undergraduate
Americannoun
adjective
-
having the standing of an undergraduate.
-
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.
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At the undergraduate level, mental and social health programs are expected to fail at very low rates nationwide, according to HEA.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 22, 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
The school is calling the streamlining a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to reduce complexity within its largest unit that includes the undergraduate college and Ph.D. programs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
He shouldn’t apply directly to the computing school; he should enroll as a liberal arts undergraduate, and take some of the courses necessary to compete academically with the other computing applicants, then transfer.
From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz
The system must add at least 1% more California undergraduates each year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
UC is outpacing that, and says it is on track to reach its goal of enrolling 217,000 California resident undergraduates by 2030.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
The amount undergraduates can borrow remains unchanged this year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
Cornell primarily contributes graduate students, along with an increasing number of undergraduates, who spend 10 weeks each summer working at the site.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 25, 2026
Just 8 percent of undergraduates in 2004 came from families in the bottom half of the income distribution, down from 11 percent a decade earlier.
From "Class Matters" by The New York Times
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.
