Like many of my colleagues, I receive dozens of requests each year from prospective applicants to exchange emails, meet, and/or review application materials. I understand why. However, I believe making my advice widely available is a fairer approach for all prospective applicants. Not all applicants know they can ask about the process with a simple email, nor do they have the proximity and availability to follow up in person. Posting this page so that it is widely available to anyone who views my profile online enables fairer access to my perspective on the “hidden curriculum” of our Ph.D. admissions process and the program itself. And I look forward to getting to know you through our formal admissions process.

If this page does not contain an answer to a question of yours, and if you think that others would benefit from my answer to your question, please email me at nadine_gaab@gse.harvard.edu. Mention that you’ve read this page and that you have an additional FAQ suggestion. I will do my best to answer it.

In some Ph.D. programs at other institutions, individual faculty members have considerable discretion to admit one or more doctoral students, particularly if they have external funding that can cover tuition and stipends for admitted students. In such programs, applicants can target their application to a particular faculty member rather than to a program.

In contrast, our admissions process is much more centralized. All admitted students receive a generous funding package, and no faculty member can admit an applicant singlehandedly. Instead, a small admissions committee with representative expertise reads and rates all applications, selecting what amounts to “semifinalists” from among the large number of applications we receive. (This is not official terminology and reflects a heuristic description of the process.) Our faculty does this carefully and thoughtfully, ranking and selecting not selfishly but in service of the needs and strengths of our program, our faculty, and our field.

The admissions committee forwards the applications of selected “semifinalists” to specific faculty members the committee believes would be a good fit. These faculty members read and rate the files, both qualitatively and quantitatively. This information is then sent back to the admissions committee. The committee reconvenes, evaluates, and selects “finalists” (again, this is not official terminology), whom we invite to interview online. 

Two faculty members typically interview each “finalist”: 1) the chair of the concentration and 2) a specific faculty member who has expressed interest in advising the student. (I interview one or more students almost every year.) Interviewers pass yet another evaluation on to the admissions committee. The committee convenes once more and makes final decisions on admissions, declines, and a waitlist. (Decisions are never final until all decisions are released, so do not expect official answers to early inquiries.)

What I think this means for a prospective applicant interested in working with me is that they should describe not only how their research goals align with what I would value, but also what they believe our program, our faculty, and our field would value. I like our approach. I think it produces students who benefit from specific faculty advising while also contributing to a dynamic, diverse cohort with overlapping and synergistic interests. Together, they are greater than the sum of each separately.

In short, yes.

Every year, before the admissions season begins, our doctoral program office sends a note to research faculty members asking them if they are inclined and prepared to serve as a primary advisor to a new doctoral student. I have always said “yes” or “maybe.” Even when I am advising many students, and even when the weight of my other commitments is substantial, I am always open to advising a wonderful student with aligned interests. 

Applicants sometimes worry that targeting their application to a faculty member who is “not accepting students” lowers their chance of admission. What my availability means for your purposes is that, if you are genuinely interested in working with me as a Ph.D. student here at HGSE, you do not need to “overthink it.” Simply express this interest.

Prospective applicants should also know that no advisor can guarantee their commitment for the duration of a doctoral student’s program. Faculty members can become unavailable for many personal and professional circumstances, some unforeseen. In my case, I have been on faculty since 2021 and have no plans to move. I am tenured.

In addition, one of the benefits of our program is our depth and breadth of faculty expertise and commitment. Even if unforeseen circumstances made me unavailable, our program is strong enough that many excellent, supportive faculty members could step in to advise.

I will speak for myself here, because I have seen through experience that my faculty colleagues often value different experiences, different writing styles, and different content in the statements of purpose they read. Please remember this as you write. Because many will read your statement, and because it’s hard to predict what they will value, it’s best to be yourself. Although you might take some of my advice below, your writing should always reflect what you genuinely believe about the difference you hope your research will make in the world.

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1. Before you write your statement, read research.

You are applying to spend 5+ years learning to do research. We invest in your training because we expect you will possibly spend far more than 5 years: a career contributing to research. I believe all Ph.D. applicants should be familiar enough with their field and its relevant research to answer the question, “what is the last good paper you read?” Or “which paper represents the kind of work you want to do?” If you cannot yet answer these questions, that is okay, but it is possible that you currently like the idea of having a Ph.D. more than the reality of earning and then using a Ph.D. It’s well worth the time to skim relevant research papers and consider whether you would enjoy a career reading and producing them.

Of course, some of the papers that my colleagues and I write are difficult for a non-Ph.D. to read. Please do not talk yourself out of applying just because you cannot understand every brain image or every link in a paper’s chain of reasoning. (So feel free to substitute “research synopsis” for “paper” in the questions in the prior paragraph.) But I do think it is important for you to aspire to be able to read, critique, develop, and write a research paper like the ones we publish. This is, in fact, an explicit criterion for the oral exams our students undertake in the third year of our program.

2. Before you write your statement, gain research experience.

Several decades ago, Ph.D. applicants didn’t need much research experience. Now, it is the norm for students to have more substantial research experience, even if “research experience” is broadly conceived. Programs are investing their limited funding in students who know from experience that they will enjoy the pursuit of generalizable knowledge. 

Competitive applicants bring research experience from undergraduate programs, Master’s degree programs, internships, and, of course, full-time research positions. With the rise of “researcher-practitioner partnerships” and policy- and practice-relevant research in education, we also get competitive applications from savvy folks who intersect with research and researchers, including applicants from government agencies, community organizations, and the education industry.

So, “research experience” does not have to look a single way. You do not need 2+ years of experience as a research assistant with 2+ co-authored journal articles to apply (although if you have this, that is great, too). Many successful students have backgrounds as teachers, education leaders, policy analysts, advocates, non-profit staff, or other roles where they have investigated questions, evaluated programs, or contributed to systematic learning. What’s important is that you can reflect on your experiences to ask and answer relevant questions, use evidence and systematic thinking, and generalize answers and solutions beyond specific, immediate settings. Ultimately, all applicants should be able to explain why you want to dedicate 5+ years and possibly a career to this kind of work.

3. Before you write your statement, read a bit of your potential advisors’ work.

I strongly encourage all prospective Ph.D. applicants to “ignore the bio; read the work.” This is perhaps a bit dramatic, but faculty bios are almost always out of date and intended as fodder for impersonal, high-level introductions. Instead of reading bios, ask, “what is my potential advisor studying these days?”

I encourage this for two reasons. First, if you want to work closely with me on my current work, it helps me to hear why my work interests you and how you think you might be able to contribute to it. Second, if you do not necessarily want to work closely with me on my current work (which is fine!), it helps me to hear why you would be interested in feedback from someone who is conducting work like mine. To be clear, I do not require, and do not even prefer, my potential advisees to work on my own projects. So please do not spend your essay applauding or accurately describing my own work to me. But I suggest you know enough about my current work to explain why feedback from someone with my perspectives and interests would help you achieve your scholarly goals.

How can you learn about my work and the work of my colleagues? There are a few places you might go (the first is most important):

First, almost every active professor has a searchable “Google Scholar” page. Visit that page, skim their most cited papers (which might be decades old), and then sort by year (this is my page). Find a recent paper where they are one of a small number of authors or where they are a lead author (in some fields this means they are listed first, in others last, and in others alphabetically). Read the paper, even if at a high level, and ask yourself whether you would enjoy working with an advisor who conducts research like this. 

Second, active scholars generally have a public, recent “curriculum vitae” (or CV, an academic resume; my CV is on the Gaab Lab website, here. CVs generally list not only papers but research activities, including grants and contracts. I encourage applicants to review not only the papers potential advisors have written recently but also the projects they are currently receiving funding to complete. Scholars may not list all their active projects, but if they do list one, you can be confident they are working on it.

Third, some scholars maintain public profiles on social media websites where they post about their work and perspectives. You can find my profiles on Bluesky and LinkedIn, and I post there periodically. Fairly few potential advisors post regularly. (Social media websites can be a bit chaotic these days.) When they do, though, it can be a helpful (if not always fully representative) perspective into their current work and thinking.

4. When you write your statement, include specific examples of topics or questions you would be interested in researching.

Your statement is like a job application, a grant application, and a team tryout in one. You are demonstrating your skills, you are requesting an investment of roughly half a million dollars over five years, and you are assuring us that you will be a good colleague and citizen of our scholarly community. When I read applications, I find that specific examples of well-motivated topics and questions are most convincing on all these fronts. More specifically, a statement of purpose lays out your research questions and the motivation behind them. It is not a personal statement and is different from a college or master's admissions essay. It should be scholarly, outline the research questions you are excited to pursue, and explain how your questions fit into the field.

Give examples of topics, questions, or problems you believe we should research. Take the time to explain these clearly, with examples and context. Include your own motivations for studying these, whether from personal experience, professional experience, or both. And explain why they are worthy of research, that is, systematic study that enables generalizable knowledge, rather than letting practitioners solve specific problems in the field.

Speaking for myself, I do not require applicants to demonstrate unwavering commitment to a specific topic or question. You come here to learn, and students often find their interests changing as they learn. (This is why HGSE policies and our faculty are flexible and supportive in allowing students to change advisors.) However, I am looking for applicants who can provide clear, specific descriptions and motivations for topics and questions. There is plenty of room between “I want to address specific topics X and Y” and “I want to address specific topics like X and Y.” But please provide X and Y.

5. Avoid unnecessary flattery, obsession about Harvard, and reliance on Artificial Intelligence.

After reviewing thousands of applications, we have seen countless sentiments beginning with phrases like, “it has always been my dream to,” “given Harvard’s/your unparalleled reputation,” and “I cannot imagine a better place/person than.” I appreciate that many of these statements are genuine, and I have written similar phrases in my own past applications. I see these now as wasted words. We do not admit based on the amount of passion you have; we admit based on the direction of that passion towards scholarly goals. If you delete overly flattering and impassioned statements, you will find yourself with more space to describe this direction.

I also find that overreliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) produces excessive, flowery adjectives and generic, ultimately unsuccessful statements of purpose. One of my AI mantras is, “GPT is a solid B-minus.” That is, on my assignments, in my field, and in doctoral admissions, “AI-first” writing will produce predictably below-average work. AI is an impressive technological advancement that I use regularly. But it is not trained on successful statements of purpose from our doctoral program. That should be reason enough not to rely excessively on AI.

Our admissions policies also prohibit excessive use of AI. Our standing policy here states in part, “the use of a third party or generative artificial intelligence or machine learning software to develop an applicant’s work, as opposed to assisting their application to suggest minor edits or to identify grammatical errors, is forbidden.” My advice is to use AI as a thought partner if you wish, but do not use it to generate nor write your ideas. If you are not confident about your ideas on your own, AI will “steal your voice” if you let it.

We know AI’s voice, and we aren’t interested in it. We’re interested in your voice. I’ll just reemphasize what I stated at the beginning of this FAQ. Your writing should always reflect what you genuinely believe about the difference you hope your research will make in the world.

‍HGSE has what we call the Faculty of the Whole (FOTW). The FOTW structure means that faculty do not “belong” to single programs nor concentrations. I have served on dissertation committees of students from all three of our doctoral concentrations: Education Policy and Program Evaluation (EPPE); Human Development, Learning, and Teaching (HDLT); and Culture, Institutions, and Society (CIS). I primarily work with students in HDLT but also advise in EPPE.  You can see how our faculty members locate ourselves roughly in the Venn Diagram of this space here.

If you want to work with me, you should apply to our Ph.D. program in Education, and then choose whichever concentration suits you best: HDLT or EPPE. I am also affiliated with Harvard’s Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT) and Neuroscience programs.

Many of my students have a solid background in experimental psychology, developmental psychology, and/or (cognitive) neuroscience. Many have also worked as research assistants in scientific labs for more than one year.

Prospective HDLT applicants interested in working with me sometimes also consider other Ph.D. programs in Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Educational Neuroscience, or clinical degrees in Speech and Hearing Sciences or School Psychology. What makes HGSE wonderful is how we bring together faculty and students from these disciplinary backgrounds who share a commitment to studying and improving education. After all, as we say, education is the field that makes all other fields possible. HGSE is an excellent, unique, rigorous, and kind scholarly community.

I am currently the only faculty member at HGSE who is primarily known for my expertise in Educational Neuroscience and Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. So, if you are primarily interested in the neuroscience aspects of our work, HGSE may not be the best fit. We are strongly committed to translating our research findings into policy, classroom practices, and clinical settings within a learning disability framework. Translation is the main goal of our work.  

Where can I learn from the perspectives of your faculty colleagues, to see how others may have different answers to the questions I’ve asked here?

I credit my colleague Andrew Ho (Ho, 2025) for a very similar version of this document. He credits Meira Levinson for writing another version of this document that was so good he's long sent prospective applicants to her version. You can find the 2024 version of her document here (Levinson, 2024). Dana McCoy has since adapted Meira’s document; Dana’s is here (McCoy, 2025). Luke Miratrix has since then adapted Dana’s document (Miratrix, 2025).

I believe I’ve seen similar documents for other fields and programs posted on social media sites. If my colleagues in my school, my field, and beyond have similar documents that may be useful alternative perspectives, even for students interested in working with me here at Harvard, I am happy to link to them and cite them here.