The Medical School is planning to cut fall 2025 Ph.D. admissions by approximately 35%.
Credit: Devansh RaniwalaFaculty at the Perelman School of Medicine were instructed to reduce admissions for the fall 2025 Ph.D. cohort by around 35%, according to an email obtained by The Daily Pennsylvanian.
The Feb. 13 email — which was signed by Penn Medicine Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Biomedical Graduate Studies Director Kelly Jordan-Sciutto — was sent to Penn Medicine graduate group chairs, admissions chairs, and coordinators and cited federal funding uncertainty as the reason for the admissions changes. The email noted that the school has admitted an average of 307 students in recent years, but this year it aims to admit 201 — a 35% reduction.
Across the program's seven graduate groups, reductions in the number of admitted students ranged from 32% to 39%.
Requests for comment were left with Jordan-Sciutto and a Penn Medicine spokesperson.
A Medical School professor, who requested anonymity due to fear of retribution, previously told the DP that the school was told to make cuts to Ph.D. programs prior to the National Institutes of Health funding cuts, but additional cuts were implemented following executive actions from the Trump administration. The professor expressed concern that Penn may have to cut other programs within the school to account for the loss of federal funding.
On Feb. 7, the NIH proposed a funding cut that capped indirect costs — which cover overhead expenses and support staff — at 15%. While a judge temporarily halted the changes after Penn and 12 other universities brought a lawsuit against the NIH, future funding remains uncertain. According to an email from Interim Penn President Larry Jameson, the University stands to lose $240 million from the proposed funding cuts.
Another Medical School professor, who also requested anonymity due to fear of retribution, described the the updated admissions numbers as a measure “to ensure that we could support the students we did take" in an interview with the DP.
"We all have graduate students already, and things are looking pretty grim,” the professor said. “It would be worse for us to take the numbers that we initially wanted and then have to be like, 'Well, you can't finish grad school because there's no money for you.’”
The professor also referenced the potential impacts of the current funding changes beyond admissions rates.
“If the [indirect costs] aren’t rescued to their previous levels, or end up with any significant reduction … it’ll be pretty catastrophic for programs across the board, and not even just those related to health sciences,” the professor said in an interview with the DP.
According to its website, Biomedical Graduate Studies “oversees the training of approximately 1100 PhD students in the biomedical sciences” across seven graduate groups which each have their own leadership and staff.
Graduate programs at the Medical School are not the first to receive cuts to their admissions numbers. Penn's Interim School of Arts and Sciences Dean Jeffrey Kallberg announced that the school would reduce graduate program admissions rates by one-third in a Feb. 19 email as a “necessary cost-saving measure to help mitigate the impact of these new funding realities.”
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