Who Should Apply?
We seek students from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. We want students who have excelled in research and their academic studies proportional to the opportunities they have been afforded in their academic career.
We are committed to a diverse community at Hopkins, as diversity is a key element of the educational experience of our students. Diversity presents itself in many different forms such as socioeconomic status, race or ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or place of origin, disability, unique work or life experience, etc. Our goal through the admissions process is to cultivate an environment that values diverse backgrounds, approaches, and perspectives.
Johns Hopkins University does not discriminate on the basis of gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status or other legally protected characteristic in any student program, activity administered by the university, admission, or employment.
You can learn more about our commitment to diversity here.
Application Process
Most of our larger research areas accept PhD students every year. If your question is “will you have slots,” there is no need to ask. Apply!
If you have specific questions about a faculty member’s research, you are welcome to contact them ahead of time. However, keep in mind that faculty members receive dozens of emails from applicants and often don’t have time to respond. This is especially true of long emails that focus on the applicant without specific questions for faculty. If you email faculty, we recommend you keep it short, to the point, and specific to that faculty member’s interests. Don’t be offended if they don’t reply. A generic email to a faculty member before you apply will not improve (or hurt) your chances of being accepted.
Each application cycle is different, and the timing of the PhD and MSE review processes occur roughly simultaneously. Whether we’re able to consider your PhD application for acceptance into our MSE program depends on several factors – the amount of MSE applications received, the speed at which our MSE Admissions Committee reviews said applications, and the number of MSE offers made during a given cycle.
In short, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that we will be able to review your PhD application for our MSE program. But if you email Kim Franklin by February 1, stating that you’d like your PhD application to be cloned for MSE review, it is likely that we will be able to accommodate your request. Please keep in mind that you may not have received your formal PhD Admissions decision yet.
The application is all online so you don’t need to worry about sending anything by mail! GRE and TOEFL scores will be sent electronically and directly to us by ETS so you don’t need to worry about those either. If you are admitted into the program, you may have to ask other people to mail additional documentation to us (like your official transcript, an unofficial one is fine for the application). For these sorts of concerns, please send your mail to Engineering Graduate Admissions Office:
Johns Hopkins University
Graduate Academic Affairs
Engineering Graduate Admissions
Wyman Park Building, 3rd Floor West
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
To contact: go to https://engineering.jhu.edu/about/contact-visit-us/
Graduate Admissions answers these types of inquiries. Please go to http://grad.jhu.edu/contact/ and fill out the requested info. The departments do not collect or record any application documents. Grad Admissions will be able to research and answer you within ten business days. The email address for Graduate Admissions is [email protected].
After Acceptance
All full-time CS PhD students in good academic standing are guaranteed full-funding. This includes a yearly stipend of approximately $35,511, tuition and health insurance. Our students are primarily funded on research assistantships, with some amount of time on teaching assistantships (teaching for at least one semester is a requirement of the CS PhD program).
Many of our students participate in summer internship programs within industry, which pay considerably higher salaries.
All eligible full-time graduate students and postdoctoral trainees receive no less than 8 weeks of fully-paid new child accommodations. For more information, see:
https://www.jhu.edu/assets/uploads/2017/06/newchildaccommgradandpostdoc.pdf
Additionally, JHU offers parents of young children childcare vouchers. See: https://hr.jhu.edu/benefits-worklife/family-programs/paying-for-child-care/2020-dependent-care-voucher/
For More Information
For answers to admissions questions that are not Computer Science Department specific, explore the Whiting School Graduate Admissions website. Make sure to look at the official application instructions for domestic and international students on the Graduate Application how-to website.
If you have questions about the Computer Science program requirements, the Graduate Program description in the catalog is the official source. Note, the answers in this FAQ are more current than the answers found in the official documents. If answers to your questions still cannot be found, please contact [email protected].
Application Deadlines:
The PhD deadline for Fall is December 15th. (No recruiting for Spring admissions)
The application will be available for submission on or about August 15.
Student Status - Full-Time / Part-Time / Non-Residency / Leave of Absence
All Whiting School of Engineering graduate students will register for courses with credits.
Some things to know:
• The Mechanical Engineering degree requirements do not change, even with credits assigned to courses.
• Degree requirements are still counted by number of courses, not number of credits.
• All Whiting School of Engineering (WSE) graduate-level courses (.600-level or higher) have credits assigned to them. Visit the Whiting School’s “Graduate Credit Hours” page for more information, including what to do if registering for a course that lists no credits.
• Audited courses do not count toward the credit load or the degree, but for those who pay tuition, audited courses are charged tuition per credit.
“ALL-COURSE” MASTER’S STUDENTS
Students taking the “all-course” master’s degree are not eligible for non-residency status.
“ESSAY” MASTER’S STUDENTS
Whiting School graduate students are eligible for non-residency status when all degree requirements except the writing of the master’s essay are complete. The essay research must be finished before the non-resident status can be requested.
Whiting School graduate students are typically granted only one semester of non-residency with the expectation that the essay will be written, read, and approved in that semester. The Whiting School will consider exception requests for an additional semester of non-residency.
NON-RESIDENT TUITION
Non-resident students pay only 10% of the full-time tuition but will still have all the privileges of full-time students such as access to campus services and faculty advising.
NON-RESIDENT RESTRICTIONS
Non-resident students cannot enroll in courses and would lose the Whiting School’s financial support for health insurance. The department could choose to cover health insurance charges, but that is not guaranteed.
Non-resident students are automatically enrolled in health insurance, but can waive the insurance, if eligible for waiver by proof of enrollment in another health insurance plan with similar coverage.
To maintain non-resident status, students will have to register for non-resident status each semester and provide a letter explaining their progress toward the degree’s completion.
HOW TO OBTAIN NON-RESIDENT STATUS
- Contact Academic Program Manager Mike Bernard to confirm eligibility for non-resident status.
- Complete the Non-Resident Status form and deliver it to Mike, who will send it to the Whiting School Academic Affairs office for review and approval.
- If the Non-Resident request is denied, a student may be eligible for part-time status.
RESOURCES
- Graduate Residency and Registration Policies
- Graduate Board Forms, which include the Non-Resident Application and the Non-Resident Annual Report
- Whiting School of Engineering Policy on Health Insurance page (select the Health Insurance tab)