Job Discussion Forums

[AjarnIam]

Generally speaking, is it fairly easy to get into an MA Tesol distance program if you meet their admission requirements? I've applied to a few schools, and I'm just waiting to hear back. Any idea long they usually take to accept you?

[Chris_Crossley]

Provided that you do have the pre-requisite academic qualifications and, more importantly, the funding to do such a programme, I do not see why it should prove challenging to enter such a programme, having done one myself with the Open University (UK) and gained both an M.Ed. in Applied Linguistics and an MA in Education in successive years.

If you are already an Open University student, though, you do not register for programmes, just for individual modules that you can count towards any qualifications that are relevant. You can even chop and change which qualifications you want to count the modules towards as you go along. You are only committed to accepting a qualification when you want to, though some may have deadlines. In the case of the Open University's masters in education programme as well as the MSc in Science, you must complete it within seven years of starting it, since modules are gradually revamped or even replaced by more up-to-date ones.

You may find, though, that other universities are not as flexible as this, rather they are in the business of recruiting you to complete postgraduate taught programmes with a few compulsory and additional optional modules. In the case of the OU masters in education, though, only one module is compulsory, otherwise one is more or less free to choose any modules, some of which are available for study worldwide whereas others are available to those who are resident in the EU only.