How to Apply

 

NEW: Prospective applicants should watch this video to learn more about the application process and our graduate program! 

Applications for admission to the Philosophy graduate program must be completed through the Office of Graduate Studies online application system. For full consideration and review your application must be completed by January 15, 2025. 

To support graduate students, we offer teaching assistantships and fellowships with a competitive stipend and remission of basic tuition and fees. Our goal is to provide five years of full financial support for all students making satisfactory progress in the PhD program.

Please note: The Philosophy program has chosen to permanently remove the GRE requirement. GREs will neither be accepted nor considered for any applicants.

Apply

The following information is required and must be submitted online as part of your online admission application:

  • Statement of purpose. This should highlight your academic preparation, your interests, and your fit with our department. 
    • Academic preparation: you should include any academic and research experiences that prepare you for this graduate program (for example: coursework, independent study, presentations) and your motivation or passion for graduate study.
    • Interests: you should tell us about your particular subfields of philosophy in which you’re particularly interested in specializing, and what your career goals are.  
    • Fit: you should tell us about how your interests and experiences match the resources of our graduate program, and identify faculty whose work particularly interests you.
  • Personal history and diversity statement. You should tell us how your personal background informs your decision to pursue a graduate degree. You might include:
    • Educational, familial, cultural, economic, or social experiences
    • Challenges, community service, outreach activities, opportunities relevant to your academic journey
    • How you can contribute to the social, intellectual, or cultural diversity without our graduate program and beyond
    • How you might serve educationally underrepresented and underserved segments of society with your graduate education.  
  • Application fee, paid by credit card only through the online application system. The fee must be paid before the application will be considered as complete, and the fee must be paid for each application submitted. Consult the Graduate Studies website for fee information.
  • Three Letters of Recommendation. Your letter writers must upload their statements through the online application system; no paper letters will be accepted. Your recommenders will receive instructions for submitting their recommendations online.
  • TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or IELTS (International English Language Testing System) scores if you have not studied at an institution and received a degree where the language of instruction is English. These scores must be current (taken with the past two years). TOEFL should be sent electronically directly from ETS to UC Davis. IELTS scores should be mailed directly to UC Davis from IELTS.
  • A writing sample of 12 to 30 double-spaced pages with a font size of 12, in English, must be submitted with the application. Your writing sample should be an original work of philosophy, typically in the style of a scholarly journal article. (Some well known scholarly journals in philosophy, chosen more or less at random, are Ethics, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Ergo, and Philosophers' Imprint.) Your writing sample should not be primarily expository; it should display your ability to argue for a thesis. The word 'thesis' should be understood broadly here. For example, each of the following would qualify as a thesis that you might argue for: an interpretation of a certain passage in a work of ancient philosophy, a new analysis of the meanings of racial slurs, the denial of a certain premise in philosopher X's argument for substance dualism, and so on. Your writing sample should also display your ability to engage with the scholarly literature and to write at the graduate level.
  • Transcripts. All applicants must upload PDF versions of their transcripts or academic records (for all institutions of higher learning they attended) directly to our system. These can be unofficial transcripts at this time. Paper transcripts are not acceptable. Consult the Graduate Studies website for instructions about uploading transcripts.