While Georgia Tech does not transfer graduate courses from other institutions into the Ph.D. program, students may request that eligible external coursework be considered as an equivalent course to satisfy breadth or minor requirements.
To be eligible for consideration, the coursework must:
Have been completed within the past six years.
Be graduate-level coursework.
If you completed non-CS or CSE graduate courses while earning a master's degree at Georgia Tech, those courses may be used to satisfy your minor requirement, provided your faculty advisor determines they are relevant to your program of study.
No formal evaluation is required. Simply list the course(s) on your Minor Form.
Graduate-level non-CS or CSE courses completed at another institution may also be used to satisfy your minor requirement, provided your faculty advisor determines they are relevant to your program of study.
No formal evaluation is required. Simply attach the course syllabus and an official or unofficial transcript to your Minor Form.
Requests to apply CS or CSE courses toward the minor requirement require a formal Petition to the Faculty submitted through DocuSign.
The petition is first reviewed by the School of Interactive Computing Associate Chair. If approved, it is forwarded to the Institute Graduate Curriculum Committee for final consideration.
If you would like to use a course that has not already been approved as a breadth course to satisfy a breadth requirement, you must submit a Petition to the Faculty through DocuSign.
Attach the course syllabus and transcript, provide a brief justification for your request, and route the petition to Thomas Ploetz, Associate Chair, for review. The Associate Chair will consult with the appropriate subject area lead before making a decision.
If you would like to use graduate-level coursework completed at another university to satisfy a breadth requirement, please follow the steps outlined below. Note that the programming requirement should be taken at Georgia Tech. See more guidance in the Q&A section below.
Q: Can a student request permission to count a CS course toward the minor requirement?
Yes. If there is a compelling academic justification for including a CS course in the minor (for example, if the course is cross-listed or substantially equivalent to a course in another discipline, such as CS 7751 and ECE 7751), the student may submit a Petition to the Faculty through DocuSign.
The petition should include a brief justification for the request. It will first be reviewed by the School of Interactive Computing Associate Chair and, if supported, forwarded to the Graduate Curriculum Committee for final consideration.
Q: Can I count grad-level courses I took as an undergraduate to count for my PhD?
You can only count TWO grad-level courses that you took and used toward your BS degree.
Q: May a student request to meet their 'programming breadth requirement' with a course taken at another institution?
In general, no. We discourage requests to fulfill the programming breadth requirement with coursework completed outside of Georgia Tech. However, students who believe they have completed an equivalent course may submit a petition for faculty consideration.
To do so, the student must first identify a Georgia Tech course that closely matches the external course. The student should then contact the Georgia Tech course instructor and provide the external course syllabus, asking the instructor to review the course and determine whether it is equivalent to the Georgia Tech course.
If the instructor supports the request, the student may submit a Petition to the Faculty. The petition is first reviewed by the School of Interactive Computing Associate Chair. If approved, it is forwarded to the Graduate Curriculum Committee (GCC) for final consideration.
Please note that this review process typically takes several months, and most petitions are not approved.
Q: Can a student use the same course to meet their minor, and breadth requirement?
No. This is not permitted as it takes away from the whole concept of a breadth.
Q: Can students have any number of courses 8803s applied to their breadth requirement?
8803s are classes that have not yet been assigned a permanent number. You can use as many as are approved to meet your breadth requirement. These 8803 classes need to be approved to count towards the breadth requirement — via a petition to the faculty. This decision is made at the school level.
Q: Can 8903 count as a breadth requirement?
8903 cannot count toward the BREADTH requirements.
Q: Can 8903s be used to meet the minor requirement?
8903s are one-to-one faculty-student directed study. Students can use up to 3 hours of 8903 toward their minor if it is an area outside of their normal course of study.
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