Exceptional undergraduate students may apply for and be accepted into the Master of Arts in Spanish and begin work toward a graduate degree before completion of the baccalaureate degree.

Based on the published guidelines for the Early-Entry program, our criteria for admission are the following:

1. A student may be accepted into the Early-Entry Program at any time after completion of 90 semester hours of undergraduate work applicable to the appropriate degree.
2. The application process and all required documentation (e.g., test scores, transcripts, letters of recommendation) are the same for early entry students as for other applicants to the program. Admission must be recommended by the Department of Languages and Culture Studies and approved by the Graduate School. The admission status will be “provisional” pending the award of the undergraduate degree.
3. To be accepted into this program an undergraduate student must have at least a 3.2 overall GPA and a minimum 3.0 GPA in the department of Languages and Culture Studies.
4. If an early-entry student has not met the normal admission requirements of a 2.75 overall undergraduate GPA and a 3.0 junior-senior GPA at the end of his/her baccalaureate degree, she/he will be dismissed from the graduate program.
5. Students accepted into an early-entry program will be subject to the same policies that pertain to other matriculated graduate students. Generally, it will be assumed that early-entry students will finish their baccalaureate degrees before they complete 15 hours of graduate work.
6. This early-entry program is also accelerated in which up to 6 hours earned at the graduate level may be substituted for required undergraduate hours. In other words, up to 6 hours of graduate work may be "double counted" toward both the baccalaureate and graduate degrees.