<p>Would a security clearance be of any aid in admittance to a phd program? I figure it would likely depend on the area you wish to research, but i'm wondering if anyone has experience with this.</p>
<p>Not unless your intended research has national security implications or you’re applying to the Naval Postgraduate School.</p>
<p>I have minimal experience with it, but I have never heard of requirements to work on certain projects more stringent than “needs to be a U.S. citizen”, which is quite common in defense-related things.</p>
<p>A security clearance will not generally help with admissions because only a small minority of grad students will ever work on classified projects, and even then only as part of their assistantship - work done on your thesis must be publishable, and therefore unclassified.</p>
<p>The exceptions are some students working at labs like Lincoln Lab at MIT. Students working at those sites may spend some time working on classified programs, but even then having the clearance ahead of time might not be an issue - US grad students academically qualified for the jobs are not likely to have problems obtaining the clearance. As such, already possessing the clearance is a bit of a cost savings and convenience more than anything else, and not likely much of an application boost.</p>
<p>Also, I think most of these types of positions are applied to seperate from admission, so the admissions committees might not care at all.</p>
<p>That makes sense. I was also thinking of it from the perspective of it being on a SOP, showing that you already have taken steps towards the sort of research you want to do i.e. you are serious about that line of work. I want to do research at the ISN at MIT, so I was thinking a clearance would be something to mention.</p>