What Does Graduate Research Count as?

[Farantino]

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I had a question for those of you who've taken masters or phD courses; What do research credits count as? In order to complete a masters program there are 8 research credits that a student has to take. They're basically for the time you spend on your masters project. I'm just wondering, are they considered science credits? Furthermore, do you know if schools count them as part of your cum GPA or BCP or do they even consider them as credits?

 

[DMDreaming]

I had the same question because I have 6 credits of thesis research as well. According to AADSAS, mine would be considered science because: 1) the experiments are science based; 2) the call letters for mine were CHE so they basically can't tell the difference between this and say o-chem; and 3) if they don't accept these credits as science, they certainly can't accept other labs as science. (These were close to exact quotes from the person I spoke with at AADSAS.) Unfortunately for me, my university only offers S/U grades for thesis research so it is not calculated into my GPA. However, DS I've spoke with said they will see this on my transcript and will look favorably on my efforts toward a Master's degree.

 

[SugarNaCl]

The responder above said a lot of this already, but for confirmation from another person...Because thesis credits are often S/U it doesn't count towards your cumulative GPA. On the application you should list it though and use the Pass option that should be on there instead of A,B etc. It won't count against you (they won't take your cum GPA and divide by credits that were from an S/U course). If you did receive a grade, this would count towards your science GPA for sure.

At least that's what I did with my M.S. research credits.

 

[Farantino]

The responder above said a lot of this already, but for confirmation from another person...Because thesis credits are often S/U it doesn't count towards your cumulative GPA. On the application you should list it though and use the Pass option that should be on there instead of A,B etc. It won't count against you (they won't take your cum GPA and divide by credits that were from an S/U course). If you did receive a grade, this would count towards your science GPA for sure.

At least that's what I did with my M.S. research credits.

Actually I did receive a grade and that's what made me wonder. Thanks for the reply though, it's good that I did my research well and got a good grade!

 

[Farantino]

I had the same question because I have 6 credits of thesis research as well. According to AADSAS, mine would be considered science because: 1) the experiments are science based; 2) the call letters for mine were CHE so they basically can't tell the difference between this and say o-chem;

hmm, even though my research is Biology based, the research course doesn't have a CHE prefix. I'm wondering if AADSAS will know to calculate it for my BCP?😎