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Updated March 12, 2025, at 1:58 a.m.
The Biostatistics department and Population Health Sciences program at the Harvard School of Public Health slashed the number of Ph.D. admissions offers they will make this year, marking the first reported cuts to graduate programs at Harvard amid President Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on federal funding.
The Biostatistics program — which typically admits 15 to 18 students annually — cut its admitted class in half, and the Population Health Sciences program plans to make approximately 25 percent fewer offers this admissions cycle.
The Biostatistics department reduced its class size after the National Institutes of Health Council, the body with the final say on NIH research funding, paused the review process for a large grant the department was depending on to fund its graduate program, according to HSPH professor Sebastien Haneuse.
Haneuse, who is the director of graduate studies for the Biostatistics department, said the grant received high scores during peer review and was “very much in fundable range,” but that the Council had not yet reviewed the proposal, leaving the department’s funding in the lurch.
“There’s uncertainty in whether or not we’re going to be able to rely on those moving forward,” Haneuse said. “We’re gonna have to figure out other ways to fund our Ph.D. students.”
The program has slashed the number of accepted students but has not rescinded any admissions offers, according to Haneuse.
The NIH ceased all grant reviews after Trump issued a communications ban shortly after the start of his term in early January. Though the NIH reported that it was resuming reviews in early February, most processes remained frozen as of February 20.
HSPH lecturer Jarvis T. Chen, the DGS for the Population Health Sciences program, wrote in an emailed statement that the program shrank its class size due both to a “substantially smaller applicant pool” and a decision to take “a conservative approach to admissions.”
“We have all been taken aback by the rapidity of the threats to research funding,” Chen wrote.
“The school makes a substantial, multi-year financial commitment to each PhD student we accept,” HSPH spokesperson Todd Datz wrote in an emailed statement.
“As we navigate the uncertain impact of federal policy changes on our budget, several departments have chosen to reduce the number of admissions offers they extended this year. This is a painful decision,” Datz added.
The cuts to the programs echo similar changes at peer institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, and are the most concrete indication yet that Harvard is feeling the heat as Trump lobs threat after threat to Harvard’s federal funding.
On Monday, Harvard took another drastic step to reduce costs amid the “financial uncertainties” caused by Trump’s orders by instituting a hiring freeze for all staff and faculty vacancies. The move caught department chairs by surprise and left programs across the University, including at the HSPH, scrambling to continue their departments’ work with vacancies that can’t be filled for the foreseeable future.
Haneuse said the consequences of admissions reductions would depend on how long graduate opportunities remain depressed, at Harvard and nationwide. But, he said, they “cannot be consequence free.”
“What research will be like in the U.S., where our sort of standing in the world will be — it’s just a lot of uncertainty there,” Haneuse said.
Correction: March 11, 2025
A caption that previously appeared alongside this article incorrectly stated that the Harvard School of Public Health reduced its Ph.D. admissions offers by roughly half. In fact, the reductions applied only to the Biostatistics department. The change was correctly described in the article
—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.
—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.
