Full Time IMC

IMC Graduate Student Handbook

Curriculum

Full-time students complete a graduate degree in a 15-month program comprising five academic quarters.  For a full breakdown of the curriculum and course offerings, see What We Teach.

Degree Requirements

To graduate with a master of science in Integrated Marketing Communications from Medill, full-time students must satisfy the following requirements:

1. Complete 18 graduate-level credits at Northwestern University:

• 15 credits must be academic units
• Three (3) credits are team project credits taken in the 4th (summer) quarter
• Of the 15 academic units, 10 are fulfilled by “core” (required) courses and five (5) are “elective” courses.  Students may use those electives to fulfill an IMC concentration
• One (1) non-Medill course may be applied toward the IMC degree
• All courses applied toward the IMC degree must be taken for letter grades, and all grades must be finalized by the time of completion;

2. Have a grade point average of at least 3.0 (no rounding) at the time of graduation;

3. Have earned no more than 2 grades of C (C+, C, C-) through the course of the program, and have earned no grades of F.

IMC Core Courses:
• 450-0 Marketing Finance
• 451-0 Statistics & Market Research I
• 451-1 Statistics & Market Research II
• 452-0 Marketing Management
• 454-0 Communication Skills and Persuasive Messages
• 455-0 Consumer Insight
• 457-0 IMC Implementation: Managing Integration
• 459-0 IMC Law, Policy and Ethics
• 460-0 IMC Strategic Process
• 461-0 Media Economics and Technology

Electives & Concentrations:
In the third and fifth quarters students select electives to pursue a concentration.  Students are not required to pursue a concentration but are encouraged to do so; they will indicate whether they have chosen to do so when they petition to graduate early in the 5th quarter.  Courses may count for more than one concentration, so students can reasonably complete more than one concentration if they choose to do so.

Exceptions to these degree requirements are made for full-time IMC students who apply and are accepted to pursue the Media Management concentration, which features a combination of IMC and Kellogg courses.  The IMC department manages this process.  Specifically, these students are allowed to apply more than one non-Medill course toward the IMC degree and may be waived from the requirement to take IMC 461-0.   Such students are not allowed additional non-Medill courses beyond those in the Media Management sequence of courses.

Independent Study and Petition of Degree Requirements

Students have the option of proposing an Independent Study (IMC 499-0) as one of their elective courses, as well as petitioning to change degree requirements.  Such petitions are unusual and must be of high merit to be approved; they are called "Petition of Academic Standards" and certain procedures must be followed. 

Petition of Academic Standards