undergraduate
Americannoun
-
undergraduates
plural
adjective
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having the standing of an undergraduate.
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of, for, pertaining to, or characteristic of undergraduates.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of undergraduate
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How does undergraduate compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
An undergraduate is a college or university student who's not a graduate student. After high school, you can become an undergraduate. Undergraduates are students of universities and colleges: they've graduated from high school and have been accepted to college, but they haven't graduated yet. If the under in undergraduate seems confusing, that's because there are also graduate students, students who have a college degree but are no longer undergraduates and are pursuing an advanced degree, like a Master's or Ph.D. Lots of people say being an undergraduate was one of the best times of their lives: it's an exciting thing to be.
Vocabulary lists containing undergraduate
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
More than 3,000 UC faculty members at all nine undergraduate campuses have signed two letters demanding the SAT’s return.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
I’ve heard from hundreds of readers who expressed surprise that anyone would pay nearly $400,000 for an undergraduate degree.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
Why buy: After finishing his undergraduate degree in Boston, Snyder moved back to Louisville in 2021 and decided to buy his primary home to start building equity.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 1, 2026
Former Ohio State undergraduate Carmen Pape was also a co-author.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 31, 2026
The last thing she wanted was an undergraduate debate on eighteenth-century literature.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
PhD students would also be able to bring their families as they were in different life circumstances to undergraduates, Burke said.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
With help from Berkeley undergraduates, Vazquez traveled throughout the region, setting up mist nets over streams, ponds and rivers at night.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 12, 2026
He is a rising senior at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, where he leads a team of 20 undergraduates who manage about $12 million in equity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
There were 200,532 California undergraduates who attended UC last fall, out of a total of 237,616 undergraduates and 301,093 students overall.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
Like many other poor students at the time, Hooke also helped to make ends meet by working as servant to one of the wealthier undergraduates.
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
