Department of Computer Science
 Admission Requirements

Admission to the Program is accomplished in accordance with the requirements for admission to the Graduate School at Texas Southern University.
The entire admission process will be under the direction of the Graduate Committee in the Department of Computer Science and the Graduate Council in the Graduate School at the University.

For unconditional admission, the University requirements, as well as the Program requirements, are as follows:

  1. Graduation with the bachelor’s degree, or its equivalent, from an accredited college or university. An example of the “equivalent,” as indicated may be an international student who has graduated from a college or university that issues a diploma or certificate instead of a degree.
  2. A satisfactory undergraduate sequence of courses in the proposed major.
  3. A grade point average in all undergraduate work of 2.50 (C+) or better or a grade point average of 3.0 for the last 60 semester hours of undergraduate course work.
  4. A score on the aptitude section of the Graduate Record Examination that will be used in conjunction with other admission factors.
  5. A score of at least 550 on the TOEFL, if the applicant has a degree from a non US university

Conditional admission may be given to applicants who do not satisfy all of the requirements for unconditional admission in accordance with existing University procedures. However, final disposition of these cases ultimately rests with the Dean of the Graduate School.

In addition to the general requirements for admission referenced above, applicants for admission to graduate standing in Computer Science are expected to present evidence of having completed the following courses with the minimum number of semester credit hours indicated with grades of “C” or better:

  • Object Oriented Programming/C++ or JAVA (3)
  • Computer Organization (3)
  • Computer Architecture (3)
  • Data Structures (3)
  • Operating Systems (3)
  • Discrete Mathematics (3)
  • Differential and Integral Calculus (3 to 6)

After successfully completing the course requirements, students admitted to the Program must pass a department-administered Qualifying Examination. This examination must be passed after no more than two attempts and prior to embarking upon a thesis, if Plan A is followed.

A student cannot be accepted to “candidacy status” for the M.S. in Computer Science until the Qualifying Examination is successfully completed.