About PhD Program,
Religious Studies typically admits three or four doctoral students each year, and at any one time has about twenty-five students in the program. Learn more through the below boxes.
Students declare an area of specialization in a particular period, topic, or corpus of materials, usually within one of the subfields into which Religious Studies is often divided (in most cases according to religious traditions), which are themselves distributed over the following broad areas, geographical or historical, in terms of which our faculty can be grouped:
PhD Program Degree Eligibility with GPA,
The doctoral program involves three years of course work, followed by a qualifying examination in the subfield and area of specialization, and writing the dissertation. Total time to degree varies considerably, but most students take at least six years. (To fund extra years, many students apply for outside fellowships.)
Although course requirements may vary according to field, in general, the doctoral program encourages students to design their own curriculum, including work outside the department. All students take
- two seminars in theories and methods,
- a reading course on recent scholarship in religious studies,
- two courses in a subfield outside their own
- apedagogy seminar, and
- must take courses with at least 5 different faculty
PhD Funding Coverage,
All Religious Studies Ph.D. students receive five years of funding. This includes fellowship stipends or teaching assistantships, tuition, and Cardinal Care health insurance for the student. In addition, Ph.D. students receive five funded summers of support.
We do not offer funding for coterminal or Masters students.
Beyond the five years of funding, below is a list of resources for PhD students to find grants or scholarships to finish writing the dissertation. Application deadlines can be as early as the fall before, so please plan in advance to apply. Internal Stanford grants are only available to Stanford students; external grants can be from outside donors or open to students beyond Stanford. Please note that this list is not exhaustive, and we encourage research into other funding opportunities.
Application Requirement,
Application Content
PhD applications should include the following:
- completed application form (including indication of intended area or field of study in the department)
- application fee (pay in online application)
- statement of purpose (upload to online application)
- unofficial transcript for each institition attended for a year or more (upload to online application)
- Official copies of each transcript will be requested after decisions are made.
- three confidential letters of recommendation (recommenders upload to online application)
- writing sample of recent work on a religious studies topic (upload to online application)
- Note: graduate record examination (GRE) scores are now OPTIONAL.
Application Deadline,
Dec 03, 2024
Application Fee,
$125 application fee
