The Department of English offers two graduate degrees, an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. Teaching assistantships are available in both. In addition, the Department's tutoring program, the Writer's Resource Lab, employs a number of graduate and undergraduate students each semester. Application information may be obtained from the Department office, (562) 985-4223.
The Department of English offers graduate study leading to the Master of Arts degree. The candidate must satisfy the general requirements stated in this Catalog as well as the specific departmental requirements stated here and, more fully, in the Master of Arts brochure issued by the department (copies of which are available upon request). Applicants must submit to the University's Office of Admissions and Records a graduate application (available at that office or on-line). Applicants must also submit two sets of transcripts from all colleges and universities attended. One set must be submitted to the Office of Enrollment Services and another set must be sent directly to the Department of English. The deadline for submitting an application for Fall semester is May 1; the deadline to apply for Spring is October 15.
An applicant may be admitted to the MA program in English only after satisfying University requirements for admission and the following prerequisites to this degree:
1. A Bachelor of Arts degree in English from an accredited institution or a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution with 24 units of upper-division English courses that offer a broad coverage of English and American literature.
Any deficiencies will be determined by the Department Graduate Advisor in consultation with the Graduate Studies Committee. Courses used to remove course or unit deficiencies may not be included in the MA program.
2. A 3.3 GPA in upper-division English courses.
3. Applicants who do not have the required minimum GPA may take additional coursework to raise their GPA to the minimum. Applicants whose upper-division English GPA is at least 3.0 may be admitted to the MA program if they take the GRE General Test and achieve a minimum score of 580 in Verbal Reasoning and 5.0 in Analytical Writing.
4. All applicants, regardless of citizenship, whose native language is not English and whose preparatory education was principally in a language other than English must receive a minimum score of 600 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) (applicants taking the Computer-Based Test of English as a Foreign Language must present a score of 250 or above; applicants taking the Internet-Based Test of English as a Foreign Language must present a score of 100 or above).
Students must be formally admitted to the program before they can enroll in ENGL 696, which is prerequisite or corequisite to all other 600‑level courses.
