seroteamavi

To offer a contrasting perspective, schools don't necessarily prefer their masters students for their doctoral programs. In fact, in some cases departments are known for not taking their own students. In my case, my interests shifted as a result of being in my masters program (that is the point of education after all), the faculty that I studied with left (there is a lot of movement in religious studies), and I didn't even end up applying to Yale. 
 
Fit is important. That can't be overstated. And not only in terms of the faculty, but also the student body. Those are your colleagues and principal dialogue partners. You'll just be happier. And if you're applying to PhD programs, faculty that fit your project better are going to be able to give better letters of recommendation, will be able to mentor you in different ways. Plus your coursework is going to be tighter, your thinking and SOP will benefit as a result... 
 
Never underestimate the importance of having a good library, especially for graduate work as you get more and more specialized and need that one book for something. That's one thing I did not think about at all, but YDS has on everywhere else I applied as a masters student. Not only is Yale's library big, but with Borrow Direct (an interlibrary loan system) I have access to the full libraries of all of the Ivy League schools, MIT, and UChicago. 
 
Short story, the only way you can figure out fit is to visit places. If you at all have the means and time to visit programs, go. Admissions brochures can only tell you so much. Sitting in a classroom, in a chapel service, in a dining hall and seeing what it feels like—that's going to tell you more than any reasoning about this will.

You're right that people do 'earn' their spot in graduate school. The other poster was right, especially if we're speaking in Christian or similar religious terms, that 'earned' is a bad category to think in at all (Romans 4.4?). I understand the sting of rejection; my application is nowhere near as prestigious as yours, but I was rejected to my first choice in spite of the fact that my application was essentially solicited by a professor with similar interests (and I received offers with full tuition and a stipend elsewhere). I'm not priest, and I can't pronounce forgiveness over you. But I understand, and I'm sure everyone else understands as well.

The good news is that Chandler and Vandy are fantastic schools, and it looks like you got great offers. So even though the rejection to your school of choice has to hurt, you still have a great way forward.

Although I am confident that no one will recognize me at Emory or Vanderbilt from the things I've posted on here, I recognize that what I did was wrong and want to apologize to the readers of this forum.
 
I apologize to everyone who experienced my tirade yesterday against the YDS admissions staff. In particular, I'm terribly sorry for the sexual favors I implied were exchanged between applicants and adcomm staff. While clearly hyperbolic, these statements tended to imply that others had not earned their place in New Haven.
 
Although it was an utter shock to be rejected after being offered near full-funding to two of YDS' peer institutions and being recommended by a board member, I'm sure, as someone pointed out above, that it had something to do with fit rather than qualification. 
 
Btw, there was a previous poster who said something about how 'earning' a place wasn't a relevant category...haha ok Mahatma R. E. Hobart, humility is one thing, but people do, in fact, earn things like admission to YDS. Otherwise these boards wouldn't exist. 
 
I want to say categorically that I am not 'entitled' to attend Yale - if anyone were there would be no such thing as an admissions process - but still want to communicate how devastated I am at rejection. 

Classical Hebrew
Thomas O. Lambdin's Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (I've read and tutored now out of a handful of others, and I still think Lambdin's is the best BH grammar I've seen)
Ronald J. Williams' Williams' Hebrew Syntax (Third Edition)
Resnikoff, et al. Tall Tales Told in Biblical Hebrew (this is fun. My professor had us read from these to practice recitation. I found them really helpful...here's a link)
Ethelyn Simon's Og the Terrible (a comic book written for children learning Hebrew in synagogue and written in BH. Also fun...here's a link)
Waltke & O'Connor, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (huge, but really good)
 
Rabbinic Hebrew
Fernandez's An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew
 
Ugaritic (haven't personally used any of these, but they come highly recommended)
Schniedewind & Hunt, A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture, and Religion
Huehnergard, An Introduction to Ugaritic
 
Aramaic
Greenspahn, An Introduction to Aramaic (second edition) (covers Imperial, inscriptional, Targumic, and Dead Sea Scrolls, and even has a chapter on Midrashic)
Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic
Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (I think this can be found online)
Torah with Targum Onkelos and Rashi's Commentary (link)
Johns, A Short Grammar of Biblical Aramaic
 
Greek
I've taught Greek once, and I used Mounce. It's not my favorite, but I think it's the most student friendly.
I also think Metzger's Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek is helpful.
When I learned, I also used Athenaze. 
Schoder, et al., A Reading Course in Homeric Greek (books 1 and 2) are also really good if you're interested in Homeric Greek. 
 
Latin
Shelmerdine, Introduction to Latin
Goldman and Morton, English Grammar for Students of Latin is helpful
 
Coptic
Lambdin, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic (I haven't used this one yet, but I've heard good things)
 
Syriac
In addition to what's already been mentioned:
Muroaka, Classical Syriac for Hebraists
You can also find The Laughable Stories of Bar-Hebraeus online (just google it). These are fun and easy to read. 

Finally some closure! In at Emory! My number one choice!

No one has mentioned much of Syriac yet. I am interested in those resources.
 
 
Greek
When I teach Greek, I use the aforementioned BBG (Mounce)
the aforementioned PGR (Whitacre)
Mounce's Morphology of Biblical Greek
Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics
Loeb texts (the green books) are particularly useful as well (apostolic fathers, Basil, others...)
 
Latin
Wheelock
Wheelock's reader
Moreland and Fleischer's Intensive Course
Dictionary of Latin Forms, W. Whitacre
The Latin Summa
Loeb texts (the red books)
And for some valuable induction, regular Latin Mass
 
 
Hebrew
Basics of Biblical Hebrew, Pratico and Van Pelt (although my teacher is not fond of this text)
JPS Tanakh
Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon
The Dead Sea Scrolls, Charlesworth's volumes

You saying adcomms don't exchange favors for admission? Ha! Hahaha. Ha. Still, I'm sure most wouldn't settle for JUST a bj.

YDS is sham. I got generous funding (80-90%) to Vandy and Candler (everywhere else I applied) and didn't even get into YDS. Did I mention that I do TFA, graduated with honors from a t-10 undergrad, and my pastoral rec came from a minister on their distinguished alumni board? Congrats to all who got in, please tell the rest of us who to fellate for those blue bloods in New Haven to send out an admit to someone without BullDog ejaculate all over their faces already. And I hope someone from their adcomm reads this because you all BLOW.

Blergh. My hands are stiff. Okay, if any one has suggestions for additions, please either email me or comment straight on the Google Doc. I didn't give anyone access just because I wanted to keep it clean. Let's keep this going!
 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhvTDVbklJMddGpWTEZWRW9fdWVESW1lYnA5NEJZRmc&usp=sharing

Whelp it's all said and done for me. I'll be at Duke this fall. Maybe ill see some of you around! Good luck to you all still waiting. 

Syriac:
 
Grammars:
Theodor Nöldeke's Compendious Syriac Grammar (an oldie that has been reprinted a bunch)
Wheeler M. Thackston's Introduction to Syriac (this is prolly the best it gets for learning Syriac)
Takamitsu Muraoka's (and S. Brock) Classical Syriac (newer and good basic reference)
 
Lexicons:
Payne's A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (by far the most well referenced grammar....and free online!!! http://www.tyndalearchive.com/tabs/PayneSmith/ )
Sokoloff's A Syriac Lexicon (the newest English dictionary! very extensive, but also very expensive!)
 
I have others in my library (well not Sokoloff...I head to library for that beast), but these are the standard grammars/lexicons. If you really want to start Syriac, it's much easier if you have studied classical Hebrew. Going from classical Hebrew to early Aramaic (e.g. imperial) and then to Syriac makes these grammars much more accessible!!

No one has mentioned much of Syriac yet. I am interested in those resources.
 
 
Greek
When I teach Greek, I use the aforementioned BBG (Mounce)
the aforementioned PGR (Whitacre)
Mounce's Morphology of Biblical Greek
Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics
Loeb texts (the green books) are particularly useful as well (apostolic fathers, Basil, others...)
 
Latin
Wheelock
Wheelock's reader
Moreland and Fleischer's Intensive Course
Dictionary of Latin Forms, W. Whitacre
The Latin Summa
Loeb texts (the red books)
And for some valuable induction, regular Latin Mass
 
 
Hebrew
Basics of Biblical Hebrew, Pratico and Van Pelt (although my teacher is not fond of this text)
JPS Tanakh
Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon
The Dead Sea Scrolls, Charlesworth's volumes

Adding to Greek and Hebrew
 
Koine Greek
Randall Buth's living Koine Greek materials
Decker, Koine Greek Reader: Selections from the New Testatment, the Septuagint, and Early Christian Writers
Christophe Rico's Polis: Parler le grec ancien comme une langue vivante (introductory Koine text almost completely in Koine; also available in Italian and German)
Whitacre, A Patristic Greek Reader (selections from various writers, ranging from Ignatius to Gregory of Nazianzus; copious notes for intermediate students)
Stanley E. Porter & Jeffrey T. Reed, Fundamentals of NT Greek (text and workbook).  This in my opinion is the best introductory grammar.
 
Classical Greek
Hansen and Quinn, Mastronarde, JACT Reading Greek, and Athenaze are some first-year courses.
 Andrew Keller and Stephanie Russell, Learning to Read Greek 
 
Biblical Hebrew
Randall Buth's living Biblical Hebrew materials
Mansoor, Biblical Hebrew
Weingreen, A Practical Grammar of Classical Hebrew
 Duane A. Garrett and Jason S. DeRouchie     A Modern Grammar of Biblical Hebrew

Accepted off wait list at Princeton Theological Seminary. Yay!!!! I got an informal email from DGS informing me to expect a formal offer! So happy. 

Yeah, sure, I'm with you. It's just that if they are making 30 offers I would have expected to see more evidence on the forums.

I found this bit underneath their Q & A section a few weeks ago:
 
Q. How many students apply to the M.T.S. Program? What is the size of each M.T.S. class?
A. Almost 200 students apply each year to the M.T.S. Program. We are able to offer admission to 25-30 students and place 5 students on a waitlist, in order to arrive at a class of approximately 20 students.
 
Perhaps the Department of Theology just wants to test the state of each applicant's cardiovascular health before extending an offer; I'm sure more than a few people are having heart palpations over this one.

U.Va basically said what another poster here had already said. There is still hope, but they can only offer a few spots due to funding and are waiting to hear back from those who they've made offers to. The coordinator said "the wait list is very limited." I think this means that they don't put many people on it at a time? I haven't been wait-listed but she's telling me to have hope, so that's where I'm getting my interpretation from. She also said she'll be marking rejections on the website around the end of March.
 
 
**And also asked that if I choose to accept elsewhere or withdraw my application, to mark it on the application website. For those who have already decided to accept offers at other schools regardless of what their response is from Virginia (if they haven't heard from them yet), it might be helpful you indicated that on the application so the list of those awaiting responses will shrink and those of us who are still waiting might hear a bit quicker. Just a thought!  

I need ND to send out MTS decisions so I can get some mental closure with this application season.

Letters of Rec, SOP, and (especially) languages. Perhaps I am saying 'the whole package'...and honestly, that is pretty much what you need to be competitive at top schools. GRE scores, meh. I'm still convinced if the rest of your app isn't competitive they don't make a huge difference. 

What worked for me was getting published and getting my GRE's up. That seemed to be the biggest difference maker. I rewrote all of my statements of purpose. I cannot strongly enough suggest that you have someone, ideally your POI, give you feedback on a draft of your statement of purpose. If you have the resources and time, visit the school and meet with your POI.

0 for 2 so far...the suspense is undeniably thick.  why does this whole app process feel like I'm stuck at the blackjack table in Vegas with my last $20?

So, that's why professors were acting odd. In at HDS.
 
Edit: I'm Religion and Society and a masters student there currently. 

I was just accepted to Wycliffe in Toronto. It says finances are given by the individual colleges in one of the PDFs they sent. I guess we will have to wait and see on those.
 
After getting rejected to every school last year and to one this year it feels so good to finally get in!!

In at Baylor. Church History.

Just wanted to throw this out ya'll - if you you applied to a ton of Mdiv programs ( as I did), be sure to negotiate a little. In some cases the top places are very amenable to matching offers from candidates they really want.
 
Blessings and peace as you apply, and feel free to PM me if you want any help thinking that part through.