Students making application are required to have satisfactorily completed an approved undergraduate program of study. On a 4.0 system, applicants must have a general academic index of 2.5. Students who have an academic index below 2.5 may be granted provisional admission if they have Graduate Record Examination scores above 1050 with good letters of reference. Students for whom English is not their first language must attain a minimum score of 550 on the TOEFL examination. Admission is selective and competitive based on the number of well-qualified applicants and the limits of available faculty and facilities. Those who meet stated minimum academic requirements are not guaranteed admission, nor are those who fail to meet those requirements necessarily precluded from admission if they offer other appropriate strengths. 

Students are required to complete a minimum of 30 credit hours including either a thesis or a non-thesis option. Under the thesis option, students complete 24 hours of course work and 6 hours of thesis work.  Under the non-thesis option, students complete 27 hours of course work and 3 hours of a directed project.  All students must take ECON 801 and either ECON 552 or ECON 802. All students must take four of the following quantitative courses:  FREC 608, FREC 615, FREC 674, FREC 682, FREC 801, FREC 806, ECON 822, and ECON 823.  Students writing a thesis must take two 800-level FREC courses while students in the non-thesis option must take three 800-level FREC courses from the following:  FREC 810, FREC 826, FREC 827, and FREC 834. In addition, no more than three credits of independent study may be taken unless approved by the department chair, advisor, and the department graduate committee. Agricultural and resource economics courses taken previously may partially meet the requirements if they do not count towards the fulfillment of another degree. 

The student plans a course program in consultation with the major professor, in order to attain competency in economics, quantitative methods, and agricultural and resource economics. 

Students must achieve an overall index of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale for all graduate course work taken. The student's progress toward the degree will be monitored by the academic advisor and the department graduate committee. 

The student choosing the thesis option is required to prepare a thesis that reflects a substantive analysis of a subject in the field of agricultural and resource economics. An oral examination covering both course work and thesis will be given to determine whether the student has a breadth of understanding of the field. A student selecting the non-thesis option is required to complete a directed research project to be presented at a department seminar.