If you are interested in applying to do graduate work in the Sociology Department at Rutgers University, please read this page.

You can apply online here.  The deadline for receiving applications for the Fall 2008 term is January 1 if you wish to be considered for a Presidential Fellowship or for other forms of financial aid, and May 1 for all other applications. The Rutgers Graduate Sociology Department has been offering a Ph.D. degree in sociology for almost fifty years.  We currently have 33 faculty and 80 students in our program. We admit only students wishing to pursue the Ph.D. degree although we also offer the M.A. degree as a stepping-stone toward the Ph.D.  We do admit students who already have Master's degrees from other institutions and these students can apply some of the credit from that degree to their Ph.D.s.  Typically we award about six Ph.D. degrees per year.Last year we had 130 applicants, out of which 9 have come to Rutgers with funding.  When funding is offered, it is usually in the form of a package consisting of up to two years of fellowship followed by up to three years of teaching assistantship.  At any given time, about 20% of our students come to us from foreign universities, 70% from American colleges and universities, and 10% are mature students who have been engaged in other activities for a number of years. 

Students applying from designated foreign countries must take the TOEFL and achieve a score of at least 550 (paper) or 213 (computer).  Applicants need not have prior course work or practical experience in sociology to be eligible for admission.  However, a demonstration of the candidate's understanding of the social scientific approach to research is required for a strong application.  Applications are reviewed when they are complete.  A complete application consists of the application form, GRE, TOEFL (international students only), 2 sets of transcripts from each institution attended, a personal statement, a writing sample, and 3 letters of recommendation.

At this point, if you are ready to apply for admission, go to the University's online application page.  If you would like further information about the program before deciding whether or not to apply, spend some time reading about our program on this site and learn about our faculty, students, required and elective courses, areas of specialization, degree requirements, student awards and accomplishments, etc.  If you are located within visiting distance of our campus, please check our department web site for public lectures, our annual poster session, or other department events, which you are welcome to attend. 

If you have any other questions, please contact our director of graduate studies, Eviatar Zerubavel, at

Society often does not fit into academic specialty areas, and the sociological enterprise requires broad intellectual sensibilities. Our first commitment is to help students develop those sensibilities. We accomplish these goals through our regularly-scheduled seminars and a curriculum that emphasizes writing. Aside from taking a required writing seminar, all our students write two or three article-length papers before they begin to work on their doctoral dissertation (some of the papers often become the seeds of dissertations). Many of those papers are presented at national conferences as well as published in leading sociology journals. Our students have also won eight "best paper" awards from the American Sociological Association.