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Graduate Admissions and Application Information

Application Process

To be considered for admission to the graduate programs of the Departments of Economics and Agricultural and Applied Economics you must submit an application to the Virginia Tech Graduate School. Once completed, the Graduate School forwards applications to the department for evaluation. Applicants are automatically considered for financial support on a competitive basis.

Transcripts from your previous degrees, GRE scores, and three letters of recommendation are required. A TOEFL score is required for most international students. Application by January 15 is recommended for Fall Semester consideration. A limited number of students are admitted for Winter Semester. Letters of recommendation should be sent directly to the department. It is also recommended that you send unofficial copy of your transcripts to the department.

Graduate School Information and Application Forms are available from the: Admissions Site

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Admissions Criteria 

Before beginning work toward either a master’s or Ph.D. degree, a prospective student must be admitted to the Graduate School.  The basic requirements for admission are stated in the Virginia Tech Graduate Catalog. The specific entry requirements for the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics are:

• a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university;
  
• presentation of evidence of potential to pursue graduate work, normally a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or higher (on a 4.0 base) for the last two years (60 semester credit hours) of undergraduate studies or satisfactory performance at the graduate level;
• GRE verbal and quantitative scores of over 500;
• timely submission of the required application forms, transcripts, and three letters of recommendation; and,
  
• for international students whose primary language is other than English, a TOEFL score of 620 or higher on the written examination, or 260 or higher on the computer-based examination and 105 or higher on the Internet Based Exam (IBT) (unless the student has received an undergraduate or graduate degree in a country for which English is the primary language, in which case the TOEFL is not required).

There are no specific undergraduate course prerequisites for the graduate programs in Agricultural and Applied Economics, but almost all graduate economics courses call for an initial understanding of microeconomic and macroeconomic theory equivalent to 3 semester hours (at a minimum) beyond basic principles.  Specific fields of study may require additional prior knowledge equivalent to that obtained in relevant undergraduate courses.  Ph.D. students are assumed to have a working knowledge of basic statistics, differential and integral calculus, analytic geometry, and matrix algebra. 

Each applicant’s record will be evaluated to determine his/her eligibility for admission to the graduate program and to evaluate whether he or she needs to further develop proficiency in certain areas.  Students who are admitted with any deficiencies are expected to take remedial steps prior to arrival or early in their residence.  Deficiencies may be made up by taking a designated undergraduate course, independent self study, serving as a teaching assistant, or by demonstrating that some course or set of courses taken as an undergraduate or graduate student provide equivalent knowledge in the subject area in question.

Students meeting the entrance requirements outlined above may be admitted to either the master’s degree or Ph.D. program.  Those students admitted for a  master’s degree must reapply for admission to the Ph.D. program should they eventually choose to pursue the higher degree.  As described in the Graduate Catalog, some students not meeting the minimum grade point requirement may be admitted as provisional students and subsequently considered for regular admission after one semester of coursework.