11Q13

You won't know if you don't try. 
You can compensate for the GPA in a couple obvious ways:
Do really well on the GRE
"For my last 96 credits, my cumulative GPA is at a 3.97." Put this very early on in your application essay, and point out that your abysmal GPA happened in a past life. Don't dwell on it, though, move on quickly.

Oof

I'm biased perhaps, but I think your first move should be to follow the money. Notre Dame is offering you more, and it's also very cheap to live there. There is also a strong theology community at ND as well, and the department is looked up to and highly respected across the rest of the university, unlike Yale where they will think of you as those weird wizards up on the hill. 

I'm biased perhaps, but I think your first move should be to follow the money. Notre Dame is offering you more, and it's also very cheap to live there. There is also a strong theology community at ND as well, and the department is looked up to and highly respected across the rest of the university, unlike Yale where they will think of you as those weird wizards up on the hill. 

April 15 is the official "s*** or get of the pot" day, regardless of when the offer was made. It's an official policy that virtually all US programs abide by.

It would be the resources of Harvard, the combined faculties of Notre Dame, the Harvard Divinity faculty of the ~1970-90s (before Stendahl retired, after Levenson joined, if there actually was any overlap), Princeton Seminary in the Metzger era, and be located on the campus of UC Berkeley (along with Danny Boyarin)...and throw in EP Sanders for good measure.
 
...a bit more dreamy than you were probably looking for

Harvard would open a lot more doors for you, though KU Leuven would honestly probably be just as good if not better for NT and EC. In a NT class at Harvard, you may only have a couple people who are Christians or actually studying the NT, simply because Harvard is a pluralistic place. Nasrallah is also leaving, so their NT faculty is kind of empty. All that said, Harvard is still the correct professional decision.

I did an MTS at HDS in Jewish Studies back in '12
Even if you're not particularly interested in studying early Christianity, having other students with interests in Christianity and the Bible generally I'm sure would help in terms of the overall academic environment. At HDS only a small part of the student body has any interest in anything to do with the Bible or Judaism or Christianity. I knew it wasn't a Christian seminary going in, but it didn't hit me that most of the people at HDS, including a lot of people in my classes would not know much about these subjects that I took for granted.
I wouldn't worry too much about Levenson leaving if your interest is Second Temple. Andy Teeter and Shaye Cohen are the two you should work with in Second Temple anyway.
That said, I would caution against focusing too much on "Second Temple Studies" as though focusing strongly on that will prepare you for a PhD or a job. There aren't jobs in Second Temple studies, and PhD programs would rather you focus on, say, Hebrew Bible or early Christianity and show that your emphasis is in the Second Temple context with your language prep and coursework. I say this as someone at Notre Dame, where Second Temple is still a big deal. We reject applicants every year because they are too focused on Second Temple Judaism or DSS to the exclusion of either HB or NT. 
 

I did an MTS at HDS in Jewish Studies back in '12
Even if you're not particularly interested in studying early Christianity, having other students with interests in Christianity and the Bible generally I'm sure would help in terms of the overall academic environment. At HDS only a small part of the student body has any interest in anything to do with the Bible or Judaism or Christianity. I knew it wasn't a Christian seminary going in, but it didn't hit me that most of the people at HDS, including a lot of people in my classes would not know much about these subjects that I took for granted.
I wouldn't worry too much about Levenson leaving if your interest is Second Temple. Andy Teeter and Shaye Cohen are the two you should work with in Second Temple anyway.
That said, I would caution against focusing too much on "Second Temple Studies" as though focusing strongly on that will prepare you for a PhD or a job. There aren't jobs in Second Temple studies, and PhD programs would rather you focus on, say, Hebrew Bible or early Christianity and show that your emphasis is in the Second Temple context with your language prep and coursework. I say this as someone at Notre Dame, where Second Temple is still a big deal. We reject applicants every year because they are too focused on Second Temple Judaism or DSS to the exclusion of either HB or NT. 
 

Sorry to hear it didn't go your way this year. The ND MTS is the most competitive I know of, and it's funded and then some. That is not a bad option IMHO. Seldom do people get in here without a two year master and something else, whether an MDiv, Fulbright, etc. It would also set you up pretty well in a year to apply to PhD's again, and ND especially since historically (though not recently) internal applicants do well.

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.

(;

Notre Dame, and Notre Dame. 
 
I considered giving Harvard a go again, but I think Notre Dame is my ideal program all around (except for the location of course). I was a student untimely born, had it been 20 years ago, with Stendahl, Koester, and Levenson, Harvard would have been a dream. Sooo, yeah, all my eggs in one basket. We'll see if that was a bad move. 
   
There were a couple international people there last year (Germany and UK)... they might have had to pay out of pocket the amount over Notre Dame's budget for the tickets, which was either 4 or 500 IIRC, but perhaps not. That's a very fair question to ask, so I wouldn't hesitate to email/call them to ask if you are invited to interview.  Beyond that, I can't really say. I know there were a couple others that interviewed earlier, and perhaps they would let you Skype interview if you couldn't afford it? Though perhaps not since you are literally shuffled from faculty office to office 6 or so times...
 
   
The Notre Dame adcomm met today, btw.

This question is being asked of current PhD students, those who have been admitted into a program and therefore have written a "successful" letter of intent/statement of purpose. For those of us about to apply (said in the gladiatorial mode of "we who are about to die, salute you!"), it would be very helpful to know how to parse the influx of input we receive about what one wants to concentrate upon in his or her statement. Among the items heralded as holding "first importance" in this document (which apparently really is of first importance), the following arise often:
 
-Intellectual evolution
-Areas of interest
-Fit with program
-Coursework/prep/language faculty (I guess a recounting of "stats")
-Personality/characteristics (ambitious/assiduous/collegial/intellectual/sycophantic)
-Persons of Interest
-Attraction to program
-Past scholarships/potential to attract funding
-Networking (I suppose these could be "hints" or explicit name-dropping)
-Achievements
 
Some of these categories are redundant or overlap significantly, and refining the categories would likely not contribute to the discussion. My question would be, rather, which among these would you rank and "very important" and why? What has your experience been? I have been told that establishing through research areas and project interests a good "fit" with the faculty is the most important piece of this document. Any extrapolation of this or any other insight would be most appreciated.

nope, never heard of it

I just retook it a couple weeks ago. I had to retake it because my scores expired. 
 
I honestly only spent a couple weeks preparing, which broke down to a few long haul sessions reviewing math and cramming vocab for the last week. I used the princeton review's most recent book to study, and it seemed to work well. I don't know math very well at all, so that was my biggest concern, and there were actually some question types in the exam which the book didn't prepare me for so watch out! I also did the free exams on the ETS website, I would definitely recommend doing those because they'll help you get down the pacing. 
 
You didn't ask, but I'll post my scores anyway because I was practically jumping up and down in the testing center when I got them and this is one of the few places where people might actually care  :
V: 166 Q: 156 AW: 5.5

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

Way less competitive than the top PhD programs for sure, though I've also gone through the past years to see how many they accept in the field of "Theology and Religion" in Germany and it's averaged about 1 or 2 a year. If they have a quota for the various fields (I have no idea if they do or don't) then it's a bit more competitive than the statistics would suggest, but still not horrible. Here are the acceptance rate stats for the last few years http://us.fulbrightonline.org/studyresearch-grant-application-statistics 

Germany, totally out of left field

Germany, totally out of left field

Germany, totally out of left field

Just turned down a life of job security and good pay in clinical psychology for Vanderbilt's PhD in Religion, Psychology, and Culture.

Happy discerning for the rest of you!

Take courses from people doing the kind of work you want to do, who are colleagues with the people you want to work with at the doctoral level, and who you think would write you good letters. If you can do both an introductory course and more advanced level (perhaps doctoral seminar) I would recommend that. The introductory course would allow you to demonstrate that you are head and shoulders above the other students (hey it's a reality), while a doctoral seminar allows you to demonstrate you can keep up with the best. Seminars tend to be better because they give you more face time and general interaction with the professor, but if it's a lecture where the professor leads a discussion session that could work just as well. 
 
My two cents.