Students are urged to consult the Graduate Handbook (pdf) for more information regarding the requirements and procedures of the Graduate Program in Anthropology.

All students in the Ph.D. program are required to complete 48 approved course credits, but how a particular student fulfills that requirement depends upon which of the two tracks he or she is following. All students in Evolutionary Anthropology must take 16:070:502 Proseminar in Anthropology, 01:960:401 Basic Statistics for Research (or an equivalent), and either 16:070:508 Evolutionary Theory and Processes or 16:070:560 Natural Selection and Social Theory. Students in Evolutionary Anthropology must also take at least one graduate-level course in paleoanthropology and archaeology and at least one graduate-level course in the behavioral ecology of humans and nonhuman primates. Students in the CITE track must take 16:070:505 History of Anthropological Theory, 16:070:506 Research Design and Methods in Social/Cultural Anthropology, and 16:070:514 Language as Social Action. CITE students interested in critical environmental studies are also advised to take 16:070:543 Ecological Anthropology, 16:070:544 Environmental Anthropology in a Changing World, and 16:070:526 Urban Ethnography. Such students are also strongly encouraged to meet the requirements of the interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Human Dimensions of Environmental Change.

All Ph.D. students are also required to complete 24 Research Credits.

In addition, students in the Ph.D. program are required to do the following:

1) Present their work in progress at a Second Year Colloquium;

2) Take written qualifying exams in the form of three Field Statements

3) Submit a dissertation proposal to his/her committee, for oral examination, after the completion of 48 credits and approval of three field statements. Students are admitted into candidacy for the Ph.D., thereby achieving "ABD" (All But Dissertation) status, after successfully passing the defense of the dissertation proposal.

4) Write a dissertation and defend it in a public forum for evaluation by her/his dissertation committee. If the dissertation is judged acceptable, and all other requirements have been fulfilled, a Ph.D. degree is awarded.

Although there is no formal fieldwork requirement, most anthropology students find fieldwork necessary for the Ph.D. There is no specific language requirement, but students are advised to learn languages that will be necessary for successful completion of their research. There is no residency requirement. The Graduate School encourages students in all programs to finish their degrees in five years, but recognizes that anthropology students may take a bit longer because of the extra demands of fieldwork, but the six-year (or seven-year in special cases) limit on University-based funding still applies. The Graduate School requires students to formally request an extension if they will require more than seven years to complete their Ph.D. Students in the anthropology program can do this as part of the existing Annual Review of Students. Extensions beyond the tenth year will be granted only for compelling and extraordinary reasons.