Admissions and Aid

When you submit your application through Admission's online system, the following will need to be uploaded as part of your online application:

• Graduate Record Exam (GRE) scores (Requirement temporarily suspended)
• TOEFL scores (International Students)
• Transcripts from prior academic institutions
• Two or more letters of recommendation
• Personal Statement
• Resume/CV
• Application fee payment

See the Admissions pages for more information.

The Educational Psychology program has the following 3 prerequisite courses: 

1. at least one upper division course in psychology,
2. one course in statistics
3. one course in experimental psychology or similar class.

Accepted students who will be enrolling and who have not met these prerequisites (or their negotiated substitutes with program faculty) will need to complete them prior to the start of their first semester.

Every applicant to The Graduate Center’s doctoral programs will automatically be considered for five-year institutional funding packages. The aid we offer — including fellowships, tuition awards, and assistantships — is based on merit. 

Learn more about institutional aid for doctoral students »

Federal aid for doctoral students includes:

• Need-based Federal Aid
• Federal Work-Study
• Non-need-based Federal Direct Loans.

New York State also provides the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) for eligible graduate students who are New York State residents.

Additional funding may be available to incoming students from underrepresented populations through offerings from the Office of Educational Opportunity and Diversity, including several fellowships and the CUNY Pipeline Program for undergraduate CUNY students.

Learn more about funding opportunities from OEOD »

Each student will be billed for a Graduate School student activities fee, a University student senate fee, a University consolidated services fee and a technology fee. These fees are not refundable.

At a time when the job market in many fields is tough to negotiate, the GC offers unusually robust support as you engage in your doctoral studies. In addition to program support, the GC provides other sources of support. These include a host of supports around pedagogical professional development, and around your research activity including financial and intellectual support. The following Graduate Center initiatives serve to enhance your doctoral studies: 

• The Early Research Initiative offers summer fellowships for exploratory research in archives, museums, field sites, special collections, laboratories, and research centers across the globe. These fellowships aim to support students at the pre-dissertation proposal stage in order to help them refine and develop more advanced individualized research agendas.

• The Futures Initiative organizes workshops, team-taught interdisciplinary courses, and workshops aimed at empowering the next generation of intellectual leaders with bold, publicly engaged teaching and learning. One of its goals is helping interested students produce world-class research that is presented in a form outside of the box of the conventional monograph-style dissertation.

• Adjunct Opportunities at CUNY Colleges: Often our students are hired as adjunct instructors to teach undergraduate or graduate courses at one of the CUNY community or senior colleges (i.e., Hunter, Queens, City College, Brooklyn College, and Borough of Manhattan Community College).

• The GC Digital Initiatives provides training in digital pedagogy, supports working groups devoted to training in Python, Text Analysis, and GIS, and offers fellowships and grants in videography, in social media, and in digital innovation.
• The Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program consists of a nine-credit sequence that prepares students for careers centered around the creation and use of technology-based educational resources.

• The Graduate Student Teaching Association (GSTA) provides psychology graduate student teachers with an array of services to hone their skills in the classroom. GSTA is an organization within APA Division 2: The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP). Therefore, psychology graduate student teachers who are interested in becoming a member of GSTA must first join STP, and then indicate their interest in GSTA.

• The Office of Career Planning and Professional Development offers individual career advising to students, including advice on CVs, résumés, and other job search materials, assistance with preparing for interviews, and discussions of career planning strategies. The office also hosts a substantial amount of career-related programs and workshops, including sessions with GC alumni.

• The Teaching & Learning Center prepares new college teachers for their entry into the classroom. The TLC provides training in the use of educational technologies, the praxis of writing across the curriculum, and the teaching of quantitative reasoning. In addition to workshops and seminars, the TLC also fosters focused inquiry groups on such topics as museum education and environmental justice.

• The Quantitative Research Consulting Center provides resources and support for research in quantitative and empirical research. The Center complements existing statistics coursework by bridging the gap between the classroom and implementation in researchers’ own work.

• Over thirty interdisciplinary research centers and institutes are located at the Graduate Center. A number of them, including the Advanced Research Collaborative, The Center for Place, Culture, and Politics, The Committee on Globalization and Social Change, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, and The Committee for the Study of Religion offer mid-career and dissertation level fellowships that enable students to join interdisciplinary working groups.

The City University of New York (CUNY) is the largest, urban public university in the US. It is a system of 25 schools-campuses across the five boroughs of NYC, of which the Graduate Center is one. Of these 25, there are eleven senior colleges and seven community colleges.

Being part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system is a great benefit to our doctoral students in three major ways:

1. Providing Students Increased Opportunities for Collaboration with Faculty. Graduate Center (GC) follows a consortia model with respect to faculty across the CUNY system. The GC has central line faculty, those whose primary appointment is at the Graduate Center. It also benefits from consortia faculty, those whose primary appointment is at another CUNY campus, but who are formally active in teaching and primary supervisory roles (e.g., dissertation chair) at the GC. Moreover, students can reach out to campus faculty who are not formally active for secondary supervisory roles (e.g., dissertation committee member) related to their research. Hence, GC doctoral students experience a wealth of faculty resources to draw upon.

2. Providing Students Increased Opportunities to Gain Undergraduate Teaching Experience. The eighteen CUNY campuses with undergraduate student populations are sites in which our doctoral students can, and very typically do, become instructors through various mechanisms. Most of these campuses have psychology departments and also Schools/Departments of Education. Our students are prepared to teach a range of psychology courses, including those related to introductory, educational, developmental psychology and research methods and statistics.

3. Providing Students Sites to Conduct Research. The eighteen CUNY campuses with undergraduate student populations are sites in which our doctoral students can conduct research. Many significant research questions, related to psychological functioning (of students, faculty or staff), educational or instructional contexts, and educational policy, can be addressed at senior and/or community colleges.

For details about other CUNY Colleges and Universities, click here.

The CUNY GC is situated right in midtown Manhattan, on the world famous 5th Ave, and across the street from the classic, legendary Empire State Building.

NYC serves as a great site for research and all kinds of educational experiences for doctoral students. It is home to CUNY and many of the other leading universities of the world. The Graduate Center is a member of the Inter-University Doctoral Consortium, which provides for cross-registration among member institutions. Matriculated Graduate Center doctoral students may cross-register for doctoral study in the graduate schools of arts and sciences at the following institutions: Columbia University (including Teachers College), Fordham University, The New School, New York University (including Steinhardt School of Education), Princeton University, Rutgers–New Brunswick (State University of New Jersey), and Stony Brook (State University of New York).

Furthermore, NYC is the US city with the largest urban, public school system, with about 1.1 million students and over 1,800 schools. One can conduct research in the schools or gain access to school data. Click here to go to the NYCDOE website for details.

In addition, one of the world’s best libraries, the New York Public Library (NYPL), has its main branch (a sight to behold with its two stately lions to greet you at the top of the stairs!), is a short five blocks north of the GC, right on 5th Ave.

New York City is also a beautiful and vibrant city, with unparalleled experiences of every kind. It is among the most diverse cities in the US. You will be surrounded by just about every culture, cuisine, and language. NYC is also a cultural, artistic world capitol. Live theater can be found in all quarters, with the Broadway district just one subway stop north of the GC. Lincoln Center, home to world-renowned opera, ballet, and music of all kinds, with a beautiful campus and arts library, is an exciting hub. The city is also home to some of the world’s leading museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the Guggenheim, and Whitney museums are just some of the city’s museums, along with countless galleries.

Not to be outdone by its cultural offerings, NYC is also home to great outdoor spaces. These include Central Park (with Shakespeare in the Park!), the High Line, Bryant Park (just a few blocks away and behind the NYPL’s main branch), and the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway (a foreshore-way for walking and cycling that stretches thirty-two miles around the island of Manhattan).

Come and join us in “the city that never sleeps,” New York, New York.