Joint PhD in Cognitive Science

The official policies for this program may be found at https://cogsci.tufts.edu/. If there is any conflict between this webpage and the official policies, then the official policies have precedence.

Students looking to enter the Joint PhD in Cognitive Science and Computer Science program must first (or simultaneously) be admitted to one of three other "home" graduate programs at Tufts. At this time these include: Psychology, Computer Science and Child Development. For those in the Computer Science program, all of the requirements for the Computer Science PhD as well as those for Cognitive Science (see below) must be met. 

Doctoral degrees require the fulfillment of the specific department requirements including the number of courses with grades of S (satisfactory) or at least a B-, as well as successful completion of the qualifying examination and doctoral dissertation.

Cognitive Science Requirements for Computer Science PhD Students

In addition to the Computer Science PhD requirements, a minimum of 12 cognitive science courses are required:

• 5 core courses
• 7 electives (many of these also count towards the Computer Science requirements)

Additional program requirements include:

• Demonstrated competence in core research methods
• Colloquium series
• Teaching requirement
• Qualifying exams

More information can be found on the Cognitive Science website.