vandersems

Hello everybody, as I am planning on applying for PhD programs in the next cycle, I thought I'd take advantage of the flurry of activity of successful applicants on the forum at this point. I have a rather simple or perhaps even stupid question. How did you pick your programs and POIs? What would make a professor be interested in supervising you? What constitutes a good faculty/program fit? What is more important, regional or topical overlaps with your POI/the faculty? Surely one's research interests are not going to be too similar to one's supervisor's, otherwise one's work would be unoriginal and/or it would be boring to be working together, right? Or, as is the case for me, there is really not much research being done on the combination of region and topic that I am interested in, so I wouldn't even be able to find somebody whose work is exactly down my alley. I'd be very grateful for some advice.

Hey Truc, could you also share your New School knowledge with me via PM? I'm from Europe, also applied for both schools. A friend is doing the MSc Social Anthro at LSE right now, and I went to attend class with him. I don't know how Master programs function in the US, but you should be aware that LSE you will also be attending lectures with undergrads for certain topical courses, although you will have a following discussion with a seminar group only comprising of Master students. This is because the MSc is for people who have not studied anthropology before or only within a more interdisciplinary degree. People who do a bachelor in anthro in the UK could move on straight to a research degree MRes, which can then lead straight into a PhD. Overall the quality was quite good though. In terms of prestige, LSE is definitely very respected, for anthropology perhaps even more than Oxford or Cambridge. They also have a PhD cooperation program with Columbia. But well, of course, you also pay quite a lot at LSE, even more than you would, for example, at Cambridge, at least for anthropology. In any case, I would say LSE can keep up with many US schools, but what is of course very different is the length of your degree; go to LSE and you should be done with your PhD within 5 years max, in the US it would be 7 or so. And you might not get funding at LSE, but I am sure you know those things.