Admissions Process

Applications are received and decided on throughout the year. For regular students, we recommend that you submit your application, along with all the required documents, no later than one month prior to the beginning of your first class.

You may apply for Financial Aid after you have received a letter of admission.

Applicants to the Special Student program may skip the second essay, submit one reference (pastoral), and pay a non-refundable fee of $40.

You will need to provide all the items which were not required for your Special Student application, namely, a statement of reasons for wishing to pursue a particular degree, an academic reference, and a general reference. You may have already provided some of these. Email admissions.newyork@rts.edu to get the process started. Additionally, there is a non-refundable application fee of $35.

That will ultimately depend on whoever is writing your reference, but they should budget at least 10-15 minutes to fill it out.

No. Once you begin your application, our system allows you to send the reference forms any time.

Please double-check that your reference’s email information was entered accurately. If you believe a mistake was made, please contact admissions.newyork@rts.edu. Alternatively, the RTS reference form may have been flagged as spam or filtered by your reference’s email provider. If you believe this is the case, please ask your reference to look for the RTS email in their spam/junk/promotions folder.

We ask that you list only non-relatives as references. If one of your parents happens to be your pastor, please ask another leader in the church to complete your reference.

This is a fairly common situation. Email admissions.newyork@rts.edu, and we’ll work with you to find an alternative and fulfill this requirement.

We will not accept any transcripts unless they are official (see below).

A transcript is considered official when it’s issued and sent by your university directly to us.

While we strongly recommend that you request hard-copy transcripts, digital ones are acceptable. They can be sent to admissions.newyork@rts.edu.

Students must submit official transcripts from all previous academic work (a baccalaureate degree or its foreign equivalent with a 2.6 cumulative GPA). In most cases, your foreign transcripts will need to be evaluated by a third party.

Undergraduate transcripts (baccalaureate degree or equivalent) from international colleges and universities should be submitted through the World Education Services for evaluation. Make sure to request the Course-by-Course Report and specifically request that they include the language of instruction on the report. You are responsible for requesting that WES send a copy of the transcript and their evaluation to admissions.newyork@rts.edu. Please see the WES Frequently Asked Questions page for further information about fees and processing times.

All degrees from unaccredited schools are considered on a case-by-case basis. The primary criterion is general compatibility with the standards of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Association of Theological Schools.

As a non-baccalaureate applicant, you may apply to any of our degree programs. Please note that the application process will entail additional steps and that admission will be restricted to persons with life experience and academic skill that has prepared them for theological study at the graduate level. Email admissions.newyork@rts.edu if you’d like to learn more.

We will keep them for one year. Within that period, we will follow up with you to see if you are still interested in completing your application. After one year, we may discard them.

If one year has passed since the beginning of the term to which you were admitted, you must submit a new application, including a $75 application fee and a new pastoral reference, to reenter your program.