Have each institution where you earned an undergraduate or graduate degree send us your official transcript.

If your transcript is not in English, provide a notarized translation of it.

If you’re enrolled in a degree program when you apply, submit your transcript of the courses you’ve taken to date. Submit your final official transcript once you’ve completed the degree program.

A credential evaluation helps us understand the courses you’ve taken, the grades you’ve earned, or the degree you’ve received from an institution outside the United States.

Get an independent credential evaluation of your transcripts to determine U.S. equivalency.

Doctoral program recommendations should address your readiness for doctoral-level study, your commitment to the field, and an assessment of success in your current role.

Submit 3 recent recommendations from those you’ve worked with closely in an academic or professional setting. You can submit your letters with your online application.

• At least one of your recommendations should come from a present or former supervisor.

• One recommendation needs to be from a person who holds a doctoral degree who can attest to your ability to complete doctoral-level study successfully.

• We don’t accept recommendations written by friends or family, or that were written more than 2 years before your application date.

Within your online application form, include the names and emails of the people writing your letters of recommendation. They'll receive an email from you with an electronic recommendation form and they can upload a letter.

We want you to be successful in your program. If your native language is not English, we require that you provide proof of your English proficiency.

You can show your proficiency in one of these ways:

The written personal statement is a vital component of your doctoral application. The admissions committee reviews these statements for excellence in thinking and writing, focus and depth, communication style, coherence in thought, and clarity of your doctoral study goals.

Write a 1000–1500-word personal statement, double-spaced.

Address these questions as part of your personal narrative.

1. Tell us about the ways in which your personal, academic, and professional experiences have influenced your decision to apply to the Lesley University PhD program in Counseling Psychology: Transformative Leadership, Education, and Applied Research.

2. Draw from your lived experiences and philosophy of practice to describe your main areas of research interest. Include discussion of specific academic journal articles, book chapters, or non-scholarly literature related to your area of interest that reflect your views on, or approach to studying, the research topic in which you are interested.

3. Describe 1-3 specific career goals, expand on how your professional history and theoretical lenses influence your career goals, and elaborate how the PhD program will support you achieving these goals.

Please note we will be reviewing your résumé or CV, so there is no need to duplicate the information you present there. Instead of telling us what you’ve done, use the personal statement to tell us about you, why you’ve done what you’ve done, how it has affected you, and how it relates to what you’re hoping to do in the PhD program and beyond. This is an opportunity to tell us your story.

In addition to your written personal statement, the Counseling and Psychology PhD program requires a separate scholarly writing sample. The writing sample should be a previously written, research-based paper, manuscript, thesis, or published work written in the past 5 years. Applicants who would like to submit longer samples such as graduate thesis are strongly recommended to provide an excerpt shorter than 5-10 pages and include a one-page coversheet contextualizing the excerpt within the larger body of the written sample.

In your writing sample, describe a specific community-based or professional issue. Present your analysis of the issue drawing from relevant theoretical frameworks. Describe individual and collective strengths, challenges, and areas of growth addressing this issue through a social justice lens.

The writing sample should show your ability to think critically, synthesize research literature, and write at an academic level.

Submit a current résumé or curriculum vitae.