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graduate student

graduate student

75 2.5
A student who studies for a master's or PhD after finishing a bachelor's degree
  • noun
  • /ˈɡrædʒuˌeɪt ˈstjuːdənt/
  • US
translation icon : estudiante de posgrado
  • I still live in Providence, where I'm a graduate student in philosophy.
  • undergraduate and graduate students
  • faculty and graduate students
  • advise graduate students

I'm a third year graduate student in the department of EECS.

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Examples

  • Research activities typically take place among graduate students and faculty in higher education.

    Academic text (1990)
  • And when I was a graduate student, I wrote a paper on Pride and Prejudice.

  • And then I carried on as a graduate student and, and stuck with it since then.

  • So a lot of the graduate students in my program, they were from India.

  • Not a faculty member, but a graduate student from Yale, right?

  • Studies relating to teacher education are usually conducted by university staff members and graduate students.

    Academic text (2011)
  • JOHN M. AGUIAR is a graduate student in conservation biology at Texas A&M University.

    Academic text (1999)
  • He's a first year graduate student at MIT.

  • And she's now a graduate student at Princeton University.

  • As a graduate student, she focused her research on renewable energy sources.

Synonyms

grad student
vsgraduate student
  • Informal
40 2.8

A student who studies after college to get a master's or doctoral degree

is specifically studying for master's or doctoral degrees after a bachelor's
postgraduate
vsgraduate student
  • UK
3 4.0

A student doing further study after finishing a bachelor's degree at university

is limited to master's or doctoral study following a bachelor's degree

How Advanced

postdoctoral
  • Specialized
6 6.7
doctoral
  • Specialized
24 6.3
graduate student
  • US
75 2.5
undergraduate
93 3.2

Surface Forms

Morphology

graduate + student

The meaning 'a student enrolled in postgraduate (master's or doctoral) studies' is directly derivable from combining 'graduate' (pertaining to postgraduate study) with 'student' (someone studying). This compositional pattern is common cross-linguistically and context makes the intended postgraduate sense clear, so a B1 learner who knows both words would understand it.

Etymology

Graduate student comes from the words graduate and student: graduate means someone who has 'finished a degree' and student is a person who studies. So, a graduate student is a person who has finished a bachelor's degree and is now studying for a master's or doctorate.