May a college grad take undergrad courses toward another undergrad degree?

Question

If a person has an undergraduate degree can he/she go back to college and take undergraduate courses culminating with another undergraduate degree or must they take graduate level courses.

Answer 1

You can do a second bachelor's degree, but if say you got your degree in Accounting and want to go back to get a degree in Marketing, you probably won't be able to as both are business degrees and you cannot get a 2nd degree in the same thing.

If you just want to take the classes for career development and not use towards a second degree, you can usually apply to the university as an unclassified post baccalaureate student. This is a student that is in graduate standing (has a BS/BA degree), but they're not in a particular program. They usually won't have any restrictions to signing up for undergraduate classes, but if they want to sign up for graduate level, they'll usually need to get permission from the department. A lot of students will do this also if they want to get into graduate school, but need to take a few classes or maybe a test (GRE or GMAT) before they can be admitted to the program. Once they've met the requirements, they usually will fill out some type of change of graduate objective to change from the unclassified to the degree program they want.

If you're thinking of going back for a 2nd bachelor's degree, you might want to sit down with an advisor first because it might be less classes if you just do a master's degree in the area you want than coming for a 2nd BS degree.

Answer 2

Yes, but you generally wouldn't want to.

If you are currently enrolled in graduate school:
At my university, undergraduate tuition is cheaper than graduate tuition, so if I had to pay for a course by myself and it wasn't counting towards my graduate degree, I would definitely take it as an undergraduate. However, they will only count graduate-level courses towards a graduate degree, and the tuition waivers for TAs will only pay for graduate-level courses.

If you take graduate-level courses, you can probably convince them to count them towards an undergraduate-level degree.

But again, there are very few possible reasons why you would want to get another undergraduate degree if you are already in graduate school. You might want to make sure that there's not some other way to accomplish what you want. If you want to do this, you'd better check with your advisor first and make sure that you're doing it right.

If you are not currently enrolled in graduate school:
There might be other ways to accomplish your career goals. You probably don't necessarily have to get another college degree. If you add more detail here, we can talk specifics, but you also might want to talk to your potential employer and see what you would need to do to make your qualifications fit what they are looking for.

Answer 3

Yes, you can. You can get as many undergraduate degrees as you want. Often that is a good idea, especially if your first degree isn't in a very marketable area, or if you want to eventually pursue graduate study in a different area. Many people have more than one undergraduate degree.

Answer 4

Oh, of course you can take more undergrad courses toward another undergrad degree!

I'm preparing to do just that! My first degree is in Journalism and my MA is in English and Lit. I want to get another degree so that I can teach high school English, so, I'm going back to school to get another bachelor's degree in Education.

I know people who have several bachelor's degrees and several master's degrees!

Good luck and study hard!!

Answer 5

It's called a "second bachelor's degree". Some colleges will not give you that !! Some colleges have a second bachlors degree program. It's not just a matter of taking courses. Find out first.