Students who arrive without transfer credits should complete all requirements for the doctorate--except the dissertation--in six semesters. This is the required program:

• 1st semester: three courses, including one 700-level seminar
• 2nd semester: three courses, including one 700-level seminar

Five of the six first-year courses should be seminars taught by members the Graduate Group. (For a list of Graduate Group faculty, which includes professors from the departments of History, Religious Studies, English, German, Romance Languages, and others, click here.) Most students should take or audit a fourth course each semester, which can be a language course, an introductory lecture course in an unfamiliar field, or a course in another group or program.

Comprehensive Examination in May

• 3rd semester: three courses, including one 700-level seminar; teaching requirement
• 4th semester: three courses, including one 700-level seminar; teaching requirement

• 5th semester: three courses, including one seminar; dissertation workshop; teaching requirement
• 6th semester: two courses, one of them usually an independent study in preparation for thePh.D. Preliminary Examination; teaching requirement

Ph.D. Preliminary Examination

• 7th semester: fulltime dissertation research begins

Students who transfer a year of graduate work to the program should complete all requirements except the dissertation in four semesters.

The University imposes a time limit of ten consecutive years on the completion of all doctoral degree requirements.