Computer Science, BS with grad track option leading to Computer Science and Engineering, PhD

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering offers a grad track option for existing UNT undergraduate students majoring in computer science.

This grad track option is a BS to PhD accelerated program for computer science and computer engineering undergraduate students. The student can take a maximum of 12 credit hours of graduate courses while completing the BS degree. These credits will be counted first toward the BS degree and then, upon graduation, be transferred to the PhD degree.

The following is the step-by-step process:

A student applies for the grad track option in the junior year (having completed at least 75 credit hours with a GPA of 3.5 or higher).
After the application is approved and the student has completed at least 90 credit hours, the student can start taking graduate courses that are approved for the grad track option as CSE electives for the BS degree requirements. For the graduate courses to be counted toward the PhD degree later, the student should earn a grade of B or higher for the courses.
The student applies to the Toulouse Graduate School within the first semester of the senior year. Once the student satisfies all course work for the BS degree and having maintained a 3.5 or higher GPA, the student will submit three recommendation letters from faculty members and a statement of purpose to be considered for entry into the PhD program.
The student must enroll in graduate school in the long semester after finishing his/her BS degree and should take the remaining graduate courses in the following year(s) to complete his/her PhD degree. If the student does not enroll in graduate school in the long semester after finishing his/her BS degree, those graduate course credit hours will no longer be counted for the PhD degree, even if the student comes back for graduate school in the future.
Once admitted to the PhD program, the students will have higher priority for funding (research and teaching assistantship) to support PhD study.
TGS will be consulted for cases when students enrolled in the BS program with the BS-to-MS grad track option are transferred to the program with the BS-to-PhD grad track option.

Program policies

After completing at least 90 credit hours, the student can start taking the accepted graduate courses as technical electives for the BS degree. If the student wants to take other graduate courses for grad track credits, he or she will need to obtain approvals from both the undergraduate and graduate CSE coordinators. For these graduate courses to be counted for the PhD degree, the student must earn a grade of B or higher for each course. Courses cross-listed as graduate/undergraduate must be taken at the graduate level to be counted for graduate credit.

Students admitted to the grad track option will be admitted into the PhD program on a conditional basis. Once the student has satisfied all course work for the BS degree and maintained a 3.5 GPA or higher, he or she will be fully admitted. Undergraduate students who have been accepted to a grad track program should complete all of the bachelor’s degree requirements and graduate within 12 months of the first day of the semester for which they began taking graduate courses, or enrollment in graduate level course work will be suspended.

Program requirements

Students may choose up to 12 hours from the following list of courses.

CSCE - 5050 - Applications of Cryptography (for CSCE 4050 )
CSCE - 5200 - Information Retrieval and Web Search (for CSCE 4200 )
CSCE - 5210 - Aritifical Intelligence (for CSCE 4201 )
CSCE - 5215 - Machine Learning (for CSCE 4930 when topic is “Machine Learning”)
CSCE - 5220 - Computer Graphics (for CSCE 4230 )
CSCE - 5225 - Digital Image Processing (for CSCE 4240 )
CSCE - 5250 - Introduction to Game Programming (for CSCE 4210 )
CSCE - 5255 - Programming Math and Physics for Games (for CSCE 4255 )
CSCE - 5260 - 3D Game Programming (for CSCE 4220 )
CSCE - 5265 - Advanced Topics in Game Development (for CSCE 4250 )
CSCE - 5290 - Natural Language Processing (for CSCE 4290 )
CSCE - 5350 - Fundamentals of Database Systems (for CSCE 4350 )
CSCE - 5400 - Formal Languages, Automata and Computability (for CSCE 4115 )
CSCE - 5430 - Software Engineering (for CSCE 3444 )
CSCE - 5450 - Programming Languages (for CSCE 4430 )
CSCE - 5460 - Software Testing and Empirical Methodologies (for CSCE 4460 )
CSCE - 5510 - Wireless Communications (for CSCE 4510 )
CSCE - 5520 - Wireless Networks and Protocols (for CSCE 4520 )
CSCE - 5560 - Secure Electronic Commerce (for CSCE 4560 )
CSCE - 5585 - Network Security (for CSCE 4930 when topic is “Block Chain”)
CSCE - 5610 - Computer System Architecture (for CSCE 4610 )
CSCE - 5620 - Real‐Time Operating Systems (for CSCE 4620 )
CSCE - 5640 - Operating Systems Design (for CSCE 4600 )
CSCE - 5650 - Compiler Design (for CSCE 4650 )
CSCE - 5655 - Principles of Compiler Optimization (for CSCE 4655 )
CSCE - 5730 - Digital CMOS VLSI Design (for CSCE 4730 )
CSCE - 5810 - Biocomputing (for CSCE 4810 )
CSCE - 5820 - Computational Epidemiology (for CSCE 4820 )

Students must also complete all other courses required for the Computer Science, BS .