Graduate Program

We take in a small number of graduate students each year in a competitive selection process. The size of the program assures the high overall quality of our students, the faculty’s commitment to close contact with each of those students during and after the course of study, and an atmosphere of intellectual collegiality.

The application portal will open in late August, 2025.

The deadline to apply for entry for the academic year 2026-2027 is December 15, 2025.

Admission Requirements

In addition to the general application requirements of the Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences the Yale Slavic department requires a writing sample of approximately 25 pages double-spaced that would give the department a sense of your writing, interests, approaches, and methodology. 

Funding

The university offers a financial support program of five years that includes two initial years of fellowship, two years of teaching fellowships and an additional year of dissertation support. (A sixth year may be possible with study abroad.) Students receive “summer money,” and in addition they are eligible for a wide array of competitive summer fellowships that Yale offers in succeeding years. 

If you are experiencing financial hardship, or are a member of a special program, fellowship, or status, you may be eligible to apply to have your application fee waived.

Resources

We offer several annual programs to enhance the intellectual life of our students. 

• Slavic Colloquium, which features talks by leading scholars within and adjacent to the discipline
• Slavic Film Colloquium, which screens films and other media from Russia, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union and invites speakers on topics in film and media studies.
• The Slavic Department frequently hosts interdisciplinary and international conferences and workshops organized by graduate students

Slavic Graduate Student Advisory Committee (SGSAC)

Every year graduate students will be asked to elect three members from their ranks to serve on the Slavic Graduate Student Advisory Committee (SGSAC). This committee is intended to facilitate consistent, open, and mutual communication between the graduate students and the faculty. The committee will nominate one of its members to attend certain parts of the department’s regular faculty meetings, at the invitation of the Chair. The committee member may be asked to convey any pressing graduate student concerns to the faculty, and will be expected to report on the faculty meeting to their student colleagues. Depending on the year, and in consultation with the Chair of the department, the committee may also oversee several departmental administrative responsibilities, including the maintenance of current funding/fellowship information, the peer mentorship program, a Russian-language and/or work-in-progress kruzhok, and dissertation progress roundtables. Other responsibilities may be added to the portfolio in consultation with the committee members and the Chair of the department.