undergraduate

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *h₁én

Proto-Indo-European *h₁entér

Proto-Indo-European *(H)n̥dʰí

Proto-Indo-European *-ér

Proto-Indo-European *(H)n̥dʰér

Proto-Germanic *under

Proto-West Germanic *undar

Old English under-

Middle English under-

English under-

English graduate

English undergraduate

From under- + graduate.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

undergraduate (plural undergraduates)

1. A student at a university who has not yet received a degree.
   • 2017 October 10, Vanessa Potter, “My sudden synesthesia: how I went blind and started hearing colors”, in CNN‎^[1], archived from the original on 20 August 2025:

     Daniel Hajas is a physics undergraduate at Sussex and has been blind since he was 16. He first heard about Giles and the SSDs when Giles was looking for blind students to test the devices.

   • 2024 January 23, Ross Pomeroy, “Why College Students' Average IQ Has Fallen 17 Points Since 1939”, in RealClearScience‎^[2], archived from the original on 7 March 2024:

     It’s commonly cited that undergraduates are significantly smarter than average, with IQs ranging from 115 to 130. […] The decline in undergraduate IQs might just be another indication that the worth of a college degree has been hollowed out over time.

Translations

student at a university who has not yet received a degree — see also pregraduate

• Bulgarian: студе́нт m (studént)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 本科生 (zh) (běnkēshēng)

• Finnish: perusopiskelija
• French: étudiant de licence
• Galician: universitario (gl) m, universitaria f
• German: Student (de) m
• Greek: προπτυχιακός (el) m (proptychiakós)
• Hindi: पूर्वस्नातक (hi) m (pūrvasnātak)
• Hungarian: egyetemista (hu), egyetemi hallgató (hu), felsőoktatási intézmény hallgatója
• Irish: fochéimí m
• Italian: laureando (it) m
• Macedonian: додипломец m (dodiplomec)
• Manx: fo-cheimee m
• Portuguese: estudante de graduação m or f, graduando (pt) m (especially one in the last year)
• Russian: студе́нт (ru) m (studént) (университе́та, ко́лледжа)
• Spanish: estudiante universitario no licenciado m or f
• Swedish: student (sv) c
• Turkish: lisans öğrencisi, üniversite öğrencisi (tr)

Adjective

undergraduate (not comparable)

1. Of, relating to, or being an undergraduate.

   After completing my undergraduate studies, I embarked on a career in publishing.

Synonyms

• pregraduate (unusual)

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “student, adjective”): postgraduate
• (antonym(s) of “student”): graduate

Coordinate terms

• graduand

Translations

of being an undergraduate — see also pregraduate

• Bulgarian: студентски (studentski)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 本科 (zh) (běnkē)

• Finnish: perusopiskelijan (attributively)
• Malay: prasiswazah
• Portuguese: de graduação
• Serbo-Croatian: preddiplomsko n
• Vietnamese: đại học (vi)

Derived terms

• nonundergraduate
• postundergraduate
• undergraduacy
• undergraduatedom
• undergraduateness
• undergraduateship
• undergraduatish
• undergraduette