One budding academic was told an offer from a Ph.D. program was coming, and then suddenly, it wasn’t. Another said their acceptance remains in limbo after a university paused, then unpaused, all doctoral admissions. Meanwhile, some faculty have been instructed to cut the number of graduate students they admit — in some cases by more than a third.
As colleges brace for potential hits to federal research funding, many presidents have warned their campuses that cuts are coming. Others have already begun belt-tightening as a federal judge in Massachusetts weighs whether to block a Trump-proposed 15-percent cap on indirect costs by the National Institutes of Health, which cover facilities, staff, and equipment for scientific research. The policy could cost some institutions more than $100 million.
One emerging casualty of the budget cuts is Ph.D. spots, as some colleges have paused or reduced admissions in anticipation of funding losses. The timing is unfortunate, researchers told The Chronicle: Some applicants had already received informal offers to begin their programs this fall, only to learn that pauses or reductions may derail those plans.
Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said deans and program directors may be temporarily halting admissions to buy time.
“Universities want to make sure that they can keep their promises to the students they admit,” Ortega said.
While some pauses to Ph.D. admissions have been brief, the uncertainty threatens the United States’ position as a leader in research and innovation, Ortega said.
“As other nations continue to make significant investments in graduate education,” Ortega said, “the U.S. simply can’t afford to drive away talent, which is what these cuts to federal funding and grants will do.”
‘Offers Are Conditional’
One doctoral-program applicant, a post-baccalaureate researcher, said she is unsure of her future in social-science research after her admittance to Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development was effectively revoked. The researcher asked to remain anonymous because she worries about harm to her current job and career prospects.
She had received an informal email offer after interviewing, and was told that an official letter was forthcoming. She planned to accept, but on February 10, she was notified that the program had paused admissions of new doctoral students and could no longer extend an offer.
The reversal was surprising, she said, “because they hadn’t really acknowledged that we had been informally accepted.”
I’m just trying to decide if I want to stay in research or if I really need to find something else to do.
A Vanderbilt spokesperson emailed a statement to The Chronicle saying the university had not imposed a campuswide pause on graduate admissions — despite previous reporting by The Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper.
“Decisions regarding recruitment and admissions are being made at the school level to ensure each school is able to fully support our current students to do their best work, even in conditions where the funding landscape might change,” the university said in the statement.
Bill Smith, Vanderbilt’s Graduate Student Council president and a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate, said faculty in his program — the astrophysics branch of the physics and astronomy department — were told to reduce admissions by 50 percent.
The anonymous applicant said Vanderbilt’s Peabody College was her only Ph.D. offer because of her narrow research focus. And she’s not sure about the future of her current role — working at a different university on an NIH-funded project, which is also in flux amid funding challenges.
“I’m just trying to decide if I want to stay in research or if I really need to find something else to do,” she said.
“It takes a lot of time, then to not be considered or to have a pause really disrupts the cycle, and personally, has made me uncertain of the future of cycles in academia,” she added. “It’s not even just the admissions process, it’s the whole ecosystem of research. … Things can change fast.”
Another post-baccalaureate researcher, who works at the NIH, said she was informally admitted to the University of Pittsburgh’s neuroscience Ph.D. program. She also asked to remain anonymous to protect her current job and career prospects.
She was awaiting an official offer from Pitt when she learned on Friday that the university was pausing all doctoral admissions. It was a painful blow, she said, after the initial relief of getting through a grueling application cycle.
But the applicant may be able to celebrate after all: Pitt this week swiftly resumed admissions.
“The university is in the early stages of extending Ph.D. offers of admission as we continue to gather the relevant information,” a Pitt spokesperson wrote in an email to The Chronicle.
But the spokesperson suggested that there wouldn’t be as many new Ph.D. students as usual: “All parts of the university are strategically planning offers to align with anticipated fiscal constraints at the university.”
The researcher said she still hasn’t received an offer from Pitt, nor from Carnegie Mellon University’s neuroscience Ph.D. program, where she is a finalist. In emails obtained by The Chronicle, Carnegie Mellon program directors said the department has not halted admissions but that its process is delayed.
“Both of my offers are conditional,” the researcher said.
‘A Limited Number’
The University of Washington’s School of Public Health paused new doctoral admissions for nearly two weeks in February, according to statements sent by its dean, Hilary Godwin. After unpausing admissions, the school moved forward with “a more limited number” of Ph.D. offers, according to a February 18 memo from Godwin.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reduced admissions slots for its biological and biomedical sciences program from 100 to 75 “as a precautionary measure in anticipation of reduced federal funding,” a spokesperson confirmed. “UNC-Chapel Hill has no university-wide plans to reduce graduate student spots.”
STAT last week reported a brief pause of admissions at the University of Southern California, resulting in an awkward back-and-forth of informal offers to provisionally accepted students.
A USC spokesperson emailed a statement to The Chronicle saying schools and programs are carefully considering how admitted students will be funded, which in some cases has led to delays in final decisions. There has been no universitywide directive to pause Ph.D. admissions, the spokesperson said, even though the graduate-school dean told STAT last week that the university had briefly paused admissions to assess funding uncertainties.
USC’s admissions portals were back open this week, said Jennifer Unger, a professor who runs a doctoral program in the department of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine. Unger has since issued official acceptance letters.
What I’m concerned about is the chilling effect that this is going to have on this generation of potential future scientists who aren’t going to come back.
But the pause, she said, was “precious” retention time lost. She added that her program will reduce its incoming class to around four students from its usual 10.
“Our grant funding is in jeopardy,” Unger said in an email. “So we have to be very cautious about admitting more Ph.D. students than we can afford to support.”
The University of Pennsylvania’s medical school will reduce Ph.D. admissions by 35 percent, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported, slicing its average pool of more than 300 admittances to just over 200. Admissions within Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences are similarly affected, according to the report.
A Penn professor, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution, said the levels of cuts vary by school and department. The professor also confirmed that some faculty had to rescind unofficial offers they had extended to students before receiving a dean’s approval, a typical step in the admissions process.
Another would-be Ph.D. student, whose informal admission to a computer-science program was rescinded, said he’s trying to make peace with the fact that his dreams of pursuing research in the United States may be hampered. He asked to remain anonymous because he’s actively interviewing with other universities.
After learning the news, “I spent the whole night trying to adjust my emotions,” the young scholar, who is from China, said. “However, when I got up [that] morning and faced the reality again, I still felt like crying.”
He recently interviewed for another Ph.D. program but doesn’t feel hopeful about his chances.
“I’m no longer worried about whether I will be admitted. Because, as I believe, life is full of paths, and everyone has their own destination,” he wrote in an email. “I’m not sure what to do right now, maybe I’ll go back to my hometown and sell pancakes or noodles.”
Science at Stake
Many early-career academics who spoke with The Chronicle expressed uncertainty about the future of scientific research in the United States.
Rosa Lafer-Sousa, a postdoctoral researcher who spoke with The Chronicle in her capacity as a union representative for NIH Fellows United, has heard from many applicants who have been contributing vital NIH research, only to have their Ph.D. hopes dashed by the precarious funding situation.
“What I’m concerned about is the chilling effect that this is going to have on this generation of potential future scientists who aren’t going to come back,” Lafer-Sousa said. “Who are going to look at this and say: ‘This is not a stable career path. I need to find something else to do with my life.’”
Lafer-Sousa is circulating a survey to gauge the impact of reduced doctoral admissions. In a Bluesky post, Lafer-Sousa said she hopes the data helps “fight back” against funding cuts, “which pose a grave threat to the future of higher education, public research, and the health of all Americans.”
Lafer-Sousa said her goal is to amplify the stories of early-career scholars and help the average American understand the erosion of scientific research.
“I want her on a news channel in Missouri, on a local news channel where people are like, ‘Oh, she went to my high school, she went to go pursue her dreams,’” Lafer-Sousa said of the Pitt applicant, who is from St. Louis. “I want them to hear her story, because they’re not reading The New York Times, they’re not watching Rachel Maddow. We need to reach them.”
Megan Zahneis, a Chronicle senior reporter, contributed to this article.
