neongolden

I realize I might be a little late to the party, but Hi! Who is applying? I grew up in Germany and just graduated with a BA in art history from Humboldt University. I also worked for a prominent art collector for several years and am now an almost full-time art critic for a national newspaper (Germany might just be the one country where people still read those) Where? Only applied to one program this spring... Master of Modern Art, Critical and Curatorial Studies at Columbia. Should that not work out (acceptance or funding wise), I'll start my MA in Berlin and then apply to MA and PhD programs this coming winter. To study what? Mainly Öyvind Fahlström and Fluxus... I have a pretty precise idea of what I want to work on. To work with whom? Prof. Branden Joseph, other equally exciting professors would be Pamela Lee at Stanford or Hannah Higgins at UIC, Chicago How's your German? I'd say it's rather fluent

I know this might be a little bit late as a response for the original post, but I wanted to answer maybe for future reference. I cannot speak all that much about the quality of Aachen's research (Being German, I do know that at least in terms of reputation, Aachen's engineering department easily beats any other in Germany... including Munich and Karlsruhe) but I can say something about Aachen as a city: For better or for worse, the city depens STRONGLY on the university, which makes for city- and nightlife that is almost exclusively male and somewhat nerdy. Also, keep in mind that at least in the engineering department, RWTH's policy is to not be super-selective with inital admissions, but to weed out bad seeds by assigning backbreaking amounts of work in the first 2-3 semesters.

I'm a German native and studied in Germany and these are my scores. 165 V / 155 Q / 5,5 AW for the GRE 119 for the TOEFL I wouldn't be worried at all, if Columbia hadn't written "students should aim for 167 V, 160 Q, and 5 AW" on the website of the "Masters in Critical and Curatorial studies" program I applied to. I've since been wrecking my brain about whether or not "aim for" means that it's a cutoff?!

Dear Flower, i also sent in my application to MODA a few weeks ago. Maybe we should stay in touch about our progress?! First of all, I am almost positive that a BFA will do you more good than harm. A LOT of the most profilic and most prestigious curators and critics (think Schjedahl, Storr, Schaffhausen... and that's just the beginning of the letter S) have trained as artists. And those are the professions that the MODA is supposed to prepare us for, no? I myself am getting my BA in art history from Humboldt University, Berlin this April. I also had a few academic hiccups towards the beginning of my studies, because I had to work full time to support myself, but stabilized on a pretty high grade level afterwards. I've also worked as the director of a big private collection for 2 years and have worked as an art critic for a national newspaper for the last year... One of my main problems was my statement of purpose. I know exactly what I want to study and with which professor (B. Joseph), but I wasn't really sure as to how specific I could be about that with an MA program. Well, I ended up being super-specific and we'll see how that turns out.