la sarar

I'm an HDS alumnus and I'm also from China. My concentration is not Asian studies so I have nothing to offer in this respect--that being said, I do know that Harvard has some strong faculty members in its East Asian and Inner Asian programs, who usually have joint appointments at HDS. Also, Boston seems like a lovely city surrounded by a number of nice small towns, Cambridge included. The winters are much less harsh than in Chicago. In addition, Boston is a pretty resourceful place---though Chicago is a larger city. From Harvard you can get to Brown, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, NYU and others pretty easily and make good use of what they have to offer in your area of study and otherwise. In Chicago, of course, you also have Northwestern, while in the East this might multiply into a cluster of helpful places. Last but not least---Harvard is a less rigorous place---which does not mean that the bar is lower here (except for the grade inflation). In a word, your experience could be a lot more enjoyable here. Besides, I haven't seen many people from China who prefer the quarter system at Chicago. I'm currently enrolled in a PhD program at Harvard and feel free to contact me about the decision-making process. I'm always more than happy to meet more fellow Chinese students in the US who major in something other than Engineering, Maths and the like (absolutely no offense).

By the way, Princeton (Religious Studies) has also made the decision.

They were apparently notified via email. Last year what happened in my own case was that I got the email on Monday and the hard copy on Wednesday. This friend of mine who told me about this has not seen the copy yet (the situation is a bit complicated since he's currently not living at the same address due to emergency), but Prof. M has written to him about everything (including the fact that hard copies have been mailed). With regard to online notifications for everyone (admitted and otherwise), this is going to take another week or more.

Harvard NELC has made their decisions a few days ago. Offers (hard copy) have been mailed to the admitted students. At least one Hebrew Bible student (an international student from Asia).

last year it was the first Monday of March

That's what I know: Brown $22,000 + 3000 summer stipend, U of Chicago basically the same. Harvard (GSAS) would be $25,000+5000 summer research grant (for four summers). I believe that Yale would more or less fall into the same range as Harvard (but no evidence), while NYC schools can be higher (Columbia and NYU at least). I have a friend at Cornell whose stipend is about the same as Harvard (humanities).

This happened to me in 2011, same program.

Use bibleworks to check your parsing?

The following info. is taken from http://www.hds.harvard.edu/academics/degree-programs/mts-program/mts-requirements ________________ Language Requirements MTS students must satisfy a language competency requirement by demonstrating intermediate reading competency in a language of scholarship in theological and religious studies. Students in these programs are not limited to the seven languages examined by the School and may meet their requirement with another language subject to the approval of the appropriate curriculum committee. There are four ways MTS students may demonstrate intermediate-level reading competency to satisfy the language requirement with one of the seven languages examined by HDS: By passing an HDS language qualifying examination (given in September and April; in addition, French, Spanish, and German will be offered in January). Samples of previous qualifying exams are available for practice. By completing with a grade of B- or better the second semester of an HDS intermediate-level course in Greek or Hebrew (e.g., 4021 Intermediate Classical Hebrew II or 4221 Intermediate Greek II) or one semester of an HDS advanced intermediate-level course in Latin (e.g., Readings in Christian Latin: Hildegard of Bingen and the Gospels). By receiving a grade of A- or higher on the final exam in a modern language course in the School's Summer Language Program. By receiving an A- or better in 4414 Advanced Intermediate German Readings or 4454 Advanced Intermediate French Readings or 4464 Advanced Intermediate Spanish Readings. For languages taught at Harvard University other than the seven offered and examined by the Divinity School, the same principles will apply for satisfying the language requirement. Students must achieve intermediate competency, which is usually measured as finishing with a B- or better the fourth semester of a language course that follows the four-semester model. For languages that do not fit the four-semester model, the student should consult with the director of language studies and provide a description of the courses from the FAS catalog or from the instructor. For languages outside the purview of any instructor at Harvard University, intermediate competency will be demonstrated by a satisfactory grade (B- or better) in a language examination. The procedure for this is as follows: The student will contact and secure agreement for an exam from a faculty member of another university. The student must then submit a petition signed by his/her advisor to the MTS Committee that details the reasoning for the student's choice of language, and the name and institutional affiliation of the proposed examiner. If the MTS Committee approves of the petition, the student will arrange the administration of the exam with the HDS registrar, and consult with the faculty director of language studies about academic guidelines for the exam.

Yale Religious Studies requires a ridiculously high score, 99% I think. So I did not apply to their program.

But one could live in Somerville, which is less expensive, especially the rent.

The current policy is that you can take no more than half of you classes outside HDS in a given semester. So if you are taking 4 courses, you can take 2 outside courses; if 5, still 2. Most of the time one doesn't want to take 6 classes in one semester and the registrar does not normally allow this. So the maximum is 2 outside courses per semester. Here outside courses refer to courses which do not have an HDS course number at all. If it's jointly offered, you can still count it towards your HDS course and take other outside courses. You have to take a minimum of 6 within area courses, 4 outside of area HDS courses to fulfill the degree requirement, besides meeting language requirements. The other 6-10 courses can be whatever you want, as long as it doesn't violate the rule explained in the first paragraph.

Are you referring to the general antipathy towards the study of religion in our society as a whole? Or the underestimation of humanities in the whole world? If that's what you are talking about, I would say that it's probably true and all of us can feel that. Where I come from in China, if I tell others that I study religion, they would probably ask me: are you a monk and want to starve after graduation? :-) Otherwise, so far as I can tell, I don't feel this hostility towards religion at Harvard. There are people who don't like religious studies, religions or humanities in general---like Dr. Sheldon Cooper in the big bang theory---but how can they hurt students and professors of religion? It seems that HDS has independent financial/administrative systems so it doesn't have to fear some FAS professor who hates religion... If what you said of Dr. Pinker is true, I can only call that stupidity. I'm not religious, at least not Christian, but I think it's necessary to know something about religion.

You are welcome. I suspect that you can now check your online status via website, for it's already past Mar. 15. Harvard usually gives students about a month to make their decisions. But it's true that as far as the application goes, all different fields would have to compete for students and some of them don't get a new student in a particular year. However, isn't that the normal situation in any department where there are different sub-fields? I might be mistaken though.