How old is too old for a PhD?

Question

Are there any age limits (formal, informal, or guidelines) that schools use when deciding to accept someone into a PhD program? I'm most curious about the upper age limits. For example, will most schools accept someone in their 40's? How about their 50's?

Answer 1

I would imagine most institutions would consider it discriminatory to judge on age, and in some places it would just be illegal. The real consideration is always whether the prospective candidate has a reasonable chance of success. Having appropriate education, or a reasonable substitute is of course the main criterion, though demonstrating research-level ability always helps (research publications etc.).

Personally I have seen PhD candidates of all ages. There's some skew to the distribution across disciplines (business and history for example often have higher proportions of older doctoral candidates than, say, mathematics), but this seems to be more a socio-cultural thing than any institutional influence.

Answer 2

At the university where I work, there are no limitations or guidelines on appropriate age ranges for a Ph.D., and I'm sure this is true throught the US since age discrmination would be illegal. In practice, we see the opposite problem regarding age: the application rate in mathematics is very low after the mid-20's, although we would be happy to consider older candidates. It may be that they just aren't interested in applying (if you have a family or are used to earning a high salary, then going back to school may be difficult or unappealing; furthermore, everyone is exposed to enough math in childhood that perhaps relatively few people first discover a fascination with it at an older age). However, I fear that there are people who would really like to go back and get a Ph.D., but who do not apply, because they believe they are too old to do mathematics research or because they do not believe they will be admitted. That would be sad, since I've known several extremely successful mathematicians who entered grad school well beyond the typical age.

Answer 3

It really depends on which institute you are attending. I did my undergrad at UC Irvine where it was very rare to see older grad students. Most grad students at UCI were accepted directly from their undergraduate programs but at the University of Nevada School of Medicine (UNSOM) where I am doing my PhD, most students have a few years of experience and so are a few years older ~30+. It never hurts to call the program head directly.