Frequently Asked Questions

  • You must have a supervisor to be admitted to the MESc or PhD program, so we recommend that you contact one or two faculty members before applying to discuss your research interests and see if they would be able and willing to supervise your research. You can find more information about potential supervisors on our Faculty Members page.
  • All applications must be officially submitted through the online application portal before receiving a preliminary assessment from the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. We cannot provide any pre-assessment advice.
  • As each program/department at Western University is separate, you must submit a separate application to each program in which you would like to be considered for admission.
  • We do not contact universities regarding an applicant's documentation. As an applicant to our program, it is your responsibility to provide all necessary documentation in the manner requested.
  • We do not accept evaluation reports from other agencies as valid documentation. All transcripts are evaluated based on conversion scales as per Western's regulations.
  • Our program does not require a GRE score.
  • We do not accept re-assessments regarding minimum individual section scores. If you do not meet the minimum required scores (individual and overall), you must re-take the test (or take a different test from our list of accepted English langauge tests) and submit a new score report.
  • We only grant conditional admission to applicants who indicate that they are planning to attend a program at the Western English Language Centre (WELC) to meet their English language proficiency requirement. All applicants who receive a conditional admission offer based on completing WELC must complete their required WELC program before beginning their MESc or PhD program. For more information about WELC, please email welc@uwo.ca. 
  • Applicants may only be exempt from the TOEFL, IELTS or test of English proficiency requirement if they have at least two full-time years of post-secondary education in an academic degree program, in an English speaking institution which is located in a country whose primary language is English.
  • We do not accept hard copies of reference letters. Each referee must submit their reference through our secure online system.
  • Once an application is complete (all supporting documentation has been received in the manner requested), the applicant's potential supervisor will initiate the consideration of an application for admission. Applications without a potential supervisor listed will be periodically shared with the faculty members in the area of specialization selected by the applicant. We strongly encourage applicants to secure a faculty supervisor before initiating the application process.
  • We are unable to accept everyone who applies to our program. For the MESc and PhD programs, faculty members select candidates that they feel are best suited for an open project they may have.

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If you are experiencing difficulty with the electronic application, please email gradapps@uwo.ca

or contact the dedicated phone line 519-850-2341