Admission requirements and program policies

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:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Once admitted to the PhD program, the students will have higher priority for funding (research and teaching assistantship) to support PhD study.
6. 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 requirements

The student is required to take three of the courses listed below in the fourth year of their bachelor’s degree program:

• CSCE 5050 - Applications of Cryptography (CSCE 4050 )
• CSCE 5200 - Information Retrieval and Web Search (CSCE 4200 )
• CSCE 5200 - Information Retrieval and Web Search (CSCE 4930 )
• CSCE 5210 - Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence (CSCE 4201 )
• CSCE 5215 - Machine Learning (CSCE 4930 )
• CSCE 5220 - Computer Graphics (CSCE 4230 )
• CSCE 5225 - Digital Image Processing (CSCE 4240 )
• CSCE 5250 - Introduction to Game Programming (CSCE 4210 )
• CSCE 5255 - Programming Math and Physics for Games (CSCE 4255 )
• CSCE 5260 - 3D Game Programming (CSCE 4220 )
• CSCE 5265 - Advanced Topics in Game Development (CSCE 4250 )
• CSCE 5290 - Natural Language Processing (CSCE 4290 )
• CSCE 5350 - Fundamentals of Database Systems (CSCE 4350 )
• CSCE 5380 - Data Mining
• CSCE 5400 - Formal Languages, Automata and Computability (CSCE 4115 )
• CSCE 5430 - Software Engineering (CSCE 3444 )
• CSCE 5450 - Programming Languages (CSCE 4430 )
• CSCE 5460 - Software Testing and Empirical Methodologies (CSCE 4460 )
• CSCE 5510 - Wireless Communications (CSCE 4510 )
• CSCE 5520 - Wireless Networks and Protocols (CSCE 4520 )
• CSCE 5550 - Introduction to Computer Security
• CSCE 5555 - Computer Forensics
• CSCE 5560 - Secure Electronic Commerce (CSCE 4560 )
• CSCE 5585 - Network Security (CSCE 4930 )
• CSCE 5610 - Computer System Architecture (CSCE 4610 )
• CSCE 5620 - Real-Time Operating Systems (CSCE 4620 )
• CSCE 5640 - Operating System Design (CSCE 4600 )
• CSCE 5650 - Compiler Design (CSCE 4650 )
• CSCE 5655 - Principles of Compiler Optimization (CSCE 4655 )
• CSCE 5730 - Digital CMOS VLSI Design (CSCE 4730 )
• CSCE 5810 - Biocomputing (CSCE 4810 )
• CSCE 5820 - Advances in Bioinformatics (CSCE 4820 )

All remaining courses for Cybersecurity, BS  must be completed.