GRE Waiver

Students with at least three years of relevant, professional, full-time work experience can request to waive the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) requirement when applying to the master’s degree programs in Political Management, Legislative Affairs, or Strategic Public Relations or the graduate certificate in Public Relations.

For the purposes of granting a waiver of the GRE requirement as a component of the application for admission to the master’s degree or certificate programs in the Graduate School of Political Management, relevant experience is defined as follows:

Three years of full-time (at least 35 hours per week), professional, management-level experience that includes some combination of program responsibility, independent decision-making authority, official high-level outside contacts, budgetary responsibility and/or supervisory authority.

Things to know about applying for the GRE Waiver:

• The waiver option is designed to help those applicants who have been out of school for some time and whose professional experience gives us a measure of their capabilities that adequately substitutes for the GRE.
• The great majority of applicants will continue to take the GRE as part of their application process.
• The waiver decision is made independent of and prior to the review of the application for admission. You will know whether or not to plan to take or report GRE scores. You should submit your waiver request as early as possible, before preparing the remainder of your application documents.
• Applicants whose request for waiver is denied cannot apply for conditional admission in anticipation of taking the GRE in the future.
• If your GRE waiver request is denied, you may enroll in up to three courses or nine credits as a non-degree student while you prepare for and take the GRE.