BS/MS Dual Degree - Advantage or Disadvantage?

[phorn]

I'm a college freshman applying for SMART this year. When I'm a junior or senior in my engineering school, I will have the option of applying for a program that will result in a Master's Degree in five years. I'm not sure at this point if I will want to pursue that or not, but there's a good chance I will. Do you think I should indicate that my program of study is a joint BS/MS program now so that I could be pre-approved for the next four years now (if I'm lucky enough to get that far, of course)? The instructions allow you to choose that as your course of study as long as your school offers it; you don't have to be accepted into the joint BS/MS program already. Or do you think it would be better to apply for the 3-year BS program only at this point, taking my chances with a re-application later if it turns out that I do want to go for the joint BS/MS before starting my work with a DOD lab? Do you think selecting one or the other will affect how the application is viewed? Thanks in advance.

[Guest]

hmmm, thats kinda a tricky one. There are a couple of things that you need to consider. Since you're only a freshman, you're at somewhat of a disadvantage anyway because your research interests aren't as well defined and since its 3 years or so until you graduate, the facility needs to provide 3 years of funding and its hard for them to anticipate hiring needs that far out. Putting down the BS/MS would exasperate those last two issues. As I understand it, if you put down just the BS, you are expected to be ready to work after your 3 years of funding and it would take a minor act of God to extend the award period. But after you fulfill the service requirement, you might be able to go to gradschool at that point under the scholarship. So basically you're committed to whatever award period you put down and then options open up again after the service period. Hope that helps a little.

[phorn]

Thanks for your thoughts. I wondered how the DOD might balance the desire to avoid an extra year of tuition cost vs. having an additional year of service commitment and a person with a Master's degree (and presumably some more training/knowledge). Anyone else have any additional thoughts?

[JimM]

But if you consider that you will be interning during the summers someone with two years left would actually have closer to 2.5 or three years left. If the consideration is on the time left to complete the degree then why extend it by removing summer courses. Most every degree you look at has some summer time required to complete the degree. From what I read it was pretty important that you get the amount of scholarship tme right. I made sure to talk with my intended institution to discuss semsters required not years. I am applying for my junior year and listed three years to complete as I will be losing two semsters over the period should I have listed 2 years?