For the Joint Bachelor's/Master's Program
The requirements for the MS-SEC are structured so that undergraduate students would be able to pursue a Bachelor's/Master's program, in which the Bachelor's degree is awarded in any major offered at WPI and the Master's degree is awarded as the MS-SEC. Students enrolled in the joint Bachelor's/Master's program must satisfy all the program requirements of their respective bachelor's degree and all the program requirements of the MS-SEC. WPI allows the double counting of up to 12 credits for students pursuing a 5-year Bachelor’s/Master’s program. This overlap can be achieved through the following mechanisms. Students may double-count courses towards both their undergraduate and graduate degrees whose credit hours total no more than 40 percent of the 30 credit hours required for the MS-SEC, and that meet all other requirements for each degree. These courses can include graduate courses as well as certain undergraduate 4000-level courses as long as the undergraduate courses are acceptable in place of a corresponding graduate course that satisfies a MS-SEC requirement.
In consultation with the academic advisor, the student prepares a Plan of Study outlining the selections chosen to satisfy the Bachelor's/Master's program degree requirements, including the courses that will be double-counted. This Plan of Study must then be approved by the Cyber Security program. As a university wide rule, the B.S./M.S. double counting credits can be applied for only while the student is an undergraduate student.
For the following 4000-level courses, two graduate credits will be earned towards the joint Bachelor's/Master's degree if the student achieves grade B or higher, or otherwise with the instructor’s approval. In addition, faculty may offer, at their discretion, an additional 1/6 undergraduate unit, or equivalently a 1 graduate credit, for completing additional work in the course. To obtain this additional credit, the student must register for 1/6 undergraduate unit of independent study at the 4000-level or a 1 graduate credit independent study at the 500-level, with permission from the instructor. A student can receive credit for at most one of the two courses in any row of the following table.
| Undergraduate Course | Graduate Course |
|---|---|
| CS 4341 Intro to Artificial Intelligence | CS 534 Artificial Intelligence |
| CS 4342 Machine Learning | CS 539 Machine Learning |
| CS 4401 Software Security Engineering | CS 557 Soft. Security Design & Analysis |
| CS 4432 Database Systems 2 | CS 542 Database Management Systems |
| CS 4445 Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery in Databases | CS 548 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining |
| CS 4513 Distributed Systems | CS 502 Operating Systems |
| CS 4516 Advanced Computer Networks | CS 513 Computer Networks |
Students may additionally double-count CS 4404 (Tools and Techniques in Computer Network Security) or CS 4801/ECE 4802 (Introduction to Cryptography and Communication Security) towards the joint Bachelor's/Master's degree.
Other 4000-level courses not listed above, including 4000-level independent study courses, require a petition and approval from the Cyber Security Graduate Committee before they can double-count for the Bachelor's/Master's degree.
Satisfying MS-SEC Core Areas
Students with Bachelor's/Master's credit for CS 4401 (Software Security Engineering), CS 4404 (Tools and Techniques in Computer Network Security), or CS 4801/ECE 4802 (Introduction to Cryptography and Communication Security) may use that course to satisfy the technically-focused core course requirement. Alternatively, the student may instead apply that course credit towards either the depth or the elective requirements. For any other undergraduate course or independent study/project work, students may submit a petition along with a detailed course description and syllabus to the Cyber Security Program for final decision on whether the course should count towards core area requirements.