Hey guys! I'm a long-time lurker, and I'm feeling a bit shy about posting, so please be kind!
I am still waiting on a couple schools (I am a MASTER of waitlists...), but I have received an offer from CMU's MA program in Rhetoric. The department seems very kind and they have sent me a lot of emails inviting me to Pittsburgh and encouraging me to enroll. CMU is a dream school for sure. I love their curriculum and I know it's super prestigious. The cohort is usually only 10-12 students, so there's the promise of personal attention. But still, I was deferred from their PhD program down to the MA, which gives me some big concerns.
Firstly, the tuition. My little bro attends the school, so I'm well-aware of how stingy CMU is with scholarships. Still, I'm not particularly happy with the fact that at a school with 38,000 in tuition, I was offered a 17,250 scholarship. That's a large chunk of change left unaccounted for, not including the living expenses in Pitt. Granted, there ARE opportunities for employment--tutoring in the communications center, RA-ships, and an occasional TA-ship. Still... $12 for probably only 10-20 hours a week isn't fantastic at a school that expensive, is it?
But still, the school offers a 1-YEAR MA. That would make the tuition less painful. However, that does pose some potential problems, doesn't it? Is a 1-year MA too fast? Does it not offer me enough time to gauge where my interests lie and make stronger applications to PhD programs? I'd love to attend CMU's PhD program, but it's not necessarily a feeder MA, so...
So I guess my real question is this: If none of my other schools pan out, and I'm left with CMU's MA in Rhetoric as my only real option for grad school, should I follow my heart and attend CMU's awesome and interdisciplinary Rhetoric program, or should I follow my brain and not go into a bunch of debt for a stingy, 1-year program? I'm just not sure, and it's KILLING me.
Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!!!