11Q13

I would apply to the Harvard ThM. They can't get more than a dozen applicants to it, it will make your CV stand out more, it will give you time to do more language, it will give you a chance to take classes with any of the professors you would like to work with at Harvard, BC, and BU because of the BTI relationship, and from the sound of things you are an ideal candidate for it.

Vanderbilt's offer was better than Harvard for the first year, but Harvard bumped me up to full tuition remission in my second year.

I have a friend at HDS who is doing a ThM now, after finishing an MTS last year, so add Harvard to the list of exceptions

ND doesn't have Hebrew Bible or New Testament per se. They've adopted the (superior) diachronic model of Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity. Who has retired jobsessed? I'd say ND has one of the strongest faculties there is if you aren't dead set on dividing them into NT vs OT/HB

The uniqueness of your background and preparation will go a long way with the Harvard adcom. Don't sweat the GRE. Also, Focault is bigger than Jesus there, so be sure to regurgitate a bit of that in your SOP as an offering.

As far as funding (based on my experience when I was accepted to Vandy and Duke a few years ago): Vanderbilt is good. They will give you an initial offer, ask them (politely) for more and they will bump it up. Duke was the worst of all the schools I was accepted to, only around 30% tuition if I recall correctly. On the other hand, their MDiv is well funded, something to think about.

I was only offered these courses last week, and I have nothing whatsoever prepared. I can borrow syllabi from professors that have taught these courses, but I will certainly need to adapt them to my strengths and weaknesses in my knowledge of the subjects. The Spring semester begins Jan 7. Am I behind? Should I have a syllabus done already? Is there any kind of standard timeline? These are the first classes I've taught so any advice or direction would be great.

If you're applying to a lot of programs like me, one technique I employ is to reuse (with minor tweaks) the same statement for each school, except for one "fit" paragraph where you, well, show that you fit the program. My results are unproven of course.

Simple. Don't apply to schools that won't fund you.

I applied to half a dozen top programs last year and submitted my GRE scores as part of the application. I'm reapplying to these schools and several others this year. I haven't retaken the GRE because my scores are good enough, but I'm wondering if I'll need to resend my scores from ETS if the schools are still in my "score recipients" list. I don't think I need to, but I wanted to be sure, since there's nothing on the website that clarifies this...

If there is a better forum for this please let me know.... I'm submitting about 15 PhD applications this year, each of which is incredibly redundant with regard to the personal data and academic history I have to enter into the online application forms. I know there are browser add-ons that will automatically fill out things like your name and street address, which would save me about 30 seconds. I'm looking for something that will auto-fill all the other fields that I keep having to fill like the names of my past colleges, GPAs, etc. Something like this would save me a boatload of time, any help would be much appreciated!

PMed you

at the risk of running this further into the ground, I just though I'd ask, how many programs are you applying to and how many would be too many? Even my short list has 13 right now, and I feel like that's too many, but I also want to make sure I have some back up programs. My main concern isn't doing all the apps myself, but asking my references writers to submit so many...

Oh, and does anyone know about Colombia? As I’ve been trudging through these faculty profiles I’ve been seeing a number of Colombia PhDs, yet, Colombia doesn’t seem to have much in terms of religious studies faculty that I've seen. I know NYC has a consortium of sorts, but I'm probably missing something...

I would definitely give Notre Dame a look. "Intertextuality" seems like a big thing there, though it might be more DSS, LXX than NT. Here is a list of the joint faculty: http://www.du.edu/duiliffjoint/Faculty.html By "stepped down" do you mean Brock left the school? The pickings there do seem a bit slim, but Dr. Eisenbaum definitely sounds interesting. The other big thing for me is the funding. I'm really only considering places that offer full tuition remission plus stipend, anything less seems too financially irresponsible to me. They do have two spots that receive tuition plus stipend, but from the sound of things they have a less than ideal standard offer. To be perfectly honest, AJ Levine often rubs me the wrong way... as a contributor, editor, etc, she seems fine, and her contribution to the field are beyond doubt, but in her monographs it's like she's trying to be controversial and edgy with 30-40 year old material that's no longer controversial. Based on how frequently she mentions she's a liberal feminist jew my theory is she's writing to Nashville rather than the general population. That said, I've never met her, we might get along. I was accepted to Vandy for my MTS and I nearly went, so I might add them back to my list again. I would probably have to meet Levine first to find out if I would last. While having a Syriac specialist would be nice, not having one isn't the end of the world, it's just one (sub)field I think hasn't been completely plowed.

Yeah, Yale's program remains structured in the old fashioned way, ie. New Testament, Judaic Studies, and Old Testament are all distinct fields without the overlap most places have been adopting. Syriac Christianity is an area that, more or less, requires this more interdisciplinary structure to drum up enough need: OT people for the lingustics, NT people for the diversity of early Christianity, and Judaic Studies for the relationship to rabbinic Judaism. That said, I do have a friend that recently finished her PhD in the Judaic Studies program and heavily emphasized Syriac in her work. Greg Sterling, the new dean, is a Coptic specialist (Copticist?), though who knows how much teaching responsibility he'll have. I will definitely give Marquette a look. This is my problem exactly, I only really know the big name places like Harvard, Yale, etc., I would have never thought to look at Marquette. Religion department. Though I feel your pain about departments being closed. I had planned to apply to the joint PhD with UC Berkeley and GTU, but they aren't accepting applications this year as they too are restructuring.

It's about that time folks... I'm exhausted from scouring school websites trying to pick out useful information so I thought I would ask you folks and it's about time we got one of these threads going. I'm interested in Judaism and Christianity ca 500-500, especially social identity, "the parting of the ways," historically neglected corners of the aforementioned such as "Jewish-Christianity" and Eastern/Syriac Christianity, and the more standard areas in New Testament, Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple. As of now, I'm certainly applying to: Brown Duke Harvard Notre Dame Princeton Toronto UPenn Yale In trying to expand this list, and would really appreciate any recommendations! It's only September and I'm already stressing out.

Hey all, A couple quick questions: I took classes at several universities for credit which were not my degree granting institution. The website says I have to upload the transcripts for these classes but there isn't any place in the online application designated for me to upload them that I can see. Am I missing something? I've written everything I feel like I need to say in both my Statement of Grant Purpose and my Personal Statement with space left over in both. Is that a bad thing?

I hear they're more than great coats... I'm also in a bit of a wardrobe conundrum, because I'm only 26 and look young for my age as well. I'll be actually teaching a class, not just TAing. Waving my Harvard degree around usually gets people to shut up about my qualifications, but I've invested in plenty of professional clothes. My issue is that I'm in a particularly warm climate, and while I'll be on campus probably every day, the class will only meet twice a week. Should I go the extra step of dressing up every day I'm on campus, or in the Starbucks nearby where are the students are for that matter, or should I only worry about class days? On the one hand, it might be awkward to run into a student when I'm wearing a Metallica tank top with skateboard in hand, on the other hand, I AM young, and don't want to be forced to adopt unnatural geriatric dress in my day to day life!

I can't speak to the other places, but Harvard likes non-traditional applicants like yourself, and it sure seems like a lot of the MDivs have no prior training in religious studies...

So, I'm applying to Germany (at-large) and this essay would be super helpful, except it's four pages... am I missing something?

Sorry, I (HDS MTS '12) have to contradict some of the stuff in this thread: Your GRE score matters very little, I would say least of all the application components, don't bother retaking it. You don't need to visit HDS, it probably wouldn't help your chances that much, if any. With the PhD I'd say it's pretty crucial, but for the Master's, an introductory (short) email to a professor or two you'd like to work with would be fine. The MDiv and the MTS don't differ in funding for most people. Before Dean Graham finished his tenure he told me they were at full funding for about 90% of the students now. Being unique does matter, but what unique is for divinity schools in general, what is unique for HDS and what HDS thinks is unique are all different things. Like someone mentioned above, applying to study the New Testament is about as vanilla as it gets in divinity schools generally, but far less so at HDS, while applying to study queer feminist ecology would get you laughed out of most seminaries but wouldn't surprise anyone at HDS. Similarly, I'm fairly certain that the Women, Gender, Sexuality, etc concentration is the most heavily saturated at HDS, so it might be harder to get into that area than New Testament. What do you want to study? If it's ministry, apply to the MDiv, if its not, apply to the MTS. If your application reads like an MTS app and you apply to the MDiv, the ad com is going to think "why is this person applying to the MDiv?" Actually, they probably won't even have that question since HDS is privy to MDiv imposters, people who only apply as MDivs for the extra year, and that would probably be a count against you. On the other hand, if you're interested in studying Islam, which is my educated guest, your chances are good. It's one of the concentrations HDS is struggling to build so an applicant will probably get a longer look. If you're looking for a trick for a leg up, that would be it. Apply to a concentration HDS is trying to strengthen. If your recs and statement are strong, I'd say your chances are good to very good.

I'm looking into applying for a Fulbright and it looks like the problem we have in the US sorting out Theology from Religious Studies from etc. is even worse there... I'm looking at Tübingen and they have a faculty of Protestant Theology, a faculty of Catholic Theology, and a faculty of Humanities. Within the faculty of Humanities there is a department of Religious Studies, an Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and a couple others that may or may not be relevant. Generally, I study Christianity and Judaism 500BCE-500CE, anyone have a clue where I fit?

can anyone provide me with any instruction about how to solicit an invitation (that sounds strange) from a foreign university? I have my eye on Germany, and I have an idea of which university I would like to affiliate with, but I don't know anyone there... Do I just send a cold email?

I hope this is the correct place to ask this. I finished a Master's in May at Harvard and am returning to my undergrad, a small private college, to teach one or two classes, and hopefully pick up another part-time job as a Graduate Writing Assistant (that is, assisting graduate students with their writing, not being a graduate student that is a writing assistant). I'm pretty sure I know the answer to my first question so I'll get that out of the way. In the humanities adjunct market there is next to no room for salary negotiation, is that correct? My primary question is about something I think is a bit odd on the Graduate Writing Assistant application, they ask me to fill in a line with my "minimum salary." I have no idea how to answer this question...I feel like giving my "minimum salary" is going to handicap if not eliminate any negotiation for competitive pay, whatever that is. Has anyone here been a writing assistant, or know how much one makes? It is part-time, so I'm assuming they want an hourly wage. Google returns nothing in terms of what a part-time Graduate Writing Assistant makes, let alone anything about specific qualifications such as having a Master's from an Ivy that was writing focused. I also have experience in about half a dozen languages if that is relevant.