This is a highly interdisciplinary program that works best for applicants who can draw on more than one of the foreign language and disciplinary strengths of the department, as well as the unique mission of BYU to bring spiritual and secular truths into harmony for the benefit of both the student and the community. Applications are due February 15 through gradapply.byu.edu.

Your application must include letters of recommendation from three individuals who can speak to different aspects of your qualifications for this program. Do not include letters from people who are related to you by blood, adoption, or marriage. It is helpful if you ask each recommender to address particular aspects of your preparednesss, such as work ethic, language competency, research experience, interpersonal skills, etc.

Your personal statement needs to make two things clear: 1) how is this program a good fit for you; and 2) what makes you a good fit for this program?. For 1), we want to see evidence of your familiarity with the faculty members’ areas of specialization that align with your research interests. For 2) you need to explain the skills, languages, and experiences that you bring to the program that will enable you to successfully complete an interdisciplinary thesis. You don’t need to know exactly what you want to write your MA thesis about when you apply, but you do need to indicate the general parameters (language area, genre, period, type of material) of what you want to research.

We no longer require a GRE score for your application Your writing sample is key to demonstrating your ability to think and write like an academic, drawing on primary sources (literary, cinematic, artistic, philological, etc.) and theory to make a coherent, persuasive argument about the meaning of the data you have presented and its significance outside the confines of your paper. The topic of your writing sample does not need to relate to your proposed MA research area, and you are welcome to use a research paper from a class or another context, but you should choose a paper that showcases your ability to think and write in a humanities-based scholarly fashion.