Students will only be considered for the DSO once they have been accepted into a Masters program in one of the six participating departments at McGill. Admission criteria may be different in each of the departments, so candidates are advised to carefully read through the Graduate Studies section on the website of the department that interests them. For links to the Graduate Studies section of each department’s website, please see the Application Procedure section of this site.

Each application is considered on its individual merits. We wish to see strong evidence that there is a potential for independent, high-calibre research. It is crucial that in your statement of purpose you provide a clear, detailed and original argument for why you have chosen particular areas of research to pursue. Your application will be reviewed by a subset of specialists in these areas, taken from your list of proposed supervisors. You must convince them that you have given careful thought to these research fields. Other considerations in the admission process are whether we can provide adequate supervision for your research and whether we can provide financial support. It is quite possible that you possess sufficient academic ability to complete a Ph.D., but we must refuse you because of these considerations. If this is the case, we will usually write to explain the circumstances to you.