anthroflea

I tried to stick to the word limit since I found out early thanks to mesoarch. I don't think we should be too worried about this though. If the word limit would have been that important, it would have been mentioned on the anthropology website. Also, it seems like most people didn't stick to the limit;)

Judging from past years we could hear from them mid-February at the earliest. Lets hope they will be fast.

I did a little research and found some numbers on the websites of a few anthropology departments: University of Florida Around 160 applicants a year, about 25% are accepted, biological anthropology is most competitive, not all students are offered funding Temple University About 10% are accepted, past cohorts were 4-8 students Duke (Cultural Anthropology) Accepted 6-12% of applicants in the last few years, last year 8 out of 159 Tulane University I heard they accepted 6 applicants last year, but I do not know out of how many.

While we wait, let's start a discussion to make the time go by faster. Again and again I see people wondering about the competitiveness of certain programs and about which schools would be good safety schools. Now, we all know that factors such as the reputation of a certain POI and subfield can make a huge difference. Also, I think we all agree that one shouldn't choose a certain school based on its competitiveness. A school can be crazy competitive, but if somebody is a perfect fit this doesn't really matter that much. Likewise, a "safety school" isn't a "safety school' if the applicant doesn't fit into the school. With that said, to end some of the questions and to kill some time: What do you know about the different universities? Which graduate programs accepted how many students out of how many applicants in a given year? What are some influential rankings out there? I don't want to get a debate going on the usefulness of rankings and such. I think we all know that other factors are much more important;)

I think one of the reasons weall might have such disagreements on whether an MA/MS is useful is because we all go into it with very different expectations. I went into my MA precisely because I knew I lacked the publication/teaching/research/presentation skills I needed to get into a PhD program. In the beginning it was up to me to find labs to volunteer in and conferences to present at. I might have been very lucky though because once I initiated something, my school's faculty was very supportive. (I also have some friends who did not have a teaching assistantships who got their teaching experience simply by asking intro teachers whether they could teach a class.) So for these kinds of things, the MA is great. But again, it all very much depends on why you go into it in the first place. I wonder whether the subfield makes a huge difference as well. I have heard from numerous people that an undergraduate or master's thesis will go a long way if you do not have any publications yet because they demonstrate that you are capable of original research:) Also, many schools will publish honors and master's theses. It is not the same as a publication in a peer-review journal, of course, but it is published by an academic institution. So, having taught a few classes and doing graduate research is not the same as having no experience at all;) I also think we need to remember that we are applying to individuals and not robots. All of them went through the same application process through which we are going right now. Some adcom members might have gotten into their PhDs without any publications, others might have had 4. So I think while there are common things adcoms will look for, individuals will always have different opinions on how important different points are. I think, even though many say publications are very helpful, a particular adcom might end up being more impressed by coursework, research interests and field schools... Besides, I know several people who have gotten into PhD programs with no prior publications;)

I had a professional CV done years ago. It was my first academic CV and I had no idea where to start. Unfortunately I cannot remember which service I used, but in restrospect the CV was absolutely horrible. First of all, it takes a long time because they need all the information from you and check back with you a lot. The forms I had to fill out were pretty much as involved as an online graduate school application. I remember choosing the service because they advertised they have experience writing academic CVs. That didn't really seem to be the case. I sent in a miniature statement of purpose which they turned into a tacky mission statement which seemed very out of place. I ended up changing it around a lot because I didn't feel comfortable with it and then delted it. The worst part was the rest of the CV though. You could tell somebody put a lot of time into it but they wasted time on the wrong things. For instance, they used adjectives to describe everything. They would write things like, "I carefully excavated ...". So there was a ton of text on my CV which was absolutely unnecessary. The CV was horribly crowded and there was just too much writing for anybody to quickly skim through it. You could also tell that the person who had written it didn't know anyhing about anthropology. The CV I have now looks nothing like the CV I had done professionally. I modeled my first "own" CV after several other CVs but have since changed it so much that it is entirely my own. So, it takes as long to have it done professionally as it does to write it on your own, it is written by somebody who knows nothing about anthropology and your work and it is a waste of money.

Congratualaionson on the UFlorida acceptance. Did you oficially interview them after you sent in your application?

I did some research right after I saw the post. I think the University of Phoenix does offer some PhD programs but I didn't see anything like anthropology anywhere. Also, they do not seem eligible to give out the necessary documents required to get a student visa and the post says "Super happy to be going to America". So I'm thinking it's likely spam.

Still two weeks until deadline Panama Slim: Once everything starts and you hear anything you feel comfortable sharing on here we will all greatly appreciate it:)

I had set up several department visits and "informal interviews" last fall. All of them were very different. Some felt like interviews and some did not at all. All of them took place before I formally applied and my POIs only had my CV. In every place I went I was asked to describe my research interests and what I was hoping to get out of the department. At some places my POI asked me which other professors I wanted to meet. So make sure you know a little about the other faculty members as well. During all of my visits, I also had a chance/ was expected(?) to ask plenty of questions. I found that part relatively hard because my brain tends to freeze when I am nervous. So thinking of questions to ask ahead of time might be a good idea:)

I cannot believe I missed that. Thank you so much! I think mine will be a little over nevertheless. Maybe about 100 words -- depending on how much I manage to cut down.

Oh wow. I am glad I haven't submitted anything yet. (For the same reason as you mesoarch. Just not happy with the statement no matter how much I work on it lol.) Where did you see the 500 word limit? I totally missed that. I'm so glad you posted this. Mine is about twice as long at the moment lol.

I know the feeling mesoarch. My initial gut feeling was not to include one since I technically have a source with all the sources lol. Archaeostudent has a good point though. Lets just hope there is not really a right or wrong!

Good point. Thanks archaeostudent!

I obsessively followed this forum last year and know there was a thread of fellow Tulane anthropology PhD applicants. So I was wondering how many uf us there are for this year. It's my top choice school -- anybody else who wishes the results would come out before the application deadline is even over?

I'm sorry if this has been discussed already. I couldn't find anything though. I still have two PhD applications to finish up. One of them asks for a relatively short writing sample. The paricular POI does research in a similar area as I did for my MA thesis. So I am planning on submiting a few pages of my thesis. On the bottom of the last page I put down my thesis itself as the source (it's been published by the university). Unfortunately though, there are a looooot of people I am citing just in the short little excerpt. Now I wonder whether I need to add a works cited page? The thing is that the works cited page might end up being pretty long.So it would cut down on the space I have for actual text. I am tempted to just leave out the works cited. My reasoning is that it is just an excerpt from my thesis which I am citing. I am nervous about it though. Since this is a writing sample, I also don't want to "undercite" and seem like I don't know what I'm doing. Has anybody else run into a similar problem? Any suggestions?