Program Requirement FAQs

Q: How I do apply for transfer credit? What are the rules about transfer credit?

Students who enter the program with a master’s degree or above from another institution and wish to transfer credits need to make the case that the courses to be transferred correspond to classes that have been offered at Yale in the last three years. Provide the syllabus for each course and a transcript documenting your grade to the graduate registrar, along with a memo explaining how you want those credits to be used toward completing department requirements. Approval is at the discretion of the DGS. No more than 3 courses may be transferred for work done outside of Yale. For students who have taken graduate courses at Yale, up to 6 courses from Yale may be transferred. If you are certifying in a field (by coursework or by exam), only one of the required courses may be satisfied by transfer credit from outside of Yale. If you are not certifying in a field, you may use all three transfer credits in that field. You may use one course from outside of Yale to satisfy the three course requirement. Finally, as with courses taken at Yale, courses cannot count in two subfields.

Q. How to I complete the language requirement? What information to I need to provide to the department?

You can satisfy the language requirement in 4 ways:

1. Take two advanced statistics courses (503, 504) or two formal theory courses (517, 518).
2. Obtain an undergraduate or graduate degree from a school where instruction takes place in a language other than English. In this case, provide documentation of degree and language of instruction to the graduate registrar.
3. Take two years of coursework, or equivalent instruction, in intermediate or advanced language training with a passing grade. In this case, provide documentation of courses taken and transcript to graduate registrar.
   You may count no more than 2 intermediate or advanced undergraduate language courses taken at Yale toward the 16 course requirement. To count a course toward the 16 course graduate class requirement, you must file at the time you register (at the beginning of the semester) a Graduate Credit Request Form.
4. Take an exam administered by language department at Yale showing “elementary reading competence” in foreign language. In this case, provide documentation of exam taken and grade to graduate registrar.  

Q: Are students required to register for a subfield workshop in years 1 and 2?

No, registration is not required. However, attendance at one workshop is required.

Q: Can I take a course Pass/Fail or CDF?

No. Please see the below discussion of auditing.

Q: Can I audit a course? Can an audited course count towards a department requirement?

Graduate students are permitted to audit courses throughout the university with the permission of individual professors. Audited courses will appear on your transcript as “Audit” and you are expected to complete 2/3 of the course work to gain that notation. What that means, however, is up to the professor. Auditing is a useful way to motivate yourself to explore a field in our department or others in which you have an interest, but to which you cannot commit a lot of time. Some language departments are more flexible than others about the work required by auditors. Check with the professor as to the auditing expectations before signing up.

Note, however, that audited courses do not count toward any department requirements. That is, you can’t count an audited course as one of your 16 courses, as one of your courses in each of 3 substantive fields, etc.

Q: How can I take courses at other universities?

Please contact the graduate school academic deans for information about these procedures.

Rev. 2018-03-19