Graduate Degrees | Academics | College of Liberal Arts | SIU Carbondale

Graduate Degrees

About Graduate School

If you are applying to a degree program, please choose your major carefully from the list of programs, as some departments offer more than one degree at the master's level. All application materials must be submitted directly to your department. You may apply to multiple programs but must submit separate applications, application fees and sets of required paperwork to each program.

While the Graduate School in general does not have an application deadline, many departments do. Please contact your department directly for application deadlines and to see if applications are only accepted for certain semesters.

Each department set their own admission requirements. Please contact your department directly for assistance.

All departments require a $50 Non-refundable application fee. This may be paid by credit card at the time you submit the online application or you may pay the fee by check or money order directly to the department.

You must meet minimum general Graduate School requirements to be eligible to be considered for admission by a department. To be eligible to be considered for admission to a graduate program, the following minimum GPA's are required:

 For admissions to a Master's program:

• 2.7 (on a 4.0 grading scale) on approximately the last two years of your Bachelor's degree

 For admission to a Ph.D. program:

• 3.25 on all previous graduate level course work

Minimum TOEFL score of 550 / 213 / 80 for International Students and some citizens / PR's; some departments require a higher score. English requirement may also be met in some cases with U.S. course work and/or various additional English testing.

Processing times vary greatly according to department. For some programs, you may need to apply 8-10 months in advance, while others may admit you in 1-2 months. To be safe, students should apply as early as possible.

Any student not meeting the above minimum GPA requirements may apply initially as a Nondeclared Graduate Student through the Graduate School Admissions Office. Once you have earned at least 12 semester hours of graded graduate course work with a "B" average, you are then eligible to be considered for admission into a department.  For more information, please see Nondeclared Admission.

Please note that once you are enrolled as a graduate student, you are required to maintain an overall B average (3.0) in your graduate credit course work to remain in good academic standing.

For more information, call 618-536-7791 or email gradschl@siu.edu.

--from the Graduate School Domestic Admissions webpage; see also International Admissions and Nondeclared Admissions.

Master's Degrees

• M.A. (Master of Arts)
• M.F.A. (Master of Fine Arts)
• M.M. (Master of Music)
• M.P.A. (Master of Public Administration)
• M.S. (Master of Sciences)

Doctoral Degrees

• Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Graduate Certificate