bioarch_fan

No, a bibliography isn't needed because you shouldn't have anything in them to reference. What you should be stating is what your interests are and the type of project that you would want to work on. They don't expect you to have a full proposal written out, so references would be highly unordinary. So if you don't have any...that is 100% okay.

Honestly my paper that I submitted with my applications was a paper written for my history department in undergrad. So just as long as it's your strongest writing sample that's all that really matters.

Honestly my paper that I submitted with my applications was a paper written for my history department in undergrad. So just as long as it's your strongest writing sample that's all that really matters.

I applied to 5 MA schools:
East Carolina- Still waiting to hear back but I was accepted and awarded funding for one of my top universities, so I'll decline the offer if accepted there.
North Carolina State University- Waitlisted
University of Central Florida- Accepted without funding wanted to go here but can't do that without funding
University of West Florida- Rejected...very sad because my POI there was amazing and does exactly what I want to do
Mississippi State University- Accepted with funding for 2 years...accepted admissions!!!!
 
I plan on visiting Mississippi State after graduation at the end of April/beginning of May, then I can meet the professors, students, and staff that I'll be working with. And looking at apartments for next year!!!!
Good luck everyone in your future endeavors!!!

I'm not doing my PhD yet, but everyone that I've talked to, including POIs, have said that what should truly matter is the concepts used. That should match your POI more than geography. That's how my MA admissions both were. Not many people work in my specific region of the world doing what I want to do, so I have to just go off of concepts.

I almost applied to Reno but decided against it. It's still in the early stages of its graduate school specialty in bioarchaeology. But they have an amazing dental anthropologist on staff I was going to work with. I just didn't have the money to apply to too many schools. So I decided to take it off my list.
But congrats!!! You'll have a good time making choices I'm sure.

I applied to 5 MA schools:
East Carolina- Still waiting to hear back but I was accepted and awarded funding for one of my top universities, so I'll decline the offer if accepted there.
North Carolina State University- Waitlisted
University of Central Florida- Accepted without funding wanted to go here but can't do that without funding
University of West Florida- Rejected...very sad because my POI there was amazing and does exactly what I want to do
Mississippi State University- Accepted with funding for 2 years...accepted admissions!!!!
 
I plan on visiting Mississippi State after graduation at the end of April/beginning of May, then I can meet the professors, students, and staff that I'll be working with. And looking at apartments for next year!!!!
Good luck everyone in your future endeavors!!!

It all truly depends on your interests in bioarchaeology. If you're mostly interested in what can be seen with the eyes then you'd be fine with just any osteology class offered in your anthropology department and maybe anatomy from a biology department. If you're interested in more in depth analysis of diet, migration, more health that isn't evident directly on the bone, etc. then I would suggest also looking at chemistry or something of the sort. It's also helpful to have a lower level genetics course, but that's not exactly necessary either.
If you want to talk more I can try and help you out as much as I can. Just PM me sometime.

I know you've heard it numerous times already, but it's rarely a good idea to stay at the same university for both your bachelors and your PhD. I know OSU is an amazing program (I go to Ohio University and have a friend at OSU), but branching out and getting other scholar's perspective is sometimes good. 

This week was amazing for me. I spent the week in Rome, Italy with the History Department and made some amazing friends and had the time of my life. Then mid-way through the week I received an email from University of Central Florida notifying me that I was accepted into the program (funding to be announced)...I was so excited about receiving this email and had a celebratory night out with friends that night. The next night I received an email from Mississippi State University with another acceptance (this one with 2 years funding) while I was at the same bar as the previous night. Both of these acceptances made my week better than it already was!!!

I hope you get good news soon!

I personally found emailing the professors a better use of my time than not.  When I emailed the professors and discussed my interests and a possible thesis project, I was better able to see how I would fit in there.  If they emailed back with just the general information and didn't seem excited to talk to me then I left it at that and decided to not apply there.  But if I received very good feedback with a lot of excitement then those were the schools that stayed on my list.  It's better to talk to the professors before you apply so you can see how their interaction with you would be.
I also suggest emailing professors to even check to see if they are accepting graduate students.  I had planned on applying to one school and after I emailed him I found out that he wasn't even accepting students for the semester that I would be entering.  So that would have been a) a waste of time that I could have used to perfect other applications and b) money that could be used on other applications and other necessities.
So personally, I say you should email them and talk to them.  Get a feel for them as a person and definitely to check if they're even accepting students.

You also should remember that most university offices are closed starting December 24-January 4. So if you have applications due on January 1, then it would be best to contact those departments and tell them the situation. I had to do that with two of my schools because my grades were due this past Wednesday but the transcript wasn't going to be sent out until either Friday or this coming Monday, which means the schools wouldn't receive the transcripts before the deadline. So I contacted my departments, told them, and they were understanding since I wanted to wait until grades were submitted for Fall semester.
If the applications aren't due until January 15, then you should be fine. I know how my school operates is they'll send the transcripts out and it'll take a couple days for the graduate school to receive the transcript and put it in my file. I would suggest calling the graduate school on Monday and see what they suggest. But if you have any due on January 1st, you're also going to have to contact the department and see what they say.

Truly, the only place where I have seen any hesitancy about applying to graduate school as an undergraduate student has been this forum. Never has a professor said this to me when discussing graduate school with them, and current graduate students have assured me this is not a big deal--many students among their cohorts came straight from undergrad. 
Even if we don't get in anywhere, this application process has not been a lesson in futility. Personally I've learned a lot about myself as an academic, researcher, and person. Enjoy the holiday season, anthrostudentcyn, and try to relax! Maybe get off this forum for a little bit, and come back at the end of January. As an obsessive-perfectionist myself, and a great, passionate lover of anthropology and academia and research, my brain easily can go crazy on here with all of you other obsessive-perfectionists (with whom I really enjoy talking nevertheless, my peers!). Therefore, I limit myself to only a couple of hours a week, or else I can quickly fall into the rabbit hole and spend hours obsessing over stats for the past three years of who got into my schools, when decisions came out, did I screw up my chances by writing "Dear Professor X" in my email instead of "Greetings Professor X," because puppydog12345 said "greetings" in his email to the same professor, etc. etc. (just really nutty stuff). Instead of doing that, I am going to read a bunch of ethnographies and novels over my Christmas break, and maybe re-watch Arrested Development or Man in the High Tower. I may also work on my thesis, a bit, and turning it into a publishable article. If I don't get in come late January-February, I'll have spent my time being productive rather than obsessing about something totally out of my control at this point. By the way, it sure would make an interesting piece to study the superstitions and rituals of anthropology applicants while they wait to hear about graduate school admissions, don't you think?
Anyway, cheers to everyone and happy holidays. Let's be proud of the work that we've done! I know I sure am. 

From my understanding, it usually depends on the professor in question.  Most of them probably won't be willing to take on graduate students but will be willing to sit in on the committee or something of the sort.  I'd say just email them and ask if they are willing to accept graduate students or participate in another capacity.

While I'm not in grad school yet, from what I've heard from numerous people is that they're not as important.  Most schools will use them as a determination between candidates and as fellowships/assistantships.  So I wouldn't worry too much if it's a low score.  From my understanding, the most important aspects of your applications would be the letter of reference, writing sample (if required), SOP, and to an extent your GPA.  People can explain why they have a poor GPA or a poor GRE.  But it's hard to explain away a horrible reference, writing sample, or SOP.  So just as long as you focus very heavily on those aspects you should be fine.

I would personally say if you don't want to go for your PhD yet then to just apply to MA programs.  If you decide that you want to go the PhD route later and the school offers a PhD program, then you can apply to that program.  I think it would look bad that you originally applied for a PhD but quit after a MA and then you want to try again.

I agree with this statement, but also would like to say that some MA/MS programs do have funding for their students.  It may not be as much as PhD funding, but it's a decent amount.  I've found a couple programs that don't have much funding because they don't have out of state tuition, so it's cheaper there anyways.  So when talking to professors, ask about the funding situation at the specific school.

Yeah I understand exactly where you're coming from.  Since you don't really want to relocate, that does limit the school choices drastically though.  Especially if you're wanting specific things out of a program.  If you ultimately want to do anything bioarchaeology or zooarchaeology related, then you should definitely find programs that have professors dealing in those as your POI.  You can add other professors to be on your committee in other areas that you're interested in working for a thesis.  That's what I plan on doing with mine at least.  I'll have my major professor as my thesis advisor and then other faculty members, either in the department or outside the department that have expertise either in my region or in my topical areas.  So when looking at programs, find schools that have every possible thing you might want to do.  Look around the university in history departments, classics departments, art history departments, etc. and see if there are professors in those departments that can possibly help out with a thesis.
If you don't have cities you want to live in around the ocean then I would honestly nix the maritime programs unless you are more willing to move to those areas in the future.  But there's something else you should think of.  Maritime doesn't always mean around an ocean.  It could be a river, i.e. the Mississippi, or a lake, i.e. any of The Great Lakes.  You also wouldn't necessarily HAVE to live around a body of water like this to do maritime archaeology.  I think you'd just have to travel more to do your research or field schools.  But obviously being around a body of water for maritime might be more beneficial than not.
On the topic of not having much help at your current university, I would say talk to scholars at museums or if your university has archaeologists in the history department or a classics department then talk to them.  They can still give you a great deal of information.  If your department can't help much, they can also give you ideas of who you could talk to that could help more.  Talk to your advisor and see what they say.  If they say they can't help too much since its not their specialty then you should ask if they recommend doing something else to get help.

What I would say is to do something that you will be interested in doing for the rest of your life.  If you're extremely interested in maritime archaeology, then do the TAMU program.  I looked into doing my Masters there but decided against it since they don't have as big of a bioarchaeology program.  They center on maritime archaeology.  If that's something you're interested in you could also look into University of West Florida.  They have a big maritime program as well.  And they have a field school in the Gulf every summer I believe.  I'm slightly interested in maritime as well, but mostly as it pertains to skeletal material and how ship wrecks and osteology can tell us about the individuals on board.
Something else you should think about though, is if you're wanting to do CRM that is not maritime and is strictly terrestrial, then maybe doing a program that was applied archaeology or something would be good.  But you said that you've done field schools before, so that might not be as important.  All you need to do is prove that you have excavation experience.  I have a friend that specialized in bioarchaeology and she works at a CRM firm as an archaeologist because she did a field school at our undergrad school.  Some CRM firms do have a maritime component to them too.  It all depends on where they're at exactly.
But when it comes to archaeology/anthropology organizations, I think that they would be viewed the same.  If you're doing a Masters program that requires a thesis, or has a thesis option, you will be able to be RPA certified.  That's a major thing if you want to do CRM or do fieldwork in the future.  But in the end, you need to figure out what exactly you want to do with the rest of your life.  Do you want to do bioarchaeology, archaeology, cultural, etc.?  If you want to do archaeology do you want to do maritime, terrestrial, etc. in America, Europe, South America, etc.?  There's a lot of things to think about when making this decision.  I have been thinking about it for almost 2 years when I started my grad school search.  The only person that can truly answer your questions is yourself though.  If you want to do bioarchaeology, which I want to think you mentioned before, then you should really go to a program that has a bioarchaeologist on staff and do your specializing in that.  Some programs have the option to where you can combine historical archaeology and bioarchaeology together.  That's probably what I'll be doing since I love both.
If you have more specific questions you can PM me anytime and I can try and help as much as I can.  Like I said, I've been doing the grad school search for years now and my undergrad program doesn't have the best advising for future graduate students.  So doing this on my own has opened my eyes that maybe some programs don't have that much help either.

I personally found emailing the professors a better use of my time than not.  When I emailed the professors and discussed my interests and a possible thesis project, I was better able to see how I would fit in there.  If they emailed back with just the general information and didn't seem excited to talk to me then I left it at that and decided to not apply there.  But if I received very good feedback with a lot of excitement then those were the schools that stayed on my list.  It's better to talk to the professors before you apply so you can see how their interaction with you would be.
I also suggest emailing professors to even check to see if they are accepting graduate students.  I had planned on applying to one school and after I emailed him I found out that he wasn't even accepting students for the semester that I would be entering.  So that would have been a) a waste of time that I could have used to perfect other applications and b) money that could be used on other applications and other necessities.
So personally, I say you should email them and talk to them.  Get a feel for them as a person and definitely to check if they're even accepting students.

You should visit the official page if you haven't yet:
http://www.nsfgrfp.org/applicants/application_components/choosing_primary_field

Since you don't have too many professors that work in the area you're interested in, you could talk to professionals in the community, including archaeologists, museum personnel, or other professors at other universities.  They could give you insight into what you could do.  I'm doing the bioarchaeology side of things, but I have a love of the classics.  Which is why I'm combining the two and doing classical bioarchaeology (especially Ancient Roman bioarchaeology, but I will do Ancient Greece and Egypt, as well as medieval Europe).  So there are definitely ways to combine things that you like.  That's the wonderful thing about anthropology, there's so much to do and love.  I've been in love with archaeology since I was a little kid, admittedly from Indiana Jones, but after watching Bones I got into forensic anthropology and then one of my professors mentioned that I should also look in bioarchaeology.  So professors can give you a lot of detail, even if it's not their specialty.  Talk to your professors anyways and see what they say.  Attend a conference and listen to as many talks as possible, that always helps to decide more about what you want to do.  The Archaeological Institute of America national conference is June 6-9 in San Francisco, the American Anthropological Association annual meeting is November 18-22 in Denver, and the Society for American Archaeology is April 6-10 in Orlando.  There are also many regional, statewide, and sometimes city-wide meetings that take place periodically.  Check them out and see what sounds interesting.
 
But before you decide on anything about graduate school you need to find out what you're interested in since this is the most important aspect of doing the dreadful search, I started with 30 schools and FINALLY dwindled them down to 10 that I'm applying to.  So it's very much possible if you can find a specific interest that moves you.  

It does sound like an amazing opportunity.  You could always check with your school and see if they'd accept the credits as transfer.  Sometimes they can find equivalent courses, my school did that for me when I transferred in.  But you don't need to do that because it sounds like your GPA is pretty good.  Most schools look at the last 2 years (Sophomore and Junior) when you apply from what I've heard.  Plus your major GPA is perfect.  So I don't see why you'd have a problem.  Maybe try taking the GRE first and see where you'd land.
What kind of graduate degree are you looking at getting?  One in anthropology, museum studies, or what?  That should be the first thing you figure out so then you can ask the right people the right questions.  If you have doubt about whether you'd be a good fit for the program, you could also email professors from these universities and strike up a conversation with them.  They're usually more than happy to help you if you ask for it.
But again, with your GPA and with your experience doing internships and field schools, I don't see why you'd have a problem getting into a good program honestly.

I know this is a bit early to start a discussion on this, but I thought since some people are preparing for applications now it would be a great time to talk to other people drudging through the same thing.  I thought it would be nice to introduce ourselves talking about our area of interests, where we want to apply to, and where you're at in preparing for grad school.  Maybe this will give other people the ideas of what they should be preparing for as well.
 
I guess I'll start since I'm the one starting the thread.  
 
I've done quite a bit to prepare myself for grad school.  I've been on a research project with two of my department's professors, one of which is my advisor, but I've recently dropped out of doing it because I'm also starting my senior thesis this summer.  I am working on a thesis, by my own choosing, on a subject that is interesting to me.  I'm looking at prison records at two of our penitentiaries from the 1918 influenza pandemic and seeing how the flu affected the prison's population and hopefully how they differed since they are different types of prisons.
 
I am finishing my BA in the 2014-15 school year and will be graduating Spring 2015 with a major in anthropology and a double minor in classical civilizations and history.  My main area of interest is in Roman bioarchaeology.  I want to learn more about the health of the general population, not just the aristocracy.  I think gladiatorial health would be interesting to learn about because we mostly hear about how they died, mostly in combat, but we don't hear much about the diseases that some of them might have had.  But along with that, I'm also interested in a paleopathological analysis of the Mediterranean area as a whole.  Part of my interest lies in the bubonic plague/black death and I'm interested in how the Italian strain of it is different than the London strain, not just the 14th century plague, but also the plague of Justinian (6th century CE) as well.
 
I'm actually planning on applying to quite a few schools, approximately 10, so I'm hoping my recommenders don't mind.  :/  I just want to keep my options open and have a better chance of getting into a good program that offers funding.  Masters only schools: University of West Florida, University of Central Florida, and East Carolina University.  PhD schools: University of South Florida, University of South Carolina, Michigan State University, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Notre Dame, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Durham University, McMaster University, and Edinburgh University.  Told you a lot of schools.  
 
Currently, I'm just studying for the GRE, I plan on taking it in July or early August before fall semester starts.  This will give me time to retake it if I really need/want to.  I've already talked to a couple recommenders and asked if they'd be willing to write some when classes start up again and I told them I'd ask again once fall semester started.  I've also been in contact with a couple POIs, some via email and some at national conferences.  I plan on going to a total of 3 conferences this year so I can network a little more.  Starting next week I'm also going to start writing my SoPs.  I want to give myself time to work on them before classes start again so all I have to do is touch them up a little bit later.  
 
Sorry for such a long thread but I rarely post on here and thought it would be nice for us all to talk about our interests and where they are eventually leading us in our future endeavors.