undergraduate
Americannoun
adjective
-
having the standing of an undergraduate.
-
of, for, pertaining to, or characteristic of undergraduates.
noun
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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.
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Co-lead authors of the paper are Reza Ghanbar, a Ph.D. student at NC State; and Eli Rodrigues, a graduate student at NC State who was involved with this work while still an undergraduate.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 3, 2026
He received his undergraduate degree in architecture from UC Berkeley, working in city planning until he got laid off, which, along with the death of his father, prompted him to pursue his true love: acting.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 3, 2026
University of Southern California undergraduate student Anyi Tan contributed to this research.
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2026
Is it worth compromising our retirement goals to pay for a prestigious undergraduate education that may not deliver enough additional value?
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 21, 2026
He was an undergraduate at Delhi University during the euphoria of 1957, when the Communists won the State Assembly elections and Nehru invited them to form a government.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
It’s now flooded with standardized public-market data, so much so that undergraduates can readily peer inside and participate on nearly equal footing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
Plus, dozens of universities now offer real-estate degrees, minors or concentrations for undergraduates.
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
Across the river at the University of Manchester, the price increases by a pound for undergraduates and postgraduates, but those with a doctorate pay £57.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
Duke University, although a private institution, integrated its graduate schools in 1961 and accepted black undergraduates the following year.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
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.
