Students are admitted to our graduate program partially based on a good fit between a faculty member’s research area and the student’s own research experience and goals. Before applying, review the research interests of our faculty (link below) to determine if there are faculty members whose research areas match your interests. Contact those faculty members to inquire if they will be accepting new graduate students for the fall semester you intend to apply. On the application, you are asked to list up to three faculty members that you have determined match your research goals and are accepting new PhD students.
A completed application to our graduate program must include official transcripts from all colleges or universities attended, a personal statement, three letters of recommendation, a TOEFL (our institution code is 1324) or IELTS score (if English is not your native language), and a $70 application fee. Specific application instructions are on the application website (link above).
The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) is not required for applicants to Psychological and Brain Sciences. However, some individual faculty prefer to consider GREs when evaluating applications. Faculty who recommend including GREs scores with the application state so on their department website - accessible through the faculty descriptions link below. Any applicant may also optionally submit a GRE score. Unofficial GRE scores may be uploaded by the applicant in our online application. However, anyone submitting GRE scores must also request official scores be sent directly from ETS; our institution code is 1324.
We take a wholistic approach to reviewing graduate applications and consider many aspects of a students’ experience. We encourage the use of multi-dimensional guidelines for faculty to consider as they review applications (view rubric here). These dimensions include:
- Research experience/knowledge, including fit of interests to proposed faculty/program
- Research skills
- Barriers and challenges overcome (life experiences, resiliency)
- Career goals
- Undergraduate/previous training
- Leadership/mentoring experience
We encourage students to include information about these dimensions in their application (e.g., in the personal statement).
View faculty profiles at the link below, where you can sort by their areas of focus and graduate recruitment status at the top of the page.
View faculty profiles
The College of Arts