Admissions FAQ

Yes. After accepting your offer of admission by completing the online response form, individuals in MA and MFA programs will be required to pay an enrollment deposit to confirm their attendance. The deadline to submit the deposit is listed in your admission letter. Students who fail to submit the deposit by the deadline are assumed to have voluntarily declined their offer of admission. The enrollment deposit will be applied to your autumn quarter tuition bill.

The deposit is required and is non-refundable. The Autumn 2026 enrollment deposit is $500 USD for MA programs and $500 USD for the MFA program.

If you have questions or require additional support, please contact the Dean of Students office at ahd-admissions@uchicago.edu.

You should submit your application no later than 11:59 PM Central Standard Time on your deadline date. If you have unanswered questions at the submission deadline, please submit your application on time. We will assist you with any remaining issues after you have submitted the application.

An interview is not part of the initial application process for the Division of the Arts & Humanities, though some programs do interview groups of applicants during the application review process.  However, prospective students are welcome to visit the University of Chicago campus at any time and should contact their department or program of interest to learn more about their program or to inquire about meeting any faculty or current graduate students.

Yes, English Language Requirements can be found at the UChicagoGRAD website. If you need to supply TOEFL or IELTS scores to meet these requirements, your scores must no more than two years old at the time you submit your application.

Scanned copies of official transcripts or unofficial electronic transcripts are acceptable for the admissions process and should be uploaded through the online application. You do not need to submit official e-transcripts. If you did not upload copies of your transcripts and have already submitted your application, please contact ahd-admissions@uchicago.edu for assistance.

Official transcripts will be required of admitted applicants who accept an offer of admission before they register for courses in the Autumn Quarter. If those transcripts are not received, we will institute a registration hold on the record for Winter Quarter.

Yes.  We accept letters of recommendation submitted by your professors through these services as long as the letters are kept confidential. If Interfolio provides you with an email address for each recommender, you should enter that email instead of your recommender's email when you create a recommendation request. You may also direct Interfolio or other portfolio services to address electronic delivery of your materials to ahd-admissions@uchicago.edu.

If electronic delivery is not an option your school should mail the letters to us at:

Office of the Dean of Students
Division of the Arts & Humanities
The University of Chicago
1115 E. 58th Street
Walker Museum, Suite 111
Chicago, IL 60637

Once you have submitted your application, you can view the status of your recommendation letters on your application status page.

When you provide your recommenders’ contact information in the online application they will immediately receive a link to where they can provide additional information about themselves, view your letter request, and submit their letters. Once you have submitted your application, you may continue to add and remind recommenders until we have received the required three letters. To make changes to a letter that has already been submitted, or to remove a recommender from your file, you will need to contact us at ahd-admissions@uchicago.edu.

Recommenders may continue to submit letters after the deadline and they will be added to your file. We cannot guarantee that letters recieved more than one week after the deadline will be included in the application review. Please ask your recommenders to submit their letters within one week of your submission deadline.

The GRE is not required for applicants to programs in the Division of the Arts & Humanities. 

Should you choose to share your GRE scores, self-reporting your scores in your application allows us to better review your application while we await the arrival of your official scores from ETS.

The Division of the Arts & Humanities does not have minimum required GRE scores or GPA to be considered for admissions. Average GRE scores and GPA vary from department to department, so it is best to contact individual departments with this question.

All admission decisions will be made available to individual applicants through the online application and the timeline is dependent on the round in which the individual applied. You will be notified by email from the Office of the Dean of Students when a decision is available. Absolutely no official admissions decisions will be provided directly in an email or by telephone; to protect applicants' privacy all applicants must log in to the application site to view their decision.

Please feel free to contact us at ahd-admissions@uchicago.edu or 773.702.5809. We will answer all questions as quickly as possible.