Applying to the Graduate Program

Timeline
Deadline for applications: December 15
On-campus pre-admission interviews for invited students: January and February
Admissions offers go out: Late February
Post-Admission Re-Visit Day for admitted students: March 24
Decision deadline for admitted students: April 15

Admissions Deadline
All application materials are due by December 15. You can apply online, download the application forms, and learn more about graduate admissions at Penn by visiting the website for the Graduate Division of Penn's School of Arts and Sciences.

The following mailing address should be used for hard copy application materials (including application forms, transcripts, writing samples, and letters of recommendation sent by mail):

University of Pennsylvania
Ernestine Williams
History and Sociology of Science
249 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304

Admissions Requirements
The GRE General Test is required. Other than that, there are no department-specific prerequisites for admission. Applicants for whom English is a secondary language are required to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and earn a score of 575 or higher (paper-based) or 233 or higher (computer-based) in order to be considered for admission.

Joint Programs
An M.D./Ph.D. program is offered in conjunction with the Medical School. For more information about this program click here.

Visiting Campus
After reviewing applicant files, the faculty invites those students who seem most promising to spend a full day at Penn. Prospective students who are invited to visit meet with faculty and graduate students and learnmore about our facilities, setting and program. Any interested student is of course welcome to attend one of our Monday workshops.

Financial Aid
The department and the Graduate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences provide qualified Ph.D. students with full funding, including stipend, tuition, and health care during at least their first five years. All fellowship packages also include two years of summer support, which can be taken in any two summers that the student is enrolled. All fellowship support depends on satisfactory work, which is formally evaluated in each of the first two years.
Within the university, aid comes from the following sources:

1. University fellowships. Awarded competitively across the University.
2. Teaching assistantships. Students are required to teach for two years (four semesters), generally during the second and third year. Depending on the size of the course, students may teach recitation sections or conduct classes.
3. Research assistantships. Students may aid faculty members on their research projects.
4. Lecturerships. For experienced graduate students, generally beyond the second year, who teach undergraduate courses (mostly in the College of General Studies) and work with undergraduates in the department.

In addition, our students enjoy extraordinary success in earning outside awards, including (but not limited to) fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the Fulbright program, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the Social Sciences Research Council, the Miller Center and many others. For a list of awards garnered by current graduate students, please see the Congratulations to Our Graduate Students announcement.

Graduate students in our program also engage in part-time research and teaching at Philadelphia's many technical and educational institutions and in various University research programs

Employment
Although the job market is competitive, our graduates have faired very well over the years. The majority work at universities, and they are members of the faculty at Binghamton, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Pennsylvania State, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Rutgers University, Stanford, the Universities of California, Delaware, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Amsterdam, Sydney and New South Wales. Others work in museums, archives, research organizations, foundations and for business corporations. Several graduates combine careers in medical history and the clinical practice of medicine. For information about our most recent graduates and their current positions, click here.

Penn has an outstanding network of alumni who play a key role in helping us place our current students. Faculty in the department have a strong commitment to training students to learn all the skills they will need to be competitive in the academic job market. The Graduate Group prepares scholars for careers not only in these fields but also in historic preservation, government service, and technology and health policy for which their knowledge not only of technical work, but of its social and political contexts strongly qualifies them.

Facilities
The Philadelphia Area is rich in library and archival sources for historical research. Major collections held at Penn in the library and University Archives include the E.F. Smith Collections in the history of chemistry and the papers of key scientists, engineers and physicians who had ties to Penn. The Bates Center for the History of Nursing holds significant manuscript collections in medical history. Other resources strong in the program's disciplines include
- Philadelphia Library Company
- American Philosophical Society Library (especially strong in the history of technology and the biological sciences)
- Franklin Institute
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania
- Academy of Natural Sciences
- The library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
- The Othmer Library of the Chemical Heritage Foundation
- The Eleutherian-Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware (which is forty-five minutes away)
- Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, a recently founded organization supported by the National Science Foundation which “promotes scholarly and public understanding of history of medicine, science and technology.”

In close striking distance, via Amtrak, are the remarkable library and archival resources of Washington D.C.

If you have any further questions about graduate admission, courses, faculty or the requirements of the program, contact our Graduate Chair Professor Susan Lindee.