The Doctor of Philosphy Degree program offered by the Computing and Information Science Department at Kansas State University is a research-oriented curriculum designed to prepare students for advanced research and University-level academic positions in the computing field.

Admission Requirements

A qualified candidate for admission to the Ph.D. program will have a Master's degree in computer science or a Bachelor's degree plus strong, advanced computing knowledge. Solid preparation in theoretical computer science and advanced knowledge in one or more applications areas (compiling, operating systems, database systems, etc.) are also required.

An applicant must take the GRE general exam. TOEFL or IELTS exam is also required of all international students whose native tongue is not English. While we do not have minimum cutoff scores for admission, competitive students typically have a GRE Verbal score above 400 with a Quantitative score 700 or above; the GRE Analytical Writing score should be 5.0 for native English speaking students and 3.5 for non-English speaking students. To keep from taking remedial English language courses, non-English speaking students should score 600 or above on the TOEFL, a 20 or above on each section of the IBTOEFL, or a 7.0 or above on the IELTS.

Click here to go to the PhD Application Page.

CIS Ph.D. Fellowship Program

The PhD Fellowship Program seeks to support outstanding students admitted to our PhD program. The recipients will be selected based on demonstrated academic achievements and exceptional promise for successful research careers in computing and information sciences. The fellowship includes a stipend of $24,000 per year plus full tuition support, for at least two years. Fellows will work with a faculty member to conduct research and/or teaching activities. Faculty research areas include cooperative robotics, bioinformatics, computer and information security, distributed algorithms & systems, formal approaches to computation, machine learning and data mining, operating systems, real-time systems, scientific computing, information retrieval, sensor networks, and software engineering. More detailed research areas can be found on the application form.

Eligibility: Both domestic and international PhD applicants are eligible for the PhD Fellowships. Under-represented groups, including women and minorities, are strongly encouraged to apply. Detailed instructions can be found on the PhD application page.

Degree Requirements

A total of 90 credits of graduate coursework is required for the Ph.D. degree; a Master's degree counts for 30 of these credits, and approximately 24 course credits beyond the M.S. are also needed. The remaining credits are dissertation research. In addition to coursework requirements, the following major milestones must be met:

• Completing the Breadth Requirement and passing the Research Proficiency Exam (Preliminary Examination).
• Succesfully presenting a research plan to one's supervisory committee at a research proposal meeting.
• Completing the research plan, writing a dissertation, and successfully defending the dissertation at a final exam.

Detailed requirements are available in the Guidelines for Doctor of Philosophy Degree booklet.

For further information, contact gradapps@cis.ksu.edu.