LateAntique

Whether you retake it is contingent upon a few things. Do you have enough time between now and your application deadlines to put in a good amount of studying and retake the GRE? If not, then I wouldn't bother. You should really only retake it if you have enough time to invest in studying/preparing. Secondly, it may not even matter. If the other parts of your application are strong, you may be fine.

I imagine with a little studying you will score well over a 900. The new GRE format is a little easier to navigate, especially for those of us who don't like standardized tests. I would not mention your GRE scores in your SoP. If the rest of your application is strong, that's all that needs to be said. The SoP should be for wooing this program and letting them know just how great you are, so drawing attention to something like not-so-stellar GRE scores undermines that. Imagine a committee who doesn't really care about your GRE score until you bring it up and then, and only then, does it become an issue. Do the best you can in December and if the rest of your application is strong, you will be taken seriously even if your GRE score is a bit low. Good luck!

I found Cliff's "Math Review for Standardized Tests" to be very helpful and I'm not a math person in the slightest.

I just retook the GREs for Ph.D applications in my 2nd year of an MA program. I had bad GRE scores and still got into my MA program at Notre Dame. It's not a deal-breaker. Don't be upset about it. If the rest of your application is strong, you will be looked at by these programs.

The amount of students working with someone in a department will also be an indication whether people like working with them. If someone has only had 4 Ph.D students in the last decade and 3 of them are still ABD, I wouldn't go with that professor. I think you'll find people are able to be more honest in person as well (again, SBL is great for this). I wouldn't necessarily be comfortable putting some of my critiques in an email (though I don't sugarcoat or lie), while I'm quite happy to speak my mind when applicants are visiting campus. I don't think anyone's going to give you a complete opposite picture of how things are. If someone writes an email and says they're very happy with their program, you can be pretty sure they're happy. If they write you a lackluster email and damn their program with faint praise, you can be relatively sure that they haven't had a great experience. Also, I agree with the above: be specific in what sorts of qualities you think you want in an advisor. If you're one who likes a lot of hands-on advising (as I do), ask around and see who fits that style.

I got a 148 and that's about it for me. I will never in my life need to know how to figure the area of a trapezoid, so I don't really care about my Q score. My V is good and my overall is good. Like it is said over and over on here, the GRE doesn't get anyone into grad school, it only keeps some people out. As long as your scores are somewhere in a gray area and the rest of your application is fine, you'll do okay.

You're kidding, right? 162 (87th %) is "poor"? Your scores are fine.

I was told this too and it just felt weird. I was even told that I could ask certain professors to write on things to which they are entirely unrelated (my rocky start to undergrad success). They're already agreeing to write a letter that is a page or two of bragging (weird), I don't want to ask them to write about specific things within my academic past, particularly those things which have no direct relation to them.

On a lighter note: I'm creating CDs right now for my recommenders. Basically the CDs will have my transcripts, my SoP, any papers or projects I did for the professor, and a list of schools to which I'm applying, their deadlines, and the relevant contact person at those schools. I figure my professors are probably overwhelmed every year by the amount of recommendation letters they have to write and so I'm trying to help streamline the process for them. This way they don't have to try to remember what I wrote, what grade I got, etc. Anyone else do anything like this?

Hey! Likewise! I'm doing the Ph.D application thing now. The MA goes by too fast.

Professors like to talk about themselves, so I like asking informed questions about their research. It helps to have read something they have written so that you might engage that while talking to them. The types of questions you can ask graduate students are different - these are the people who will typically be honest with you about the ups and downs of the program, a question you don't want to ask the professors. Ask around, see if the students are on the whole pretty happy.

The MTS program is far more structured - if you're in HC, you still have to take Moral/Systematic classes, etc. We have no such requirements (you can see our requirements at classics.nd.edu). We are required to do more language study than the MTS students are. The MTS is a fine program, don't get me wrong. But it has a different emphasis than ECS. You could do early Christian and NT stuff within ECS. We have a wide variety of interests and the program is extremely accommodating.

I know in past years they have taken just one student. It's not super well-funded. The stipend is only about 18/18.5k /yr, which is not really enough to live comfortably in DC.

I'm currently a 2nd year in the program. Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions. The program is a good opportunity to solidify language ability. We have a good placement record. Funding is solid (tuition + small stipend which can be supplemented through TAing and teaching). We are also able to explore our various research interests in ways that students in the MTS program cannot. In my year, we have a variety of interests from social history, New Testament, early Christian exegesis, etc. We're all very different in our interests but the program supports us all.

I've never sat on an admissions committee, so feel free to disregard this. I've been told that having a nice 'narrative' is what admissions committees like. In other words, if first semester your grades were awful, but by your senior year you're taking advanced courses and acing them, this shows that you grew as a student and can be a good indicator that you will end up a good student in graduate programs. I did poorly in the beginning of my undergraduate career (mostly due to working full time), but managed to make all A's in my latter years, boosting my GPA and showing a positive trajectory.

The MA in Early Christian Studies is naturally geared towards the Patristic era. We do have people whose interests are more Biblical Studies and they manage to do basically what they want in the program. There was a guy a couple of years ago who basically made the MA in ECS into an OT MA. He's now doing CJA in the Theology Ph.D program focusing on OT. Just within my year there are people whose interests run all the way to the OT up through the Reformation. We're a diverse bunch and the program likes to attract diverse people. The MA in Early Christian Studies should not be confused with the MA in Classics. Though they are both housed in Classics, ECS is technically co-sponsored by the Theology department. The MA in Classics is your usual Classics MA, although you can focus on late antiquity as stated above.

Also, just to make sure you know, Bob, ND's program is a terminal M.A. We currently do not have a Ph.D in Classics here.

Hi Bob, The name's LateAntique, not Macchiato (they give coffee drink 'rankings' depending upon how much you have posted - you have to look above for names). The focus here is definitely not Christian Latin. The majority of our Latinists in Classics are not people who do Patristics. Brian Krostenko, Katie Schlegel, Martin Bloomer (who teaches both Greek and Latin courses), Liz Mazurek, Tadeusz Mazurek, etc., are all Latinists who do work in Classical stuff. Krostenko last semester taught a course on "Cicero, Augustine, and Rhetoric" which focused on Cicero while engaging other, later authors. The majority of Latin classes are also not Christian Latin. One may focus at ND in Late Antiquity if they would like, but they don't have to. And yes, the plan is to only allow 2-3 in per year. The tuition is funded and comes with a small stipend which would need to be supplemented by either TAing or having a spouse who works or something.

Also, we have several Evangelicals here at Notre Dame, so you could apply here if you don't mind having Catholic professors and colleagues.

+1 - Many do not.

Notre Dame has also just begun a fully-funded Classics MA. classics.nd.edu

If it is important that you study the New Testament from an Evangelical perspective, I recommend you apply to schools where this is the stated nature of the program. If you're comfortable with writing papers that do not appeal to inerrancy or some other Evangelical belief, you could attend some of the places you listed. Places like Duke, Vanderbilt, etc, are going to have professors who are Christians of some stripe, but this will not necessarily be the underlying basis of their methodology. You ought to look into programs at places like Fuller, Dallas Theological, Wheaton, New Orleans Baptist, etc. Those places are quite comfortable with people doing NT scholarship within the bounds of Evangelicalism. Those schools will also have more currency in the circles in which you would likely teach.

The MTS has great success in landing people in great Ph.D programs. The best the MA will do on money is 50% tuition reduction. I would go with the MTS.

What are your interests, exactly? This post was really hard for me to follow. Question 1: Depends where you do your M.Div. It sounds like your tradition requires you to do an M.Div in an SDA environment, so are you asking what to do after you do an SDA M.Div? Question 2: What sort of interests do you have? Theology? NT? OT? Church history? Yale might be great for Theology, but not as good for Greek and Latin patristics.