We offer PhD degree in Psychology in seven Areas of Specialization. Each Area of Specialization may have distinct application and graduation requirements. Because the graduate students are admitted to a Specialization, and transfers among programs are not permitted, the applicants to our graduate program are advised to examine the research programs in each area carefully before they apply to the PhD program in Psychology.
A note on admissions to our doctoral program: Please note that we do NOT use cutoffs on GRE or GPA scores to make admissions decisions. Further, we are committed to a holistic review process that involves reviewing multiple sources of information tied to a students’ readiness and fit for our program, and we strongly value students’ prior research experience, fit with a primary mentor, and other characteristics, such as students’ passion for research. Thus, we encourage all students with strong prior research experience who feel they are a good fit for our program to apply, regardless of any one particular score or feature of their application.
The application for the PhD programs in the Department of Psychology has eliminated the GRE requirement, beginning with the applications for the 2021 admissions.
To help you learn more about what criteria we value among applicants for our doctoral psychology program, we encourage you to review this rubric that some labs in our program use to evaluate applications. Our goal with these criteria is to holistically evaluate your potential to be a successful graduate student and contributor to our program and the field. As you’ll see in the rubric, in your application we invite you to share experiences you’ve had that demonstrate your motivation, perseverance, and initiative as we want to recognize the broad range of paths that can prepare a person to be successful in graduate school.
Please note that current graduate students, research staff, and postdoctoral fellows might help review applications for a given lab.
(Psychology PhD Course Requirements (PDF))