- Personal Statement - The personal statement should be used to share your motivations to pursue a PhD in your chosen field or discipline. We encourage you to share your journey from your personal history to formative experiences that have led you to pursue a PhD. Be as specific as you can about the area in which you plan to study and your reasons for wishing to study at the University of Pennsylvania. The personal statement should be around 500 words in length.
If you are applying to certificate program, your personal statement should include a paragraph (~200 words) reflecting your interest in those programs in addition to the doctoral discipline. - Research Statement - The research statement should describe your meaningful research experiences, highlighting your findings. Please describe the goals of each project, approaches used, results obtained, and implications of the findings for the project and the field at large. You may choose to describe a single research experience or several experiences, but please limit your statement to around 1000 words in length.
- Community Statement - The community statement should describe how your personal perspectives will shape and be shaped by engagement with the Penn community. The community statement should not exceed 200 words.
- Resume/CV (Please do not include GPA or Latin honors)
- Transcripts - All BGS applicants are required to upload up-to-date unofficial transcripts from all institutions attended. These transcripts must include your Spring 2023 semester grades and indicate the courses you are enrolled in for the Fall 2023 semester. Transcripts from completed programs should show proof of degree conferral. A final, official transcript showing conferral of degree will be required of all accepted students prior to matriculation.
Please refer to our FAQ page and the Instructions section of the online application for the answers to the most common application questions.
