All Official Transcripts.
Admission to the Ph.D. program. Applicants must hold a bachelor's or master's degree (or a foreign equivalent) in linguistics or a related field.
Personal statement. This should include a summary of your academic and personal background, with a special emphasis on aspects of it that might be relevant to graduate work in linguistics. Of course, any previous study of the subject should be mentioned. You should also indicate your reasons for wanting to pursue a graduate degree in linguistics.
Academic statement. This is a statement of purpose that characterizes your intellectual goals. It should indicate your specific area(s) of interest in linguistics and what you hope to focus on in the program. It's entirely appropriate to speculate about potential topics of future research papers or even the topic of your thesis or dissertation. (If admitted, you will not be required to do precisely what you describe. Your plans may change.)
For applicants to the M.A. program, each of these statements should be 500–700 words, for applicants to the Ph.D. program, 700–1,000 words.
Recommendation letters. Ask three people who are well-acquainted with your qualifications for graduate study in linguistics to submit letters via the online application system. If necessary, they can sending letters by post or by email to the graduate secretary.
Transcripts. Arrange for each college or university you have attended to send two official transcripts to the department.
Graduate Record Exam. Take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) general test and have scores sent to the MSU Office of Admissions. MSU instution code: 1465. Our department code: 2903. There is no fixed minimum score you must attain, but scores below the 50th percentile will significantly reduce the likelihood of your admission.
PhD applicants only. Provide a sample of your academic writing. Ideally your sample will be from a linguistics course or thesis, but it does not have to be. Applicants come from a wide variety of backgrounds in the sciences, arts, and humanities, sometimes they have spent years in an unrelated professional career before returning to academic study. Select a piece of writing that best demonstrates your ability to do at least some of these things: Summarize and critique ideas or studies, put forward your own evidence-based opinion or argument, analyze existing or novel data, generate and justify a hypothesis, test a hypothesis, describe methodological steps, suggest new directions for future research(ers).
English-language test. If you are an international student and not a native speaker of English, take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) and have your score sent to the department. Minimum TOEFL = 100, minimum IELTS = 7.5.