To be admitted to the doctoral program, applicants must satisfy the Institute requirements for admission to the Graduate School, and must be formally accepted by the linguistics faculty of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy as a candidate for the Ph.D. degree. With the exception of the MIT Indigenous Languages Initiative program, the department does not admit students for a Master’s degree.
The department discourages applications for admission to our graduate program from students with extensive experience in linguistics beyond the Masters level. Applicants who are far advanced in their post-graduate education or who already hold a PhD in linguistics would be better advised to apply as a Visiting Scholar.
Students are only admitted into the program in the fall. Please note the application deadline has changed to December 15th for the following September. Decisions are communicated to applicants by early March.