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).

Postgraduate education, or graduate education in North America, involves learning and studying for academic or professional degrees, academic or professional certificates, academic or professional diplomas, or other qualifications for which a first or bachelor's degree generally is required, and it is normally considered to be part of higher education. In North America, this level is generally referred to as graduate school.