These PhD Program Profiles offer statistical portraits across key metrics, which we hope will provide prospective Boston University PhD students a clear sense of the program or programs in which they are interested. We aim to give prospective students a sense of the probability that they will be admitted, how long it is likely to take them to complete the program if they matriculate, what jobs might await them upon receipt of their PhD and so forth.

Each profile showcases a brief description of the program, and five-year (or more) trend data on: applications and offers, selectivity, entering cohort size, sex and ethnicity demographics, attrition rate, cumulative completion rate, median time to degree, and five- and ten-year out graduate employment outcomes.

Please note:

Some of the Profiles will reflect missing data, suppressed data, and combined data.

Missing data is insufficient data for reporting purposes. For example, Career Outcomes Data may not yet exist for relatively new programs.

Data has been suppressed (i.e., not reported) when data counts are five or less. This is done to ensure individual student confidentiality. Suppressed data appears as an asterisk (*).  

Data has been combined to produce data counts of six or more. This provides Profile viewers information while ensuring individual student confidentiality. For example, Entering Cohort Size in some instances has two entering fall semesters combined (e.g., 2021-2022); Race/Ethnicity groups in some instances are collapsed into a Combined Race/Ethnicity category; Number of Completions in some instances appear together as multiple years (e.g., 2022-2023).

The profiles are organized alphabetically.

PhD Profiles