Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences Graduate Program Admissions
For Prospective Graduate Students
Thank you very much for your interest in the MU fisheries and wildlife sciences graduate program. We are working towards a paperless system and no longer send printed general information about our program to prospective students.
At this site you will find general information about our program, application materials and faculty profiles. If you have any questions beyond the information you find on the site, or if you have any problems interpreting the information, please let us know by e-mail (MillspaughJ@missouri.edu or faaborgje@missouri.edu) and we'll answer you as soon as possible.
Due to our largely grant-based funding sources, we do not have set deadlines for applicants to the department of fisheries and wildlife sciences, but rather accept new students when we have space and money for an assistantship. No student is accepted without both funding and an adviser. It is possible that you meet minimum requirements for entrance but be denied acceptance because no adviser is able to sponsor your degree program. Therefore, we do not encourage you to apply to the program until a faculty member suggests that you do.
Each faculty member has a profile and contact information on the F&W web site. We strongly encourage you to e-mail or contact the professors you are interested in working with to learn whether they have funding available for new students. Direct contact is a good way to introduce yourself as well as get additional information about the program.
Minimum Requirements
Our minimum requirements for acceptance into the graduate program are:
- 3.2 undergraduate GPA for the last 60 hours of coursework AND
- 1100 on the verbal and quantitative sections of the GRE.
Applicants who do not meet the minimum standards are sometimes accepted, depending on extenuating circumstances. A degree in fisheries and wildlife, conservation or ecology is not a requirement, although preparatory coursework might be required before entry into our program. A faculty adviser can help you determine what those preliminary classes will be.
Submit all application materials online
You must submit all application materials to the MU Graduate School ApplyYourself. We will not accept paper copies of your application materials.
In addition to the online ApplyYourself University application, you will need to upload the following materials:
- Fisheries and Wildlife Application (Word). You are required to enter an area of specialization; a potential adviser(s); and your official GPA for the last 60 hours of your undergraduate program.
- You must write a response to one of the 5 questions listed below.
- What has basic ecology offered applied ecologists?
- Does science require hypothesis testing?
- What is the most important concept in ecology and why should applied ecologists care?
- Why should a management agency be concerned with conserving species?
- What is the importance of research to a state or federal resource management agency?
- Resume or CV.
- Three letters of recommendation to be uploaded by your references, along with their evaluation pages.
- Official GRE scores.
- A sample publication (optional).
You must upload all materials onto through the ApplyYourself system. References must also upload letters of recommendation to the ApplyYourself system. You will need to provide the pertinent information to your references. Official transcripts, GRE scores and TOEFL scores (international students only) should be sent directly to the Graduate School. Do NOT send any application materials to the Department.
Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
Joshua Millspaugh
Professor, Wildlife Conservation
Director of Graduate Studies
Janice Faaborg
F&W Academic Adviser
