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The Department of Psychology at Ashoka University invites application for its PhD program in cross disciplinary research spanning different domains of psychology. Our faculty expertise spans social, developmental, biological, cognitive, clinical, and counseling psychology. Methodologies span qualitative and quantitative, theoretical and experimental.
Prospective students are requested to visit faculty webpages to learn more about individual faculty research and contact faculty prior to their formal application. Please read through the instructions carefully before proceeding with applications. The following faculty members are accepting PhD students in this admission cycle: Bittu K. Rajaraman, Mary Arneaud, Naseer Bhat, Simantini Ghosh, Sramana Majumdar, and Supriyo Ray.
The department PhD Coordinator is Dr. Dipanjan Ray (dipanjan.ray@ashoka.edu.in).
Accepted students are expected to commit full-time to their PhD studies. They are not allowed to take on paid jobs outside their studies, unless it can be demonstrated that these jobs contribute to their research.
We especially encourage applications from individuals from historically marginalized communities, e.g. individuals/ women/trans candidates from Dalit Bahujan and Adivasi backgrounds who fulfill the eligibility criteria.
The Psychology PhD program at Ashoka University wishes to train a generation of psychologists from diverse backgrounds, irrespective of gender, caste, creed, orientation or religion. We expressly seek individuals from marginalized groups and communities to be included in our program. Our guiding principles are founded on imparting rigorous scientific training and building cross cultural awareness to address relevant psychological research problems. We will stress holistic development of our trainees into responsible scholars who are methodologically robust and ethically sound, and adept at principles of praxis. We want the graduates of this program to be well rounded individuals who practice and promote the discipline of psychology with meaningfulness to science and humanity.
Master’s Degree or equivalent (M.Tech or MPhil) in Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Biology, Life Sciences, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, Social Sciences. Students with BTech degree are also eligible. All candidates need a minimum score of 55% in their respective degrees.
Any PhD applicant who has qualified for NET JRF/lectureship in psychology or GATE in psychology, if shortlisted, can directly appear for the interview, bypassing the written test.
We are particularly looking for candidates who have a passion for research, who are highly motivated and can create and take forward their own ideas in research. We value candidates who enjoy collaboration and forging work with a sense of team spirit.
Prior to writing the essay, please visit the program website and faculty webpages to know what sort of research is being pursued in the department prior to writing your statement. In your statement, you should identify at least 2 faculty members whose work might interest you, and who could become your prospective thesis advisor.
Use this essay to state what draws you to research with emphasis on your reasons of interest in the Psychology PhD program at Ashoka University. In addition you might want to consider these questions: How do you think your academic background is related or ties into the research you want to conduct? What kind of research do you want to conduct, in broad terms at the Department of Psychology at Ashoka University? Who are the two faculty members who can become your prospective thesis advisor(s)? What skill sets and experiences do you have already that can help you attain your research goals? How can the program help you attain the goals, and what do you hope to learn?
In addition, you may give the admissions committee any information about your life, your long term and short term career goals or anything else that you deem crucial for the committee to know, in order to make a decision on your application.
This can be your undergraduate or master’s thesis, a project report, a term paper that you wrote for a course. The work has to be completely original, and will be checked for evidences of plagiarism. Any plagiarism detected can lead your application to be summarily rejected.
Prospective applicants are advised to consult these books before preparing their application materials:
American Psychological Association (Ed.). (2007). Getting in: A step-by-step plan for gaining admission to graduate school in psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Keith-Spiegel, P., & Wiederman, M. W. (2000). The complete guide to graduate school admission: Psychology, counseling, and related professions. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Ph.D. admission will be based on a written test, followed by a personal interview
The duration, number of questions and weightage of the sections included in the admission test will be released soon. Candidates are requested to carefully go through the syllabus and prepare accordingly.
Structure of the admission test
The test will have two sections. The first section is mandatory for all applicants. It will test their general aptitude, basic analytical skills, understanding of academic integrity and ethical practices in research, and statistical literacy.
Syllabus for the first section:
Numerical abilities: Grade 10 mathematics as per CBSE/ICSE/International school boards
Academic integrity and research ethics: What is academic integrity and why is it required? What is plagiarism (including self-plagiarism)? Citing, summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting others’ work. https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/
Responsible conduct of research: For any epidemiological/intervention based/ investigative/observational studies involving humans: http://www.who.int/ethics/research/en/
For animal research: https://www.aaalac.org/accreditation/RefResources/IGP2012.pdf
Statistics: Empirical methods in science, constructs and their operationalization into variables, continuous and discontinuous variables, scales, reliability and validity, frequencies, distributions, central tendencies: Mean, median, mode; measures of dispersion; graphical representation of data; correlation and covariance; standard normal distribution; sampling error of the mean and standard error; hypothesis testing; Type I and Type II errors; t-tests; chi square test; ANOVA (all types, including post hoc tests and corrections); and regression (simple and multiple); non-parametric statistics; confidence intervals, power analysis, and effect size.
Rather than mathematical derivations and formulations, questions will test applied aspects of these statistical concepts. You will be tested on
Statistical skills involving latent variable modeling (in various forms), meta-analysis, and time series analysis will not be tested.
The second section will be grouped into five subsections out of which candidates will choose any three. Questions will be grouped according to the core domains in psychology: Biological, Developmental, Clinical, Social, Cognitive and Measurements and Methodologies.
The PhD program will include academic and research training as well as ethical and career development training. The first two years (one year, in case of M.Phil./ M.Tech. entrants) will be heavily tilted to coursework and professional development and career planning workshops. Students need a minimum of 24 coursework credits to advance to PhD candidacy in year 3. To maintain good academic standing in order to receive your fellowship, all PhD students are required to maintain a minimum GPA of 7.5 (i.e. A minimum grade of B- or above) for all coursework.
From third year onwards, gradually the research components will start to predominate, and years 4 and 5 will be more or less research centric.
Duration of the PhD program: For candidates with M.Phil or M. Tech, the duration of the PhD Fellowship is 4 years. For every other entrant, the duration of the PhD fellowship is 5 years. The PhD curriculum has been developed within this framework.
Major Milestones in the PhD program:
Deadline for Application: March 15, 2025
Written Test and Interview: May 10-11, 2025
Note: The written test and interview will be conducted in person at Ashoka
Ashoka Ph.D. Handbook
I will advise students to pick Ashoka University to do their Ph.D., because the University gives an international approach to their research and coursework. Moreover the faculty is highly qualified but also helpful and approachable. They will make you feel at home and will work with you put together your work. Last but not the least it is my pleasure to work under such world-class faculty and department!
Maitrayee Sen
Ph.D. student under the Psychology Department
