How to Write About Programs, Degrees, and your Education

By Morris Chen, July 2, 2018

In my 7 years of advising international students, I have observed widespread confusion amongst international students over how to write about their educational experience and prospective programs. This is normal, for everyone. English is a grammatically confusing language that is constantly being stretched, expanded, and reinvented. Native speakers of English often make grammatical mistakes as well, but their English proficiency is not questioned because it is assumed to be a slip. However, most Americans do not give international students the benefit of the doubt when they spot grammatical errors, and attribute such errors to the foreignness of international student experiences.

Is it fair to expect international students, who have been immersed in their home country or culture’s academic traditions, to magically know how Americans play this game? No. However, advisors can help even the odds by pointing out how to make your ideas more palatable to American readers (which includes the admission officers!).

Making simple mistakes when talking about your prospective program can undermine your application, giving people the impression that you do not care enough about the program to even get the name right. In reality, many students simply do not know how to do this correctly and are just copy-pasting words from a program description page. In this post, I will briefly address several common confusions over how one describes a program.
 

1. Is it Master’s Degree or Masters Degree? Do I capitalize “master”? 

When speaking generally about degrees and curricula offered at the graduate level, use lower case and an apostrophe (’). 

• Rhonda will receive her master’s degree next year.
• I recommend Mr. Chan for admission to your master’s program (in xxx).
• Starting in the fall of 2020, New York University will offer a master’s degree program that teaches students how to give belly rubs to puppies.
• We care deeply about your master’s education.
• We care deeply about your education at the master’s level. 

When speaking of a specific degree or program, capitalize the degree and drop the apostrophe. 

• Rhonda currently holds a Master of Arts (in xxx) from National Taiwan University.
• I recommend Mr. Chan for admission to your Master of Business Administration program.
• Starting in the fall of 2020, New York University will offer a new Master of Education (M.A. or Ed.M.) in Puppy Administration.
• I received my B.A. in Women’s Studies from the College of William and Mary, while my sister majored in political science from Boston University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree (which is not true). 
  
  

2. How do I correctly abbreviate degree names?

Disciplines and institutions have different preferences for how one should abbreviate something. Nevertheless, in most cases, it is not wrong to punctuate the name of your degree(s) with periods. 

• A. in Women’s Studies
• Hannah Googlesnoutz, Ph.D., will give a lecture on the future of Big Data at 3 p.m.

Another tip, this time on writing dates and times: It is generally accepted to leave a space and punctuate with periods. 2 P.M. and 2 a.m. are both correct. In a more informal setting, do whatever you prefer as long as it gets the point across!

3. What about Ph.D. programs? 

• Gloria holds a doctoral degree (or a doctorate) from the University of Southern California.
• Gloria was a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Southern California.
• Gloria was a doctoral student.
• Gloria received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California.
• Gloria holds a Doctor of Philosophy (degree) in Economics from the University of Southern California.

 

References

Academic Degrees. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://wmich.edu/writing/rules/degrees

Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. (2017). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.