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Ph.D. Program Curriculum & Requirements

Ph.D. students must complete a series of required courses and tasks in order to proceed through the program in good standing. (These are in addition to the requirements of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences).

Required Courses for First-year Students

  1. Sociological Theory
  2. Introductory Social Data Analysis (two-semester sequence)
  3. Designs of Social Research

These courses are to be taken for Pass/Fail only.     

First-year students are also required to participate in a weekly, non-credit professionalization seminar or "Prosem".

Additional Required Courses

  1. An advanced theory course
  2. An advanced methods course
  3. The M.Phil. Seminar (two-semester sequence)


Students qualify for the M.A. degree upon completion of all academic requirements.

M.Phil. Requirements

To qualify for the M.Phil. degree, students must complete all their coursework, either a qualifying exam or a field statement on a problem of their choice, and write and submit a paper to a scholarly journal for review. These tasks must be completed by the end of the third year. After being awarded the M.Phil. degree, students must defend a dissertation proposal in order to be promoted to ABD status. This defense happens by the start of year four.