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IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 SITE VISITS: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, site visits for the majority of programs scheduled to be visited in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 have been shifted. Please note that the “next site visit date” listed for each program does not represent an expiration of accreditation. It represents a timeline for a program’s next periodic review. The accreditation status of the 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 programs will not be impacted by site visit delays. Cycle shifts are listed here .
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PhD Admissions
The PhD program in Psychology trains students for careers in research and teaching. In addition to a wide range of courses, the PhD program is characterized by close collaboration between students and their faculty advisors.
General Information
The Department of Psychology holistically reviews each candidate's complete application to assess the promise of a career in teaching and research. Consideration is based on various factors, including courses taken, grade point average, letters of recommendation, and the statement of purpose. Additionally, the Department of Psychology places considerable emphasis on research training, and admitted students have often been involved in independent research as undergraduate students or post-baccalaureate settings. Although there are no course requirements for admission, all applicants should have sufficient foundational knowledge and research experience to engage in graduate-level coursework and research.
We accept students with undergraduate degrees and those with both undergraduate and master's degrees. An undergraduate psychology major is not required; the Department welcomes applicants from other academic backgrounds.
Our application portal is now OPEN for the AY25-26 admissions cycle.
How to Apply
Application and deadline.
Our 2025-26 Admissions application will open on September 15, 2024.
Applications will be due on November 22, 2024
The deadline for letters of recommendation will be November 22, 2024 .
Once an applicant submits the recommenders' information, the recommenders will receive an automated email with instructions for submitting the letter. Late letters should be sent directly to psych-admissions [at] stanford.edu (psych-admissions[at]stanford[dot]edu) . Staff will add them to the application file if the review process is still underway. Still, the faculty reviewers are not obligated to re-review files for materials submitted after the deadline.
Generally, students will hear from us by the end of January.
The status of submitted applications can be viewed anytime by logging in to the application portal .
The deadline to apply for the '25-26 PhD cohort this year is November 22, 2024 . Applicants who are admitted to the program will matriculate in Autumn 2025.
Our next admissions cycle will open in September 2025 and have a November 2025 deadline.
In addition to the information below, please review the Graduate Admissions website prior to starting your application. The Department of Psychology does not have rolling admissions. We admit for the Autumn term only.
Requirements
- U.S. Bachelor's degree or its foreign equivalent
- Statement of Purpose (submitted electronically as part of the graduate application). You will be able to specify three Psychology Department faculty members , in order of preference, with whom you would like to work.
- Three Letters of Recommendation (submitted electronically). A maximum of six letters will be accepted.
- Unofficial transcripts from all universities and colleges you have attended for at least one year must be uploaded to the graduate application. Applicants who reach the interview stage will be asked to provide official transcripts as well; Department staff will reach out to these applicants with instructions for submitting official transcripts. Please do not submit official transcripts with your initial application.
- Required for non-native English speakers: TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores, submitted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) electronically to Stanford.
Application Fee
The fee to apply for graduate study at Stanford is $125. Fee waivers are available for some applicants. Please visit Graduate Admissions for information on applying for an Application Fee Waiver .
Application Review & Status Check
The Department of Psychology welcomes graduate applications from individuals with a broad range of life experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds who would contribute to our community of scholars. The review of applications is holistic and individualized, considering each applicant’s academic record and accomplishments, letters of recommendation, and admissions essays to understand how an applicant’s life experiences have shaped their past and potential contributions to their field.
To check the status or activity of your application, please log into your application account . You can also send reminders to recommenders who have not yet submitted their letter of recommendation.
Due to limited bandwidth, the Department of Psychology staff will not answer any phone or email queries about application status, including requests to confirm the receipt of official transcripts.
Our faculty will interview prospective students before making final admission decisions. Candidates who progress to the interview round will be informed in January. Interviews are generally conducted in February.
The Department of Psychology recognizes that the Supreme Court issued a ruling in June 2023 about the consideration of certain types of demographic information as part of an admission review. All applications submitted during upcoming application cycles will be reviewed in conformance with that decision.
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For More Information
Please see our list of Frequently Asked Questions and psych-admissions [at] stanford.edu (contact us) should you have additional questions.
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Please note that our GRE General Test score requirements for admission have changed. For candidates seeking Fall 2025 admission: - required for applicants to the Clinical Science area - optional but recommended for applicants to the Social, Developmental, and CBB areas* As of Ma y 2024, GRE General Test scores will be required for all applicants seeking Fall 2026 admission. The Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences welcomes applications for admission from individuals who have or will have by the time of matriculation a BA, BS, or equivalent undergraduate degree (for prospective international students, a three- or four-year undergraduate degree from an institution of recognized standing) and actively seeks applicants from groups historically underrepresented in graduate schools . All degree candidates are admitted for full-time study beginning in the fall term.
Immigration status does not factor into decisions about admissions and financial aid. For more information, see Undocumented at Harvard .
If you already hold a PhD or its equivalent, or are an advanced doctoral candidate at another institution, you may apply to a PhD program only if it is in an unrelated field of study; however, preference for admissions and financial aid will be given to those who have not already had an opportunity to study for a doctoral degree at Harvard or elsewhere. You may also want to consider pursuing non-degree study through our Special Student or Visiting Fellow programs.
Eligible Harvard College students with advanced standing may apply in the fall of their junior year to earn an AM or SM degree during their final year of undergraduate study. Interested students must contact the Office of Undergraduate Education for eligibility details before applying.
Questions about the application or required materials should be directed to the Harvard Griffin GSAS Admissions Office at [email protected] or 617-496-6100.
Harvard Griffin GSAS does not discriminate against applicants or students on the basis of race, color, national origin, ancestry or any other protected classification.
Required Application Materials
Please refer to Completing Your Application on the Harvard Griffin GSAS Admissions site for details. A complete application consists of:
Online application form
Application fee payment ($105) - Application fee waivers are available to those for whom payment of the application fee would be financially challenging. Applicants can determine eligibility for a fee waiver by completing a series of questions in the Application Fee section of the application. Once these questions have been completed, the application system will provide an immediate response regarding fee waiver eligibility.
Transcripts
Letters of recommendation (at least 3)
Statement of purpose
Personal statement
Demonstration of English proficiency
GRE General Test scores: - required for applicants to the Clinical Science area - optional but recommended for applicants to the Social, Developmental, and CBB areas* As of May 2024, GRE General Test scores will be required for all applicants seeking Fall 2026 admission.
Harvard Griffin GSAS may request additional academic documents, as needed.
*Graduate student admissions are among the most important decisions we make as a department. Like many other PhD programs around the US and abroad, we have wrestled with the question of whether we should continue to require that applicants to our PhD program submit scores from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) as part of their application. After extensive review of the scientific literature and robust discussion among our faculty, we have decided to continue to make submission of GRE scores optional, but to Recommend that students submit GRE scores if they are able to do so. We wanted to share our candid thoughts on this here.
A number of empirical and review papers have noted that performance on the GRE is not a strong predictor of performance on a number of graduate school metrics (e.g., correlation with graduate school GPA = .21-.31, which represent small to medium effect sizes; Woo et al., 2023) and that the fact that the significant group differences (by race/ethnicity and gender) in GRE scores suggest it may discourage those from underrepresented groups from applying to PhD programs. Other research has shown that although there are limitations to the GRE, other potential predictors of success in graduate school have even smaller correlations with such outcomes, and removing the GRE would lead us to rely on these other potentially biased factors, such as where a person received their undergraduate degree, what research lab they had the opportunity to train in, and letters of recommendation.(1) We have heard anecdotally from current and former PhD students (including those historically underrepresented in PhD programs) who argue that the GRE helped them demonstrate their abilities when they didn’t attend a top undergraduate institution or work in a well-known research lab.
On balance, we acknowledge that the GRE is an imperfect test and should not be used as the single deciding factor in admissions; however, we fear that excluding it altogether will introduce more, not less, bias into the admissions decision-making process. Thus, we have decided to keep the submission of GRE scores optional, but to recommend that students submit their scores if they are able to do so.
We know that many students might expect that we are looking for near-perfect scores as a requirement for admission. We are not. We do not use a rigid threshold for GRE scores, and take it into consideration with other factors (e.g., strong performance in undergraduate statistics might be used to demonstrate quantitative abilities in place of strong performance on the quantitative section of the GRE). To be transparent about this, we note that our past 10 years’ of admitted PhD applicants have had scores on the GRE ranging on the Quantitative section from the 38th to the 98th percentile, and on the Verbal section ranging from the 59th to the 99th percentile.(2 )
We will continue to work toward determining how to make admissions decisions in a way that identifies the candidates who match best with what our PhD training program has to offer and in doing so may make further adjustments to our admissions requirements in future admissions cycles.
(1) For a review of these issues, see: Woo, S. E., LeBreton, J. M., Keith, M. G., & Tay, L. (2023). Bias, Fairness, and Validity in Graduate-School Admissions: A Psychometric Perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(1), 3–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916211055374
(2) Note: Test scores were not required for the past 3 years and so are largely unavailable for that period.
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