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bobkindles

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  • Application Season
    2013 Spring

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  1. I got a positive response back about three weeks ago via informal POI contact, and I got the formal response (application page updated with acceptance letter) about two weeks ago. I think I have seen some other positive notifications on the results page as well.
  2. Why did you not get in? Maybe because sentiments like this: came through in your application, and they assumed you were too arrogant and just not good enough for a place.
  3. If you had a research project along the lines of "the intersection between classical orientalist discourse and contemporary American representations of Islam and Muslims" then that would be interesting - but yeah, as other people have said, framing your project as a "refutation" of Ann Coulter sounds more like bad liberal journalism than academic research. I'm an international student, and whilst I've heard of Coulter, I can promise you that most people outside of the US do not ascribe that much importance to the specific right-wing commentators who seem to attract so much attention and anger within the United States itself, like Coulter, Pat Robertson, an so on. The specific focus on Coulter aside, it's also worth pointing out that if you want to invoke orientalism/post-colonialism as a theoretical perspective, that is not a straightforward thing to do, and you need to be sensitive to some of the theoretical baggage that comes with Said's critique of orientalism and post-colonial theory more generally - just to pick up on some of your language in your post, you say you would seek to "debunk" Coulter's representations of Islam and Muslims, but one of the theoretical aspects of Said's work that has often been commented on is that, due to the theoretical context and background he is coming from (specifically, the role of Foucault in his work, as distinct from Enlightenment epistemology) he does not really view his work as an attempt to uncover some ultimate "truth" about the orient, beneath the "distorting" influence of orientalism, in fact he is very resistant to the idea that there can be a "truthful" or "objective" representation of the orient, in part because the category "orient" is itself internal to orientalist discourse. The notion of "debunking", on the other hand, does suggest some kind of appeal to an ultimate truth or underlying reality. If you were to position your work as operating within Said's paradigm but then invoke vocabulary like "debunk", that could be seen as very problematic.
  4. I'm struck by how many different kinds of psychology people can study in the US (I'm an international student). If I were in a critical/analytical mood I'd suggest it says something about the US being an incredibly medicalized society, where negative emotions and experiences of every kind are transformed into pathologies that demand treatment =p That being said, as a humanities student, in an "obscure" field, I'm not overly inclined to criticize other people's subjects as being "random" or "useless".
  5. Hey phil413, sorry for the wait. In my experience, Masters' levels programs do not require an exact research proposal in the same way as DPhil/PhD programs - my MPhil was a taught Masters' though with a big thesis component, and for that my statement was just a discussion of my research interests, which, as it happened, did not manifest themselves in my final thesis, as my interests changed significantly during the Masters'. If you are applying for a research Masters' then I would imagine that you would need to provide a bit more detail, like a thesis title, in your statement, but in general, a "discussion-style" essay rather than a highly specific research proposal should do the trick. So, in other words, don't pay attention to what I said above for PhDs/Dphils, that advice is generally not applicable to Masters' programs!
  6. I did my undergrad and Masters degree at Oxford. I think that, as with the US, interviews outside of the sciences are not that common - I was not interviewed for my Masters, and neither was anyone in my course, and I know of few people outside of my course who were. As PetitJacques said, though, conditional offers are the norm - the exception is, obviously, when you have already finished your undergraduate degree or previous program of study, in which case you will either receive a rejection or an unconditional offer, because, after all, you are already done with your study, so there are no conditions that you would be able to fulfill. It is also not uncommon to receive a condition that is higher than the stated minimum - just as US universities make it clear that fulfilling the minimum requirements for a course will not guarantee you admission, with the UK, universities will set higher conditions, either because the applicant pool is especially strong, or because there are some parts of an individual's application which are seen as lacking or problematic, so that the higher condition is set as a way of ensuring they will be adequate for the program. So, don't read anything into having or not having an interview, but don't be surprised about having a conditional offer either!
  7. I've just finished a two-year MPhil in the UK and am applying there and the US for PhD, so I hope I can help you. As you probably know, PhDs in the UK are shorter than the US because they do not have the lengthy coursework component at the beginning, and there is also the expectation that you will start a PhD in the UK having already completed a separate Masters' degree (at least for some fields, anyway) - in that context, the "personal statement" should be more like a research proposal (and is generally referred to as such) in that, rather than being open-ended and focused on your achievements, it should really be a fairly detailed plan of what you research will be. The level of detail required, from my experience, will substantially exceed what is expected in a US personal statement - so, for my field, Chinese literature, I was advised by those who read my first draft to specify exactly which authors and texts would form the basis of my study, how I anticipated the internal structure of my research (number of chapters, for example), whether I would need any particular methods training or foreign language teaching, and the anticipated length of my research. You will also be expected to provide a provisional title for your research. To that extent, the UK statement is a great deal more "rigorous" than the US personal statement, and should ultimately be an academic document. Of course, each school and field will have their own guidelines, but I think the above holds true in most cases.
  8. I'm applying for EALC as well, PhD, my interest is in 1930s/40s Chinese literature, specifically looking at representations of body and disease. I'm dying waiting for results - anyone have any notion of when we can expect to hear from the likes of Berkeley, Columbia and UCLA? Looking at past results, February seems the key month, but Columbia seems to wait until March for some applicants.
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