PhD in Learning Sciences

Your current résumé or CV should include your scholarly background, including any relevant educational experiences, publications, projects, advanced coursework, honors and awards, and/or work or volunteer experience.

Transcripts should list the name of the university, a list of courses you have taken or are taking at the university, and the grades you received in these courses. You should send a transcript for any university from which you have earned college credit, including both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Please submit a scholarly writing sample of work you have previously written. This could be a master’s thesis or final course paper. The sample should demonstrate your ability to read and write academically at the pre-doctoral level. Your sample should be between 10 and 20 double-spaced pages. Extracts from longer works are accepted.

Please submit a personal statement describing your relevant past experiences and goals for pursuing doctoral study in the learning sciences, in a focused essay (no more than 800 words).

For a doctoral program, your personal statement serves to describe the research you hope to do and explain why you think the Adelphi University program is a good place for you to do it. Of course, any ideas you discuss here will likely change as you progress through the program; however, stating your ideas here helps us see what kinds of projects interest you and how they fit with the work we do here.

In your statement, you may choose to reflect on some of these questions:

1. What are some meaningful experiences with learning and learning design from your past, and how have they shaped your current thinking about learning and design?
2. What specific expertise do you bring to the program?
3. How have your prior experiences prepared you to succeed in doctoral study?
4. What are your overall research interests, and why?

Sociologist Eve Ewing, EdD, provides a guide to writing such statements that may be helpful for you, although we by no means require this format

Submit two letters of references. Letters of reference should come from professors with whom you have worked closely who can speak to your scholarly potential. These are often advisers, professors you have conducted research or independent study alongside, or professors in whose courses you have done work you are very proud of. At least one of your letters should be an academic reference (i.e., from a professor). If you think it is useful, one of your two letters can come from someone who has supervised you in another capacity, such as a principal or director; but we suggest you only do this if the work they are speaking to is relevant to the learning sciences.

Letters will be submitted confidentially; submit writers’ contact information in the application.

We suggest you provide your letter writers with all the information you are including in this application. It is usually good to give professors about one month’s notice to submit. It is generally appropriate to send reminders to letter writers shortly before letters are due.

The admissions committee will accept self-reported TOEFL test scores for admission reviews. Any admission made with these documents would be conditioned on receipt of official documents, which should be provided as soon as possible following conditional admittance.

You may optionally choose to include with your application any other material that you think the admissions committee should review, though it is not disadvantageous to not include optional materials. Optional materials may include a design portfolio, a second writing sample or anything else you think will help us better understand your background as it relates to the doctoral degree.

If you are admitted, you will receive a provisional adviser. You will form a program of studies committee after your first semester, then a dissertation committee once you complete the qualifying process.