re: Graduate Certificates

quote:

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If someone completes a 12-18 month Graduate Certificate with a major university, should they be able to consider themselves alumni of that university?

I googled this and results are split 50-50. I’ve also asked the opinion of several people who I know and trust their opinion. They’re also split pretty evenly.

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To me, the issue or dispute comes about because people often assume something that doesn’t meet the actual definition of the word in question. An alumnus is simply someone who has graduated from or attended a particular school.

Just because I was involved in a discussion about this topic many moons ago, when I was taking real estate law courses as part of my CCIM designation at the UVA School of Law, the professor stated that the people in that program would indeed be alumni of the School of Law, just not necessarily graduates (unless they continued on the graduate path). Because of that, I’ve never mixed & matched alumnus with graduate. Much like all pistols are guns, but not all guns are pistols… all graduates are alumni, but not all alumni are graduates.