Why we’re waiving application fees for domestic PhD students

If you read the Daily Camera today, you already know our big announcement: now through Dec. 1, 2018, we’re waiving application fees for all domestic applicants to our CU Engineering PhD programs.

We’re taking this unprecedented step for a few important reasons:

1. To remove one more barrier for qualified applicants. Between GREs, visiting schools and submitting applications, the cost of applying to graduate schools can add up quickly. We want to ease the burden for prospective students where we can, so the college will absorb the $60 fee that is used to support the processing of applications.
2. To increase the diversity of our community. As our graduate student community grows, so must our diversity, including socioeconomic diversity. We believe that having broad representation in STEM is essential to academic and workplace success, and that starts with getting qualified students from all backgrounds in the door.
3. Because we have big goals. In our college’s Strategic Vision, we set a goal of increasing our total PhD graduates and moving into the top 10 doctoral degree-granting engineering colleges in the nation. We currently graduate about 120 doctoral students each year, so we must embrace new strategies to boost this figure.

We’ll evaluate this pilot program after this application cycle and determine whether to continue the waiver in future years.

Why aren’t we including international applicants in this pilot program? Our data show that our applicant pool from outside the U.S. is already robust, so we’re focusing this pilot on domestic students, where we think we can create the most immediate impact. We are working with the Office of Admissions on other strategies to increase the diversity of the applications from our international student community.

To qualify for the waiver, applicants must:

• Be a U.S. citizen or U.S. permanent resident
• Be applying for a PhD program in the College of Engineering and Applied Science
• Enroll in fall 2019
• Have a 3.4 GPA or greater from their accredited undergraduate institution
• Meet all department requirements for their PhD programs

Learn more about the waiver or apply now for admission.

Have a comment or question? Email Meredith Canode at meredith.canode@colorado.edu.

Meredith Canode is the director of graduate programs, and Ken Anderson is the associate dean for education in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU Boulder.