Admission Requirements

Students seeking admission into the Master of Arts in English must meet the admission requirements of Graduate Programs and the specific program requirements.

Applicants must hold a baccalaureate degree from an accredited four-year institution with the appropriate undergraduate background in the field of the proposed academic emphasis and a grade point average of 3.00 on the last 60 hours of undergraduate work, or a 2.75 average on all undergraduate work (A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1, F-0). The appropriate undergraduate background must include a minimum of 18 semester hours of coursework, exclusive of any basic education courses, in the proposed field of the graduate major. All courses attempted, including any repeated courses, are considered in the computation of the grade point average.

Students who do not meet the requirements as stated above may be granted admission at the master’s degree level provided they have a grade point average of 2.50 overall or a 2.75 average on the last 60 hours.

1. Applicants for admission to the master’s degree program who have not completed the appropriate undergraduate background will be assessed under graduate course deficiencies.
2. Applicants from an unaccredited college, who have satisfactory grades and a satisfactory undergraduate program, may be admitted with an entrance condition of 12 semester hours.

Newly admitted students must take a preliminary examination immediately after completing six to nine hours of graduate course work. This preliminary examination is a proctored, impromptu written explication of a relatively brief poem or prose passage, the text of which will be presented to the student at the time of the examination. Students will have two hours in which to write this explication, which will be administered once each semester during the regular academic year and graded by a three-member committee. For information on the exam schedule, contact the graduate adviser.

Students failing the preliminary examination must retake it in the next consecutive full semester. Students who fail the explication a second time must complete a non-credit Independent Study in explication until they can pass an explication graded by three members of the English graduate faculty. Students may not take comprehensive exit exams for the degree or register for thesis hours until the explication requirement has been satisfied.

Graduate Courses and Credit

Graduate students enrolled in courses numbered 5000 through 5999 must do special work in addition to that required of undergraduates in the courses numbered 4000 through 4999. Courses numbered 6000 or above are open to fully qualified graduate students only.

Deficient Grades

Should a student receive more than 6 hours of “C” or lower in 5000- or 6000-level graduate degree credit courses, that student will not be allowed to continue in the program in subsequent semesters regardless of overall GPA.

Additional Degree Requirements

A knowledge of one foreign language is a requirement for the Master of Arts degree in English. The language requirement may be met by completing the final course of the intermediate level of a foreign language (2023) with a grade of “C” or above, or by passing an examination approved by the World Languages faculty.

The foreign language requirement must be met before the comprehensive examination can be taken.

Students who elect to write a thesis may not register for thesis hours until the preliminary poetry explication requirement has been satisfied.