Ph.D. in Computer Science

Degree Requirements

PhD candidates are required to complete the following program milestones on a timely basis:

• required coursework completion
• dissertation advisor designation(*)
• qualifying exam passing
• dissertation committee appointment
• research proposal defense
• final dissertation defense.

A graphical illustration of these milestones and the associated timeline is provided here.

(*) Faculty eligible to serve as sole academic advisors in the CS Ph.D. program include all tenure-track and tenured CS Faculty, NJIT Faculty with joint appointments with the CS department, and Graduate Faculty of the department who are also tenure-track or tenured faculty in the Data Science or Informatics departments. 

Course and Program Milestone Requirements

The CS Ph.D. program catalog provides a formal description of the program requirements. The course requirements are:

• Students who start the program with a recognized Master’s degree in Computer Science or related areas are required to take six 3-credit courses (18 credits) at either the 600 level or 700 level, of which four 3-credit courses (12 credits) must be at the 700 level.
• Students who start the program with a recognized Baccalaureate degree are required to take eight 3-credit courses (24 credits) at either the 600 level or 700 level, as well as four additional 700-level 3-credit courses (12 credits), for a total of twelve 3-credit courses (36 credits).
• All students must choose 18 credits of the required courses from sections designated as doctoral sections. A doctoral section is a section of a graduate-level course designated as such by the PhD committee. 700-level courses are always automatically considered doctoral sections.
• At most 6 credits can be Independent Study in Computer Science (CS 725 and/or CS 726). If a student takes two Independent Study courses, then they should be done with two different professors. At least 6 credits must be for lecture-based courses at the 700 level. The student’s research advisor and dissertation committee may ask the student to take additional courses, usually before the Qualifying Exam, but possibly also after the Qualifying Exam.

CS 792 (Pre-doctoral Dissertation), CS 790A (Doctoral Dissertation Research), and CS 791 (Doctoral Seminar) do not count towards the 700-level course requirements.

In addition, students must also comply with the NJIT Ph.D. Credit Requirements and milestones, including the PhD Research Proposal Defense and the PhD Dissertation Defense.

Doctoral Seminar (CS 791)
Full-time students are required to enroll in CS 791 every semester. Full-time PhD students are required to attend 2/3 of the weekly Wednesday departmental seminars. It is strongly recommended that all PhD students (including part-time) attend these seminars in order to benefit from their educational value.

Pre-Doctoral Research (CS 792) and Doctoral Dissertation Research (CS 790A)
The PhD dissertation registration requirements are described in the NJIT PhD credit requirements.

Qualifying Examination
To qualify as a PhD candidate, a student’s research potential is assessed through a Qualifying Exam, which must be completed within two years from the time the student starts the Ph.D. program. The Qualifying Exam evaluates the student's technical ability and oral and written communication skills, and consists of two components based on research supervised by their advisor: 1) Written Research Report, 2) Oral Research Presentation. The presentation must be based on the research report. A more detailed description is available in the "Qualifying Examination" section of the CS PhD program catalog.