To be formally advanced to candidacy, a student must, to the satisfaction of the chair of the department, have:Achieved classified status;

1. Successfully completed 16 units of course work in the program and maintained a 3.0 ("B") grade point average in the course work;
2. Selected a graduate advisor to supervise the course of study;
3. Satisfied the ethical requirements of the American Psychological Association;
4. Filed an approved graduate program which must have the approval of the student's advisor, the department chair or the graduate program director and the Dean of Graduate Studies;
5. Demonstrated successful research participation with a faculty advisor. This requirement can be fulfilled in one of three ways:

• Comprehensive Examination. Student will be required to become familiar with the literature in a research area which will be related to their comprehensive examination. This could take the form of a partial literature review, an annotated bibliography and/or a presentation of the literature of interest to faculty/student groups.
• Project. Student will be required to become familiar with several related research literatures if their area of interest is currently undeveloped or if specialized knowledge of particular methodologies requires further investigation for the development of a project.
• Thesis. Students will be required to become skilled in certain specialized research methods which will pertain to their abilities to gather data for a thesis. Examples of such activities could include gathering pilot data to acquire interview skills, knowledge of survey procedures, assessment skills, advanced statistical skills, understanding of content analysis, skills to work with a special population, or advanced physiological measurement skills.