The Masters degree associated with a combined four-year BS/MS program is a coursework-based degree.
Course distribution
Students may take graduate courses in any number of departments to tailor a degree to best suit the candidate's needs in consultation with a student's undergraduate advisor and the departmental graduate committee. However, the department only allows a maximum of 10 credits of elective (non-CBC) coursework (e.g. eng, neuro, math, manag., etc.) to count towards the Masters degree in a combined BS/MS program. Overrides to this policy must be considered by the departmental graduate committee, but the committee is very accommodating of many graduate-level engineering or natural science courses.
Graduate research
Because the undergraduate degree requires a research component (i.e. the Major Qualifying Project), students are not allowed to register for undergraduate MQP work and graduate research, Ch 598, in the same research group concurrently. As such, two work-around possibilities include performing Ch 598 research in a different research group from one's MQP work, or by scheduling Ch 598 and MQP research in different terms.
The department follows university guidelines for a maximum of of 9 credits of Ch 598 being allowed towards the completion of this coursework-based master's degree.
If Ch 598 is to comprise some part of a student's degree, that student must reach out to a research advisor and secure an agreement to participate in graduate-level research concurrently with applying for the BS/MS program, and discuss with the graduate committee how that research will be separate from any MQP work.
WPI expects graduate students to put in 56 hours of effort per one credit hour earned. Thus, if a student is registering for Ch598 during a seven-week term, the department will expect students to put in eight hours of research effort per week per credit-hour earned in Ch598. (See page 13 of the 2019-2020 graduate catalog, or page 15 of the 2018-2019 graduate catalog).
The graduate committee expects a "product" of graduate research irrespective of the number of hours of Ch 598 that is completed. This may include a write-up of the research completed, or preparation of a manuscript to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.
Credit hour conversion
When matriculating as an undergraduate student, the university registrar counts both 4xxx-level courses and 5xx-level courses at 1.5x the credit hours that would be earned if being counted towards a graduate degree. For example, a student having completed the biochemistry sequence, Ch4110, 4120, 4130, and 4140 would see each of those courses appear as three credit-hours of effort on their undergraduate transcript. However, when being counted for graduate credit towards a Master's degree, those courses would only count as two credit-hours of effort. Similarly, Ch516 would show up as 4.5 credit-hours of effort for an undergraduate, but will only be counted as three credit hours of effort towards a graduate degree. Since students in a combined BS/MS program have not yet earned an undergraduate degree, courses will remain listed on transcripts at the undergraduate level of effort and not directly reflect credit-hours earned towards a graduate degree.
With that conversion in mind and the 40% allowed double-counting of credits, the simplest trajectory through the requirements are the completion of six 4xxx-level, 1/3 unit courses, and six 5xx-level 3-credit-hour courses.