Mattd4488

Last application season, I applied to 4 schools and was only accepted to 1. That 1, Catholic University, didn't offer me any funding, but encouraged me to try again. They said that I applied during a year of unusually high competition and unusually low funding. One of the professors said that he was "confident" that I'd get funded the second time around. He said, "You clearly have the ability and the drive; now all you need is the money." Although I felt like giving up, his encouragement allowed me to continue. I retook the GREs, studied Latin (I was already fluent in French, so I decided to add another language to my CV), managed to get myself published (in a popular religious magazine, but whatever) and applied to 7 schools this time around. So far, I've only heard from McGill, and I got in there with some funding. Now I'm just hoping to hear some good things from the rest, but especially from Catholic, which is still my first choice.

"You're worried about getting in? What is it that you're studying again?" "Theology." "Theology? I can't imagine that a lot of people do that. It's probably pretty easy to get in. Don't worry about it." Yeah, easy, of course. Nobody stops to think about the fact that the reason why so few people do PhDs in theology is because there's such little funding available in that field.

I applied to CUA last year to do a PhD in Moral Theology. I was accepted, but just missed getting funding. (Apparently, the department only had one scholarship to offer, and it went to the guy ahead of me after the guy ahead of him turned it down.) I deferred my acceptance after a professor told me that he was "confident" that I'd get an offer of funding from them the following year. They just e-mailed me saying that they've reassessed my application and that they are "optimistic" about funding prospects, but will not be certain until they hear from the university how much money they'll have to offer. Having lived in DC for over half a year now, I've found out that my experience of getting in without funding is rather typical of CUA. Well, hopefully things work out this second time around. If not, I'll have to go somewhere else. I can't wait around for another year.