xypathos

I'll share limited advice as I transferred PhD programs but in Religious Studies: 1) You need to leave on good terms with your current program. You'll need at least one LOR from them. If you can't get one it's likely to trigger a red flag for someone. 2) Be prepared to essentially start over. I went into one program with a MA and got 12 credits. Did two years and left with the blessing of the program and all of my LORs came from them. My final school (I'm done and graduated, working) accepted 9 credits from my previous PhD program. 3) Socially, it was weird AF. I came in with enough credits to be a second year but felt like a first year (yet struggled to relate with them), yet also felt ready for Comps. Because of #2, if you're going to transfer, I'd do it sooner rather than later. That said, bailing year one does look weird but you also need to protect the integrity of what you want to research and not settle for something less. I had an advisor in my MA that shared a story of having to completely retool their dissertation b/c the people qualified to supervise it had left and the school didn't replace them. Got it done, hated every step of the process! Find a confidant you can speak to, maybe the Director of Graduate Studies for the department, just share your struggle. You need someone more experienced to help you walk through this process. I was lucky in that my advisor at School #1 was best friends with my soon to be advisor at School #2, and they walked through me through the application process and Advisor #2 planned out my studies to try and recoup time lost.

Seconding @sacklunch - you're mistaken on all accounts. 1. The UK PhDs that are well represented/respected come from UK scholars, by and large. They often attended highly elite boarding schools, did their BA at Oxford or Cambridge, and stayed on for a doctorate. They are a cut above your run of the mill scholars. Yes, absolutely, there are acclaimed US scholars that went to the UK for their DPhil. But guess what? The good ones landed highly competitive scholarships and their work reflects their overall ethic. 2. No one is questioning their scholars. We're questioning their institution taking advantage of gullible students. 3. What rankings, specifically, are you referencing? There's not a strong contender for Philosophy Gourmet like there is Religion/Theology. 4. I interviewed at Oxford and was granted acceptance but alas no aid. My POI walked me through the draft, step by step, with feedback until we knew that it would pass their committee. He said, literally, they're expected to do this for every US student. 5. You don't "hide" from critical scholarships. You find a hole in their argument and just blow it out of proportion. That's how their scheme works. Etc., Etc., Etc. You're reading our criticism as being negative of UK schools. Their scholarship is, by and large, sound. What we're critiquing is how their administrators handle US applicants and because of that, how they're perceived when they return Stateside looking for a job. EDIT: Also done with my PhD but I like to stick around and offer advice. That said, I'm an Episcopal priest and knew that I would be headed into church work with minor/medium interest in the academy.

My advisor's mantra: Leaving college we're all faced with the ultimate decision: Do I face the fact that I need therapy or postpone it and go to grad school and make it everyone else's problem?

To add onto @True_hope's argument. British universities are 1) known for allowing a dissertation that wouldn't see the light of day at a mainstream school and/or 2) use American students as the cash cow our student loan system is, taking us in and pushing us back out with a very poor dissertation, but with a PhD/DPhil none the less and they get $100k+ for it, knowing that you're all but unemployable in the US and abroad.

Some of these results may be legitimate but FYI - we get a number of troll posts/results around this time every year.

As someone that lived in Atlanta on a PhD stipend, it's rough going. At the end of the day, I don't know a single student that did it. I've yet to meet a single student at any institution that accomplished it either. We had partners, some were independently wealthy, parents footed the bill, student loans, and/or PT work. Some school's like Yale offer stipends around 33k but very few of us (PhD grads and hopefuls) stand a chance to attend Yale. You're far more likely looking at a stipend of 20-25k, probably.

Yes. Often the stipend for M* students is in the 10-15k range but that varies by school.

Work and/or loans. Of my PhD colleagues, I think all of us worked part time or took out loans in order to make ends meet. Personally, I took a part time job at the local Genius Bar and mostly worked on desktops and laptops. I was also married and we had my wife’s salary too, but grad school stipends are a joke that makes you cry yourself to sleep. EDIT: For my MDiv I worked for the city of Nashville as a research assistant in their office of historic preservation

I will add that Chicago has many iterations of the nickname PhNeverDone. They love to advertise 5-7 years but the reality is that the median is 7.75 currently. They still have a number of students that enrolled in the 2008-10 period that are still not done. Almost no one gets out of Chicago in 5. The reality is that you'll be in the 6-10 year range.

What do you want to do? Going from philosophy to systematic theology isn’t uncommon. But if you’re wanting to teach philosophy, you need to get a PhD in Philosophy. Systematic Theology is an increasingly niche field that it is getting harder and harder to find jobs for. If your field was philosophy of religion, you could theoretically, teach systematic theology at a smaller seminary or divinity school. Outside of Fordham, BC, etc., no philosophy department is going to touch you with a PhD in Theology.

It’s going to take them some time to regather and rebuild the program. While Levine is an amazing scholar, it’s no secret in the NT community that she was an absolutely atrocious and abusive mentor. VDS suspended admissions into the program pending a review of her and her suitability to supervise students. Exceptionally brilliant NT PhD students have left the school to study elsewhere and faculty have turned down offers so as to not directly work with her. I genuinely mean this, consider yourself lucky.

You'll get into most of them. HDS and YDS will be the most selective, naturally, but I'd say you stand a good 40% chance at both. Funding is another issue but that horse has been beat in a lot of threads on the first page.

If you were doing a subfield that looked at religion + science, your engineering and NASA experience would be invaluable. In biblical studies, not so much. It's neat and will help you stick out as "that NASA person" but that's about it.

Can confirm - I know several recent PhD grads from HYC in theology that are 1) forced to take a part-time lecturer position at their school, sometimes called the new grad gap year, 2) are on #2+ post-doc, 3) said fuck it and moved to Europe or Asia to teach, or 4) gave up on academia and went to other fields. Enter into this with an open mind and don't close any career doors just yet.

Princeton gives, I believe, all Presbyterians 100% tuition as a matter of policy. Someone that attends/ed may be able to correct me or even say if that includes any kind of stipend. They also offer housing and I can't stress the benefit of an intentional community. In all likelihood they will be your best bet in terms of theological fit and funding. PTS also offers a wide swath of courses in practical theology that will be invaluable to someone interested in chaplaincy. BU - It's Boston, there's great cultural things going on. That said, it's expensive and funding at almost all of BTI's member schools is meh. Again, should you get lucky and get a strong offer, you can take courses at other BTI schools and campus ministry service opportunities are a plenty. VDS is real hit or miss. Very few funding opportunities beyond 50% tuition discount. Nashville is astronomically expensive as a graduate student. If you decide to go this route, reach out to the Disciples' House EARLY for housing, they run an intentional community/apartment building for VDS students but it's competitive. There's also some Friendship House options but also competitive. I'm an alum of VDS and while I enjoyed my time there and it pushed me to grow a lot, I generally don't encourage people to attend. I had dozens of classmates graduate with 90k+ debt just from their MDiv. Someone in an alum group leaked an internal document from VDS that stressed the school's shift to focus more on bettering the school's PhD reputation and move resources away from the M* degrees and student body. Wake Forest is an outlier. Baptist heritage but really quite progressive now. They've had students go on to do amazing practical things and place in top notch PhD programs. Winston-Salem isn't an expensive city and if you're willing to drive in you can live even more frugally. I've known two MDiv graduates from WFU - one got 100% tuition and I think the other somewhere around 75%. I just don't know enough to say what you might expect. Yale's funding is like Harvard - a bit meh. Great school with resources and connections to help you succeed but you're coming out of there with debt. Chicago accepts VERY few MDiv students. In defense of that though, very few people apply there for a MDiv. Basically same situation as BU. Chicago would provide a great opportunity to connect with other schools and chaplaincy opportunities. Funding is hit or miss though. Some years they've done, it seems, nearly 100% tuition and sometimes it seems to be solely merit based. They've had a recent change of leadership in an effort to shore up the Div School's finances and bring it closer to being a profitable enterprise. VDS is doing this too, hence the exceptionally large classes that they accept. Duke seems to mostly give everyone somewhere around 25% tuition discount and laugh at you. They know who the reputation of their name and that their M* degrees are cash cows, no desire or interest to change. Can't comment on Emory.

Depends on the school and your preparation before/after the MTS. If your background is in psychology, presumably you could make quite a strong case for transitioning back to psychology, looking at neurological aspects of religion. If you attend a larger M* school you will likely even be able to work some electives into your curriculum from the school's psychology and/or neuroscience departments. I myself took graduate courses in English and History while a M* student. I had colleagues taking courses in the French department, Social Work, law school, education, medicine, etc. Many of these opted to go get their PhD in those respective departments rather than religion. Generally two big reasons, 1) job prospects suck in religion, and 2) religious studies PhDs take an obscenely long time to do in comparison to other departments, even within the humanities.

Your chances aren't 0 but you're seriously hurting your chances by not having an M* degree. If you're wanting to be competitive take your pick - HDS, YDS, Chicago, and maybe 1-2 others for the purposes of comparing financial aid offers. It use to be that the top schools set aside a single slot for an exceptional undergrad student but those students are rarer and rarer. Too, you often saw them in history or some field that I just broadly refer to as 'cultural criticism.' By and large most undergrad students just don't have the languages fully under their belt for a PhD for NT or HB. Your languages are good. Russian is a bit of an outlier but perhaps it's pertinent to your research interests. If you're at a T5 school I'd look for a language a bit closer to your field. You'll need a basic familiarity with translating written French but given your language exposure, self study. Also if T5, you have access to faculty that are perhaps sitting on a PhD AdCom in religion and/or have worked with students that have gotten into such programs. They'll be far better sources of wisdom.

Good questions. I couldn't find anything on the school's website regarding recording. Legally, Texas is a one party consent state. That said, I know at my school most professors don't record b/c they want to "protect" IP. I generally don't record myself b/c if you miss the class, just ask a classmate for notes. I have sometimes recorded my lecture but I never record student discussion.

Your summary is correct. The small change is that the FB group in question is all professors. Graduate students, those outside the academy, etc aren't allowed in. Yes, I think the situation is overblown. Student A was out of line. I don't know their religious background. I think the professor lost control of the classroom and couldn't recover. That said, I think barring this student from being considered is an overreach. Sure, maybe the professors will calm down in time, maybe Student A will never even apply to their program, etc., etc., etc That said too, I know from conversations while I was a PhD student that applicants get turned away for all sorts of petty/subjective reasons, despite being a stellar applicant on paper.

I'm part of a small'ish FB group for religious studies professors in Texas. I'm using RS here broadly, there are biblical studies, cultural, theology professors, etc. With the pandemic a lot of our discussion over the last 1.5 years is "Zoom sucks but it's the medium, how do we engage our students?!?" Anyway, a professor shared a captured zoom video. I want to preface that this professor didn't record the video and they're not at the school in question. It was meant to be a conversation starter about "How would you have handled this?" kind of situation. That said, the student featured in the video is a M* student at a divinity school in Texas. Their name, mistakenly/intentionally was not blocked so through the powers of Google-Fu it's easy to identify the school and look up the student. Said student (Student A) was responding to another student (Student B ) that mistakenly summarized the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's views on Jesus' divinity. Student B was wrong, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Student A then proceeded into a verbal assault of Protestants being 1) lazy and 2) stupid. Verbatim, straight up rant about Protestants that the professor made no attempt to stop, redirect, etc. Completely derailed the conversation and Student B was visually upset. A student, we'll call them C, is the one that recorded the video on their cell phone. They added text over the video later and you can hear them snickering. The text said something to the effect of "Another angry white guy that wants to be a NT professor" in reference to Student A. They're presumably the sharer of this video in an effort to shame their peer. Well, professors in this group obviously look up the student and verify that he's in fact wanting to be a NT professor and is/will be applying to programs. Said professors have emphatically stated that Student A is on their blacklist - they would never welcome an application from him. To make matters worse, a professor from the divinity school in question chimed in and "tried" to defend the student. He's bright, excellent grades, super passionate about NT studies and making sure churches like the EOC get fair descriptions, etc. Unfortunately for this student, the professor also described them as emotionally immature and that this isn't their first outburst in a class. So, bad reference! I'm new to all of this being a professor thing and I don't know what to do. The video has since been taken down but the damage is done. While the group is obviously not inclusive of every professor or anything, people talk. A small number of them mentioned showing this video to their TAs as a training of 1) don't let this happen and 2) here's how you recover. I kind of want to give Student A a heads up but it's also not my place! Thoughts?!?

You're wanting to do a M.Div at a reformed school, ThM at PTS, and then go back to the evangelical circle for a PhD? Some evangelical schools can be fairly competitive, part. among such identifying applicants. The problem you face, realistically, is that a PhD from an evangelical school greatly diminishes the number of schools that you're realistically hire-able at. You're better off aiming to go to as "high" a school as you can and then go back to evangelical circles to teach.

If you're only willing to attend if you get a full ride, Duke probably won't work for you. That said, you'll need to apply very broadly to help land a full ride.

That's correct, a theological degree is not required and in fact a few of your colleagues will have little to no coursework in religion. These programs assume as such and begin everyone with Intro courses to NT and HB, history, and theology. If you've taken them in undergrad there's often ways to place out of them. How much time do you have left in your undergrad program? If possible, I'd look at seeing if you can take a religion course. Otherwise, your degrees provide a really good wide spread of skills that will be useful in your graduate studies. What are you wanting to do with your degree? If you had to choose right now, what's your gut/inclination say? (Don't worry! It'll surely change later!) Also, what are you wanting to study or focus on? Traditionally the MDiv is for working in a church and a MTS is for those looking at a PhD. That said, plenty of MDiv students go onto PhD programs and MTS students go onto church work or other fields entirely. I had a classmate that went to a Top 3 law school after their MTS and they're now working for the UN! That said, your chances of getting in are probably pretty good, based on what you've offered here so far. Something that you need to consider is what "kind" of Christian you are. If you are deeply conservative/traditional, you're going to struggle in the top divinity schools. You'll find friends but a lot more colleagues wanting to push and challenge your beliefs. This is hard. Harvard and Yale have full scholarships and stipends available but there's no rhyme or reason as to how they pick. You just have to apply and hope. That said, sometimes international students get decent funding. Sometimes they get little to none. I would strongly advise you to apply to schools outside of the ivy league, too. I'd say look at: Harvard, Yale, Chicago (their MDiv takes 12'ish students but often receives less than 30 applications per the director), Duke, PTS. Possibly consider schools like Vanderbilt and Emory. At this point I would use something like Z-Books and get copies of things like The Oxford Handbook and browse them to get a topical knowledge. It'll also help you with your vocabulary come essay time. Gotta show those Admissions people you're serious!

As someone that was once in your shoes, I'll pass down advice that was given to me: Ask for more money. The worst thing that can happen is that they'll say no. They will never revoke an offer simply because you asked for more money. I was offered 75% to attend Vandy but simply asked for more. I explained that I loved the school, Nashville, etc but I needed more money to commit. They asked me to wait until closer to April 15th so they got a better sense of who was/isn't coming and the director called and offered me an increase to 100%. VDS takes in anywhere from 70-100 students a year and the amount of classmates I had with 100k+ in student debt just from their M* was fucking criminal. ALWAYS ask for more!

Depending on your aspirations after schooling: Yale Notre Dame HDS Duke If you have a strong Catholic identity and want to teach in that environment, it could boost ND above Yale. Likewise, if you have a strong Methodist identity and want to leverage Duke's name, it might move Duke up. "Political theology" and "ethics" is very broad so it's hard to get into specifics. That said, M* degrees are for finding specialization, so you're fine!