uiuc physics phd stipend

Course Catalog

Physics, phd.

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics

The Department of Physics offers graduate programs leading to the degrees of Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Physics and Master of Science in Teaching Physics. The Department is actively developing a new paradigm for graduate physics education and research for the 21st century, aimed at enhancing interdisciplinary interactions and creating an integrated approach to educational and research training. Outstanding graduate research opportunities are available in many subdisciplines of physics, including condensed matter physics, high energy and nuclear physics, astrophysics, atomic physics, molecular and optical physics, complex systems, quantum information, biological physics, physics education research.

Students may select experimental, theoretical, or computational thesis projects. Multidisciplinary projects are especially encouraged, and, with the consent of other departments, students may earn master's degrees in areas such as materials science and engineering, or computer science, simultaneously with their PhD degrees in physics.

Opportunity exists for specializing in computational science and engineering via the Computational Science & Engineering optional graduate concentration.

Department Research The research specialties of Physics faculty fall into the broad categories described in the graduate programs section of this document. Details of each individual's specific interests are available at the department's  faculty research Web site.  Included are faculty whose primary appointments are in other departments but who supervise Physics students.

The Department of Physics offers world-class research facilities in traditional areas of physics, including condensed matter, nuclear, particle, and optical physics, as well as state-of-the-art instruments for quantum information, nanoscale science and engineering, and biological physics. For a complete description of physics facilities, please consult the department's research facilities Web site .

For additional details and requirements refer to the department's  Degree Requirements  and the  Graduate College Handbook .  Learn more about the Qualifying Exam .

Entering with approved M.S. degree

Other requirements and conditions, entering with approved b.s. degree.

Illinois Physics PhD graduates will have:

• a firm foundation in core physics, math, and current physics research topics;
• an ability to design and conduct original experiments, model physical phenomena, and analyze and interpret data;
• an ability to work collaboratively with a diverse team;
• a mastery of the concepts, techniques, and literature associated with the student’s specific research subfield (e.g., theoretical condensed matter physics, experimental high energy physics, etc.);
• an ability to teach and mentor others effectively;
• an ability to communicate—both orally and in writing—scientific topics effectively to specialists in the student’s research subfield, to scientifically literate non-specialists, and to the general public(outreach);
• an understanding of the student’s professional and scientific ethical responsibilities;
• an ability to identify important scientific problems and to use modern experimental, computational, and/or analytical techniques to solve scientifically and societally relevant problems.

Admission Requirements Admission to the physics graduate program requires an outstanding record of accomplishment in an undergraduate physics program and clear evidence of considerable academic promise, as judged by test scores, letters of recommendation, and strong intellectual achievements. A bachelor's degree or its equivalent from an accredited college or university in the U.S. or an approved institution of higher learning abroad, with at least 20 semester hours (30 quarter hours) of intermediate and advanced undergraduate physics course work, is required for admission. Course preparation in electricity and magnetism, optics, mechanics, atomic and nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, mathematical physics, differential equations, and analysis is essential. Any deficiency in these areas may delay degree completion by as much as a year. (Students are expected to make up deficiencies during the first graduate year.)

A minimum GPA of 3.00 (A = 4.00) for the last two years of undergraduate work is required; however, because of space limitations, applicants with GPAs below 3.50 are rarely admitted. Students with prior graduate course work must have a minimum GPA of 3.50 for those courses. Applicants may provide test scores from the General GRE Graduate Record Examination (GRE) . Both the Physics GRE subject test and the GRE general test are optional for admission to our program.

Graduates of curricula in the physical and biological sciences, mathematics, or computer science may be admitted with limited standing if they are judged to have the necessary aptitudes to profit from graduate work in physics. Such students are admitted to full standing after completing course work to remove deficiencies in physics preparation.

All applicants whose native language is not English are required to submit TOEFL or International English Language Testing System (IELTS) scores as evidence of English proficiency. Minimum admission requirements are set by the Graduate College.

A few applicants may be admitted for the spring semester, in addition to the customary fall semester admissions. See the Physics graduate admissions website for lists of deadlines and application materials.

Financial Aid Fellowships, research assistantships, and teaching assistantships (all of which include waivers of tuition and some fees) are available for the majority of admitted students. Starting in Fall 2020, Grainger Engineering PhD students in their first five years of enrollment who meet the minimum eligibility requirements are guaranteed a funded appointment for fall and spring that includes a full tuition waiver, a partial fee waiver, and a stipend.

All applicants, regardless of US citizenship, whose native language is not English and who wish to be considered for teaching assistantships must demonstrate  spoken English language proficiency  by achieving a minimum score of 24 on the speaking subsection of the TOEFL iBT or 8 on the speaking subsection of the IELTS. For students who are unable to take the iBT or IELTS, a minimum score of 4CP is required on the  EPI test , offered on campus. All new teaching assistants are required to participate in the  Graduate Academy for College Teaching  conducted prior to the start of the semester.

Physics Department Head: Matthias Grosse Perdekamp Director of Graduate Studies: Lance Cooper Physics Department website 227 Loomis Lab, 1110 W Green St, Urbana, IL 61801 (217) 333-3645 Physics Graduate Office email Physics Department faculty

Grainger College of Engineering Grainger College of Engineering website

Admissions Physics Graduate Admissions & Requirements Graduate College Admissions & Requirements

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2024-2025 Catalog (PDF)

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PhD Stipend Survey Results

The living wage ratio (LW ratio) normalizes each gross pay entry to the local living wage. The purpose is to allow you to quickly compare the pay received by students at universities in different cost-of-living areas. See the FAQ for more information.

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Five-Year PhD Funding Guarantee

The grainger engineering ph.d. commitment.

A mission of The Grainger College of Engineering Graduate Programs is to prepare graduates able to meet the nation’s need for advanced technical knowledge, experienced in the methodologies of scientific research or industrial innovation, and equipped with the skills and gumption required to lead society toward advances in infrastructure, health care, food and energy production, security, environmental sustainability, and information technology. 

Our Ph.D. students are vital to this mission. Their creativity fuels an engine of scientific discovery ranked among the best. Their spirit of entrepreneurship extends our impact. It is for them to define the future of our world and for us to give them the tools to succeed. 

Grainger Engineering Ph.D. students in their first five years of enrollment are guaranteed a funded appointment for fall and spring that includes a full tuition waiver, a partial fee waiver, and a stipend. Students are also eligible for summer support. Students must remain in Good Academic Standing (see the Graduate College Handbook , Part I, Chapter 3.2) and successfully perform the duties of their assistantships.

“With this program, we are reaffirming our unwavering commitment to the success of our students,” said Rashid Bashir, Dean of The Grainger College of Engineering. “This funding guarantee gives our Ph.D. students freedom to explore new possibilities and lead the way toward solutions to the world’s toughest engineering challenges.”

Ph.D. students in Grainger Engineering work together with over 450 tenure-track faculty in just about every imaginable specialty. With the resources of the seventh-highest research expenditures for engineering-related studies in the nation, over 60+ centers, labs, and institutes, and the entrepreneurial engine of the university’s Research Park, the opportunities at Grainger Engineering are as limitless as the ambitions of our outstanding students.

Follow this link for more detailed terms .

Looking to fund graduate school?

Terms of the five-year phd funding guarantee.

• you are in your original degree program of study,
• y ou make satisfactory academic progress and maintain Good Academic Standing (see the Graduate College Handbook , Part I, Chapter 3.2), and
• you perform satisfactorily and meet the obligations of any assistantships that you hold.

Graduate College

Fellowship Finder

The Illinois Database of Grants and Fellowships for Graduate Students

University of Illinois

507 East Green Street MC 434

Champaign, IL 61820

Email: [email protected]

• Animal Science Twitter Account that is long

PhysStipendRankings: PhD Stipend Rankings

PhysStipendRankings is a stipend-based ranking of top-paying Physics departments in US. We may implement support for other countries and you are welcomed to contribute! For a real academic ranking, please refer to U.S.News , etc.

• Stipend is the annual, 12-month, pre-tax allowance graciously granted by the institution. Note that some departments do not have guaranteed summer funding , and we are currently working to collect such data. Departments with summer funding guarentee are tagged with a summer label. For now, the list is not complete.
• Fees are annual non-reimbursible tariffs (including health insurance) reclaimed by said institution.
• Living cost is calculated based on the MIT Living Wage Calculator for the institution's city.

We have received a lot of comments that the living cost calculated by the MIT Living Cost Calculator does not really reflect the real living cost in multiple areas. We are considering alternative metrics and data sources. If you are aware of something we can use, please feel free to submit issues or pull requests on GitHub.

This ranking is part informational and part satire, designed to democratize information on how PhD students in physics and related areas are paid for their labor – inadequately , in most cases.

Most of the frontend code of this website is from CSRankings , and we intentionally used the same template. The code of this website can be found at https://github.com/PhysStipendRankings/PhysStipendRankings , and the data presented can be found as a CSV file here .

Contributing: Everyone is welcomed to submit patches or report the stipend via pull requests . Another option to submit valuable datapoints is through this Google Form . Also, feel free to submit issues on GitHub .

• Gathering data for summer funding guarantees. We plan to incorporate a feature that allows users to exclude non-guaranteed funds when calculating the stipends.
• Highlighting universities that offer 100% appointments during the summer, e.g. UW, instead of the typical 50% appointments.
• Adding a verification system for stipends, where we can confirm the details of the stipend with an offer letter or paystub record, and displaying a checkmark in the "Stipend" column to indicate that the stipend is verified.
• Add alternative sources of living cost. In the future, users should have the ability to choose between different sources of living cost while ranking.
• Data is often unavailable for the precise district in which the university is located. In such cases, we use data for the county or wider metro area. This often skews the estimate lower. For instance, UC San Diego is located in La Jolla, one of the most expensive districts in the US, but we resort to using figures for the wider San Diego county. Same goes for Princeton vs. Mercer County, etc.
• The Calculator states that the estimates are what is required "to cover the costs of their family's basic needs where they live". However, how much one needs to sustain onself is subjective, and users have reported that they can live on much less.

PhysStipendRankings is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License . The frontend (i.e., CSS and HTML) of this website is based on CSRankings, a work at https://github.com/emeryberger/CSrankings . The copyright of CSRankings is owned by Emery Berger . The copyright of the non-CSRankings part of PhysStipendRankings is owned by its contributors .