National University of Singapore - PhD scholarship opportunities in August 2025

Introduction

The NUS Economics Department is widely considered a world leading Economics Department and perhaps the best in Asia in terms of research. Doctoral students get the opportunity to interact with more than 50 facultymembers, whose expertise cover all the major areas of economics.

The PhD program admits around ten students each year. For admission, a student should have a good honors degree (first class or second upper) or a good masters degree, either in Economics or in a field with a quantitative emphasis, such as mathematics, statistics, physics, engineering, or operations research.

Almost all students who are admitted to the program will receive NUS Research Scholarships; these scholarships provide full financial aid (covering both fees and living expenses) for four years and will typically require some teaching duties. Students who continue into their 5th or 6th year may receive support through Research or Teaching Assistantships, or through the KR Chou and Goh Keng Swee PhD Scholarships in Economics. There are also other scholarships available to PhD students that you can learn about here.

Graduates of the NUS doctoral program go on to establish promising careers both within and outside academia.

Course Requirements 

The first year of the PhD program is almost exclusively devoted to coursework, with research becoming increasingly significant in subsequent years.  Students are required to maintain a cumulative average point of 3.5 on their coursework modules. The first year modules (all of which are compulsory) are the following:

Semester 1

• EC5101 Microeconomic Theory
• EC5102 Macroeconomic Theory
• EC5103 Econometric Modelling and Applications I
• EC5104 Mathematics for Economists

Semester 2

• EC6101 Advanced Microeconomic Theory
• EC6102 Advanced Macroeconomic Theory
• EC6103 Econometric Modelling and Applications II
• EC6104 Advanced Mathematics for Economists

In the second year, students are required to take at least four more taught modules (from a list of optional modules), in addition to beginning work on their thesis.

Application

Students are admitted to the program once each year, at the beginning of the academic year in August.

Applications for admission in a given year are considered in the last quarter of the year preceding that. Applications received before September 30th will be considered for early offers made by the end of November. The deadline for all applications is November 1st. Application outcomes will be made known by the end of March.

• NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
  DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
  FACULTY OF ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES
  1 ARTS LINK, AS2 LEVEL 6
  SINGAPORE 117570
  (Attention: Graduate Research Programme Administrator)

The application package should include the following:

• Online Application Form duly signed
• Payment Receipt
• Research Proposal (this should be in the range of 1000-2000 words including the Title)
• Bachelor/Master Transcripts
• Bachelor/Master Degree Graduation Certificate (if any)
• 2 Reference Letters (you will have to input your referees information into the online system and we will monitor on our end)
• TOEFL/IELTS