B1.6 Reporting Admission Recommendations to the Graduate Division
Updated: August 24th, 2011
To recommend admission for candidates who meet the minimum requirements, departments directly enter the recommendations for admission into the Graduate Admissions database after applicant evaluation. Participants can retrieve the individual records and enter the recommendation information, GPA, and ranking into the database. After each batch of recommendations is entered, the participants run and print a summary report for that batch from a report menu. The Head Graduate Adviser or other authorized person signs the summary report and forwards it with the supporting documentation to the Graduate Division. To recommend admission for an applicant who does not meet minimum requirements, departments complete a Request for Exceptional Admission form or send a departmental memo. The Head Graduate Adviser must sign this form. Exceptional requests may not be signed by a delegate.
The recommendation must specify:
- the major and degree to which the applicant is to be admitted;
- for domestic applicants, the grade-point average for work completed for the bachelor’s degree, computed on all undergraduate course work completed after the first two years and up to the award of the bachelor’s degree;
- the applicant’s ranking; and
- the test scores, if appropriate, for TOEFL or IELTS. Attached to the recommendation must be the appropriate official academic records.
Deadlines for admission of applicants who are not citizens or permanent residents of the United States. These applicants must be recommended for admission no later than May 1 for fall semester and October 1 for spring semester in order to allow time for their visas to be processed. After the department recommendation, the Graduate Admissions Office will send the student the official admissions notification and other materials. Admitted students must notify the Graduate Division of their intent by completing the Statement of Intent to Register form online. For students who accept the offer of admission, other forms may be required, including the Statement of Legal Residence (SLR) for determination of residency for tuition purposes, and the Non-Immigrant Information form (NIF) for issuance of immigration documents. These are online forms. The student must complete and submit the “Statement of Intent to Register” along with other forms and financial documents to request a student visa document. BIO can then send the visa document to the student. This process can take as long as six weeks.
Students must then negotiate with U.S. consular officials and their own governments for permission to leave their countries. These negotiations can take weeks or sometimes months. For more information on visas, contact BIO (642-2818, siss@berkeley.edu).
Recommendation for admission with deficiencies in preparation. For applicants whose backgrounds are weak in certain areas of study or who lack specific courses but are otherwise acceptable, departments can recommend admission with minor deficiencies in preparation. The department should outline the deficiencies and a course of action to correct them in a memo to the cognizant Associate Dean before a letter is sent to the student. If Dean approves the admission, the department should inform the applicant in writing, with a copy to the Graduate Division, regarding:
- the nature of the deficiencies;
- the approximate time needed to resolve them; and
- whether the background work can be taken concurrently with graduate study or whether the applicant must complete the course work before beginning the graduate program. Students will not be permitted to continue to register if they do not meet the conditions of their admission within the stated period.
Usually, the classification of admission with deficiencies in preparation is used for students who lack some course work but not the entire undergraduate major. Students with serious deficiencies should be denied admission. Departments should recommend limited status for students who are making a radical change of field and who would need to complete an undergraduate major. Limited status is an undergraduate classification only. For more information on limited status and other options available to students who do not meet the department’s requirements for admission, see “Special Categories of Students” (section B1.8).
Recommendation for deferred admission. Departments can recommend that an applicant’s admission be deferred one time only if the applicant has been admitted but is unable to enroll on schedule and wants to begin graduate school in a later semester. Departments that admit only for fall semester can recommend deferring an admission only until the next fall semester; those admitting for both semesters can recommend deferral until spring or the following fall.
Deferred admission may be offered only to superior applicants. Applicants admitted by exception may not be deferred. Such applicants must be reviewed and ranked with the current applicant pool, and may be offered admission if they rank above the cutoff point for admission. Under no circumstances can deferred admission be offered to an international applicant who has not yet received a basic degree or whose scholarship, preparation, or English proficiency is questioned by the Graduate Admissions Office.
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