The decision to go to graduate school is not always easy; you must weigh many personal and professional concerns. Where will I get great training that will help me to further my career? Where can I keep a healthy balance between my life and my work? A degree in Genetics from UGA is the answer! We offer a rigorous education, that will make you competitive in the job market, and we offer a supportive learning environment in a fun community.

Cutting-edge research
Our faculty are at the cutting edge of research. Forty faculty (25 within our Department and others across other life sciences departments) publish in top journals, generate millions of dollars in funding, and are invited to speak all over the world. The Department is housed in 2 bright and sunny buildings containing state-of-the-art research and learning facilities. Our weekly seminars allow you to interact with top researchers.

A broad spectrum of rigorous training
Our program brings together faculty in molecular genetics, evolutionary biology, and genomics into one group. All our students are exposed to molecular and evolutionary genetics and genomics, creating a unique intellectual environment. Our department is so well-respected that we have continuously held a training grant from the NIH for over 30 years. A student-faculty ratio of less than 2:1 ensures individualized training. We are committed to training: almost all the students we admit earn their degree.

The Genetics graduate program at UGA receives NIH support in the form of a T32 Training Grant.

We support our students
Every student accepted into our Ph.D. program is guaranteed financial support for 5 years, including summers. Currently, each student is paid at least $24,000 a year. And, the University subsidizes part of the cost of health insurance. Athens is a very affordable place to live and most students find that our stipend provides a high standard of living. To give you an estimate of the costs of living in Athens, we polled our current graduate students: many of our students can afford to live without having to take on roommates: monthly rent for a person living without a roommate is typically around $600, with about an extra $225 a month for utilities (cable/DSL, phone, electricity, water, gas, trash). Most students also have to cover student fees (about $150 a month), on-campus parking (about $40 a month) and health insurance (about $85 a month).

Our students go on to productive careers
We are committed to training you for a wide range of careers. In addition to your research training, we provide opportunities for training in written and oral communication skills, grant-writing and ethics. We also take our teaching mission seriously and provide training and internships in teaching. Our focus on training means that students generally finish their degrees on time: the average time to the completion of a Ph.D. is five and a half years. Our students do very well in finding jobs: in the past three years, 88% of our Ph.D. students were placed in postdoctoral fellowships at major research institutions. Click here to see what our graduates are doing now.