Yale Tobin Pre-Doctoral Fellows Program 2027 - Paid Predoc

It is a paid research traineeship at Yale for people with a bachelor's or master's degree who are considering a PhD in economics or a closely related field. The Tobin Center for Economic Policy runs it with the Yale Department of Economics. Fellows work full-time for one to two years under named faculty mentors on posted projects, sit in a cohort of roughly 70 scholars, and can audit or take a Yale course each semester. Every position is on campus in New Haven.

Yale's public apply page says only that salary will be competitive with similar programmes at other institutions, and that the position carries standard benefits including health insurance. The concrete number comes from Yale's own faculty-facing proposal form, which sets a standard annual salary of $60,000 for a full-time Postgraduate Associate in AY 2025-26, on top of which the sponsoring department pays fringe benefit charges. Treat $60,000 as the recent base rather than a guaranteed 2027 figure, and ask for the current rate when you reach offer stage.

There is not one. Yale reviews applications on a rolling basis until positions have been filled, and keeps posting new projects through the cycle while marking filled ones. In practice that makes early winter the real window, because the projects with the most competition close first. Most positions start in July, so anything still open by late spring is the tail of the cycle rather than the start of it.

Yes. Yale sponsors J-1 visas for accepted international candidates unless an individual project description says otherwise, and fellows who are eligible for F-1 Optional Practical Training may use that status instead. The exception is written at project level, so read the specific posting rather than assuming the general rule holds. Raise timing early if you get an offer, because J-1 processing has to fit between the offer and a July start.

No. Yale frames the programme as being for individuals with bachelor's or master's degrees, so a good bachelor's is enough on its own. What carries more weight is demonstrable quantitative and programming ability, prior work as a research assistant, and a piece of independent research such as a senior thesis. Applicants from outside economics with strong technical backgrounds are welcomed on several projects.

Yes, and it is one of the better parts of the deal. You can audit any Yale course for free with the instructor's permission, or take one course per semester for credit. Courses taken for credit cost roughly $3,200 each in AY 2025-26, and Yale says that potential expense is accounted for when it sets fellow salaries. Fellows also attend a weekly professional development seminar and department research seminars.

Fellows who apply typically matriculate at top economics and business programmes, and Yale names Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, the London School of Economics, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, the University of Chicago, Michigan, Penn, Toronto, Wisconsin and Yale itself. Others go a different way entirely, to law school or into public, private, non-profit and non-governmental work.

Not quite, and the difference matters if that is what you searched for. Inclusion Economics at Yale hired research associates and pre-doctoral fellows on development and gender projects, and those roles sat under this same Tobin and Economics pre-doc umbrella. The Inclusion Economics web presence has since folded into the Tobin Center site, its old opportunity pages no longer resolve, and the remaining Inclusion Economics vacancies advertised publicly are at the India Centre based at IFMR rather than at Yale. If you want that kind of development economics work at Yale now, the posted Tobin project descriptions are where to look.