Admission Requirements

Applicants must meet the following requirements:

• Minimum Graduate School requirements
• A bachelor’s degree in any field.
• Prior completion of at least two courses with substantial content on women and/or gender and a grade of B or better.
• A 2.75 undergraduate GPA overall, a 3.0 in the last half cumulative undergraduate GPA, or a minimum 3.0 in graduate course work previously taken. Please comment on any grades that are not within this range.
• The applicant must write and submit a 2-3 page (double-spaced) personal statement. The personal statement must be written in such a way as to demonstrate graduate-level writing proficiency and must include the following elements:
  • an explanation of your academic goals: specifically, areas of the field of WGST that you find particularly appealing; professors at EMU with whom you would like to work and why; research questions about the field of WGST and the role of women in society that you hope to pursue in the course of your graduate study;
  • an explanation of your professional goals and the ways in which your WGST graduate degree will help you attain these goals;
  • a discussion of any prior professional and/or community-based experience related to women and/or gender and how that informs your understanding of the field of women’s and gender studies; and
  • an explanation of how previous course work related to women and/or gender shaped your desire to pursue further study. What particular courses and writers have influenced you?
• Two letters of recommendation from former professors addressing the candidate’s preparation and ability to successfully complete graduate work.
• For students whose first language is not English, demonstrated English Language proficiency as shown by official test scores on the International English Language Testing System.  For the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), students need a 90-91 on the IBT, a 233 on the CBT, or a 577 on the PBT, or they need a score of 80 on the Michigan English Language Assessment Battery (MELAB).

Conditional Admission | Students not meeting regular admission requirements may be admitted on a conditional basis with the approval of the WGST admissions committee

Non-Degree Admissions | Students not meeting the GPA requirement may be granted non-degree admission with the permission of the WGST admissions committee and the Graduate School.

Degree Requirements | Students will develop competencies through core requirements, restricted electives and complementary concentrations.

Department Information

Women’s and Gender Studies, College of Arts & Sciences

Peter Higgins, Ph.D. | Interim Department Head | 714A Pray-Harrold | 734.487.1177 | phiggin1@emich.edu

Advisor Information

Peter Higgins, Ph.D. | 714A Pray-Harrold | 734.487.1177 | phiggin1@emich.ed

Degree Requirements: 30 hours

Students should consult the advisor for other approved women’s and gender studies courses offered each semester. The Master of Arts in Women’s and Gender Studies is distributed among core courses, restricted elective courses and complementary concentration courses as follows: