vityaz

I just received the last of my grades my MA program and was wondering what a "good" average would be, i.e. what would PhD programs expect from an applicant with an MA? I understand that the other parts of an application are more important, but am just curious. If it matters I'm in Canada.

Just officially accepted Western's MA History offer!

With that GPA it might be tough...usually spots for international students are even more competitive than domestic. According to this: http://uwaterloo.ca/graduate-studies/application-admission/review-admission-requirements/international-student-admissions-guide, you need a minimum of 3.0 to even apply to Waterloo. You're going to need the rest of your application package (GRE, SoP, LoR) to be very competitive to have a chance. If you're really set on coming to Canada, I might recommend applying to some lower ranked programs to be on the safe side. Based on these rankings: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2014/computer-science-information-systems#sorting=rank+region=+country=222+faculty=+stars=false+search=, I'd say your best shot is Calgary. I know Waterloo is super competitive so that might be a longshot.

OP has 18 posts including 3 topics, all trying to dissuade people from doing a PhD in the humanities. OP, why the agenda?

Banking on loan forgiveness is a mistake because that could change at any time. Go for the cheaper school.

Ouch, that sucks. I'd be very wary about taking any debt to go for a Public History program. You're right, people don't get into this field to get rich and it's probably not going to be worth it.

$100k for a Masters is a ton of money, especially in the social sciences where you're not even guaranteed a high-paying job straight out of University. Think of it this way, at 6.8% interest, you will be paying roughly $1150 per month for 10 years. Over 30 years that's $650 a month. Honestly, you should just consider an acceptance with no funding to be a rejection and apply again next year to programs that are more likely to provide funding.

Is this for a MA or a PhD?

Interesting, but paying 20k+ per year for a degree that employers are more than likely not going to understand/respect is a bad idea.

For what it's worth, if you reverse image search the OP's avatar it doesn't come up with any matches. There's a decent chance it's a legit pic and not one she just found online somewhere.

You mentioned that you already have a desktop at home. In this case, I'd highly recommend a Chromebook. Chromebook's come with a remote desktop application that allows you to access any programs you have on your desktop (you can test it out on any computer, it's an extension for Chrome and is available on the web store). I purchased a Chromebook (13" Toshiba Chromebook) several weeks ago and am really happy with it. It does everything I need on the go, and if I do happen to need a Windows application (which is surprisingly rare), I can just remote in to my desktop. I love the 8-10 hour battery life too. The best part is that it only cost around $350 so it wouldn't be the end of the world if something happened to it (vs. a $1000 Macbook).

Pretty much same as me. I think it's easier to wing it when applying to Canadian schools since you don't have to worry about GRE stuff. I asked LoR's over the Christmas break (deadline Feb 1) and only really started working on the SoP a week or two before the deadline. I also didn't realize that for one of the schools you had to submit your SoP before they sent out the forms to the LoRs, which gave them all of 3 days notice to get it in (which they all did, thankfully).

How much debt would you take on for the PhD vs. Masters?

Same thing happened to me for MA History. Considering I'm in Ontario I wouldn't have even been able to visit the campus in that timeframe.

Yeah, not buying this one at all.