Admissions

-Please note that applications for admissions received after the deadline or applications that are incomplete after the deadline will not be reviewed . You may want to follow up with the Graduate School to ensure your file is complete at 414-288-7137.  

Request Marquette admission materials on-line
- or-
email Coreen Bukowski, Assistant to the Chair

*NOTE: Educational Psychology. We are not accepting applications for the Masters in Educational Psychology for the 2009-10 academic year. This is only for the Educational Psychology Masters Program. We are accepting applications for all other programs.

Visiting the Department

You are welcome to visit the department to find out more about our programs. We are located in room #150 of the Walter Schroeder Health and Education Complex; click here for a campus map (our building is #42). Please contact Coreen at the above email address or telephone 414-288-5790 to let us know you are interested in either visiting or would like someone to contact you.

The Graduate School at Marquette also holds an Open House where you can meet with the department chair to learn more about our programs. The next Open House will be held on Thursday, April 2, 2009, 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., with campus tours available at 4:00 p.m., in the Alumni Memorial Union. For more information and to RSVP, please see the Graduate School website.

We look forward to meeting you!

Specific Admission Requirements

Students with a variety of backgrounds are admitted to our programs. Some enter with a bachelor’s degree, others have completed some graduate courses, others have a master’s degree in a mental health field, and a few have even had doctoral degrees in another field but wish to retrain as counseling psychologists. All applicants must have at least attained a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university, however.

The majority of our recent students have also had undergraduate majors in psychology or a related field. We do not require an undergraduate major or minor in the behavioral sciences for admission to our programs, but we do expect that applicants with less experience in these areas are sufficiently familiar with their intended field of study to be able to make informed decisions about their educational or career goals. We ask that applicants without a major or minor in the behavioral sciences or education address this issue in their statements of purpose. Applicants without these types of academic backgrounds are often able to demonstrate their familiarity with and commitment to the field through post-baccalaureate coursework and through work and volunteer experiences in human service fields.

New students enter the program in the fall semester of each year.

Materials to be Submitted for Application

All of the following materials must be submitted to the Graduate School by the appropriate deadline—please do not send them to the department. The Graduate School asks that applicants submit all of their application materials in one packet (click here for more info).

Interviews
After all applications are reviewed, the highest ranking applicants will be contacted for an interview, which is required for admission. International applicants and others for whom the interview would be prohibitively expensive will be invited to interview over the phone.

Applicant Evaluation by the Departmental Faculty

The department faculty reviews applicant files comprehensively, emphasizing all aspects of applicants’ backgrounds. Our assessments of potential for graduate study and success in the field are based on all components of the application, and we do not use cutoff scores with regard to previous grades or test scores. With regard to test scores and previous grades for our recent Counseling Psychology Ph.D. students, the median GRE General Test combined score (i.e., Verbal plus Quantitative subtest scores) was 1160 and the median undergraduate GPA was 3.7. The median GRE combined test score of our recent Master’s in Counseling and Master’s in Educational Psychology students was 1030 and the median undergraduate GPA was 3.4. The median score on the GRE Writing Assessment for the doctoral students was 5.5, and the median score for the Master's students was 4.5. The faculty admits students with lower test scores or grades when there are significant compensating factors which are important for determining success in the field. If relevant, applicants should highlight these factors in their Statement of Purpose.

The large majority of our recent students have also had undergraduate majors in psychology or a related field. We do not require an undergraduate major or minor in the behavioral sciences for admission to our programs, but we do expect that applicants with less experience in the area are sufficiently familiar with their intended field of study to be able to make informed decisions about their educational or career goals. Applicants without a major or minor in the social sciences or education often are able to demonstrate familiarity with the field through post-baccalaureate coursework and through work and volunteer experiences in human service fields.

Those applicants who are judged to show good potential for graduate study in our department are then invited for an interview with the departmental faculty and a group of current graduate students. After the interviews have been completed, the entire faculty again reviews each application and makes a decision about admission to the program.

Tuition and Financial Aid Information

The current tuition for an Education Graduate student in our program can be found here. This level of tuition is often fairly competitive with other institutions, and is actually less than, for example, one nearby state university for students taking one or two courses per semester.

Most of the scholarships and assistantships that we offer students goes to doctoral students. We have two scholarships open only to current students within the department. In addition, Master’s students who are primary and secondary school teachers in southeastern Wisconsin are eligible for two scholarship opportunities that Marquette offers. The first is the Milwaukee Area Teachers Scholarship which provides scholarships for K-12 teachers from the greater Milwaukee area. The second is the Catholic Schools Scholarship which covers part of the tuition for students employed by schools in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee; more information is available at http://www.grad.mu.edu/financialaid/index.html. These scholarships are available only to students enrolled at Marquette.

In recent years most of the new full-time students in our doctoral program have been supported by a part-time research assistantship through the Department. Scholarships have also helped support some additional students. We will not know the number of assistantships that will be available to next year's students until our admissions offers are sent out to students in the middle of the spring semester. A variety of fellowships and other possibilities are also available for our students (for more information, see http://www.grad.mu.edu/financialaid/index.html).