In AY 2026-27, there will be nine ICIT PhD students.

The “core ICIT faculty” who direct the PhD program, including teaching ICIT-related seminars and chairing ICIT PhD committees, are Michael Dessen, Kojiro Umezaki, and Rajna Swaminathan. ICIT PhD students also take courses and receive research guidance from many other Department of Music faculty, as well as faculty in other departments and schools across UCI.

ICIT began in 2007 as a new MFA emphasis that was created to merge and replace the MFA in Composition and Technology and the MFA in Jazz Studies. We designed ICIT to offer a new kind of program we felt was lacking in the field, given that many graduate degrees were defined by binaries such as classical/jazz and western/non-western, and also separated technology into its own specialization, conceptions that did not reflect contemporary music practices outside of academia, where integrating different traditions and methods has long been common. We envisioned ICIT as a novel form of graduate music study that will serve diverse students and prepare them to contribute to multiple, overlapping fields. In addition to the current faculty, others who have shaped the program’s evolution by serving as core ICIT faculty include Professor Rae Linda Brown (at UCI until 2008); Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus Kei Akagi; Professor Nicole Mitchell (at UCI from 2011-2019); Professor Lukas Ligeti (at UCI from 2015-2020); Professor Emeritus Christopher Dobrian, and Professor Emeritus Mari Kimura.

No, graduate ICIT applications are accepted for the PhD only.

In recent years, on average, we have received between 35-50 applications per year, and have been able to admit either 2 or 3 students per year.

An undergraduate music degree is not a formal application requirement, but to be prepared for the coursework we require, most students need the skills and knowledge provided by an undergraduate music curriculum, and the majority of admitted students have an undergraduate degree in music.

A masters degree is not required.

All ICIT students have the same degree requirements and normative time to degree (four years). Students who enter the program with prior graduate study may request that specific course requirements be waived based on equivalent graduate coursework completed at other institutions, up to a maximum of 12 units.

There is no explicit requirement regarding the format that creative work submissions must take, but we do recommend that applicants submit at least some score-based work to demonstrate their skills in this area.

Please include several works that represent both the breadth and depth of your experience creating music. As mentioned above, including scores would be helpful, but audio recordings are also important. If you have video documentation or software programs that will help us understand your creative practice, you should include those as well. Regarding length, please see the explanation of the “curated playlist” under Application Details.

Our students come from diverse musical backgrounds, and we do not expect all applicants to have expertise across all three areas of composition, improvisation and technology, or extensive experience integrating them. However, we do expect strong skills in at least one of those areas, and most admitted students also have some background in at least one of the others. We also seek applicants who are actively engaged in the performance of their own music, and whose creative work embraces the realtime dimensions of music creation, since these are aspects that distinguish ICIT from many other graduate music programs.

No, we are looking for serious musicians who want to explore the integration of composition, improvisation and technology and who are prepared to develop creative work and research at a PhD level. Students are expected to further refine and deepen their own work as they develop their dissertation, and they should also be able to collaborate with others and engage with new creative practices and ideas.

The academic writing sample requirement enables us to evaluate your writing and critical thinking skills. We suggest you submit a research paper of at least ten pages, double spaced, on a music-related topic. Longer submissions are welcome (e.g. a senior or masters thesis), but quality is more important than quantity.

As with most graduate school applications, the statement of purpose is an opportunity for you to outline your artistic and career goals, explain why you are interested in this particular graduate program, and detail the kind of work you hope to do in our program. All the other application materials (i.e. creative works, performance video, academic essay, transcripts, reference letters) enable us to evaluate whether you are sufficiently prepared to successfully do the work you propose doing in this statement, as well as whether your stated creative goals are a good fit with our program.

Whereas the statement of purpose should explain your academic interests and goals, the personal statement is the place for you to share any relevant information about your personal background.

No, the GRE is not required.

Each fall, the core ICIT faculty host an open Zoom livestream, and prospective applicants are invited to join and post questions by video, audio or text chat. That session typically takes place in November. The date/time and the Zoom link will be provided on the main page on this site the month prior, and a recording of the session is posted soon afterwards. We recommend attending this session because most applicants find it very helpful in getting a feel for the faculty and the program, and because it is often difficult for faculty to meet individually with prospective applicants during the application phase.

Yes. After the December 1st deadline, we review all application materials and identify a small pool of finalists, who are interviewed individually on Zoom by the core faculty in January. 

Applicants are usually notified by email in late February or early March. A very small number of applicants may be placed on a waiting list.

The required courses for the ICIT PhD program are listed on this page in the UCI catalogue.

No. All ICIT students must be enrolled as full-time graduate students.

The normative time to degree is four years (12 quarters). Typically, students take three years (9 quarters) to complete their required courses, pass the Qualifying Examination and advance to Candidacy, after which they spend their final year (3 quarters) completing the dissertation.

Our library has an https://escholarship.org/uc/ucimusic_icit/etd through our library’s eScholarship platform that includes many completed ICIT PhD dissertations, MFA theses, and other works submitted by ICIT faculty, students and alumni. (Please note that the list includes both recent PhD dissertations and earlier MFA theses, even though ICIT is no longer offered as an MFA, only as a PhD.)

UCI uses a quarter system, meaning that during the normal academic year, there are three quarters: Fall, Winter and Spring. (Graduate courses are not offered in summer.) Each quarter has 10 weeks of classes and one week of exams. For specific dates, see the UCI Registrar calendars. 

All ICIT students must be enrolled each quarter in a minimum of 12 units of graduate level courses (i.e. with course numbers 200 and above). Graduate seminars are typically 4 units, though some with lower workloads are 2 units. In addition, graduate students enroll in supervised independent study courses to advance their own creative work and research with faculty guidance.

Yes, we encourage students to take courses outside of our department, both in other departments in the School of the Arts as well as in other schools on our campus. As noted in the curricular requirements listed in the UCI catalogue, students may satisfy up to 8 units of the “44 units” group of courses with approved comparable graduate seminars in another department. In addition, students can take courses in other departments as electives.

As noted in the degree requirements in the UCI catalogue, “the dissertation in ICIT combines innovative creative activity with scholarly research. The goal of the dissertation is to address a major intellectual issue in the integration of composition, improvisation, and technology, and to make an original contribution to existing knowledge of that issue through research and new artistic work. The tangible product will be a written dissertation that presents and contextualizes substantial innovative work in integrated composition/improvisation/technology, and music of significant scope that clearly demonstrates that work.” The written research thesis is generally expected to be ~25,000 words in length, and the scope of the creative work is expected to be roughly equivalent to a full-length concert of original music.

Many students in our undergraduate program are skilled instrumentalists and are eager to collaborate with graduate composers. ICIT students typically organize their own performers in order to realize new compositions, drawing on undergrads, fellow ICIT students, or performers from outside our campus. Some ICIT courses also provide opportunities for realizing new work with other students in the class, and we occasionally host residencies by professional guest ensembles who provide readings of new works by graduate composers. ICIT students have a wide range of creative practices and the process of getting works performed is different for each person; faculty assist students as much as possible in the process of identifying performers.

Our department has a variety of different music technology studios, each with a different function, and ICIT graduate students can reserve those spaces for their creative work and research, as well as check out equipment from our inventory. For details on our department spaces and electronic music studios, please see the list under "Facilities and Technology" on the department's About page. In addition, for dissertation concerts and other major events, ICIT graduate students also present work in spaces such as the Experimental Media Performance Lab (a black box theater) and Winifred Smith Hall (a 200-seat recital hall). 

Yes, we place a high value on collaborative work. ICIT students frequently compose, perform and collaborate with one another, and also collaborate with graduate students in the Dance, Drama, and Art departments. Some seminars are also co-taught by faculty from different departments, and enable students to collaborate on interdisciplinary, intermedia projects.

Yes, for all PhD students, the department covers the full cost of tuition and fees and provides a salaried Teaching Assistantship position (50% or 20 hours of work per week) that includes health insurance. This funding offer is provided for up to a maximum of 4 years (12 quarters), the normative time to degree for the ICIT PhD degree.

Teaching Assignments vary each quarter and can include assisting a professor with either small or large undergraduate courses, or assisting with a performance ensemble class or technology support. The department also offers some PhD students (typically once they have advanced to candidacy) the opportunity to design and teach their own undergraduate course as an instructor of record. 

Some applicants may be nominated by faculty during the application process for additional fellowship opportunities from UCI Grad Division, which, if awarded, supplement department funding with additional stipends. Other funding opportunities to which students can apply directly (once enrolled)  include a yearly School of the Arts Graduate Student Research and Travel Grant, a School of the Arts Medici Grant for summer projects, and travel/research grants from UCI Associated Graduate Students.

Where you live is your choice, but please note that between course and TA duties, graduate students may at times be required to be on campus for four or five days per week.

Yes. For admitted students who apply to Graduate Housing before the May 1 deadline, a spot is guaranteed. For more information please see the Graduate and Family Housing website.