A data-driven reflection on coterminal degrees

It’s senior spring and I am slowly but surely coming to terms with the fact that my time on the Farm is nearing an end. In the first few weeks of the quarter, I was overwhelmed with activities. From degree conferral to Grad Fair to commencement ticketing to Senior Formal, I found myself juggling all sorts of due dates and programs.

Over the next few weeks, I expect to fit in a few final side quests with friends and family. The festivities will conclude with Senior Dinner on the Quad, ​​where seniors celebrate their time at Stanford before families arrive for Commencement Weekend. This year’s Commencement ceremony will feature a few opening remarks by Stanford’s president, Jonathan Levin ’94, before transitioning to speaker Sundar Pichai M.S. ’95, CEO of Google and Alphabet.

The graduating class is entering a unique historical moment. Experts believe that AI will be enormously transformative, with some timelines for superintelligence projected as soon as 2027. At the same time, the political and economic landscape is unstable, with democracies facing challenges across the globe. With all this in mind, our class needs to seriously consider how to spend our 80,000 working hours.

Upon graduating, we will pursue a variety of paths. Some will go straight to industry or public service. Others will launch startups of their own. And still some will continue down the academic pipeline and pursue a graduate degree. Stanford, like many peer institutions, offers a streamlined approach for current students to pursue master’s degrees via the coterminal degree program. But what exactly is a “coterm,” and just how many students are actually pursuing them?

The Coterminal Program is a special admissions process where undergraduates at Stanford apply to applicable master’s programs and begin taking graduate courses during their undergraduate career. The program has grown increasingly popular over the years (particularly with respect to M.S. degrees), as reflected by the number of active coterms over time.

To apply for a coterm, undergraduates must satisfy a few key requirements, including a six-quarter minimum and completion of 120 units towards graduation. Students may only apply to one coterminal program per quarter and submit up to three applications to the same program.

The application assesses students based on their alignment with the program, transcript and letters of recommendation

Upon acceptance into a program, students retain dual status as undergraduate and graduate students with at least one quarter of overlap. At this point, a student has three years to complete their graduate degree from the matriculation quarter. The degree itself requires 45 units of at least 100-level coursework. In general, students take somewhere between 16 to 19 quarters to complete both their undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Take a moment to consider the numbers. Assuming that it takes four years (i.e., 12 quarters) to complete an undergraduate degree, that means it takes the average coterm student somewhere between four to seven quarters to finish up the remaining 45 units required for a master’s degree. That works out to roughly six to 11 units taken per quarter.

At first glance, this unit count seems rather low, but this trend is well explained by tuition gains. As a graduate student, you are placed under a different payment plan. If you take 8-10 units per quarter, you are considered a part-time graduate student and therefore pay less tuition. If you simultaneously do work for the University (a TA-ship, for example), your income plus tuition write-offs essentially nullify your tuition. In other words, many students can pursue master’s degrees at little to no cost. This is what previous Data Editor Matthew Turk ’24 would call “an infinite money glitch.”

Looking into fields of study, we consider the transitions from bachelor’s to master’s degree programs across all years. As it turns out, not all undergraduates pursue a coterm in their original field of study.

The pipeline to the CS coterminal program draws from many different sources, beyond what is visible in the alluvial plot above. The degree transition network can make these patterns clearer. The nodes are degree programs and color distinguishes the school the degree falls under. The edges represent a transition from an undergraduate to master’s degree program with weight indicating a stronger pipeline.

Personally, I am wrapping up my bachelor’s degree in data science and plan to spend a couple more quarters on the CS coterminal program. And while I will be on the Farm for a bit longer, the finality of my undergraduate experience does hit me at times. Many friends are going off to work in industry and others are pursuing Ph.D. programs outside. Still some, like me, are figuring out the details as they move along. My hope is that we are able to live out the dreams we came here to start.

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