The Department of Psychology offers a research-intensive PhD program within a close-knit community of faculty and students.
The Department of Psychology offers a graduate program leading to a PhD in psychology. The program offers four main specializations, behavioral neuroscience, cognition, perception, and personality/social, with cross-cutting themes in affective science, lifespan development, and health. The main objective of the program is to train a select group of students to become experts in the multidisciplinary field of psychological science. To accomplish this goal, the department takes a mentoring approach whereby the graduate students are apprentices in faculty laboratories, working closely with their faculty mentors throughout their time in the program. All students are fully supported with stipend and tuition waiver, 12 months a year, for their full five years in the program.
The department admits a small group of students to its doctoral program each year in order to maintain its apprenticeship model, with students admitted to work with a particular faculty mentor. In the laboratory, responsibility for collaboration in research gradually shifts from the faculty mentor to the student, culminating in the student’s doctoral dissertation. The program is five years in length, with students earning a Master’s degree at the end of their second year, in the course of working towards their PhD. Some students enter with a Master’s degree in an appropriate field; they are not required to earn another one.
The basic apprenticeship relation is supplemented by other activities, such as required courses (concentrated in the first and second years), advanced seminars and/or coursework in this as well as other departments or universities, a colloquium series, assignments as teaching assistants, the master’s project, and the dissertation and its oral defense. Graduate students also develop their teaching and research skills through close mentoring of undergraduate research assistants.
- Specializations in behavioral neuroscience, cognition, perception, and personality/social
- Cross-cutting themes in affective science, lifespan development, and health
- Program follows apprenticeship model, with students admitted to work with a particular faculty mentor
- Students without a Master’s degree in an appropriate field will earn one at the end of their second year
- Students develop teaching and research skills through mentoring of undergraduate research assistants
- All students are fully supported with stipend and tuition waiver, 12 months a year, for their full five years in the program
- Bachelor’s and Advanced-degree entry are possible
Application Materials
Requirements
- Application
- Application fee – US $100
- Unofficial transcripts for all institutions attended
(Official transcripts required upon acceptance of admission offer) - Personal statement
- Three letters of recommendation
- GRE General – recommended, but not required
- Resume
- Proof of English Proficiency for all applicants
Application
Priority deadline for completed applications: December 1st
Rolling admissions until March 15. Check with department to see if there is availability.