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A maximum of six credit hours of the 4000 level courses listed above, taken as foundation required for admission, may be applied toward the MS degree.
As a condition of admittance to the graduate program, students who do not meet School GRE and/or GPA standards will be required to meet additional performance criteria, such as past performance in critical courses, withdrawal and drop history, letters of recommendation, personal knowledge of past performance, improvement on repeated courses, work and/or life experiences and individual faculty support as a mentor in the research laboratory.
All graduate students in the Biological Sciences program must complete a Candidate Plan of Study (CPS) with their assigned faculty advisor before they complete 9 hours of graduate credit. Courses completed past the initial 9 hours that are not on the approved CPS may not be counted toward the degree.
The MS in Biological Science requires 36 hours of coursework in one of four Specialization Areas, of which 24 hours must be in biology courses. Students enrolling in the non-thesis option must complete 33 hours of coursework (which may include independent study research) and the capstone course, BIOL 6838 Research Project and Seminar. BIOL 6838 must be taken in the last 12 hours. Alternately, students may elect to pursue the thesis option, which requires 27 hours of coursework, plus BIOL 5530 Research Methods (three hours) and BIOL 6939 Master's Thesis (six hours). Students pursuing the master's thesis option are advised to consult with their faculty adviser and take BIOL 5530 early in their studies as preparation for beginning the thesis. | 
