To be considered for unconditional admission to the program, you must have:
We require a statement of purpose on the application; please pay attention to the word/character count restrictions, as the Director of English Graduate Studies only receives that count to evaluate (32,000 characters).
We do not generally require the general or subject-area G.R.E., letters of recommendation, or writing samples, although some of those materials are necessary or helpful if you are applying for financial support. (Do be aware that students who have not taken the MAT or GRE cannot be considered for the Matrix Fellowship program.)
If you have a B.A. in English, you can generally be admitted to the program without needing prerequisite coursework, provided you meet the other entry requirements.
If you are applying to a Teacher Certification program, please see the additional requirements for those programs.
If your B.A. is in a different field, we like to see essentially the equivalent of an undergraduate Minor in English (21 hours beyond freshman writing, 15 hours upper division), with solid performance in upper-division English coursework. If your background is different from this model, we will work together to determine the best way for you to be successful as a graduate student, which may mean requiring pre-requisite or co-requisite undergraduate English coursework.
If you do need additional undergraduate courses, you may prefer to hold off on applying to the Graduate School until you have completed them. You can take them as a non-degree undergraduate student for a lower tuition amount. Otherwise you have to pay the higher graduate tuition for undergraduate courses. (At UAH the rule is—once a graduate student, always a graduate student!). Of course, your situation may vary if you anticipate requiring financial aid; for some programs, those prerequisite courses can be folded into your Program of Study (and thus are eligible for loans or for tuition coverage if you receive a fellowship, an assistantship, or scholarship money from the English Department). If you are a full-time student, we will try to design a program of study for you that allows you to take advantage of our block tuition system (where fees are the same for 9 semester hours up to 13 semester hours) so that the courses will not cost you additional tuition.
If you do not meet our requirements, you may still be granted conditional admission. This means that you can take classes, but that you must have the approval and signature of the Director of English Graduate Studies or the Chair. You will also be required to earn at least a “B” in each of your courses. After having done satisfactory work for 12 hours (four courses) your admission status automatically changes to unconditional. From that point, you are required to maintain an overall GPA of at least 3.0 (thus it is possible to get a “C” as long as each such grade is balanced by an “A”).
