undergraduate
Americannoun
-
undergraduates
plural
adjective
-
having the standing of an undergraduate.
-
of, for, pertaining to, or characteristic of undergraduates.
noun
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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:
The AI era may force a separation between undergraduate liberal-arts education and research-focused graduate education.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2026
He began that manuscript, which takes place on the reservation, as an undergraduate at Princeton, in Toni Morrison’s long-fiction workshop.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2026
Pella, the 28-year-old daughter of the late Westish president, has completed her undergraduate studies in literature—a bad first marriage meant she started college belatedly.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 2026
Computer science became the most popular undergraduate major at the flagship Ann Arbor campus, according to Michigan’s budget office.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 19, 2026
Anyway he related long pointless anecdotes of his undergraduate days, speaking familiarly of dead and departed professors by their first names, usually incorrect ones.
From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
The liberal-arts college has roughly 2,000 undergraduates, and some of them take multiple computer-science courses each semester.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 19, 2026
Signers would cap international undergraduates at 15%, require the SAT or ACT and freeze tuition for five years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026
As part of the deal, Tishman Speyer will make ground lease payments to the Cooper Union which the college wants to use to finance "a bold plan to restore full-tuition scholarships for all undergraduates".
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
Colleges enroll 4.2% fewer undergraduates than last year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026
In a neighboring village, there was an African dance-hall known as Ntselamanzi, which catered to the cream of local black society and was off-limits to undergraduates.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
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