Statianus

Right, so your problem is more with the discipline than the departments themselves. It seems that those who chose UT and UC, irrespective of final placement outcomes for this programs, have made a good choice for their area of interest. This is probably a issue of translation-failure. In my country, classics and archaeology are generally grouped together as 'the school of classics and archaeology'. Archaeology students may complete their training with minimal classical background (I would never have called a Bronze age archaeologist a classical archaeologist). Undergraduates go on digs in Israel as well as in their own region. The archaeology school generally has little relationship with the school of anthropology, but has a happy friendship with classics. The problem you describe seems more of a US problem. I have no idea why a Bronze age archaeologist would be suspect to classicists.

Ok, I think I will add my information now that the dust has settled. Accepted at Yale, Colorado. Waitlisted at Harvard. Rejected at Princeton, Michigan, Cornell, Chicago, Toronto, Illinois (or so I assume). GRE: 162 (V), 154 (Q), 5.5 (A) GPA: I am an international student and do not have a GPA. I generally just made it up in my applications. Other stuff: year and a half of teaching experience in beginners Latin, intermediate Latin, Classical mythology, Roman history. 1 publication. 2 book reviews. A few conference presentations. Hold an MA and BA. Languages: 1 year of German. Four years of both Latin and Greek coursework Reading list: comparable to what actual_entity has with more Latin than Greek. Advice: contact professors whom you are interested in first. Find out if they are moving, retiring, interested in your proposed projects, etc.

Reading this article, it seems that US graduates have a lot of power negotiating their offers. One of the people interviewed actually said they allow ten days for negotiation. The issue here seemed to be twofold: 1. the accepted candidate did not negotiate in an appropriate way; 2. the college rescinded the offer rather than reply to queries. It seems that the accepted candidate did not understand that this was primarily a teaching institution (wanting a research sabbatical, deferred commencement to complete post-doc, capped teaching load, etc) It seems that your issue is related to the discipline rather than UT and UC themselves. Sure, there simply aren't many jobs available in bronze-age archaeology, but if a graduate student does decide to pursue this area, these are probably the best institutions to attend. (And why wouldn't a Bronze-age archaeologist be considered an archaeologist? There are many dig-sites directed by Bronze-age archaeologists. Why would you even say that?)

As I understand, Yale has offered so many places with the expectation that only four to five will accept. This is not a new practice. It has done it before. If, however, more than four accept, the school will be penalised the next year and be forced to admit fewer applicants. As an incoming Yalie, I can say that I know what the stakes are. I am fully apprised of the fact that not all graduates make tenure-track positions. This information is easily accessible on their website and the DGS and head of department also went over this with me. To be honest, I am not alarmed. I am an international student and from where I come from, very few PhD graduates obtain a senior lectureship because there is a preference for UK and US graduates. Most of our graduates continue in casual positions for years or else reapply their training to other careers - teaching, editing, curating. And I would be happy with those non-academic jobs.

I have to say that this application process is weird and surprising and agonising. I am interviewing with Harvard and Yale, but not Michigan, Illinois or Chicago. It doesn't even seem about fit. It's just random. Congratulations to all who have received good news; to the rest, just take note that the selection process can be unpredictable.

It's a stressful time for everyone here. I think the best course of action is patience and waiting.

Thanks Chelone. I think I will go but will need to check with my faculty whether they can give me three days off. I am definitely interested.

Invited to visit Yale. I will need to seriously consider this because I am teaching Latin at the moment and missing three days is quite a financial loss. I feel very privileged for this opportunity and very very excited to meet the faculty, but it does come at an inopportune time for me. Does anyone know how important these campus visits are? Professor Bakker said they were inviting 16 people and I assume they need to narrow this down quite a bit.

People do get into top programs with only two years of Greek and nearly all programs explicitly say that they require two years of the weaker language as a minimum. I have a friend who got into Cornell with only two years. So your language preparation is by no means a deal-breaker.

Working through the Odyssey (ah, so many intricate descriptions of wool making and parts of ships) and Lucan's BC (nothing like graphically violent civil war).

That genie is a jerk.

No! Silius is amazing. But yes, more Greek tragedy. And definitely comedy. Will anyone come out and ask for the lost books of Livy?

One of my lecturers once said that he was asked in a job interview what three texts he would wish did not survive and what three he would wish to replace them. That could be a fun game to play here. I'll start with what I wish survived, 1. Ovid's Medea. 2. The rest of Callimachus' Aetia. 3. The rest of Petronius' Satyricon. What to do away with... 1. Frontinus. All of it. 2. Vitruvius. Ok, I give up. I couldn't wish anything to go, not even if they wrote about architecture or military strategy. Congrats to everyone who has heard good news! All the best for the coming weeks!

Sorry, I didn't have anyone in mind when writing that. I hope it didn't come across as aggressive. As I said, I can't give a verdict myself on what languages are needed in philosophy or to what extent. I suspect it varies between different areas of philosophy. I just wanted to give my own experience and be part of the conversation. And anyway, I never accused anyone of saying that language requirements are worthless or that google translate gives perfect translations. Everyone had very thoughtful responses.

Not disagreeing with you. I have only ever taken classical philosophy; I couldn't comment, and certainly didn't want to comment, on all philosophy. I was just writing earlier in response to a few comments that language requirements are redundant because of google translate or other technologies. If there is frequent publications in a foreign language in a given field, I don't think google translate is practical or reliable.

In regard to 1, I can't comment on what work is being in what languages in what fields. I was just addressing the point about machine translations. In regard to point 2, you misunderstand me. I meant in this particular thread. I understand that a lot of work is being in the philosophy of translation. Hence, my comment.

In very practical ways, foreign languages are needed for graduate research. When you are collating a preliminary bibliography, you need to know be able to decide whether foreign language works are relevant to your project. You need to be able to read the title or abstract. You do not want to be google translating every second citation in a recent publication to find out whether it is relevant to your project or struggling to decipher one hundred abstracts. English might be the main academic language, but there continues to be work done in European languages. While seminal works in one area might be translated, most recent publications will not have an English translation to follow. On this point, however, maybe it is different in philosophy. My background is classical philology and there is an expectation that a PhD thesis will show an understanding of all relevant secondary literature, including non-Anglophone literature. Finally, a few people have mentioned using google translate. I wish more of the philosophers tackled this ... philosophically. Does a translation ever accurately reproduce the original? I guess in terms of extracting raw propositional content, a translator (or even google translate) might be effective. But in translation, you also lose a lot of other features of the text (the sound, syntax, tone, etc). You might lose puns or irony, which a translation does not necessarily render. As a classical philologist I often find this is a problem when I observe philosophers engage with Plato, where in the original text, there's a lot of punning, plays on sound, highly ornately organised sentences, and often irony.

It's only if applicable and not necessarily required. I suppose they allow multiple documents to be uploaded if you are submitting two smaller pieces for your writing sample or if you need to submit a folio.

I also applied to Boulder, though I'm not an archaeologist. Also applying to (in alphabetic order...) Cornell, Chicago, Harvard, Illinois, Michigan, Princeton, Toronto, Yale. Broadly interested in Roman epic and Flavian literature.

Augustine's Confessions are a good suggestion. Many parts are repetitive and hymnic, but further in you encounter more difficult prose. It's ideal for beginners. When I first did a reading Greek course, we read the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. The language was straightforward and there was a very enjoyable narrative. I would recommend something like that if you've just started learning Greek.

I think grad schools would look favourably on that as an extracurricular activity.

Philoctetes? I just submitted my applications and have begun the long period of anxious waiting for contact. I certainly relate to him. We could play this game all day...

Because nothing cures stress better than a Priapic party. Just ask Petronius.

Yep. Although if I were to look for a mythological exemplar, I'd go for Ajax.