Josh J.

So I emailed Duke and asked for admissions details since I'm leaving town and still haven't received a letter. They emailed me my letter, but it says nothing about merit aid whatsoever. Does that mean I am not even getting 22%?

I got my Vandy one a couple days after the email. Still waiting on Duke's to arrive. Really hoping for today....

I had to submit a writing sample for the Duke MTS. Vanderbilt (and the denominational schools I also applied to) did not require one. My writing sample was an excerpt from my senior capstone paper, which was not original research. The assignment was to explore a paradox of the human condition through three of more disciplines, one bring my major, one being a humanities discipline, and one being a scientific discipline. I submitted the history portion, which was on modern Israel, and it's struggle to be both immanent and transcendent. No original research, and not really original thought as I found a psychohistory of Israel that somewhat agreed with my thesis. All that being said and described? I got into Duke. Don't get me wrong, my paper was quite good, but it was not groundbreaking. They want to see that you can write coherently, and cogently. Their essay questions are limited to one page in length, writing samples to five pages, I think.

Hey everyone, I've been mostly hanging out in the religion forum, but my academic interests are mainly in history. I'm a history major at my undergrad institution and will be studying American Religious History at either Duke or Vanderbilt next fall. Any fellow students of religious history here?

FWIW (probably not much), when I worked at Pacific University many years ago, I know the Psych department would encourage our PsyD students to persue additional education after the doctorate. Often that was an MSN so that the student could obtain Nurse Practitioner licensure so they could prescribe. However, I seem to remember PsyD's as taking quite a while, so that may not be desirable at all.

Wow, well I guess I was right, there are only a few of us. I'll be studying American Religious History. My research interests include how American religion and war intersect (such as pacifism), and the American Reatoration Movement broadly defined (Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Christian Churches, UCC, etc.) I hope to become fairly conversant with ethics and political theology along the way.

So who here is going to study church history/religious history/historical theology? Seems like this forum is much heavier on textual studies, systematic theology, and philosophy.

If you want to work in counter terrorism, why an MTS to study Islam? It might prepare you for an intelligence analyst job with an alphabet soup agency, the military, or State....maybe. Is that what you are thinking?

Wow. Yeah, I would definitely call them... And if their immediate answer is, "you didn't make it," ask some pointed questions about the now at least double mixup to make sure they didn't make even more errors....

Congrats!

They left me a voicemail saying I was accepted, so not sure. I'm most likely going to decline unless there is a fluke and they offer me massive funding, so if you are wait listed, hopefully you are at the top.

Def. time to bump this thread back up!

And....I just got the acceptance call for Duke!

Congrats to all who got acceptances at Duke...I'm still waiting...and hoping that isn't a bad sign....

I am pretty sure Duke said notifications would be done by March 15.... Are they seriously gonna go down to the wire?

Congrats!

I plan to be at Baltimore as well. My research cohort has a panel presentation on our study of "the nones".

Congrats! What's your first choice?

U.S. History, specifically American Religious History and History of the American South. Advantages: if I end up in a history department, I should be able to eventually teach history and religion. If I end up in a religion department, I can study these topics from a very multidisciplinary perspective more easily. Disadvantages: There is a lot of hand wringing lately about religious historians being way behind the curve on historiography and method. I don't want that to be me.

My area is American Religious History. Many programs only require one language, while some require two. I took French in HS (Looong time ago) and couldn't hardly speak it but could somewhat read it. I figure I'll do French during the MTS and then Spanish if I need a second one for the PhD. Anyone have any thoughts that I should do it differently?

Anyone know anything about MTS admissions? Haven't seen or heard anything.

Sorry to hear that, man.

Glad to hear you aren't out of the running!

Will be curious to hear what the response is.

Friday/Monday? That's what my plan was this week if I hadn't heard from Vanderbilt.