How Long Is an ALES Score Valid? Rules for Graduate Applicants

Contents

1. What is ALES, and how long does the score last?

2. Who needs a valid ALES score for graduate study?

3. How do you check whether an ALES score has expired?

4. How should you prepare an ALES score for an application?

5. When does an ALES score from 2026 expire?

6. How do Turkish universities apply the five-year ALES rule?

7. Does the five-year ALES period start on exam day?

8. What should you do next with your ALES score?

9. Real-World Examples

10. Frequently Asked Questions

11. References

12. Legal Notice

Introduction

An ALES score is valid for five years from the date its results are announced, according to the 2025 ALES guide published by the Student Selection and Placement Centre (ÖSYM). ALES, the Turkish graduate admission exam, is offered three times a year, so a result from the 2026-ALES/3 session, with results scheduled for 17 December 2026, stays usable into December 2031 (a derived date).

This article answers the practical questions behind that rule: whether the clock starts on exam day or results day, which graduate applicants are expected to hold a valid score, what happens when a score expires partway through an admission round, and whether international applicants need ALES at all. It is written for applicants to master’s programs (sometimes searched as “masters” or “graduate college” programs) and PhD programs at Turkish universities.

The sources are official wherever possible: ÖSYM’s exam guide, the Regulation on Graduate Education and Training issued by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK), and the published admission pages of graduate schools at Middle East Technical University (METU), Bilkent University, Marmara University and Özyeğin University. Figures from news reports are labeled as such. Mezun Kampüsü gathers these program and calendar details in one place, but exam dates and university rules change between academic terms, so every date below is stated as of October 2026.

What is ALES, and how long does the score last?

An ALES score lasts five years. ÖSYM’s 2025 ALES guide states that the results of the exam are valid for five years from the date they are announced, and that candidates can use their ALES scores within that validity period. One result can therefore support applications to several programs and several admission rounds, as long as it is still inside the five-year window.

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. Özyeğin University’s admissions page gives the English name as the Academic Personnel and Graduate Education Entrance Exam. The exam has a quantitative test and a verbal test of 50 questions each, with 150 minutes of answering time, according to the 2025 ALES guide.

ÖSYM’s 2025 ALES guide lists several uses for ALES results. Graduate schools use them in master’s and doctoral admissions. They are used when selecting candidates sent abroad for graduate study. Universities also use them when filling academic staff positions. The five-year validity applies to the result itself, whichever of these purposes it serves.

A detail many applicants miss is where the five-year rule comes from. The Regulation on Graduate Education and Training, published by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) in the Official Gazette on 20 April 2016 (issue 29690), defines ALES in Article 3 and sets out when an ALES score is expected. The regulation text, as reproduced by Koç University’s Graduate School of Health Sciences in December 2023, does not state how long a score remains valid. The validity period is set in ÖSYM’s exam guide, and graduate schools then decide on which date they check it.

That split matters in practice. ÖSYM fixes the length of the window at five years. Each university decides whether the score must be valid on the application deadline, on the evaluation date or on the enrollment date. The same ALES result can therefore be accepted by one graduate school and declined by another in the same month. The remaining sections explain how to find your own expiry date and how to match it against each program’s checkpoint.

Who needs a valid ALES score for graduate study?

Applicants to master’s with thesis and doctoral programs at Turkish universities are generally expected to hold a valid ALES score, according to the Regulation on Graduate Education and Training of the Council of Higher Education (YÖK). The same regulation lets universities drop ALES for master’s without thesis programs, and it leaves admission rules for applicants who studied abroad to each university senate.

A master’s without thesis is a coursework-focused graduate program completed with a term project instead of a thesis. Article 5(2) of the regulation states that universities may decide not to ask for an ALES score for these programs; when they do ask for one, the university senate sets the minimum. An integrated doctorate is a route allowing admission directly into a doctoral program with a bachelor’s degree, without a master’s degree. Under Article 16(1)(c), applicants on that route face a higher ALES threshold than applicants who already hold a master’s degree.

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. Article 35(2) of the regulation covers foreign nationals and Turkish citizens who completed their entire undergraduate education abroad and states that their admission procedures are set by each university senate. The article does not mention ALES, which is why practice varies widely between universities.

Table 1. ALES expectations by applicant group under YÖK’s Regulation on Graduate Education and Training (Official Gazette, 20 April 2016, with later amendments).

The regulation has been amended several times since 2016. The Lexpera legal database shows Article 5 amended in the Official Gazette of 14 April 2020 and lists further amendments dated 15 January 2026 and 6 March 2026. Applicants should read the program’s own announcement for the exact requirement in their admission round.

How do you check whether an ALES score has expired?

You check an ALES score’s validity by finding the date its results were announced and adding five years. ÖSYM’s 2025 ALES guide counts the period from the announcement date, not the exam date. Then compare the resulting expiry date with the checkpoint your target graduate school uses, which may be the application deadline or the enrollment date.

Graduate school pages in Turkey repeat the ÖSYM rule in their own wording. Marmara University’s Institute of Population and Social Research, on an admission page updated on 9 June 2026, puts it this way:

ALES/GRE/GMAT scores are valid for 5 years from the date of announcement of the results.
— Marmara University, Institute of Population and Social Research, 9 June 2026

The announcement date is the day ÖSYM published the results of your session. For the 2026 sessions, Milliyet reported on 5 June 2026 that 2026-ALES/1 results were announced on 5 June 2026, and Eğitim Sistem reported on 1 August 2026, citing ÖSYM, that 2026-ALES/2 results were due on 21 August 2026. Your own result document from ÖSYM is the safest record of the date for your session.

Once you have the expiry date, the second check is the checkpoint. The Graduate School of Social Sciences at METU, on a page updated on 6 March 2026, states that all test scores must be valid as of the application date. Özyeğin University’s admissions page states that the validity period of exam results is determined based on the date of university enrollment. A score that expires between the application deadline and the start of classes can therefore pass at one university and fail at another.

When the gap is narrow, the safest reading is the earliest date a program could check. If an expiry date falls within a few weeks of an application window, applicants can ask the graduate school in writing which date it uses, or sit a later ALES session so that a fresh result is ready. Planning around the earliest possible checkpoint avoids a last-minute problem during registration.

How should you prepare an ALES score for an application?

Preparing an ALES score for an application means confirming three things before the deadline: the result is inside its five-year window, it is in the score type the program uses, and the program accepts ALES rather than an international alternative. ÖSYM’s 2025 ALES guide, Özyeğin University and Bilkent University describe each of these checks on their own pages.

The score type matters as much as the date. ÖSYM’s 2025 ALES guide refers to quantitative and verbal scores, and Özyeğin University’s admissions page lists an equal-weight ALES score for its programs. A valid result in the wrong score type may not meet a program’s requirement. The program announcement usually names the score type it expects.

The accepted test also varies. Bilkent University’s Graduate School of Engineering and Science states that ALES is required from resident Turkish citizens and lists the GRE General Test as obligatory for foreign students. Marmara University’s Institute of Population and Social Research states that ALES is not required for international applicants. Özyeğin University accepts ALES, GRE or GMAT as alternatives.

A short preparation routine helps avoid the most common problems:

• Find the results announcement date on your ALES result document from ÖSYM.

• Add five years to that date and write down the expiry date.

• Check whether the graduate school measures validity on the application date or the enrollment date.

• Confirm which ALES score type the program uses.

• Check whether the program accepts GRE or GMAT in place of ALES.

• Save a copy of your ALES result document for the online application.

Each step answers a question admissions offices often receive. The first two steps fix your personal deadline. The third step turns that deadline into a yes or no for a specific program. The last three steps cover the cases where a valid score is still not the score a program asks for.

The routine is the same whether an applicant targets one program or ten. Programs at the same university can differ, because each graduate school and, in some cases, each department sets its own score-type and test preferences inside the senate’s rules. Running the checks per program, rather than per university, keeps the list accurate.

When does an ALES score from 2026 expire?

An ALES score from a 2026 session expires five years after its results announcement date, which places the expiry dates in 2031. Using ÖSYM’s five-year rule and the 2026 results dates reported by Milliyet and Eğitim Sistem, ALES/1 results expire in June 2031, ALES/2 results in August 2031 and ALES/3 results in December 2031.

Table 2. 2026 ALES session dates and derived expiry months under ÖSYM’s five-year validity rule.

The expiry column is a derived figure. It applies ÖSYM’s rule to the reported results dates and is shown to the month, because the exact last day of validity depends on how ÖSYM and the receiving university count the final day. The ALES/2 dates come from the Eğitim Sistem report of 1 August 2026, which is closer to the exam than earlier calendar reports.

The calculation for any session, past or future, follows the same order:

1. Find the results announcement date for your session on your ÖSYM result document.

2. Add five calendar years to that date to get the expiry date.

3. Find the checkpoint the program uses: application date, evaluation date or enrollment date.

4. Compare the two dates. If the checkpoint falls after the expiry date, plan to sit a later ALES session before the application opens.

The result depends on two inputs that can change: the results date of your session and the checkpoint used by the program. Both should be confirmed in the official announcement for the admission round.

The same arithmetic works backwards. Results from the 2021 sessions, for example, would by the same derived calculation fall out of their five-year window during 2026, so applicants holding an older score should check its announcement date before applying for the spring 2027 term. Bilkent University’s Graduate School of Engineering and Science, for instance, lists a spring 2027 application deadline of 9 November 2026.

How do Turkish universities apply the five-year ALES rule?

Turkish universities all use ÖSYM’s five-year window, but they check it at different points. The METU Graduate School of Social Sciences requires scores to be valid as of the application date, Özyeğin University uses the enrollment date, and Marmara University’s Institute of Population and Social Research counts five years from the results announcement. Some graduate schools also add their own exceptions.

The checkpoint is the main difference. On its page updated on 6 March 2026, the METU Graduate School of Social Sciences states that all test scores must be valid as of the application date. Özyeğin University states that the validity period of exam results is determined based on the date of university enrollment. For an applicant whose score expires in the weeks between those two dates, the two rules lead to different outcomes.

Exceptions exist at some graduate schools. The METU Graduate School of Social Sciences allows applicants who were registered in a graduate program in one of the last two semesters to apply with the ALES score they submitted before, provided that score meets the program’s minimum criteria. This is an institutional rule, not a national one, and it should not be assumed at other universities.

Universities also differ on which applicants need ALES at all. Bilkent University’s Graduate School of Engineering and Science requires ALES from resident Turkish citizens and the GRE General Test from foreign students. Marmara University’s Institute of Population and Social Research states that ALES is not required for international applicants. Ondokuz Mayıs University in Samsun publishes an ALES, GRE and GMAT conversion table adopted by its senate on 18 December 2014, which notes that GRE and GMAT results are valid for five years.

The general rule and the institutional practice should be kept apart when planning. The five-year length comes from ÖSYM and applies everywhere ALES is used. The checkpoint date, any re-use exception and the choice between ALES and international tests are set by each university senate and graduate school, and they can change between admission rounds.

Does the five-year ALES period start on exam day?

No, the five-year ALES period does not start on exam day. ÖSYM’s 2025 ALES guide counts validity from the date the results are announced, which comes several weeks after the exam. This differs from the GRE, whose scores ETS reports for five years following the test date, so the two tests start their clocks at different moments.

The gap between exam day and results day can be measured from the 2026 calendar. The 2026-ALES/1 exam took place on 10 May 2026 and its results were announced on 5 June 2026, according to Milliyet on 5 June 2026, a derived gap of 26 days. For 2026-ALES/3, Milliyet lists an exam date of 29 November 2026 and a results date of 17 December 2026, a derived gap of 18 days. Counting from the exam date would place an applicant’s expiry date a few weeks too early.

The international tests follow their own rules. ETS, which runs the GRE, states that GRE scores are reportable for five years following the test date. GMAC, which runs the GMAT, states on its mba.com scores page that a GMAT score is valid for five years. The length matches ALES, but the starting point for the GRE is the test date, not a results date.

A second confusion concerns the source of the rule. Some news articles attribute the five-year period to the Council of Higher Education (YÖK). The YÖK regulation text, as reproduced by Koç University in December 2023, defines ALES and sets admission conditions but does not state a validity period. The five-year period appears in ÖSYM’s exam guide, so the guide is the document to cite when a question about validity arises.

A third confusion concerns older scores and older rules. Reports that describe a different validity period in earlier years could not be confirmed against an official ÖSYM or YÖK source during research for this article, so they are not relied on here. Both ÖSYM guides checked for this article, the 2020-ALES/2 guide and the 2025 ALES guide, state the same five-year period counted from the announcement date.

What should you do next with your ALES score?

The next step is to turn your ALES expiry date into a plan for a specific admission round. Write down the results announcement date, add five years, and compare that expiry date with the checkpoint of each program on your list. If the score will lapse before a checkpoint, schedule a new ALES session, since ÖSYM runs three sessions a year.

For the 2026 calendar, the 2026-ALES/3 application period ran from 7 to 15 October 2026, according to Milliyet on 5 June 2026. The exam is scheduled for 29 November 2026, and results are expected on 17 December 2026. A result from that session would be available for many spring and fall 2027 admission rounds, subject to each program’s dates.

A practical order of work for the 2027 admission rounds:

• List the programs you plan to apply to and note whether each asks for ALES, GRE, GMAT or no exam score.

• Record the checkpoint each graduate school uses for score validity.

• Compare those checkpoints with your ALES expiry date.

• If you are an international applicant, check whether the program follows a rule like Bilkent’s GRE requirement or Marmara’s exemption.

• Keep the program announcement and your ÖSYM result document together for the application.

Exam calendars change every year. ÖSYM publishes the next year’s sessions in its annual exam calendar, and graduate schools announce their application windows before each term. Recheck every date in the official announcements before you apply, especially when an expiry date and an application window fall close together.

If you have no valid score and the next ALES session comes too late for a deadline, it can be worth looking at programs that do not ask for ALES. Under Article 5(2) of YÖK’s regulation, master’s without thesis programs may admit students without an ALES score, and several universities admit international applicants on other criteria set by their senates. Mezun Kampüsü’s Announcements section follows new calls from universities as they are published.

Real-World Examples

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

Selin and the enrollment date. Selin received her ALES results in September 2021 and plans to apply for a master’s with thesis starting in fall 2026. Her score is valid on the application deadline in July 2026, but it lapses in September 2026, just before classes begin. One university on her list checks validity on the application date, while another checks it on the enrollment date. Selin reads both announcements, keeps the first program on her list, and registers for the next ALES session so that she has a fresh score for the second program’s next round.

Daniel, an international applicant. Daniel completed his bachelor’s degree in Ghana and wants a master’s in engineering in Turkey. He assumes he must take ALES, then finds that one program he is considering asks foreign applicants for the GRE General Test, while another does not ask international applicants for an exam score at all. Daniel takes the GRE at a test center, notes that his score is reportable for five years from his test date, and applies to both programs with the documents each one lists.

Omar and the exam-day mistake. Omar sat an ALES session in late November and counted five years from exam day. When he checked his ÖSYM result document, he saw that the results were announced in mid-December, almost three weeks later. His score therefore remains valid slightly longer than he thought. Omar updates his planning spreadsheet with the announcement date and uses it for every program on his list. He also notes which of those programs check validity on the application date, so the extra weeks are counted only where they apply.

Mariam and the master’s without thesis. Mariam works full time and wants a coursework-based master’s in business. Her last ALES score has expired, and the next session falls after her preferred program’s deadline. She checks the program announcement and finds that the university does not ask for ALES for its master’s without thesis programs. Mariam applies with the documents the announcement lists and decides to sit ALES later only if she moves on to a thesis-based program. She keeps a note of the next session dates in case her plans change.

Frequently Asked Questions

About Mezun Kampüsü
Mezun Kampüsü is a platform that brings together the graduate programs, application calendars and academic announcements of universities in Turkey. Applicants checking whether their ALES score will still be valid can compare the exam requirements and application dates of master’s and PhD programs through Atlas, follow application periods, track current announcements from universities, and start a free application through the Universities section.

Legal Notice

This article provides general information about the validity of ALES scores for graduate admission in Turkey. It is not personal academic, legal or financial advice. The five-year validity period is set out in ÖSYM’s ALES guides, and admission conditions are governed by YÖK’s Regulation on Graduate Education and Training (Official Gazette, 20 April 2016, issue 29690, as amended) and by the senate rules of each university. Regulations, exam calendars and program conditions can change between academic terms. Applicants should confirm every requirement and date with ÖSYM and with the graduate school of the university they are applying to.