GSAS Fact Sheet

Profile

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) grants the Harvard PhD or AM in 58 departments and divisions across all disciplines. GSAS also grants a terminal master’s degree in select fields. It is the only school at Harvard to award the PhD degree.

GSAS offerings include 17 interfaculty PhD programs, which bring the arts and sciences together with Harvard’s professional schools. GSAS offers its PhD students the chance to complete a secondary field in one of 17 areas of study, including computational science and engineering, critical media practice, and science, technology, and society.

GSAS students seek to answer fundamental theoretical questions and discover new modes of thinking. In their roles as teachers at Harvard College, they engage and challenge some of the most talented undergraduate students in the world. And in their future careers, whether within or outside of academe, they become leading members of their communities, drawing upon the spirit of intellectual curiosity, scientific inquiry, and prudent skepticism that their work here instilled.

GSAS Facts

Updated: Spring 2012

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is the only Harvard school to award the doctor of philosophy (PhD).

GSAS offers the PhD and master’s degrees in 57 departments, programs, divisions.

17 Interfaculty PhD Programs (jointly offered with Harvard’s professional graduate schools):
Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning
Biological Sciences in Dental Medicine
Biological Sciences in Public Health
Biophysics
Biostatistics
Business Economics
Chemical Biology
Division of Medical Sciences
Education (beginning enrollment in fall 2014)
Health Policy
Organizational Behavior
Political Economy and Government
Public Policy
Religion
*Science, Technology, and Management
Social Policy
Systems Biology

Graduate Seminars in General Education (contributing to the course offerings of Harvard’s new General Education undergraduate curriculum):
7 seminars offered 2010–2011

Repression and Expression: Sexuality, Gender, and Language in Fin-de-Siècle Austria and Germany by Peter J. Burgard
Political Corruption by James E. Alt and Daniel F. Ziblatt
Rome and China by Emma Dench and Michael J. Puett
The Architectural Imagination by K. Michael Hays and Erika Naginski
Science and Art by Jimena Canales
Genomics and Evolution of Infectious Disease by Pardis Sabeti
The Sacred and the Secular by Sean D. Kelly

87 (currently funded) Graduate Research Workshops
View online here.

17 Secondary PhD Fields
African and African American Studies
Celtic Medieval Languages and Literatures
Classics
Comparative Literature
Computational Science and Engineering
Critical Media Practice
Film and Visual Studies
German
Historical Linguistics
History of American Civilization
Linguistic Theory
Medieval Studies
Mind, Brain, and Behavior
Music
Romance Languages and Literatures
Science, Technology, and Society
Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

3 Interdisciplinary Graduate Consortia
Graduate Consortium in Energy and Environment
Graduate Consortium in Microbial Sciences
Graduate Consortium in Infectious Diseases

Enrollment Statistics (as of 2010-2011)
3,809 registered degree candidates (3,664 PhD and 145 AM)
22 percent in the humanities
52 percent in the natural sciences
26 percent in the social sciences
44 percent women
36 percent international (Harvard’s largest international student population)
6 percent underrepresented minorities

* Did not admit students in 2011–2012

* Not admitting students in 2011–2012.