Joseph45

Don't do it. As somebody who has finished and has been on the job market, I can't have a clean conscience if I don't tell you not to do it. The job market is horrible for everybody. It does not matter who you are. It's horrible for Ivy League and equivalent people, but it's even worse for second-tier people. If you go to a "second tier" school, the best case scenario--best case--is that you'll finish in five years without added debt after living quite modestly, you'll move every year for 2-3 years for adjunct or low-paying visiting posts that often don't include health insurance or cover moving costs (i.e., $5,000 of your $40,000 salary goes to moving across the country). You'll have an extremely limited budget for conferences, which means its difficult to get feedback on your research, your teaching load will be insanely high, so you don't have much time for research, and then you finally land a tenure track job at mid-level state school, for $50,000 a year. This is if you stay up until 3:00 a.m. most nights grading, preparing, and writing. Hope that you don't have or meet a partner, and god-forbid you want kids. You won't have the time or money for them, and they won't want to move every year (or can't move because they have a real job that actually pays money). A lot of people have offered a lot of good comments on this thread, but very few of them have seen the job market up close. Yes, having a degree from the Ivy League and equivalent does not guarantee you a job. People from non-top tier programs can get jobs. It doesn't follow however, that you or anyone else will get a job by going to a non-top tier. (I don't think banking on being in a situation where search committees know that you'll be so desperate that you'll move anywhere is a good thing, especially since there will be at least 20-40 other applicants in the same boat--not to mention plenty of people with degrees from top schools grew up and/or like living in the middle of the country. Anybody telling themselves that they'll be able to get a job because their not-so-great application will match a not-so-great job has serious problems.) This scenario might not have been true even five or ten years ago, but this is how it is now. Don't let hearing about the random exception to this story make you think that everything will work out. Please, I have enough friends for top-tier and second-tier programs that I know how this story goes. We were all optimistic when we started, loved being in PhD programs, "knew" that the job-market was tough, but were all somehow convinced that it would just work out. It rarely rarely does. I'm rambling now, and it certainly depends on the subfield, but the job thing really is a lottery. If you're coming from a second tier program, it's usually much harder to finish (less funding and more teaching), and you usually have less contacts. (I can't tell you much being at an Ivy opens up doors compared to being at even a good second-tier school.) Even having a big-name or multiple big-name advisors at a secondary school usually doesn't help much, because the search committee is composed of people who are outside the subfield (usually--that's why they're hiring), and they don't know/care how important so-and-so is. Check out the Wiki board on religious studies jobs this year, or past years (links available on this year's site). Look at how many jobs are listed that you could apply for, paying particular attention to the additional search criteria the committee has listed of interest. If they want to hire in your subfield, that's great, but also note when they want that person to also be able to do X (e.g., gender studies, race studies, language Y, to focus on this time period of your subfield). In other words, just because there is a (rare) job opening in Religions of America, for example, it doesn't mean that anyone in that subfield is actually a fit. They might be looking for someone who does women and religion, or indigenous traditions, or Latinx traditions, or material religion, etc. (Some jobs, of course, are more specific than others). This means that there will probably be very few jobs that you actually "fit" in a given year. Getting a job is oftentimes more about the happenstance of the year than anything to do with the quality of your application, the name of your advisor, or your school. Of course, if you do fit a job perfectly, that's great. Much better chance of getting that job. Then again, you end up in a situation where you're applying to 10-15 jobs, but only really fit 2-4 of them. A couple of those are probably big research schools (e.g., UCLA, Oregon) and the chances of anyone getting those jobs straight out is quite small (they often take people who are already on the tenure-track or are in the midst of a prestigious post-doc). This is a good time to note that you won't just be applying against recent graduates, you'll be applying against everyone who's graduated in the past year or two, with those who have held visiting assistant positions or postdocs having a star by their name.

I don't want to scare people, but math scores can matter at some institutions and/or programs. They usually won't matter much for masters programs, but they can figure into decisions in competitive PhD programs. Decisions for most PhD programs are made at three levels. First, there is the person or two who would be your advisor. That person is mostly going to be focused on "fit," on whether s/he thinks that your (1) an excellent student, with great potential in the sub-field and (2) have proposed an interesting set of research interests--something that they want to work on. S/he probably doesn't care about GRE scores per se. Secondly, decisions are made at the departmental level. Not every professor who wants to accept a student that year will get to. Sometimes this comes down to inter-departmental politics, other times it's just turn-taking. The department might use things like GRE scores, even math scores, to compare candidates, because numbers, even seemingly irrelevant ones, are just so much easier to compare than rec-letters and statements of interest. Finally, the applicants the department chooses will be sent to the grad school for a final decision. Some places probably divvy out a certain number of people for each department, so final decisions are more of a rubber-stamp. Other places will do a final sifting of people, and the departments will want to submit candidates with scores that will reflect well on them (and, again, the numbers are just the easiest thing to compare, especially cross-field.). All of which is to say, yes, it's stupid that math scores can count for humanities PhD programs, but it's certainly possible. They're an easy way to compare people across sub-fields and across disciplines. Furthermore, the math section on the GRE doesn't really test advanced math skills, it's closer to a logic test. It can be studied for, and you're willingness to study for it is an indication of how much you're willing to do to get into a PhD program (where many other stupid/irrelevant tasks will present themselves). Some programs and places certainly will not care about your math score, but you never know when it'll make the difference.

Stay away from Hebrew U. I had an awful experience with them.

This is a nice conversation, all around. I've largely stopped commenting on the cafe, or going to it, but I occasionally surf here in order to remind myself of what it was like to be so excited about applying and getting into a PhD program. (I had quite the difficulty getting into one myself). Just to give people an idea about where I'm coming from, I'm defending in May (at an Ivy). First, about the job market. This past year (applications for jobs that will start in the fall) was worse than usual in my field. That said, there were five jobs to which I could apply--one open rank Stanford, another at Yale, another at a small liberal arts that was open field, and then two more regular job openings for assistant profs. I want to stress that I was not limiting myself to elite schools or a specific geography. I applied to every job that was a conceivable fit. (Very religious schools were not an option, but, if you are very religious, that also limits you to a very few set of schools in another way.) All of which is to say, there were basically two jobs in the entire country that were hiring in my area. Think about that for moment. It makes getting into a PhD program looking like a F*%$* joke. Think of all of the people applying for those jobs, from people in the Ivies and Chicago, Duke, Stanford, etc., people who might have inside connections, people at great programs with slightly less prestigious RELS programs (Virginia, UNC, Indiana, Syracuse). Also, depending on your field, very few people actually graduate in five years. This means that you're not just sinking five years of your life into a program, you're more likely sinking 6-7 (and many people can't finish, so there's that.) And it's one thing to be okay with doing this when you're younger, un-partnered, without kids--it sounds basically like doing a second round of college. It's exciting, you'll get to read so much. If, however, once you're in your 30s (probably) you might end up married and with one or more kids. Now, all those evenings reading and writing seem so much less exciting and important. They instead feel selfish and somewhat pathetic. At best, you're getting a stipend that covers your living cost. You'll likely run out of that for your last year or two. Your partner has to pay for the rest, and your partner suffers as you read another $Y(**#*() book on that topic that you find so much more important than spending time with him/her or your child(ren) (or at least getting paid). Again, it's different for everybody, but there are a lot of high costs that go into getting a PhD. Additionally, at this stage, there is passion, but it's not just reading what you want to read. With or without partner and/or kids, it's about producing extremely competent work. (And it will never be good enough.) I appreciate the person (above) who doesn't want to write a book or lecture on a topic without a terminal degree. Chances are, however, that you won't write the book you want or have anybody who wants to listen to you when you do have the terminal degree. You'll be trained so intensely that nobody will want to read the monographs you write, becasue they won't understand what's at stake in the first place. I don't know how to put this without sounding harsh, but it's really not about reading or writing for fun at this stage. There's a very slim bit of scholarship that I find interesting right now. The rest I need to know to properly bolster my arguments, to footnote. And that's the stuff of scholarship. Most of it is pretty pedantic and predictable. Most of the interesting stuff is BS. Even if you publish early, it's still no guarantee of getting a job. You will almost assuredly not present enough, publish enough, or do such outstanding work that you'll feel okay about yourself. Again, I don't want to be harsh, dispiriting, or condescending, but, for me, it does not seem like a decision between following my passion for academic quesitons (which I still have) and the job-risk it entails versus just getting a "normal" job, it's that very little of doing good PhD work involves following your passion. It's a job. There are moments of glory. There are good things about it. It's also intensely competitive. Your work will never be good enough. You'll soon see that most of what you read as an M* student was the best of the best in your field--most of the rest of it is sh*t. Then you'll start writing and realize you are part of that sh&t. Then you will start teaching, and you will realize almost none of your students find your area interesting at all. They view you as the enemy, because you are a teacher. They will not read. Even though you thought you would love teaching, you realize it is much harder when the students are not excited to be academics, and they do not care about your field. [or they have the most simplistic understandings of the field, but will not listen to you, even though they've never read so much as a single book on the topic under discussion.] And all of this is assuming that your advisor is helpful and supportive, that s/he doesn't leave or retire, or get arrested because he hit a prostitute (true story for a friend of mine). If you have a bad advisor, or even an average one, there are whole other nightmares with that. I can't say whether anybody should do a PhD or not. And it's certainly a better experience for some rather than others. What I will argue though, is that it is rarely primarily about pursuing one's academic passions. It's a job at best. You get to read about as much in your area of academic passion as you would if you were outside of the academy. You do have people pushing you on your reading, people who will call out your BS, which does have great advantages, but that's about it from my perspective.

I think you missed my point (which I thought I had put so cleverly, but I guess I was actually just confusing). Let me try again. Rankings are linear, but the ways in which div schools can be good or not good to attend are not linear. That's why your particular aims and goals are so important, because they define a ranking of div schools for you (which may be completely wrong for others). Let's talk about you now. So, you want to go to a div school in order to get into a PhD program in American Religious History. Yet, "theological stances matter greatly" for you, and you think that your "belief system would not vibe well with the modern-liberal divinity school environment." First, why limit yourself to Div schools? Why not history departments, anthropology, or something similar? Second, if your theological commitments are such that the "modern-liberal divinity school environment" won't work for you, that certainly narrows your options down. I don't quite know what you mean by this, since the definitions of "liberal" are so perspectival (e.g., once upon a time I thought Duke Div was very liberal, I now think of it as very conservative). Moreover, I don't know if you oppose this environment because you have "conservative" theological commitments, or because you have commitments to the secular study of American religious history and "modern-liberal divinity school environment" would annoy the hell out of you due to latent or explicit theological commitments at those places. Third, are these theological commitments also going to shape your choice of PhD programs? This is important, because if your self-perceived conservative theological commitments (however you define them) would prevent you from going to many divinity schools, they are also likely to prevent you from choosing (or being chosen by) "top" PhD programs. In other words, even your definition of "top PhD programs" depends a bit on your commitment to your certain theological values. In other words, let's say, UNC Chapel Hill has one of the generally regarded "top" PhD programs in American Religious History. They have good job placement and are well respected in the field. [Again, this is just hypothetical, I don't know this subfield that well]. If your opposition to the "modern-liberal divinity school environment" is based upon an annoyance with theological approaches to the study of american religious history, then UNC would be a great place for you. Take a look at where their grad-students went for their masters degree to get a sense of where you should apply or what types of school they accept people from. If, on the other hand, you don't like "liberal" divinity schools because they are "liberal" and not "conservative," then, even if you got it, you would probably hate being at UNC and the job offers you might receive from there. They're not going to be a place to pursue your conservative theological commitments to the study of American religious history. Sorry to ramble on, I just think the subtleties of your interests, goals, and ideological commitments matter a great deal when choosing a graduate program. Ranking divinity schools--whether in First Things or by anybody else--is just not helpful. Vanderbilt is a great Divinity School for some people and a horrible one for others, just like any other divinity school. Dallas Theological Seminary is a great seminary for some people, and a horrible one for others. If you want to Yale and then teach at a state school, don't go to DTS, but if you have conservative theological commitments that are a real priority for you, then don't go to Vanderbilt or Yale, or teach at a state school.

Asking about divinity school rankings isn't a very helpful question. In deciding on where to go, it depends on what you want to do once you finish divinity school. It also depends where you are at theologically. It's kind of like being asked to rank the restaurants in your city. Sure, some are better than others, but it's not like restaurants can be ranked linearly. What do you want to eat? Who are you eating with? Are you a vegetarian? Is farm-to-table important to you? Do you like bar-food? Are you trying to impress a date, or are your parents visiting?

I guess from my experience, most people at top tier programs don't have more than one masters. I think, at a certain point in time, having a second masters just flags that you couldn't get in the first time around (and, therefore, aren't that appealing of candidate). There are, of course, exceptions, and I'm certainly only speaking from my own experience and perceptions, but I know a lot of people in top tier programs (partly because I'm at one), and getting a second masters is not the norm or the key to getting in (at least at the handful of programs that I'm pretty familiar with). And, for what it's worth, I strongly recommend against getting a PhD unless you're at a top six or so program. Too much time, energy, and commitmee for a very dreary job market. I know opinions differ, but that's my (limited) perspective on the question.

Don't get a second MA. I mean, it depends on what you want to do and all, but that's a big time commitment and probably a big money commitment. Again, I don't know what you want to do, but I really doubt that it's worth it. You'll build your Greek skills as you go along working on the texts you need to in the doctoral program. Sure, it would be fantastic if you had a fabulous classics background to begin with, but, especially since entrance into a good PhD program is no guarantee no matter what you do, it's not worth it.

I suggest just grabbing one of the many textbooks available for learning classical Greek. Go through the text chapter by chapter, making sure to do the assigned exercises and readings. You'll be able to go through it relatively quickly since you already have a base in Greek, but it'll expand your comfort with broader forms of the language. Maybe skip exercises that focus strongly on Greek poetry or non-attic dialects (unless you think you'll end up needing to read those)--topics that probably won't come up too much anyway at first. Then just figure out something that you want to read. Dive into Plato, Josephus, Philo, Plutarch, or whatever seems most relevant to you and just force yourself to do a little bit each day. The transition really isn't that daunting, but it will require some work and determination, especially at first as you get used to the specific author's vocabulary and style.

Don't go there if you're an atheist agnostic. There are some Christian institutions that might be okay for you, but not there. (I know a lot about ACU, one of my relatives was even faculty there). And it's not even about whether you'll be "welcomed" or not. It's just that their scholarship will be so faith driven that it's really not that worthwhile if you're not looking for conservative hermeneutic stuff. Trust me.

" can tell you specific, heart-clutching and true anecdotes/or shorter specific points in your life that showed a decision point is what makes the adcom pause, raise their eyebrows and go hhhhhmmm. in other words, this is what distinguishes you from the pack in a VERY good way" I call BS. "heart-clutching" anecdotes are actually quite cliche--and most academics, even at divinity schools, are much more interested in rigorous thinking that personal sob stories.

Again, I certainly do not know what these different admissions committees are thinking (and, for what's it's worth, I'm at a PhD program that doesn't do theology at all or have any masters students, although I did get my MTS from one of the places you mentioned). That said, I personally would still advise you to talk about what books, authors, classes, or maybe even intellectual problems got you interested in the study of theology. For example, talk about how this author or this class really excited your intellectual curiosity in a way that you didn't even know was possible, and you realized how important the study of theology can be, especially against the cacophony of popular notions about X topic. It's pressing to study it, and that class/book, first made you see that. Since then, you've expanded your interest in these problems are are excited about the possibility of studying at X school because it seems like the natural next step in your intellectual development. It'll be the perfect place to . . . . Like I said, that's my advice. I'm sure that those committees do take at least some students who include descriptions of their personal faith development, but I just don't think it's necessary (and most theology isn't really about that anyway).

I don't know how the MTS admissions committees at the respective schools that you are applying to will read personal statements. I'm sure that some won't mind your willingness to share your personal experiences. On the other hand, I just think that it's unnecessary. You're applying to MTS programs. You don't need to convince them that you're interested in studying this stuff. Besides, they get it--that's what they do. I just wouldn't put it in. Focus instead on explaining what exactly you're interested in and why that particular school would be the perfect fit for you to pursue your academic interests. --My two cents

"these sort of univocal interests occur in Jewish and Muslim majority environments, too" -- I guess that's what fascinates me so much. This isn't a Christian space, but a forum for applying to graduate school. It does, however, reflect the field's (unfortunate) Christian moorings.

It's amazing how quiet this forum gets when somebody asks about something other than where to study N.T. or theology. If only you were pondering where an evangelical should go to study theology or Bible, then you could get more advice than you'd need (even if most of it would be horrible advice). There's not a lot of jobs or strong PhD programs in your area (not a bad thing, few people applying for them), and the first ones I'd recommend are the ones you already listed. I'd also consider Northwestern, mainly because of Mira Balberg, whose written a great first book. Of course, Stanford would be great too if you can make it out to the left coast (Charlotte Fonrobert is there). I'd also take a peak at Virginia, to see if you'd like to work with Elizabeth Alexander. Maryland wouldn't be bad to check out either (Hayim Lapin), although I don't know what program you'd want to apply to in order to get a PhD under him. If you're not limiting yourself to the rabbis only, Penn would be a great place to go (Annette Reed is fantastic). I'm sure I'm forgetting a few people, but there are my two cents.