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Current Students

Outside Class Information

Cross-Registration for M.S. & M.A. Students

M.S. students are encouraged to make use of the greater Columbia University course offerings to further their knowledge base in areas of particular interest and relevance to their journalistic goals. Classes (except for languages) must be graduate level (4000+) and must be approved by the Dean of Students office.

M.A. students are required to take an outside elective each semester. Classes must be graduate level (4000+) and must be approved by your discipline professor.

*Please note that the Law School and Business School have different academic calendars.
Please check their schedules if looking at classes offered in those schools.

M.S. Options

  1. Take a 3-point elective in another division in lieu of a journalism elective for one of your two required electives.
  2. Take a 4-point language course in lieu of a journalism elective for one of your two required electives.
  3. Once you have found a class that is graduate level (4000+), works with your schedule, and meshes with your journalistic goals, please send an e-mail to dos@jrn.columbia.edu with a request to take the class that includes the class name, course number, professor, number of points, and a description of how it will help you achieve your professional objectives.

M.S. Process

  1. You must complete our course preference balloting and registration process with the intention of taking all your classes at the Journalism School (since cross-registrations aren’t always possible, you should carefully complete your ballot). Registration for outside courses is a function of our add/drop period. Once your Journalism course assignments are available in SSOL, you can look into swapping out either your elective or your seminar with an outside course.
  2. You must find the class of interest. To the right, you will see information about each school/division and a list of classes that Journalism students have taken in the past.
  3. Once you have found a class that is graduate level (4000+), works with your schedule, and meshes with your journalistic goals, please send an e-mail to dos@jrn.columbia.edu with a request to take the class that includes the class name, course number, professor, number of points, a syllabus and a description of how it will help you achieve your professional objectives.
  4. Once you have approval from the Dean of Students office, you will need to get approval from the outside division (dean or professor) on the M.S. Outside Course Approval Form. Once it is received by Dean Huff, you will be automatically registered for the course(s). Please note that for fall 2009, this must be completed by 7:00 a.m. on September, 18, 2009.

M.A. Process

The responsibility for finding the proper outside courses and securing admission to them rests with each MA student. Your seminar instructor and other faculty, as well as the academic-affairs deans, are happy to advise you in your search; but you must take primary responsibility.

You should begin searching as soon as you have a clear idea what you think you want to study. Visit the Columbia University Website www.columbia.edu/academic_programs to see what is available in different schools and departments. In some cases, classes at other schools may begin before they do at the Journalism School, so be sure to check calendar information carefully.

To help you along in your selection we have created the M.A. Outside Course List. This list will help you get a taste of some of the outside courses M.A. students have selected in the past.

Although we have tried to publicize the MA program to Columbia University faculty members, the likelihood is that a professor you approach will have little idea of what it is. You must use the same skills to get into a course that you use to secure an interview from a difficult subject—be patient, explain what you want clearly, and be persistent. We have had great success so far, but our continued success in this area depends to a large degree on your own diplomatic skills.

Please read the following instructions carefully, and if you have any questions please contact Evelyn Corchado at eoc11@columbia.edu.

Outside Course Registration

  1. Working with your discipline professor, you must find the class of interest.
  2. All courses must be at the graduate level. Once you have found a class that is graduate level (in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences these are at the 4000 level and above; courses at the graduate schools are almost all graduate-level courses by definition), works with your schedule, and meshes with your journalistic goals, you must complete the M.A. Outside Course Approval Form and get signatures from both your discipline professor and the professor (or appropriate dean) for the outside class. Please note that you must also submit a syllabus for the class.
  3. You may take outside courses with a pass/fail option (with the permission of the instructor). “R” credit, (Columbia’s version of the formal auditing of a course) cannot be applied toward the required 18-credit points.
  4. In rare instances, there may be an undergraduate course at the 3000 level that is a particularly good match with an MA student’s area of interest. In such cases, it is possible to sign up, with approval from Dean Huff, for a 3-credit independent study with the professor of that course, provided that the professor is willing to undertake this and that the student and the professor agree on an amount of additional work that the MA student will do to raise the workload to the level appropriate for graduate work.
  5. Once the outside course approval form is completed and signed, please submit it with the course syllabus to Dean Huff in room 207C for official class registration. Please note that for fall 2009, this must be completed by 7:00 a.m. on September 18, 2009.