HannahPie

My apologies if there is already a topic thread for Rutgers, but I'm lazy. So a quick update for anyone who is still waiting to hear back: I emailed the grad director and she told me that they've made four initial offers and are waiting to hear back from two. One is likely to come, but the other they have no idea. So don't give up hope yet, fellow applicants! There's still a chance!

For Renaissance people, Michael Baxandall's "Painting and Experience in the Fifteenth Century" was a great read. It's a bit dated, but I think it has some awesome foundational premises.

I have exactly zero answers to any of your questions, stilnovista, but I would love to hear more about your background/resume if you don't mind sharing! NGA is my FAVE and I would love to do an internship there when I'm done with grad school.

Anyone gotten in touch with Rutgers? I sent an email inquiring as to when we're supposed to hear back, but no reply yet.

Lizelle85, what kind of a podcast do you do? And can we listen to it? That sounds fantastic!

MEGA congrats to the two Harvard acceptances! Would you mind sharing what your concentrations are? Since it feels like almost all of us applied to Harvard, I know that I personally just want to know if all hope is lost or if I should continue biting my fingernails. And again, congratulations!

What's the general word on Tufts? I know someone said they're pretty well-regarded, but anyone have more deets?

Have you taken the GREs yet? That's the only difficulty I can foresee. I know they have testing sites abroad, but I'm not sure what the price comparison is or how many options you have in London for testing sites. But other than that, you really shouldn't have any problems. And congrats on the internship! That is stellar!

Awesome, thank you all! It is indeed a one-year taught Masters, which is where my uncertainty came in, since it doesn't have the same level of research that the MPhil does. And because it's one year, I wasn't sure if it would be seen as a stand-alone Masters from an American program.

Hello all! I've been accepted to an MLitt program at St. Andrews and it's my backup plan if I don't get into an American PhD program, but I'm unclear as to whether or not the MLitt will be seen as the equivalent of an MA in the US. (Wikipedia at least has not managed to give me a definitive answer.) The difficulty is that the Scottish degrees are different from UK degrees and there's all manner of different Masters programs (MPhil, MLitt, MSc, etc.), so I'm not sure if the investment in the St Andrews MLitt will be worth it if I have to come back and do an MA in the States anyway. Any information would be enormously helpful. And good luck to everyone in these coming weeks!!

I think the problem with this generalization is that while there are certainly students who fit this description, you're making a lot of assumptions about the professors who grade these students as well. Speaking to my own undergrad experience, I didn't get A's UNTIL I started producing academically imaginative, engaging, and interesting work. There were obviously a few professors who wanted me to spit back what they told me, but the majority wanted me to produce original research with fresh insights. So to say that just about everyone who does very well in undergrad is boring and stuffy is to insinuate that that is what professors are requiring them to be. And don't forget that these professors are often the ones teaching the grad classes too.

Congrats to kunstgeschichtedude! That is seriously great news! Also, if the person who got the phone call from their Princeton POI is on here and doesn't mind sharing, could you elaborate on the "expect to hear within two weeks" bit? Basically, I'm curious (read: DYING TO KNOW BECAUSE GAH) if they said everyone would be contacted within two weeks or just you specifically.

I used The Princeton Review book to help me study which was enormously helpful for many reasons, but one of the primary ones being that they said the one thing all of the top-rated essays had in common was length. Not excellent vocab, not extremely logical reasoning, but just sheer word count. When I took the GRE, I just tried to make my essays as long as possible without being ridiculous and without totally forgetting about those other characteristics of good writing, and I ended up in the 92nd percentile. Since you're a good writer already, I would really just focus on writing as much as possible in the time you're allotted. ALSO: Everyone else here is right; your writing sample is much more important anyway, so don't stress over writing The Greatest Answer Ever. The professors will see your abilities without having to turn to your GRE score for confirmation.

Let the nausea set in! Granted, I can't tell if it's from general nervousness or refreshing my email every three and a half seconds.

Bearcat1, you're saving my sanity today. Thank you.

Oh oh, another question: do all/most programs ask for an interview before admittance? Or only some? None of the programs I applied to mentioned it in their process, but there's something so comforting about worrying one's self to pieces.

Phew. I think. Ugh, is it March yet?

Question(s) from the newbie: when y'all mention POIs, do you mean professors you're merely interested in working with (and vice versa) or professors you've specifically contacted/been in touch with? And on a scale of 1-10, how screwed am I for not getting in touch personally with professors in programs I'm applying to? Any insight would be enormously helpful! I basically just want to know now whether I'm dead in the water or I should continue my current pattern of oscillating between hope and despair.