For Prospective Students

The Graduate Program in Religion is a diverse and dynamic community of faculty members and graduate students, marked by scholarly exchange with each other, and with our colleagues in the broader university and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (only 8 miles away).

Our Ph.D program is individualized and levels of preparation are not the same. Because of this, the time to graduation varies. Students who have a master's degree (either M.Div., Th.M., or M.A. or the equivalent) may reasonably expect to complete the program in 5 years; 2-3 years in coursework, followed by preliminary examinations, then 1 or more years devoted to dissertation research and writing. Students entering directly from an undergraduate program should not expect to complete the Ph.D. program in fewer than 6 years.

Statistics for our program can be located on The Graduate School website.