I’m thinking about switching careers and am wondering if it’s possible to get into a masters program without a college degree or work experience in the same field. I have a BS, but it’s not in a field that I want to persue. I have been working in IT for 7 years, and I know that I can get a masters in IT business despite never having taken a college business course. So does the same thing apply if I wanted to get a masters degree in biology, which I only minored in? Otherwise, I will have to take undergrad classes at night to finish off my missing bio classes (3 years of work) and then go after the masters.
No you can’t get a masters without related experince or a related college degree. In many ways a master’s (well, at the uni I was at anyway) is like an extra final year, so you can’t do the final year without doing the first 3/4 years.
Can’t answer your specific career switch, but you can get a masters in a subject you do not have BA/BS in. It depends on your original and new subject and the new school’s requirements.
Hmmm very curious. At my institution you would not be able to do that. Then again many of our master’s program’s we offer are only one year post b.s/b.a. University level may require a GRE and prereq’s. How old are you? Can you be considered a returning student? I mean enter a program and be classified as a returning student…I think the time frame is 5 years after graduation.
I’m going ot let someone with more knowledge of the university system step in. I am only an instructor at a small liberal arts college. There are different rules for the uni’s.
My wife wants to get a Master’s in a field completely unrelated to the field in which she got her Bachelor’s. She was told that she’ll need to take some undergrad courses as a prerequisite to getting into the Master’s program. YMMV.
Zev Steinhardt
I suppose it depends on the field. I think it would be difficult to get a masters in a science field without having had significant previous schooling in that field.
However, I have to add that aahala is right, and posters who are asserting that you can never get a Masters without first having majored or worked in that field are misinformed.
Take my example: My B.A. was in Economics, but I got my Masters in Higher Education. I had worked at a college, but I can tell you that many of my graduate classmates never had. I had a classmate who had majored in Comparative Literature and had worked in politics before joining our program, and another who majored in Art History and worked in the corporate world.
It depends on the field. The best thing to do is contact the school(s) you are interested in.
I’m working on a master’s in information science (known some places as library & info science, just to clarify). My undergrad is in history and I spent several years working in a finance-related field before coming back. I did not have to take any undergrad classes before I could be admitted.
I can see where a biology master’s might require specific undergrad courses, but not knowing where you are thinking about going, I don’t know that we can give you a definite yes or no.
I’m 31. It’s quite confusing since it seems even the universities don’t know what I should do. One even has a program that lets you take undergrad courses at night that prepare you for med/dental/vet school/etc… but they are non-credit so if you don’t get in, you’ve wasted a bunch of time. If I try to finish up my BS in bio, most of the undergrad courses I need to take are not offered at night. How do people do it?
I dug around some more and think I found the answer for at least one school - Johns Hopkins. Looks like I’d only need to take organic chem or bio-chem:
Applicants must meet the following criteria to be considered for the MS/MBA Biotechnology:
• A bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited college or university.
• Strong communication and computer skills.
• Two semesters of college general chemistry, preferably with laboratories.
• Two semesters of college organic chemistry, however, students without this course work may be admitted provisionally but must complete Bio-organic Chemistry.
• A minimum of two years of full-time progressive work experience after completion of undergraduate studies.
So, I guess it can be done. I’m glad others chimed in with their experiences. I think with all the international outsourcing that is going on in IT, that there are going to be a lot of people trying to switch into different fields.
You might also look into community college courses. Many are offered at night, and they are dirt cheap.
My housemate, applying to med school, found that he was short on their desired credits in English Lit. So he signed up for a night class at our local community college, rather than take the credit at his alma mater, U of M, which was expensive. It was so cheap, I signed up for the class too, just to keep him company and to brush up on my literature knowledge. Heh.
It depends on the program. I got a BA in Social Sciences and went for a Masters in English a decade later. All I had to do was take the GREs and send my transcript.
Others I know have been told they need to take an undergraduate course or two before applying to the Masters program.
What you need to do is contact the college and talk to them.
I had an acquaintance that had one of those ITT or DeVry quasi-associate’s degrees (I only say quasi- because I don’t think they have the normal accreditation, like, say, North Central). He was admitted into a master’s program provisionally. I don’t know what field, though, since this wasn’t really a friend of mine. I just remember “associates” and “masters program” because it seemed so unusual.
I imagine he could have been jerking my chain, but I think it’s pretty credible since (1) universities want money; (2) they want to uphold a reputation which they can if their graduates are quality; (3) not having a bachelor’s degree isn’t any indication of how you’ll do in the program.
FTR, DeVry is accredited by the NCACS (http://www.ncacihe.org), making their degree as legit as any.
The NCACS listing:
DEVRY UNIVERSITY IL accredited accredited as a single entity on 2/1/02; the result of a merger of DeVry Institutes, first accredited in 1981, and Keller Graduate School of Management, first accredited in 1977
And just to be relevant to the OP, I’ve a BA in History and a MS and PhD in Geology–it took extra coursework (in a nutshell, I had to take the undergrad courses that I was lacking [Geology was my minor] that I would’ve had to taken to earn a BS in Geology, anyway)–but no problems otherwise.
To apply for the graduate school here at Cornell, all you really need is a baccalaureate degree. Of course, just having a BS doesn’t mean you’ll get in. Each field of study may have additional requirements. They won’t just look at your degree, but also your undergraduate transcript as well as take into account past experience. If you look solid enough, they might let you into the program and allow you to take “remedial” undergraduate classes. I have a colleague who came into the doctoral program with a completely different background and work experience. She had to play catch-up with the undergraduates, but made it through (relatively) unscathed.
Pantellerite, I didn’t mean to be disparaging to DeVry or its degrees, and I hope no one takes it that way. I know they’re legit degrees, and their graduates are respected in applicable sectors of my industry.
There are a number of possibilities, but they all amount to convincing the department you are applying to that your background is equivalent to that of a typical undergraduate major in the area. At some schools you can apply for a qualifying year, take a full load of undergraduate courses and they will base admission on how well you do in them. In fact, that is the best way since you are not asking them to make a commitment based on too little information. Your undergrad minor should have prepared you to do that much. Assuming it is still there in your gray cells. I don’t think the junior college is a good idea since they are unlikely to go as far as your undergrad minor. A four year community college might qualify, but I’ll bet the grad school will not be impressed. If you don’t want to do a full year, registration as a special student might do it, again taking the courses needed to make up an undergrad major.
I knew a student who came to my dept (math) not having taken so much as calculus in college (he was an anthropology major), but having gotten interested in math, he was self-taught and somehow would up talking to a well-known mathematician at Brooklyn college who wrote a strong recommendation. That was crucial in his case. So he took a quailfying year and was admitted, got an M.Sc., a Ph.D. and now is a quite successful mathematician. That case is unique, but then in your situation it is likely to be since it is not a normal career move.
One thing to note is that admission to grad school, unlike undergraduate college, is done by departments not admissions offices and is based on much more realistic criteria. I always smiled when an applicant emphasized his extra-curricular activities or the other kinds of things that influence admissions officers, since we just ignored such things. The only criteria we cared about were those clearly related to probability of success in graduate school.
No worries! I just read:
and saw an opportunity to “fight ignorance”. College and University accreditation is just something I kind of follow.
This is not necessarily correct.
Check with whatever school you are applying to. A Masters program is generally 2-3 years. If you are applying for a Masters in the same field as your undergrad degree at the same school, it may only be another year.
I think it depends on what you study as an undergrad. Law and Business, it doesn’t matter really but if you have a BS in Literature, you may not be able to get into a Masters in Mathmatics or Engineering program without additional coursework.
Ah, organic chemistry. The bane of the Hopkins undergrad’s existence.
I’m a history grad student at Hopkins, so this doesn’t affect me, but undergrads here are always stressed out about their grades in “orgo,” as they call it. I think that probably has something to do with the fact that about half the Hopkins undergrad population seems to be hoping to go to med school.
Law is actually a Doctoral program; the Masters program is taken afterwards.