Waivers for these requirements are possible, however, especially when the student has taken a number of courses in other areas of the social sciences, or would be able to take undergraduate courses upon arrival to make up these deficiencies. The GRE may be needed if you wish to receive financial assistance and your undergraduate GPA is below a 3.0 average for your last 60 hours. ISU Graduate School policy prohibits providing graduate assistantships to anyone who has not achieved a 3.0 GPA for the last 60 hours of their undergraduate coursework OR scored at least 1,000 on the GRE's combined verbal and quantitative sections. Once these hurdles have been cleared, prospective applicants must still be accepted by their Department and the Fellows Program to be eligible for available assistantships. These assistantships are then awarded on a competitive basis.
All eligible applicants compete for available assistantships and awards.
If an applicant is not eligible for an assistantship but is nevertheless accepted by the Economics Department, Political Science Department, or Sociology-Anthropology Department, some assistantship awards may be available in the second or third semesters if the student shows satisfactory progress in his or her coursework. Of course, all students accepted by these departments are eligible for student loans. Graduate Assistants are required to work up to 20 hours per week in exchange for these awards. Talk with the department graduate advisor or the UCED director about these. With or without financial assistance, students are responsible for payment of these fees and all other expenses, including books and photo copying, housing, food and other typical living expenses.