Admission criteria

Applicants who have completed their university studies in the master's program may be admitted to the doctoral studies at the Institute of International Studies (IMS). They shall prove this fact at the latest when enrolling for studies with a higher education diploma or certificate of recognition of higher education acquired abroad.

Foreign Language Knowledge

The compulsory part of the applicant's professional qualification is the knowledge of the English language and one other foreign language (ie outside the applicant's mother tongue), which is relevant for the dissertation research, at least at the level of university credit. The applicant demonstrates his / her knowledge of foreign languages during the entrance examination by an internationally recognized certificate of passing the language examinations, a record in the university index, a confirmed extract from the study information system, a certificate from a language course, etc.

Dissertation Thesis Project

The applicant shall submit the dissertation project in the form of an attachment to an electronic or paper application. The project will have a range of 6-7 standard pages and must include the following parts: brief introduction to the issue, delimitation of the topic, objective and working hypothesis, basic theoretical and methodological bases, considered work structure and brief analysis of research resources.

Entrance Examination

In order to be accepted for studying International Area Studies PhD Programme, an entrance examination need to be passed successfully. The entrance examination, that regularly takes place in June, is an interview about a dissertation project whose purpose is to assess the quality of the submitted project and its compliance with the professional focus of the IMS specialization. The admission committee evaluates the quality of the project in terms of its content and form, the applicant's ability to justify the selected topic, clearly define it and put it in a broader time, material and research context. The applicant must convincingly prove that the topic contributes to the current state of research, ie it brings new empirical and theoretical knowledge or original methodological procedures, which have not been applied, etc.

Evaluation and Results

The maximum score for the entrance examination is 80 points. The admission committee reaches the overall score on the basis of the following key: content quality of the project - max. 30 points, originality of the selected topic - max. 20 points, ability to justify the topic and put it into a wider research context max. 5 points, previous lecture or publication activity - max. 5 points. 

The point limit for accepting applicants is set by the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University.