Graduate student

A graduate student is a college student who is pursuing a higher academic degree like a master's or Ph.D, or a professional degree like a MD, MBA, or JD.

All graduate students are not "undergraduate eligible" - however, not every student without undergrad eligibility is a graduate student. This is because all rulesets set a limit on the amount of time a student can be an undergraduate, excluding non-traditional students who spend more than roughly four years to graduate.

Controversy

The eligibility of graduate students in quiz bowl is a perennial source for argument. Defenders of the status quo hold that quiz bowl is a game for all college students, including grad students, and that the game benefits from having a wider range of players. Opponents argue that the presence of grad students stifles the ambitions of the undergraduate portion of the community through their control over the game and its discourse.

An important aspect to remember when participating in such discussions is that there is nothing intrinsically exceptional or unfair about being a graduate student. Grad students are not a monolith. Though their detractors typically focus on specific players that are considered too old or too good or to have played too long, there are plenty of other grad students who don't meet any of these criteria.

Thus, it is most relevant to focus on the two components that lie at the heart of all of these discussions:

• how to handle players who are too good
• how to handle players who are too old.

Because neither of these things are actually related to being enrolled in graduate school these topics also appear when discussing other kinds of demarcation problem, like "who gets to be an undergraduate".