The Graduate School and McCormick provide incoming PhD students with full funding, including paid tuition and a monthly stipend. The Graduate School and McCormick provide incoming PhD students with full funding, including paid tuition and a monthly stipend.

Academics
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Graduate Study
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PhD
Curriculum & Requirements

The PhD program in applied mathematics at Northwestern includes a combination of coursework, research, and professional development. The coursework is a combination of core applied mathematics topics with special topics courses that are chosen to support your research and personal interests. The core courses include statistics, differential equations, mathematical modeling, asymptotic analysis, numerical methods and scientific computing. 

Most students complete their core courses during the first year. During that time, they also do 2 quarter-long research rotations with 2 different faculty members, which provide the opportunity to get quite familiar with the research performed in these research groups, facilitating the subsequent choice of their thesis advisor. At the beginning of the winter quarter of their first year, graduate students take the preliminary exam which are based on foundational concepts necessary for more advanced coursework and research.

At the end of the first year of coursework, students choose research advisers and begin research that will lead to their PhD dissertation. Research groups vary in size from a single faculty member and student, to groups involving combinations of multiple faculty, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students. Often research is conducted in collaboration with faculty in an applied field outside the department.

Almost all students serve as teaching assistants during their second year of studies. Serving as a teaching assistant gives students the opportunity to develop their teaching and mentoring skills. During the second and part of the third year, students continue taking courses along with their research. Students also take the Qualifying Examination by the end of their second year. After that, they concentrate mainly on research. For more details see the Applied Mathematics PhD student handbook.