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Next PhD cohort intake - September 2025

CYC Doctoral Program Renewal 

The School of Child and Youth Care is excited to announce that we are undertaking a complete review and renewal of our PhD Program. To date, our renewal process has included extensive consultation with current students, faculty, alumni, community stakeholders, and national and international CYC and allied programs. This process has involved a pause of PhD student intake.

We first focussed on the renewal of our Master's program, which was relaunched in 2022, and have now turned our attention to the renewal of the Doctoral program. The PhD renewal will follow the same lengthy approval process through multiple levels of governance at UVic, and we will provide updates on the proposed changes to the program as they are confirmed. The PhD program will be relaunched in September of 2025.

Once our proposed PhD program renewal has been approved through all levels of the University, we will announce the relaunch of the program here and open the admissions portal on September 1, 2024. We welcome you to apply then for admission to our renewed Doctoral program for September 2025.

Due to the proposed nature of our graduate program renewal, we are unable to respond to individual questions about the program and admissions at this time. If you would like to be added to a mailing list for prospective PhD students and receive updates via email about the progress of our program relaunch, please contact the graduate program assistant at scycgrad@uvic.ca.

We will continue to provide updates on this page as our proposal is developed and begins to move through the approval process. Please check back here for these updates and for more detailed information about the program changes as they are developed.

Admission requirements

You will need a minimum B+ average and a Master's degree in child and youth care or an allied discipline that demonstrates research experience and a capacity to conduct research. If your previous degrees didn't have a research component, you will need to undertake and write a qualifying research activity.

Short-listed PhD applicants may be required to participate in a telephone-based interview as part of the overall screening and application process.

If accepted, you will be assigned one faculty member as your primary supervisor and one to serve on your supervisory committee. Admission to the program is restricted by the availability of faculty supervisors.

You are strongly encouraged to apply for external funding. Be sure to indicate on your application where you have applied for funding.

Admissions process

After Graduate Admissions and Records receives your application materials, the admission process involves the following steps:

  1. An admissions officer in Graduate Admissions and Records makes sure your GPA meets their requirements and that all required supporting documents have been submitted.
  2. If the application is complete, it is forwarded to the School of Child and Youth Care graduate program.
  3. The School's graduate admissions committee reviews the applications.
  4. Offers of admission are usually sent out in mid to late March.