xypathos

In almost all cases, assuming you're looking for a program here in the States - they (speaking to RS programs) aren't really going to care about German beyond reading level. By reading level, I mean your ability to understand the basics and being capable of translating a passage with use of a dictionary (usually permitted). I honestly don't think anyone is going to test oral skills to see if you can carry on a conversation in a technical manner. This might vary if you apply to political theory programs, I can't speak personally to that. If you have solid command of a language, I think you can get reading level up to a safe enough level for a reading exam fairly easily. Mileage will vary, naturally but most of my classmates have done it too since our stipends and tuition don't cover language courses if they're not vital to our proposed area of study. It'll depend on program but a lot of them prefer, some state it outright, an applicant to have one research language already done. So on that premise I'd advise to start in on French. If you're attending a MDiv program that has access to a PhD - HYCPD-etc., see about taking the reading exam, even if it's unofficial. At the very least it'll give you a gauge of your skills and if they're willing to make it official and put something on your transcript, that'll be a box you can already have checked off.

That's an incredibly serious charge to levy and I don't see a faculty member referencing that in their notification. So, I'm curious as to how they could possibly know.

Sure! I'm heading into class now but I'll send you a PM with my thoughts - just wanted you to know that I've seen this!

Funding at Oxford and UK schools in general is bad for US students. They do have some competitive offers but I think they tend to prefer DPhil students for them. That said, make sure you take a hard look at funding with other schools. Often Oxford is marginally more expensive, sometimes cheaper, so it's something to consider. I turned down an offer to Oxford in exchange for staying stateside at Vandy and I think, all things considered, it'd have been cheaper and more culturally awesome had I gone to Oxford. Nashville is astronomically expensive for grad students and most of us were living 30-45 minutes away from Nashville.

A little over a year ago I had to write a comp essay that I was struggling with. I knew what I needed to do but it was a case of writers' block and it was a rather philosophical piece on contemporary theodicy. Anyway, after missing my deadline and drawing from earlier conversations, my advisor invites me over to a working group of faculty and grad students that they're hosting at their house. In reality, we all got drunk (to be fair: It was more than a buzz but far less than being dangerous/unprofessional). The point was that we were all working on something and struggling, aka were overthinking it so the group was a fun gathering that used alcohol to get passed our blocks but also to bounce ideas off each other. With a stack of notes the next day I spent the next 48 hours finalizing it and it's probably the best writing I've done so far. So, clearly Luther was onto something! Props to the merit scholarship!

As I'm sure you've encountered, the biggest issue here is going to be cost but that's subjective for everyone. Part-Time is defined differently at each institution so that's something you'll need to find out. Some schools set anything less than 12 as part-time, for other's it's 9, etc. Your standard M.Div is 72 credits long so 12 credits a semester, giving you 3 years. If you don't take summer courses and/or transfer credits in, any less than 18 credits (9 a semester), and you can't graduate in 4 years. You probably already know all of this but just in case! 1. Union's Mdiv is 78 credits so somewhere you need to squeeze in two extra courses. Some institutions give credit for CPE summer/semester-long courses - anywhere from 3-6. I don't know Union's policy on CPE for academic credit. That said, at 9 credits a semester you wouldn't be able to graduate in four years, without summer courses and/or transferring in something. 2. Lancaster use to be a much more well known UCC seminary but has since become more of a regional school. My father went to Lancaster for his M.Div and loved it but this was back in the late 70s before I was born. We use to take family vacations to Lancaster because he missed the area so much. He's since passed away but I still go and visit myself. 3. I went to Vanderbilt and knew quite a few part-time students there. They all fell into broad categories of working in IT, medical doctors, or entertainment professionals (a lot of singers!) that were pursuing this passion part-time because their main job was too financially profitable to walk away from. Nashville is expensive and it's getting more so every year, very few VDS students can afford to live in Nashville proper so they commute in.

I was referencing one year post-M.Div degrees. Sorry, I should've been more clear about that! They're cash cows for the university and don't provide enough time to be of much benefit for most students.

I forget the exact numbers, and it does fluctuate a little each other, but Syracuse admits 2-4 M.A. students a year with full funding and no TA/GA obligations. From my unofficial interview there several years ago, all M.A. students are eligible to continue on into the Ph.D. through an internal application process (interviewer mentioned that in their nearly 30 years there they've only denied one internal application and that was because he kept taking courses in other departments and they no longer felt he was a suitable potential Ph.D. student in Religion). Most opt not to continue into the Ph.D. there but through no fault of the school - a lot of their M.A. graduates transition into another field, go onto higher ranked Ph.D. programs, or someone just doing it for personal reasons. FLAS funding at Syracuse is pretty pervasive though I can't speak to Religion specifically. I knew a lot of students in History, Sociology, and Political Science that had it. My wife did her Ph.D. in Disability Studies at Syracuse so we lived there for about five years - glad to talk about the city and school if needed!

Apologies! They weren’t interviewing when I applied and didn’t know that it had changed.

Yale also doesn’t interview.

It’s very well the school subscribes to notifying everyone on March 15. Tell us the name of the school and we can give a more direct answer.

Chicago doesn't interview. I suspect this is a troll or someone misunderstanding what the "interview" is. A faculty member can reach out if they need to clarify matters in someone's application, inorder to eliminate a candidate, but they're required to denote that it's not an interview. As a policy the University of Chicago strongly discourages interviews. The dean of the div school is adamantly opposed to interviews. They have strict policies in place to make sure even their internal applicants are kept aloof. I know for a fact that if a faculty member were interviewing candidates against a direct order from the dean, they'd rake them through the coals.

90% of social media content is going to be fine. If you're doing soft drugs in one, obnoxiously drunk, etc - that might rub someone the wrong way but those kind of pictures should be set to private/friends only anyway. The stuff that is going to get you in legitimate trouble is racism, sexism, etc. If you're someone heavily involved in social justice and advocacy, the academy tends to skew left but that's not a gamble I'd count on, esp. not in religious studies. 9/11 jokes and conspiracy theories will get you in trouble, trust me. Trolls never get tired.

I don't think anyone would hold that against you. Really, it's just them trying to find a means to work within the system that the school setup. I imagine most adhere to the rules but I know faculty that skirt them, or outright break them. For faculty that are deciding between two students, they'll sometimes Skype both of them (separately) and just run it as a "we're getting to know you, so you can also get to know us" and through some cognitive dissonance argue that it's not an "interview."

Yes. In particular there are schools that have a strict policy of no interviewing *stares at Yale* so faculty use social media to get an idea of who you are. Some faculty violate this but that's a slightly different issue. Academia.edu is a route that many check to see if applicants use. On a personal level, I strongly suggest people not use Academia as it's a front to steal your intellectual property and monetize it. I know for a fact that my advisor does extensive searches on everyone they might take on as a student. They also print it all out and keep a folder and for your annual review they show it to you. You can take that as you will but speaking to my own experience - my advisor is amazing and requires bimonthly meetings with all of their students over a meal. They go above and beyond to cultivate a personal relationship with you, check in on life stuff, make sure you're not studying too much, etc.

Personally, every single one, or at least feeling like I was very socially awkward. On the counter, the ones I thought I aced tended to be followed up with a rejection letter.

Back when I was applying to M* programs I had a LOR writer have a mental breakdown, quit his job, leave his family, and move to Iceland. It was almost two months late but I finally got in that third LOR and fortunately VDS was willing to work with me. As Admissions told me, this (a LOR spacing out) happens a lot and they're pretty liberally willing to work with people. That said, I'm sorry this happened to you! I'm glad that you found someone willing to step in though! EDIT: If, and only when, you ever feel comfortable do reach out to them. I'm still in a place of anger with my LOR writer and not able to do that.

That's fine. I doubt anyone will remember previous SOPs or care enough to look at a previous one. When I was applying to PhD programs I was pretty picky about the schools and faculty members that I wanted to work with, so that my SOPs were similar but catered to each school - so quite a bit of copy and pasting happened.

It’s applicants with poor preparation (bad grades, no M*, inappropriate coursework) and things like disastrously bad GRE scores that don’t survive the institution’s minimum. Regarding the M*, very few schools explicitly state that they won’t take students without a M* but a lot won’t take them. With GREs, usually there’s an institution minimum that is low 150V but then the department sets a screen (example) of 161 (really it’s whatever they think reflects their ideal student). 1-2 faculty are required to read all of the screen-out apps to see who should be moved back in. A number are always moved back in but you’re still fighting against a deficit. My school gets a number of NT/HB apps that loved biblical studies but only took 1-3 seminars with minimal language preparation and/or they didn’t sit down with an advisor about how their application needs to shift when applying to a graduate program in Arts & Sciences and to avoid confessional statements.

A lot. It depends on the program but a lot of people want to be NT scholars so I'd say that and ethics tends to always get the most applicants in any school. At my institution, of the ~150 I'd say close to a 1/4th are for NT but only half of those are taken seriously, so 20'ish.

Wycliffe can get you into a top program if you choose courses carefully, and communicate with your advisor what your intentions are ahead of time. Multiple M* degrees are becoming more common but plenty of people can get into a PhD program with one. If you do end up doing another degree at Yale, Princeton, etc - make sure it's at least two years. One year degrees, unless you already did a degree there, are worthless.

Blind reviews aren’t universal but some level of it is common. As far as connecting apps, generally when a student reaches out it’s a mix of “I’m interested in X, Y, and Z and I did my undergrad and/or grad at Schools A and B, etc.” Profs then note the candidates that they’re the most interested in and willing to throw some elbows for during review. It’s different with each school but at my current school and where I did my M*, field faculty could only vote on applicants to their field. They could read applicants from other fields and comment, but they couldn’t vote. So, while the department got ~150 applications, fields only got 10-20 making connecting names to applications very easy.

It’s a factor. Now, how much of a factor it is depends on the department, school, and individual faculty. As a whole, from my experience of working with Adcom panels, it’s of no direct benefit. Generally, hard identifiers (gender, race, etc) are scrubbed from the applications but given the expectation of prospects emailing faculty ahead of time and having a nominal relationship, it’s super easy to put apps to names. It always gets discussed but some of that is identity politics. For example, we had an individual who applied last year that had a good application but it wasn’t great. What stood out was that they were interested in the role of music in shaping ‘black Christianity.’ The “problem” is that the professors who were name dropped by the applicant knew that this person was white and they didn’t feel comfortable supervising a white student doing black Christianity. Take of that what you will but they were rejected. At a former school, I’m close with a professor that prefers working with evangelical Asian students (as in they’re moving to the US from Asia). They’re always given a boost by the prof.

On its own, Wycliffe is considerably less regarded than DYP, especially if you’re looking to transition back to US PhD programs. That said, the strength of Wycliffe is taking courses at other TST schools and at UoT proper. If you do this, it’ll benefit you tremendously.

I know late applicants aren’t welcomed but most schools I’ve encountered will take a late letter of recommendation. That said, I don’t know if Duke does! I’d suggest emailing Carol Rush for this kind of question. She’s listed as the GDR Program Office Coordinator or something like that. They’re generally the first point of contact for admissions questions.