Ph.D. in Special Education - Admission Procedures

Once an applicant's file is complete, the departmental Graduate Secretary notifies the Doctoral Coordinator who then reviews the file to insure that all required material is, in fact, available. The Doctoral Coordinator notifies each member of the Doctoral Admissions Committee (DAC) that the file is complete and available for review. The applicant's file is then placed on the agenda of the DAC as an item for both discussion and action. The DAC may recommend to the department faculty that the applicant be: 1) fully admitted to the Ph.D. doctoral program in special education, 2) admitted provisionally to the Ph.D. program, 3) admitted contingent upon satisfaction of a prerequisite requirement or 4) denied admission to the Ph.D. program in special education. (Provisional admission requires the satisfactory completion (e.g., with a 3.5 grade-point average) of 9 or more hours in regularly scheduled graduate courses approved by the student's advisor and departmental faculty. After completion of the provisional program the Doctoral Coordinator will (after consultation with the Advisor, and Department Chair) recommend to the Graduate College that the student (1) be transferred to regular status or (2) be dropped from the program).

After the DAC has formed a recommendation regarding admission of an applicant, the Doctoral Coordinator notifies the Department Chair as to the nature of the recommendation and requests that discussion of the application be placed on the agenda of the next Department of Special Education Faculty Meeting. At the meeting, the Doctoral Coordinator discusses the recommendation of the DAC and moves that the department faculty adopt it. It is the responsibility of the Doctoral Coordinator to forward, in writing, the final recommendation of the faculty, as a whole, to both the Graduate College and to the applicant

The Doctoral Coordinator is empowered to constitute an admission committee of available faculty to review and act upon applications completed during the summer.