11Q13

hmm fixed now... that was weird.

can anyone access the website of Brown's graduate school? I'm no expert on these things but it looks like its been hacked... The page doesn't load, and if you google "brown graduate school" you get this: www.brown.edu/gradschool/ Nov 5, 2011 – Generic viagra, cialis, levitra Online Pharmacy. Order cheap Viagra and many other generic Viagra online drugs. Lowest prices.

So what is everyone else doing between now and hearing back? I'll be in my final semester of my master's but I've taken extra coursework so I only have one class left to finish all my requirements. I'm still going to take a full load but it's nice to have a bit of pressure off. I'm also going to busy myself writing a couple apps for summer study which will help take up time in case I don't get in any place. I'm also brushing up on the languages which are on my CV but I haven't used recently... I have all the paradigms memorized in my head somewhere but my Greek is pretty rusty.

I think Harvard's is the earliest, around the start of February. I significantly revised my SOP after I submitted my app there, and they won't have my Fall grades available, so my hopes are pretty low. The rest I'm actually not sure. Anyone know when we should be hearing back from Brown, Notre Dame, Princeton, or Yale?

well, the last apps are in. Now I'm pessimistic and bored.

no one here lives without roommates. You should be looking to split a place with 3 or 4 other people. You should be able to find a place around 6 or 700

yeah i remember last year was way busier than now. what gives? Harvard apps are in, I feel like I have a snowballs chance in hell, but that's also how I felt before I got into the MTS

you might try kicking major ass on the GRE and submitting it as evidence that you are capable academically

You're right, I wasn't being clear enough in my chronology. It will only be more difficult to be clear in these tiny personal statements. I'm interested in Christian and Jewish origins in the context of one another. A rather minor difference in wording, but a big difference in meaning it seems. Well, I'm hardly surprised your best friend didn't rush to my defense. I am really struggling to see how you might be offended by a general observation about the reaction to the last generation of Jesus and New Testament research by Christians and Jews...as far as I'm aware this is widely observed. I put Judaism and jewishness in quotes because these are the terms that were used in the last generation of Jesus research by some of the watershed works, and which I, and a growing number of scholars beginning about that same time recognized to be inadequate terms. I avoid using "Judaism" and "Jewish" especially, when referring to this time period because I think it anachronistically connotes a continuity with contemporary Judaism and jewishness as a religious identity. It doesn't work in the sense that it privileges contemporary Judaism over Christianity as a "mother daughter" relationship, which, like you said, actually both emerged from the same milieu as contemporaries. I avoid the terms for their association with the concept of religion itself, which for Judaism came much later. Finally, I avoid the terms because they are etic. I used "Israelite," whenever possible, and when I wish to convey the ethnos or the cultic practices of said ethnos I use "Judaean" or "Judaeanism." Depending on what you mean by "jewish" it may be throughgoing in the New Testament or it could have nothing to do with it. http://books.google.com/books?id=dOf6HhffWO4C&lpg=PA295&ots=mrylNxIuRL&dq=TERMINOLOGICAL%20BOOBYTRAPS%20AND%20REAL%20PROBLEMS%20IN%20SECOND-TEMPLE%20JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN%20STUDIES&pg=PA295#v=onepage&q=TERMINOLOGICAL%20BOOBYTRAPS%20AND%20REAL%20PROBLEMS%20IN%20SECOND-TEMPLE%20JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN%20STUDIES&f=false so how's everyone else doing? (no offense!)

The ND MTS takes something like 20 students a year, perhaps less, and funds them all. I'd hazard to guess Harvard takes 50-100 MTS students a year, with no gurantee of full funding, and we still reject something like 4/5 applicants. More applicants for fewer spots basically. IIRC the Notre Dame statement of purpose is also really short, making it even harder. One thing you might do to "boost" your application is to contact a professor or two who you might like to work with. Something as simple as that can make your name go from a list of 100 other unknowns to "oh yeah, I got a nice email from this guy." It's not much, but better than nothing. Also, which Princeton?

Herr Wolf, Apart from languages which you mentioned, the biggest advantage of the MDiv is having more time to get to know professors. Find out who you need to know and get to know them. Welcome to HDS.

I certainly am sympathetic to your concern about "orthodoxy" at Harvard. I consider myself a moderate socially, politically, etc. and a bit toward the liberal side theologically...but at Harvard I often feel very conservative. On the other hand, the faculty is no more liberal or conservative than at BC (that's BCE at Harvard, haha ...joke!), and the MDiv is very flexible. You could take your shiny full tuition scholarship from Harvard and take nearly half your classes at BC if you wanted. I had been a full time volunteer for almost two years when I applied, and I have to say (and I mean this in the nicest way possible, you're obviously very smart), limiting yourself to three schools is a bit nearsighted. You should apply to all the schools that you feel called to apply to. This is the next three years of your life, these application fees are a drop in the bucket in the long term. Also just fyi about the BTI libraries, you would only have access to Harvard's Div school library. Edit: oh and yeah about Notre Dame. Best funding at any school there is! Especially at the PhD as far as I'm aware. Because of the cost of living, every PhD student at Notre Dame that I know owns their home.

I do think some aspects of rabbinic Judaism come from exchanges with Christianity, if not imitation of Christianity if you'd like to put it that way. My knowledge of the arguments for this have come entirely from Jewish scholars actually, one of which would be a PhD advisor. I do think we can learn new things about rabbinic Judaism based on what's going on in early Christianity, or "the context of early Christianity". It's been the counter-swing to the last generation of historical Jesus scholarship uncovering Jesus' "Judaism" and the "jewishness" of the New Testament. Jews seemed to like this quite a lot, while the "alarm bells" were going off for Christians. I do appreciate your concern for phrasing things with sensitivity to contemporary religious communities, it certainly is a minefield. I'll be sure to run my statement through some of my Jewish studies friends and mentors.

I'll throw myself in here since I'm procrastinating writing my personal statement as I write this. I'm on a pendulum swinging wildly between overly optimistic and despair. I exchange emails with a potential advisor, they seem to like me, I have a face to face meeting with a potential advisor and I'm shoved in and out the door in 15 minutes. One of my recommendors that is quite fond of me even told me not to have high expectations for being accepted (though this was specifically to Harvard). I know he will write me a good recommendation, and my other two recs are from people at the top top of their field so I'm not sure how to feel about this. One thing I'm afraid is really going to be a dark spot on my record is having a B+ and a B on my transcript from the Spring. With these due dates at Dec 1 and Dec 15, are they even going to see my grades from this Fall semester?? The B+ is from a notoriously difficult professor, though he also happens to be the director of one of the PhD's I'm applying to! The B is in a language so that's not that bad, the TF that was teaching it had an absurd pedagogy, and I've earned an A in a class in the same language since then. The way it actually shows on my transcript makes it even worse, I was actually taking 5 classes in the Spring, and earned A's in the other 3, but because one of the 5 was a year long class, the A shows up with the Fall semester grades rather than the spring, even though the main project for it was heavily weighted to the Spring. So basically, it makes it look like I did really awesome in the Fall, got straight A's and then crashed and burned in the Spring semester. /rant EDIT: to the Notre Dame folks in here! The Notre Dame CJA PhD is one of my top choices but I'm still looking into who would be an ideal advisor and could use your input. Conceptually my studies focus on understanding Christianity in the context of other Israelite religion in the centuries around the turn of the Era, and rabbinic literature in the context of early Christianity. Practically I imagine this would involve continued work in the “Jewish” aspects of early Christian gospels and Q, the issue of the “parting of the ways,” “Jewish-Christianity,” the development of religious identity in antiquity, and Christian and Jewish portrayals of one another like the Adversos Ioudaios tradition and the Minim. I'm also interested in working in Syriac literature for the way it uniquely sheds light onto these issues.

Harvard is pretty good with funding, most students get full tuition remission. You'd probably get in with your stats.

Your stats sound good, and I'm sure being a Fulbright will make you particularly attractive. Your SOP is the most important part, so make sure the non-subjective parts are their best. The religion, ethics and politics concentration is first or second in terms of the number matriculating so it might be a more competitive concentration. Just give it your best and leave it in God's hands.

I'm applying to doctoral programs at universities that are a little far for a visit to the campus. Seeing how SBL is a place where all these guys will be at the same place at the same time, is it unusual to ask to meet with them there? I imagine everyone is busy, and scholars will mostly want to chum around with each other rather than the peon graduate students. Anyone have any experience doing this?

I'll save you a few hundred bucks, don't bother trying to get into Harvard.

so...can anyone tell me a place I can host the CV that will allow me to track the hit stats on it? Google docs lets me upload it and display it well enough, but I can't view any statistics. I could upload it to my blog, but I don't think there's a way to natively integrate it so there's no download involved. Halp.

Both programs will look the same to PhD committees. I don't know about the funding for the MA, but the funding for the MTS is abysmal: ~20% for all admittances except for 5 that receive a full tuition. I applied knowing I was really only applying for 1 of 5 spots, if you are applying to the MTS as well, I suggest you adopt a similar mentality. The MDiv on the other hand has better funding.

I'd give Harvard Divinity MDiv a shot. Being SDA will give you a big boost for diversity which they're always looking for and it looks like you've got pretty good stats. I wouldn't call Fuller a feeder school (except for one guy I know that went to Claremont after [but whether Claremont is a top school or not is another thing]). As for other schools, Harvard, Notre Dame, Yale, and Chicago are all incredibly incestuous, then in the south there's Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, some other "feeder" type schools depending on what exactly you're studying could be Princeton TS, Boston College, University of Texas, perhaps a few others

Basically, if they want you, they won't let that get in the way. I know a few people that did PhD's at say, Yale, who did not meet one of the requirements but was accepted anyway. There is no difference between an MTS and an MAR at most top schools like Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, and so forth. It's a formality, like the distinction between the PhD and ThD at Harvard. When I finish my master's I will not have taken a single class in theology. The distinction between the MTS/MAR/MA and the MDiv is more clear, but it's rather common here at Harvard for students with no interest in ministry to do the MDiv because it allows you to do a third year of course work, basically a three year MTS. An MDiv's length of work is 3 years, while to most, and MDiv or equivalent suggests academic ministerial preparation. Ministerial preparation is not necessary for the ThD at Harvard.

<---HDS MTS student Yes you can certain emphasize political philosophy etc in your MTS as long as you satisfy the requirements of your concentration (which are themselves rather flexible). I know one of our MTS's that just graduated was an advisor to some senator before matriculating and had similar objectives. Any Harvard student has full access to take classes from any other Harvard graduate school provided they meet the prereqs. It's difficult for me to imagine adcoms looking at a Harvard degree with disapproval at any rate... There is no difference whatsoever between an MTS and an MA, it depends on what classes you take to get the degree. Top tier religion PhD's will expect a master's in the same field. Most Harvard master's students don't just transfer to another Harvard department for the PhD, as competitive as the master's is, the PhD is a whole new level. Most HDS students that apply to Harvard PhD's get rejected, that's the reality. Harvard, Notre Dame and Chicago divinity schools require the GRE for their master's students. Though the website says the ThD requires an MDiv or equivalent, it actually doesn't. That said, you would need a MDiv's length of graduate work to really be competitive at all.

One of my friends just finished an MAR at Yale (now entering PhD at UVA) and came from a small bible college in her undergrad. Yale especially, seems not to mind. As I'm sure they would tell you, it's your whole application that they will consider. I myself went to an evangelical university with a reputation for being conservative, lo and behold Harvard wanted me.

I think it depends on where you are applying. Evangelical divinity school that people will have heard of? That has professors (and more importantly, your recommenders) that people will know? You might consider a 1 year ThM instead of a full two year degree, it will not be difficult to get into a ThM at the top tier schools with your credentials, and it's a way to show your chops at what might be perceived as tougher schools. It's common to do a research language in a ThM as well, though unfortunately ThM's are commonly unfunded. If you do go the two year MA route you would need to explain why you need to do another MA in your application (you should contact programs about this, I think Harvard might have a problem with this), but assuming you can get past that, you shouldn't have much trouble being accepted. Perhaps apply to a couple MA's as backups (to say, Yale, etc) along with your PhD apps.