Political Science

The Department of Political Science is home to a dynamic faculty devoted to studying political phenomena at all levels of interest to our graduate students, including local, state, national, and international issues. Our program is oriented to the scientific study of politics of all types. Whether our graduate students seek to study international relations, American politics, public law or foreign political systems, UB's Department of Political Science is committed satisfying student interests in each of these areas.

Students in the M.A. program must complete a total of 30 credit hours: eight courses (24 credit hours) and a Master’s Thesis (six credit hours) or 9 courses (27 credit hours) and a Research Project Paper (three credit hours). A maximum of 6 hours of transfer credit may be allowed. No more than three credits may be earned through the satisfactory completion of Political Science 599,
Supervised Teaching or PSC 600 Supervised Research.

In accordance with Graduate School regulations, all requirements must be completed in four years. Masters students are required to take the following Department Core Courses (PSC 500-Introduction to Political Inquiry and PSC 508-Basic Statistics for Social Science) plus the Core Courses in two of the four Fields (PSC 503 in Comparative Politics; PSC 504 in International Politics; PSC 505 in American Politics; PSC 561 in Public Law). A maximum of three courses (nine credit hours) may be taken outside the Department, subject to prior approval for each by the Director of
Graduate Studies.

The Master’s Thesis or Research Project Paper is written under the direction of, and must be approved by, two faculty members; it is also subject to the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies. Although the research paper is ordinarily less substantial than the thesis in scope, it is expected to be of comparable quality. As appropriate, faculty members outside the Department may
participate in the guidance of theses or research papers.

Admission to the Master’s program is open to students who hold a Bachelor’s degree.

Successful applicants will have a combined score of at least 310 on the Verbal and Quantitative sections of the Graduate Record Exam (1200 on old version), and a score of at least 4.5 on the Analytical Section of the same exam. A minimum GPA of 3.0 (on a 4.0 scale) is required for admission to the graduate program.  For International applicants, the University at Buffalo requires international students to have a TOEFL score above 550 on the paper-based test (PBT) or 79 on the internet-based test (iBT).  The Graduate Admissions Committee may waive these requirements if other application materials are deemed sufficient to warrant admission to the graduate program.

A limited number of fellowships and assistantships are available for qualified graduate students. Departmental assistantships include a stipend for the academic year of $13,400 (on average) and a full tuition scholarship. In addition, the University offers a limited number of one- to four-year fellowships awarded on a competitive basis to outstanding students. These fellowships increase the base Departmental stipend by $2,000 to $8,000 per year. Recently, more than half of the students on Departmental assistantships also received University-level fellowships.