Do International Students Need ALES for a Master's in Turkey?

Contents

1. What is ALES and who normally takes it?

2. Which applicant groups does the ALES rule cover?

3. How do you find your program's actual requirement?

4. What can stand in place of an ALES result?

5. How do universities differ in practice?

6. Which route fits which applicant?

7. Is ALES the same as the TR-YÖS exam?

8. What should you do before you apply?

• Real-World Examples

• Frequently Asked Questions

• References

• Legal Notice

Introduction

International students do not face a single national ALES rule for a master's in Turkey. The Regulation on Graduate Education and Training assigns the admission procedures for foreign national candidates to each university senate, so one graduate school may ask an overseas applicant for an ALES result while another asks for none at all.

That division of authority explains most of the confusion in English-language sources. The regulation, published in the Official Gazette on 20 April 2016 under number 29690, sets a general framework for graduate admission in Turkey, and Article 35 of the same regulation carves out foreign national candidates and Turkish citizens who completed their entire bachelor's degree abroad.What the senate of a university decides for those groups is the rule that an international applicant is actually judged against.

The scale of the question is not small. The Council of Higher Education (YÖK) reported 330,464 master's students and 89,665 doctoral students in Turkish higher education for 2025-2026 in its Higher Education Statistics Bulletin of 27 March 2026, and the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) puts the international student population in Turkey at approximately 340,000 as of 2026. Mezun Kampüsü works with these application processes daily, and the ALES question is among the most frequently repeated.

This article draws on the regulation itself, ÖSYM's 2026-ALES application guides, YÖK statistics, and the published admission pages of six universities. Admission conditions are revised term by term, so any rule quoted here should be re-checked against the program page for the term you are applying to.

What is ALES and who normally takes it?

ALES is the centralised examination administered by the Student Selection and Placement Centre (ÖSYM) and used in applications to graduate programs and in academic staff recruitment in Turkey. ÖSYM's 2026-ALES/1 guide of 25 March 2026 describes a test of 100 questions, 50 quantitative and 50 verbal, answered in 150 minutes and reported in three score types.

The examination was built for the domestic academic pipeline. A graduate of a Turkish university who wants a place in a master's with thesis, a doctoral program or an academic post takes ALES because the regulation and the university's own rules point there. According to ÖSYM's 2026-ALES/2 guide of 10 June 2026, a result stays usable for five years from the date it is announced, which is why applicants often sit the test once and apply with the same score across several admission rounds.

Two features of ALES matter more to an international applicant than the syllabus. The first is language: ÖSYM states in both 2026 guides that the test is administered in Turkish, with no other version offered. The second is location: for 2026-ALES/1 on 10 May 2026, ÖSYM listed test centers in the 81 provincial capitals of Turkey plus two centers outside the country, in Lefkoşa and Bishkek.

An applicant who does not read Turkish at examination level and does not live near those centers is, in practice, unable to sit ALES. Turkish universities know this, and Article 35 of the Regulation on Graduate Education and Training gives their senates room to respond to it.

Which applicant groups does the ALES rule cover?

The Regulation on Graduate Education and Training separates applicants into groups, and the ALES requirement written into its general admission articles is aimed at the standard domestic route. Article 35, second paragraph, states that the procedures and principles for admitting foreign national candidates, and Turkish citizens who completed the whole of their bachelor's degree abroad, are determined by the senates of higher education institutions.

An international student is a person who is not a citizen of the Republic of Turkey and who is admitted to a higher education institution under international student status. That status is what moves an applicant out of the general admission article and into the senate's own rules. The distinction is administrative rather than academic, and it is decided by citizenship and admission route, not by where a degree was earned.

The regulation also treats the two master's routes differently. A master's with thesis is a graduate program completed through coursework and the preparation of a thesis, while a master's without thesis is a coursework-focused graduate program completed with a term project instead of a thesis. Article 5 of the regulation allows higher education institutions not to require an ALES score in admissions to programs without a thesis, which is a separate exemption from the one that applies through the senate.

Table 1. Which admission rule applies to which applicant group, under the Regulation on Graduate Education and Training

How do you find your program's actual requirement?

The reliable answer sits on the admission page of the graduate school running the program, for the term you are applying to. A graduate school is the academic unit within a Turkish university that runs graduate education and manages application and enrolment procedures, and the conditions it publishes for a given term govern that term's applications.

Universities state the position plainly when they have decided it. İstinye University sets out its rule for international applicants on the application criteria page of its International Office:

Academic Personnel and Graduate Education Entrance Examination (ALES) scores are not required from candidates within the scope of international students.
— İstinye University International Office, application criteria page, accessed 29 August 2026

Istanbul Medeniyet University publishes the equivalent rule for its graduate school, stating that an ALES result or an equivalent examination result is not sought from foreign national candidates, and describing an admission examination whose result is combined with the graduation grade in equal weight when candidates are ranked.

Three details are worth reading closely on any such page. The first is the applicant category the rule names, since a page may address international students, foreign nationals or all applicants, and those categories do not overlap perfectly. The second is the program level, because a rule written for a master's with thesis may not extend to doctoral admission.

The third is the academic term printed on the page: Istanbul Technical University's international admission announcement covers the 2025-2026 fall semester, and the İzmir Institute of Technology page covers the fall semester of 2026-2027, so a rule read out of its term is a rule read incorrectly.

What can stand in place of an ALES result?

Universities that keep an examination requirement for international applicants generally accept an international test in place of ALES, most often the GRE or the GMAT. Istanbul Technical University's admission announcement for international applicants to graduate programs, covering the 2025-2026 fall semester, asks for one score document from among ALES, GRE or GMAT rather than ALES alone.

Koç University's Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering splits the requirement by applicant group on its application requirements page, listing an ALES score for Turkish applicants and a GRE score for international applicants across doctoral, master's with thesis and master's without thesis programs. The İzmir Institute of Technology graduate school describes a further route for its master's programs in the fall semester of 2026-2027: "For international applicants: Those who cannot meet the ALES or GRE score requirement can apply with conditional GRE." Applicants admitted that way have to submit the required result within a stated period after courses begin.

The Middle East Technical University Graduate School of Social Sciences, on a page last updated on 19 August 2025, states that international students who do not hold a GRE or GMAT score can still apply as a conditional student, alongside the documents required of every applicant.

Alongside the examination, universities weigh other evidence. A scientific assessment is a written or oral evaluation of subject knowledge administered by a university as part of its graduate admissions; it is not a centralised examination and its scope varies by program. Interviews, transcripts, reference letters and a letter of intention appear on most of the six pages reviewed for this article.

• Open the graduate school page for the exact program and academic term you plan to apply to.

• Search that page for ALES, GRE and GMAT, and note which of the three it names.

• Check whether a separate paragraph addresses international student applicants.

• Confirm whether a scientific assessment or interview forms part of the evaluation.

• Ask the graduate school in writing where the page is silent, and keep the reply.

How do universities differ in practice?

Six published admission pages give six different answers, which is the clearest evidence that Article 35 of the Regulation on Graduate Education and Training leaves the decision with the institution. Two of the six ask nothing of international applicants in place of ALES, three accept an international test, and one offers admission before the test result arrives.

State and foundation universities do not divide neatly along that line. İstinye University, a foundation institution, and Istanbul Medeniyet University, a state institution, both drop the ALES requirement for international applicants, while Istanbul Technical University and the İzmir Institute of Technology, both state institutions, keep an examination requirement that ALES can satisfy.

Table 2. What six universities ask of international graduate applicants, as published on their own pages

Language conditions run separately from the examination question and are not removed by an ALES exemption. İstinye University states that for master's and doctoral programs with a thesis it is compulsory to submit one of the listed English examination results, whatever the language of instruction of the program. Istanbul Medeniyet University asks candidates for Turkish-medium programs for a Certificate of Turkish Proficiency at the level its graduate school specifies, issued by its own language center or by the Yunus Emre Institute.

Which route fits which applicant?

The route follows from three facts about the applicant: citizenship status, the language they can be examined in, and whether they already hold an international test result. An applicant holding international student status has no national obligation to take ALES, so the practical question is which of the accepted alternatives the target program names.

An applicant who reads Turkish comfortably and lives in Turkey has the widest choice, because ALES is available three times in 2026 according to ÖSYM's 2026-ALES/2 guide and its result serves for five years.

That applicant can satisfy an ALES requirement, a GRE requirement or a GMAT requirement depending on the program, and can apply to programs across all six of the universities named in this article.

An applicant abroad with no Turkish at examination level has two workable routes. The first is to concentrate on programs that ask nothing in place of ALES, such as those described by İstinye University and Istanbul Medeniyet University on their admission pages. The second is to sit the GRE or the GMAT, which are administered internationally and in English, and then apply to programs that name those tests, as Istanbul Technical University and Koç University do.

Doctoral applicants should read the program page separately rather than assuming the master's rule carries over. An integrated doctorate is a route allowing admission directly into a doctoral program with a bachelor's degree, without a master's degree, and Turkish universities usually publish separate conditions for that route.

The exemption written into Article 5 of the regulation for programs without a thesis gives a fourth option, but a master's without thesis and a master's with thesis lead to different rights at doctoral level, so the choice deserves its own comparison rather than being made to avoid an examination.

Is ALES the same as the TR-YÖS exam?

ALES and TR-YÖS are different examinations with different purposes, and confusing them costs applicants time. YÖS is the examination used in international student applications to higher education programs in Turkey; it is administered principally for undergraduate admission. ALES, by contrast, sits at the graduate stage.

The Study in Türkiye portal describes TR-YÖS as an examination designed for international students wishing to study in Turkey, conducted twice a year by ÖSYM in Turkish, German, Arabic, French, English and Russian, at centers in Turkey and abroad. That range of languages is a further point of difference: ÖSYM's 2026-ALES guides state that the ALES test is administered in Turkish.

A second confusion involves documents rather than examinations. A Certificate of Recognition is a document confirming that a higher education institution abroad, and the specific program attended there, appear among the institutions recognised by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK); it does not mean the diploma has been declared equivalent to a Turkish qualification. A Certificate of Equivalence is the Council of Higher Education's formal determination of which Turkish qualification, in which field and at which level, a diploma obtained abroad corresponds to. Neither document replaces an entrance examination, and no entrance examination replaces them. İstinye University lists a Certificate of Equivalence or Recognition among the documents it asks international applicants to submit.

What should you do before you apply?

Start from the program rather than from the examination. The requirement that governs an international applicant is the one published by the graduate school for the term of application, because Article 35 of the Regulation on Graduate Education and Training places that decision with the university senate rather than with a national rule.

A workable order of steps for an applicant planning an application in the 2026-2027 academic year:

1. Shortlist programs first, then read each graduate school's admission conditions for the term you intend to apply in.

2. Record, for each program, which examination is named and which applicant category the rule addresses.

3. If ALES is named and you can be examined in Turkish, check the remaining 2026 session date published by ÖSYM against the program deadline, allowing time for results to be announced.

4. If ALES is named and Turkish is not an option for you, look for a GRE or GMAT alternative on the same page, or move that program down the list.

5. Start the recognition or equivalence file early, since İstinye University and Istanbul Medeniyet University both list a YÖK recognition or equivalence document among the required papers.

6. Prepare the language document the program requires, which İstinye University describes as compulsory for thesis programs regardless of the language of instruction.

7. Write to the graduate school where a page is silent, and keep the written answer with your application file.

Admission conditions are republished each term, and the six pages reviewed for this article carry different terms and update dates. A rule that held for the 2025-2026 fall semester at one university may be rewritten for the following year, so a check performed in one application season should be repeated in the next.

Real-World Examples

The examples in this section are illustrative scenarios created to explain situations applicants may encounter.

Amina, applying from abroad with no Turkish

Amina holds a bachelor's degree in economics and reads no Turkish. She assumes ALES is unavoidable and delays her application by a year to study the language. Reading the admission pages first would have shown her two positions among the six universities reviewed here: institutions that ask international applicants for no ALES result, and institutions that accept a GRE or GMAT result in its place.A shortlist built around those two groups, combined with an early start on her recognition documents, would let her apply in the coming admission round rather than the one after it.

Daniyar, holding a GRE result already

Daniyar took the GRE while preparing applications to several countries. He now wants a master's with thesis in engineering in Turkey and finds a program listing ALES first in its conditions. Reading the full paragraph shows a score document from ALES, GRE or GMAT, which his existing result satisfies. His remaining task is the language document and the recognition file for his diploma, and confirming that the program's rule as published covers the term he is applying in rather than the previous one.

Sofia, a Turkish citizen who studied abroad

Sofia is a citizen of the Republic of Turkey who completed her entire bachelor's degree in Spain. She expects the general ALES rule to apply to her without exception. Article 35 of the Regulation on Graduate Education and Training places candidates in her position, alongside foreign national candidates, under procedures set by the university senate. Her requirement therefore depends on the institution she applies to, and the graduate school page is where she can confirm it. Where the page addresses only foreign nationals, a written question to the graduate school settles her category.

Omar, admitted before his test result arrives

Omar applies to a master's program that allows an application without a completed international test result, on condition that the result is submitted within a set period after courses begin. He is admitted and starts his coursework. The condition attached to his admission carries a deadline and consequences for missing it, so the dates and the exact wording belong in his own records from the day of admission, and any uncertainty about them is worth raising with the graduate school in writing before enrolment.

About Mezun Kampüsü
Mezun Kampüsü is a platform that brings together the graduate programs, application calendars and academic announcements of universities in Turkey. For applicants weighing an entrance examination requirement, the platform makes it possible to compare programs through Atlas, follow the application periods published by graduate schools, track announcements from universities as they are updated, and start a free application through the Universities section.
Update Information
Published: 29 August 2026
Last updated: 29 August 2026
Next review: 28 September 2026

Legal Notice

This article provides general information about entrance examination requirements for graduate admission in Turkey. It rests on the Lisansüstü Eğitim ve Öğretim Yönetmeliği (Regulation on Graduate Education and Training), published in the Official Gazette on 20 April 2016 under number 29690, and on the published pages of the institutions named in the text. Regulation and administrative practice can change over time, and university and program conditions vary from one application period to another. Because Article 35 of the regulation leaves admission procedures for foreign national candidates to university senates, requirements differ between institutions and between programs at the same institution. Applicants should confirm every requirement with the relevant university, graduate school and official institution before applying. Nothing here is personal academic, legal or financial advice. All sources were last checked on 29 August 2026.