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Registration for courses
Enrollment for our new students is a two step process. We ask that you first register for a minimum number of credit hours prior to finding your advisor so that your full-time student status may be established with the university.
Then after you have found an advisor, and determined which courses you should take, adjustments can be made to your schedule prior to the start of classes.
International students: you can not register for any courses until you have completed the OIE New Student Orientation. You may, however, activate your OSU account prior to arriving at OSU.
Activate your OSU internet account
Before arriving, you may activate your OSU internet account. An e-mail/internet account is provided to all OSU students. The user name and password you establish for this account will permit on-line access to such things as quarterly course scheduling, grades, course web sites, and other important web-based resources provided by the university.
To activate your account, please go to the following web site:
- Activate account (new window)
- Please use the OSU ID and password provided to you by the Admissions Office when you applied to the university and by which you have checked the status of your application. The email confirming receipt of your application contained your OSU ID (username), in the form "lastname.#", and a temporary password. Please use these to activate your account.
Please DO NOT forward your OSU e-mail account to another e-mail sevice. An MSE department e-mail account will be provided to you upon your arrival in MSE. We will ask you to forward your OSU e-mail to your MSE account so that all of your OSU-related e-mail may be read from a single in-department account.
If you are unable to activate your account from off campus, that is not a problem. Upon your arrival on campus you may use one of the public computing sites to activate your account.
Register for a minimum number of credit hours
[International students: you can not register for any courses until you have completed the Office of International Education New Student Orientation. Once you have completed this orientation, please follow the steps below.]
Before you arrive on campus, please register for the following credit hours for your quarter of admission. Doing so causes you to be registered as a full-time graduate student. You'll add graded graduate-level courses after you arrive and find & meet with your advisor. [for more about MSE 795 and 999]
MSE 795, Seminar and Colloquium. Number of units: 1
MSE 999, Research in MSE, number of units: 10 under your advisor, if you have one, or under Dr. Suliman Dregia.
Steps involved in course registration:
- Register for courses using Buckeyelink.osu.edu (new window)
- Select Student Center under the "SIS Student Center" section.
[Note: detailed instructions for the use of the Student Center are available there as well. The video is especially helpful.] - Please enter the username (lastname.###) and password you established when you activated your OSU internet account. This will bring you to your OSU Student Center page, the home page of your OSU account (see above). It allows you to add/drop courses, chek your account balances, update contact info, and more.
- Click Add a class under the "Academics" section. This takes you to your course shopping cart (if you've ever bought anything on line, this process is very similar).
- Choose the desired quarter. [Continue]
- Find a course using the search option (or enter a class number if you have the individual course indentifier). To search:
- Select the course subject, such as Materials Science and Engineer.
- Select a course number search parameter such as is exactly, is greater than or equal to, etc. For example, enter "999".
- Course career should be set to Graduate.
- Campus = Columbus and "show open classes only" are set as defaults.
- Additional search criteria allow you to be more specific in your search .
- Click the green Search button.
- As you find the courses, click the green select class button to add the course to your shopping cart. You may be prompted to enter the number of units--in the case of 999.
[You are not yet enrolled in the course.] - When you have finished adding courses to your shopping cart, click the green button Proceed to Step 2 of 3. This will take you to a confirmation screen.
- If you are blocked from enrolling please obtain a Course Enrollment Permission slip from the staff in 477 Watts Hall. In many cases, Mark Cooper can sign for you to enter a course. This form is to be taken to the Graduate School, 247 University Hall, to complete enrollment in the course.
- Click the green Finish enrolling button to confirm your enrollment in these courses. This will display the "View results" page which will alert you to any enrollment problems. From this page you'll be able to view your class schedule, make account payments, etc.
Your fees
If you hold a GRA or Fellow position, you are responsible to pay out-of-pocket roughly $120 in student fees:
- COTA Bus Service Fee (allows OSU students to ride any COTA bus in Columbus "free")
- Rec Program Facilities Fee (allows the student to use OSU's student recreational facilities)
- Student Activity Fee
- These fees must be paid by the second Friday of the quarter.
- 15% of Student Health Insurance Plan premiums--this amount will be divided by three and automatically deducted from your monthly paycheck, it is not paid in a lump sum.
Finding an advisor
The MSE dept. does not assign new students to an advisor; instead, we ask that you meet with each of the faculty who have openings. The professor you work with will act as your academic and research advisor during your graduate studies at Ohio State.
Review the list of available positions and meet first with faculty who have openings in your area(s) of interest. If, after meeting with these professors, you do not have an advisor, please meet with the remaining faculty on the list who have openings and come to an agreement to work with one of these faculty. You are required to find an advisor from the list of openings provided. This should occur during your first quarter of enrollment.
Every effort is made to match you with a project in your field of interest. However, we have only a few positions, each of which has a narrow research focus. Therefore, you may find that the area of research you will be working in is not an exact match with your interests.
When you have found an advisor, inform the department Human Resources officer, 176 Watts Hall, and Mark Cooper, 477 Watts Hall.
Review the "Funded research openings" page of this site.
Which courses should I take?
Before registering for academic classes, you must first discuss with your advisor which courses you should take (thus you can not register for graded classes until you have an advisor). It is very unlikely that you would be closed out of a course due to late arrival; graduate level courses rarely fill to capacity. A typical course load includes:
- Two or three graduate level academic classes
- Research credit hours (called "999")
- One hour of MSE 795, a seminar/colloquium class required of all MSE graduate students during Autumn, Winter, and Spring Quarters
Further details on registration will be provided when you arrive in the department.
What courses are available?
The MSE curriculum offers a wide range of courses to deepen our students' knowledge of materials. Additionally, you can enrich your knowledge through exposure to other disciplines at OSU.
What counts? MSE courses at the 600 level and greater count toward fulfillment of the graduate degree requirements. Courses outside MSE may also be applied to your degree. Assuming that they are relevant to your field of study, courses at the 500 level and above outside MSE may be used to satisfy degree requirements.
- MSE course descriptions
- MSE course offerings--when our courses will be offered in the coming quarters
- BuckeyeLink: register, browse courses, check course availability, etc.
MSE 795, 899, 999
Registration in three courses is required of all MSE graduate students; MSE 795, 899, and 999. Further details will be provided after you arrive in the department.
795
MSE 795 Seminar and Colloquium Series is a discussion of current thesis problems, outstanding current literature, and related topics. MSE students and invited speakers provide our graduate students with current information on research in the field of materials science.
Registration for this course is required of all MSE graduate students every AU, WI, and SP quarter of enrollment at Ohio State, unless prior release is granted by the Graduate Studies Committee.
899
MSE 899 Instruction of Materials Science Instructional Assistance (IA) credits are earned while assisting the faculty in the instruction of various courses in the MSE curriculum. This assistance is expected to take, on average, 6 hours of the student’s time per week during the quarter of service. Three credits are required of our Master's students; Ph.D. students are required to earn five credits before graduating.
Note: students do not register for 899 every quarter; typically students are given an IA assignment after being in the department for four quarters.
999
Enrollment in MSE 999 Research in MSE is required of all MSE graduate students earning an MS with Thesis or a Ph.D. (MS without Thesis students are not required to register for MSE 999). The number of credits for which a student registers does not reflect the number of hours the student will spend in research.
GRA's: Students classified as GRA's are to register for the maximum number of 999 credits allowed in your schedule (i.e., 20 - (graded grad credits+ MSE 795) = # of 999 credits for which to register).
Fellows: Students classified as fellows are to register for no more and no less than 15 total graduate credits each quarter on fellow status (i.e., [graded grad credits] + MSE 795 + 999 = 15).
Degree guidelines
The following guidelines detail the requirements to be fulfilled in order to earn an MS and/or Ph.D. degree in MSE:
- Master's with Thesis degree requirements
- Master's non-Thesis degree requirements
- Ph.D. degree requirements
