A
graduate school (sometimes shortened as
grad school) is a
school that awards advanced
academic degrees (i.e.
master's and
doctoral degrees) with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous
undergraduate (
bachelor's) degree with a high
grade point average. A distinction is typically made between graduate schools (where courses of study vary in the degree to which they provide training for a particular profession) and
professional schools, which offer specialized advanced degrees in professional fields such as
medicine,
nursing,
business,
engineering, or
law. The distinction between graduate schools and professional schools is not absolute, as various professional schools offer graduate degrees (e.g., some nursing schools offer a master's degree in nursing). Also, some graduate degrees train students for a specific profession (e.g. an
MSc or a
PhD in
epidemiology trains a person to be an epidemiologist).