harvard university phd sociology

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Harvard Griffin GSAS strives to provide students with timely, accurate, and clear information. If you need help understanding a specific policy, please contact the office that administers that policy.

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Questions about these requirements? See the contact info at the bottom of the page. 

The First Two Years

Minimum course requirements.

Course requirements include fourteen courses in sociology, as follows. This is the minimum acceptable amount of coursework, not the norm; most students take additional courses in sociology, as well as courses in other departments that relate to their research interests.

Seven required methods and theory courses and the teaching practicum, the first four of which are normally taken during the first two years in residence:

Soc. 2202 Intermediate Quantitative Research Methods (Students who have had sufficient training in quantitative methods before entering the program may substitute a more advanced quantitative methods course for this course if they can satisfy placement procedures designed by the Soc. 2202 instructor.) 

Soc. 2203 Advanced Quantitative Research Methods 

Soc. 2204 Sociological Theory: Seminar

Soc. 2205 Sociological Research Design

Soc. 2208 Contemporary Theory and Research: Seminar

Soc. 2209 Qualitative Social Analysis: Seminar

Soc. 3310 Qualifying Paper Seminar

Soc. 3305, the Teaching Practicum

Two workshops in Sociology 

Four elective courses; three of which must be 200/2000-level courses in Sociology 

Electives 

Three of the required four elective courses must be 200/2000-level courses in Sociology. Courses not listed or cross-listed in Sociology in  Courses of Instruction  will not count toward the requirement of at least three 200/2000-level courses in Sociology. 

The remaining elective may be chosen from 100/1000-level Sociology courses designated as Conference Courses in  Courses of Instruction;  200/2000-level Sociology courses; 301/3301 individual reading courses in Sociology; or electives outside Sociology. If the remaining elective is not a 200/2000-level Sociology elective, it must be approved by the Sociology Committee on Higher Degrees (CHD). 

Any electives outside Sociology should meaningfully contribute to the student’s graduate training. They should have a Letter Graded grading basis and be chosen in consultation with the student’s advisor at the time of enrollment. To receive elective credit for a course outside Sociology, the student should submit a Petition for Elective Credit to the CHD. 

The minimum standard for satisfactory work in the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is a “B” average in each academic year. The Department of Sociology, however, expects that students will maintain an average of B+ or better in Sociology courses.

There is no language requirement.

Incompletes

Graduate students are permitted to take a temporary grade of Incomplete in courses other than the required ones. Notwithstanding this, the CHD strongly recommends that students not take Incompletes unless absolutely necessary, and certainly in no more than one course per term. Papers should be submitted in time to receive a letter grade; revisions for possible publication can come later.  Incompletes are equivalent to Cs; and thus, for each Incomplete there must be an A in order to maintain a B average.  A temporary Incomplete grade must be converted to a regular letter grade in order for a course to count toward meeting minimum course work requirements.

Research Paper

A special research paper, known as a “qualifying” paper, is required of each student. Although not a master’s thesis, this paper will be judged more critically than the normal seminar or term paper. It should offer some new contribution to knowledge, either in the form of an original interpretation of existing facts, new facts in support or disconfirmation of existing interpretations, or both. The work should be of the same length, quality, and finish as a paper acceptable to the major sociological journals, and, indeed, students normally will be encouraged to submit the paper for publication, although this is not required. In preparing to write this paper, students should consult with their academic advisor or research supervisor before the end of the third term in residence. Second-year students are required to appoint a Qualifying Paper advisor and submit a two-page overview of their planned project to the graduate program coordinator. Once the topic and research design have been agreed upon with the advisor, the student should petition the Committee on Higher Degrees (CHD) in Sociology for appointment of three readers. 

Master of Arts (AM)

The department does not admit students to study for an AM degree. Students in the PhD program who have successfully completed eight sociology courses (including 2202 or approved substitute, 2203, 2204, 2205, 2208, 2209, and 3310, and not to include Sociology 3305 or workshops), the written examination, and the research paper may apply to receive the AM degree in sociology. A student who passes the written general examination at the AM level but not the PhD level, or who passes the general examination at the PhD level but subsequently decides not to complete the requirements for the PhD in sociology, may apply for a terminal AM degree. The requirements for the terminal AM degree are successful completion of eight sociology courses (including Sociology 2202 or approved substitute, 2203, 2204, 2205, 2208, 2209, and 3310, and not to include Sociology 3305 or workshops), passing the written general examination at the AM level or higher, and completing the research paper acceptable at the AM level or higher. A student who has passed the general exam at the PhD level but will not be completing the PhD program must apply for the terminal AM before the start of a fourth year of study in the department.

All students are expected to accept one-fifth time teaching fellowship (with salary) for one term before completion of the program. Sociology 3305, the Teaching Practicum, should be taken prior to or concurrent with the first teaching assignment. Normally, students do not teach in the first two years; many students teach several sections per year in the third, fourth, and fifth years.

For the first year, prior to the written examination, students are assigned an advisor and also receive guidance from the director of graduate studies. Before the start of their second year, students must choose an advisor, who may be any senior or junior faculty member whose research interests are compatible with those of the student. The selection process is informal and at the students’ initiative. When they have mutually agreed to work together, the student obtains the faculty member’s signature on an Appointment/Change of Advisor form and files it with the graduate program coordinator. Students may appoint a new advisor at any time if their field of research changes or they find the advising relationship is otherwise unsatisfactory.

General Examinations

Written examination.

Students take the written examination in August, prior to the second year in residence. Its purpose is to ensure a working knowledge of the range of subfields that comprise the discipline of sociology. Students need to be prepared for a broad range of questions; they are given a reading list and sample questions from previous years. The results of the examination will be: honors, pass, conditional pass, or fail. The grade of conditional pass is used when just one of the four answers is found not acceptable; the student is allowed to rewrite that particular answer under faculty guidance within the next month. A student who fails the examination will be permitted to take it a second time at a later date.

Dissertation Prospectus

The prospectus should state clearly the objectives of the study and the specific set of problems to be explored; review the relevant literature; and indicate the ways in which the student hopes to make a contribution to existing ideas on the subject. The data to be employed, the research methods and design, and a plan of study should be given in as much detail as is necessary. Normally the prospectus is twenty to thirty pages in length, in addition to an extensive bibliography. When the final draft of the prospectus has been prepared, the student petitions the CHD for approval of the topic and the appointment of three examiners, one being the dissertation advisor. Following CHD approval, the student and prospectus committee schedule a prospectus defense, at which time the student is examined on the proposed research project. The intent of this meeting is to ensure that the dissertation project is viable and that the student is prepared to begin their research. Defending the prospectus by the fall of the fourth year is encouraged. Ordinarily, the prospectus should be approved before the end of the spring term of the student’s fourth year in residence.

Dissertation Completion/Oral Defense

The dissertation should build an integrated argument. While individual chapters may be stand-alone papers, the dissertation may not consist of several unrelated papers, published or not, without an introduction or conclusion. With the approval of the dissertation committee, one dissertation chapter may be co-authored, provided the student is the lead author or authorship is shared equally with one co-author. Co-authorship of any chapter must be acknowledged in the dissertation. Students who do not complete and defend their dissertation by May 31st of the sixth year must receive approval from the CHD. The student must create a planned timeline to degree with their advisor(s) and submit the timeline, signed by both the student and the advisor(s), to the CHD for approval no later than April 30th. Students must receive approval from the CHD each year to remain in good standing (see Failure to Meet Requirements). In addition, Harvard Griffin GSAS sets the following policy for all Harvard doctoral programs: “PhD candidates who have not completed requirements for the degree by their tenth year of study will be withdrawn. Once the dissertation is complete, withdrawn students may apply for readmission to register for the purpose of receiving the degree.” Harvard Griffin GSAS also sets the following policy for students who receive a Dissertation Completion Fellowship: “Students are expected to complete the dissertation during the completion fellowship year; this will be the final year of Harvard Griffin GSAS funding even for students who do not finish during the fellowship year. In addition, after holding a dissertation completion fellowship, students will ordinarily be limited to no more than one additional academic year of registration in the Graduate School.” Requirements for the format of the finished dissertation are contained in the Policies on formatting your dissertation. The CHD does not add to these specifications. When student and advisor agree that the final draft is ready, members of the dissertation committee, other faculty, students, staff, and guests are invited to attend the oral defense. At its conclusion, the committee may approve, reject, or require revisions in the dissertation. 

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Graduate Office Department of Sociology William James Hall 660 33 Kirkland Street Cambridge, MA 02138 [email protected]

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Phd in social policy.

The PhD programs in Social Policy award either a PhD in Government and Social Policy or a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy. This is a joint PhD program for students who wish to combine the full disciplinary depth of a doctoral degree in political science or sociology with multidisciplinary study of issues of Social Policy.

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Department of Sociology

Applications for admission to the PhD program in Fall 2025 are due December 1, 2024. We do not accept applications at any other time.

Please be advised: In the interest of treating all applicants equally, the Sociology Department at Harvard University has a policy of not scheduling meetings between faculty and prospective doctoral students until admissions decisions have been made.

Harvard Griffin GSAS does not discriminate against applicants or students on the basis of race, color, national origin, ancestry or any other protected classification.

Please note, Harvard Sociology continues to require GRE scores for application review. Our application process as described on the website is accurate and reflects any COVID-related changes. 

GSAS does not accept scores from the TOEFL ITP Plus examination. This is because the TOEFL ITP Plus does not provide a robust assessment of the candidate’s proficiency in spoken English, which is one of the most critical components of our English proficiency requirement. Applicants unable to take the TOEFL IBT, IELTS or IELTS indicator exams may apply without these scores, and if programs recommend these applicants for admission, their admission will be provisional until they provide scores from one of the accepted tests that demonstrate the required level of English proficiency.

The following materials are required for application to the program. All materials must be submitted electronically. 

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Visit the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences  for all detailed application information, deadlines, and forms.

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Office Hours (Fall 2023) Monday, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. (remote) Tuesday, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. (on campus) Wednesday, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. (on campus) Thursday, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. (remote) Friday, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. (remote)

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Professor of Sociology

Curriculum Vitae

Xiang Zhou is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He is also a faculty affiliate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. His research broadly concerns inequality, education, causal inference, and statistical and computational methods. His work has appeared in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among other peer-reviewed journals. Before coming to Harvard, Zhou worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. He received a PhD in Sociology and Statistics from the University of Michigan in 2015.

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Students in our PhD programs are encouraged from day one to think of this experience as their first job in business academia—a training ground for a challenging and rewarding career generating rigorous, relevant research that influences practice.

Our doctoral students work with faculty and access resources throughout HBS and Harvard University. The PhD program curriculum requires coursework at HBS and other Harvard discipline departments, and with HBS and Harvard faculty on advisory committees. Faculty throughout Harvard guide the programs through their participation on advisory committees.

How do I know which program is right for me?

There are many paths, but we are one HBS. Our PhD students draw on diverse personal and professional backgrounds to pursue an ever-expanding range of research topics. Explore more here about each program’s requirements & curriculum, read student profiles for each discipline as well as student research , and placement information.

The PhD in Business Administration grounds students in the disciplinary theories and research methods that form the foundation of an academic career. Jointly administered by HBS and GSAS, the program has five areas of study: Accounting and Management , Management , Marketing , Strategy , and Technology and Operations Management . All areas of study involve roughly two years of coursework culminating in a field exam. The remaining years of the program are spent conducting independent research, working on co-authored publications, and writing the dissertation. Students join these programs from a wide range of backgrounds, from consulting to engineering. Many applicants possess liberal arts degrees, as there is not a requirement to possess a business degree before joining the program

The PhD in Business Economics provides students the opportunity to study in both Harvard’s world-class Economics Department and Harvard Business School. Throughout the program, coursework includes exploration of microeconomic theory, macroeconomic theory, probability and statistics, and econometrics. While some students join the Business Economics program directly from undergraduate or masters programs, others have worked in economic consulting firms or as research assistants at universities or intergovernmental organizations.

The PhD program in Health Policy (Management) is rooted in data-driven research on the managerial, operational, and strategic issues facing a wide range of organizations. Coursework includes the study of microeconomic theory, management, research methods, and statistics. The backgrounds of students in this program are quite varied, with some coming from public health or the healthcare industry, while others arrive at the program with a background in disciplinary research

The PhD program in Organizational Behavior offers two tracks: either a micro or macro approach. In the micro track, students focus on the study of interpersonal relationships within organizations and the effects that groups have on individuals. Students in the macro track use sociological methods to examine organizations, groups, and markets as a whole, including topics such as the influence of individuals on organizational change, or the relationship between social missions and financial objectives. Jointly administered by HBS and GSAS, the program includes core disciplinary training in sociology or psychology, as well as additional coursework in organizational behavior.

Accounting & Management  

Business economics  , health policy (management)  , management  , marketing  , organizational behavior  , strategy  , technology & operations management  .

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A Sociocultural Paradigm for Pricing: How Status, Cognitive Authority, and Professional Culture Qualify Market Values 

The achievement gap, revisited: an empirical assessment of what we can learn from east asian education , advocacy and anti-racism: how institutions shape organizational responses to racially biased policing in france and the united states , art, crime, and the image of the city , attitudes and beliefs about distributive justice in china , birds of a feather: patterns, heuristics, and constraints of cross-boundary marriage sorting , the causes of the divergent development of banking regulation in the u.s., canada, and spain , collateral consequences: how increased incarceration rates transform parenting and partnership in low-income boston neighborhoods , courting trouble: a qualitative examination of sexual inequality in partnering practice , cultural continuity and the rise of the millennials: generational trends in politics, religion, and economic values , dealing with the past: history and identity in serbia and croatia , defining female achievement: gender, class, and work in contemporary korea , dying of encouragement: from pitch to production in hollywood , essays on place and punishment in america , expertise diversification and the transformation of the field of contemporary chinese art: 1979-2012 , food production during the transition to capitalism: a comparative political economy of russia and china , for richer and poorer: disentangling the association between income inequality and health , historical origins of racial inequality in incarceration in the united states , i go, you go: searching for strength and self in the american gym , innovating in education: ngo interventions in new delhi government schools .

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Social Anthropology

The graduate program in Social Anthropology focuses on issues of globalism, ethnic politics, gender studies, “new” nationalisms, diaspora formation, transnationalism and local experience, medical anthropology, linguistic and semiotic anthropology, and media. Our mission is to develop new methodologies for an anthropology that tracks cultural developments in a global economy increasingly defined by the Internet and related technologies. Our graduate students (drawn from over 30 countries) expect to work in the worlds of academe, government, NGOs, law, medicine, and business.  

Knowing that material culture is a key element in the study of globalism and the new world economy, we work closely with staff from Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, who share our interests in redefining the study of popular culture, art, and the origins of industrial society. Research at the museum also makes it possible for us to maintain close ties to our departmental colleagues in the archaeology program.  

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Social Policy

The Ph.D. Program in Social Policy is a collaboration between the government and sociology departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the social policy faculty at Harvard Kennedy School leading to a Ph.D. in government and social policy or a Ph.D. in sociology and social policy. The program is designed for students whose research interests engage questions of economic inequality, neighborhoods and spatial segregation, poverty, changing family structures, race and ethnicity, immigration, educational access and quality, political inequalities and participation, and comparative and institutional studies of social policy, particularly in the US and Western Europe.

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CitiesX: The Past, Present and Future of Urban Life

Explore what makes cities energizing, amazing, challenging, and perhaps humanity’s greatest invention.

This introduction to moral and political philosophy is one of the most popular courses taught at Harvard College.

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Leadership, Organizing and Action: Leading Change

This program is designed to help leaders of civic associations, advocacy groups, and social movements learn how to organize communities that can mobilize power to make change.

No One Knows What Universities Are For

Bureaucratic bloat has siphoned power away from instructors and researchers.

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L ast month , the Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period. “Happily, there is a simple solution,” Smith wrote in a droll Washington Post column. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, his modest proposal called to get rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching bureaucrats. At the very least, he said, “the elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.”

Administrative growth isn’t unique to Pomona. In 2014, the political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg published The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters , in which he bemoaned the multi-decade expansion of “administrative blight.” From the early 1990s to 2009, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew 10 times faster than tenured-faculty positions, according to Department of Education data. Although administrative positions grew especially quickly at private universities and colleges, public institutions are not immune to the phenomenon . In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals swelled by 60 percent from 2004 to 2014.

How and why did this happen? Some of this growth reflects benign, and perhaps positive, changes to U.S. higher education. More students are applying to college today, and their needs are more diverse than those of previous classes. Today’s students have more documented mental-health challenges. They take out more student loans. Expanded college-sports participation requires more athletic staff. Increased federal regulations require new departments, such as disability offices and quasi-legal investigation teams for sexual-assault complaints. As the modern college has become more complex and multifarious, there are simply more jobs to do. And the need to raise money to pay for those jobs requires larger advancement and alumni-relations offices—meaning even more administration.

But many of these jobs have a reputation for producing little outside of meeting invites. “I often ask myself, What do these people actually do? ,” Ginsberg told me last week. “I think they spend much of their day living in an alternate universe called Meeting World. I think if you took every third person with vice associate or assistant in their title, and they disappeared, nobody would notice.”

In an email to me, Smith, the Pomona economist, said the biggest factor driving the growth of college admin was a phenomenon he called empire building. Administrators are emotionally and financially rewarded if they can hire more people beneath them, and those administrators, in time, will want to increase their own status by hiring more people underneath them. Before long, a human pyramid of bureaucrats has formed to take on jobs of dubious utility. And this can lead to an explosion of new mandates that push the broader institution toward confusion and incoherence.

T he world has more pressing issues than overstaffing at America’s colleges. But it’s nonetheless a real problem that could be a factor in rising college costs. After all, higher education is a labor-intensive industry in which worker compensation is driving inflation, and for much of the 21st century, compensation costs grew fastest among noninstructional professional positions. Some of these job cuts could result in lower graduation rates or reduced quality of life on campus. Many others might go unnoticed by students and faculty. In the 2018 book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory , David Graeber drew on his experience as a college professor to excoriate college admin jobs that were “so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”

Another reason to care about the growth of university bureaucracy is that it siphons power away from instructors and researchers at institutions that are—theoretically—dedicated to instruction and research. In the past few decades, many schools have hired more part-time faculty , including adjunct professors, to keep up with teaching demands, while their full-time-staff hires have disproportionately been for administration positions. As universities shift their resources toward admin, they don’t just create resentment among faculty; they may constrict the faculty’s academic freedom.

“Take something like diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Ginsberg said. “Many colleges who adopt DEI principles have left-liberal faculty who, of course, are in favor of the principles of DEI, in theory,” he said. But the logic of a bureaucracy is to take any mission and grow its power indefinitely, whether or not such growth serves the underlying institution. “Before long, many schools create provosts for diversity, and for equity, and for inclusion. These provosts hold lots of meetings. They create a set of principles. They tell faculty to update their syllabi to be consistent with new principles devised in those meetings. And so, before long, you’ve built an administrative body that is directly intruding on the core function of teaching.”

Bureaucratic growth has a shadow self: mandate inflation. More college bureaucrats lead to new mandates for the organization, such as developing new technology in tech-transfer offices, advancing diversity in humanities classes through DEI offices, and ensuring inclusive living standards through student-affairs offices. As these missions become more important to the organization, they require more hires. Over time, new hires may request more responsibility and create new subgroups, which create even more mandates. Before long, a once-focused organization becomes anything but.

In sociology, this sort of muddle has a name. It is goal ambiguity —a state of confusion, or conflicting expectations, for what an organization should do or be. The modern university now has so many different jobs to do that it can be hard to tell what its priorities are, Gabriel Rossman, a sociologist at UCLA, told me. “For example, what is UCLA’s mission?” he said. “Research? Undergraduate teaching? Graduate teaching? Health care? Patents? Development? For a slightly simpler question, what about individual faculty? When I get back to my office, what should I spend my time on: my next article, editing my lecture notes, doing a peer review, doing service, or advancing diversity? Who knows.”

Goal ambiguity might be a natural by-product of modern institutions trying to be everything to everyone. But eventually, they’ll pay the price. Any institution that finds itself promoting a thousand priorities at once may find it difficult to promote any one of them effectively. In a crisis, goal ambiguity may look like fecklessness or hypocrisy.

George Packer: The campus-left occupation that broke higher education

For example, in the past few years, many elite colleges and universities have cast themselves as “anti-racist” and “decolonial” enterprises that hire “scholar activists” as instructors and publish commentary on news controversies, as if they were editorial boards that happened to collect tuition. This rebranding has set schools up for failure as they navigate the Gaza-war protests. When former Harvard President Claudine Gay declined to tell Congress that calls for Jewish genocide were automatic violations of the school’s rules of harassment, she might not have caused a stir—if Harvard had a reputation for accommodating even radical examples of political speech. But Gay’s statements stood in lurid contrast to the university’s unambiguous condemnation of students and professors who had offended other minority groups. This apparent hypocrisy was goal ambiguity collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions: one mandate to police offensive speech versus another mandate to allow activist groups to speak offensively.

Confronted with the Gaza-war protests, colleges are again struggling to balance competing priorities: free speech, the safety of students and staff, and basic school functions, such as the ability to walk to a lecture hall. That would be hard enough if they hadn’t sent the message to students that protesting was an integral part of the university experience. As Tyler Austin Harper wrote in The Atlantic , university administrators have spent years “recruiting social-justice-minded students and faculty to their campuses under the implicit, and often explicit, promise that activism is not just welcome but encouraged.” But once these administrators got exactly what they asked for—a campus-wide display of social-justice activism—they realized that aesthetic rebelliousness and actual rebellion don’t mix well, in their opinion. So they called the cops.

Complex organizations need to do a lot of different jobs to appease their various stakeholders, and they need to hire people to do those jobs. But there is a value to institutional focus, and the past few months have shown just how destabilizing it is for colleges and universities to not have a clear sense of their priorities or be able to make those priorities transparent to faculty, students, donors, and the broader world. The ultimate problem isn’t just that too many administrators can make college expensive. It’s that too many administrative functions can make college institutionally incoherent.