therealhogwarts

Hello there. I finished my PhD at Emory last fall. Usually, you will receive an email or call about getting an interview. If you are in the US, that means an invite to the Recruitment week. If you are abroad, you will be asked to interview over Zoom. Still, any contact means you have made the first cut of 20 or so applicants.
 
Ah! Just saw someone has provided this info above. Best of luck to those who get the interviews. Emory is a good place to study religion and Atlanta is a good place to live during your journey.

I just got invited to Recruitment Week at Emory. None from other schools!

All short-listed candidates have an interview of some sort, if I am not mistaken. Typically, the top four or so candidates from each subfield are invited to Emory's campus for in-person interviews (all expenses paid). These interviews are competitive and usually 50% of the in-person candidates are offered admission. I knew somebody once with a Zoom interview to Emory, but they were not offered admission as there were four in-person candidates in addition to this individual. This person seemed lower on the short list than the other candidates that were at Emory for the in-person interview weekend (i.e., they did not seem to be as strong of a candidate as the rest). 
 
Other schools, like Duke (GPR), PTS, and UChicago, invite you to campus only after you have been admitted into the PhD program (though some subfields at these schools may or may not offer video interviews). 
 
It is still quite early. I did see an Emory interview posted already, but if I remember correctly, I think the convener of each subfield is responsible for sending out these offers. That means that interview requests may not come out at the same time for all subfields at Emory. Hope that helps!

Why did so many people give this a thumbs down? That's great news! Congrats!

Why did so many people give this a thumbs down? That's great news! Congrats!

Why did so many people give this a thumbs down? That's great news! Congrats!

The interview went well. Pretty short. I think they just use these short conversations to put a name with a face. In any case, we'll see!

Just got a call from the NT chair at Emory. Invited for interview weekend.

Apologies. By soon, I meant one-two days!

I'm not sure if I appreciate this information or if I hate you for it. My refreshing of the Emory results page and my email has increased by 5000% in the past few minutes.

If you applied to the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory, final interview candidates were decided today. If you were one of them, you should receive a call or email very soon.

Thrilled to have just accepted an offer to start a PhD at Princeton University!

No doubt that Stanford offers the better likelihood of obtaining a teaching position in the US after your degree.

Meh, not mentioning why the school is a good fit is a terrible idea, we would all agree (I hope) and this often entails discussing faculty you hope to work with. Again, we are merely speaking past one another if we are talking about M* vs PhD programs. The former, again, will vary greatly depending on the program (HDS would rather hear about how your post-op transition from male to female has helped your theological interests grow, while an MA in NELC at Harvard would, I imagine, look around the room utterly confused on why your personal life has anything to do with your academic interests). The latter...well, if you apply to a doctoral program, especially in our field where having 3-5 years of masters work is not uncommon...well, good luck on getting in without mentioning faculty of interest. Again, if you are a senior in college and a classics major applying to doctoral programs, sure, it might not matter at that point what particular faculty you'd like to work with, perhaps philosophy students, too, though I would bet even those folks would not imagine turning in an SOP without at least a paragraph addressing faculty interests and how they jive with your own. 

Tough luck, mate. I know quite a few top candidates that were rejected. At the same time, the DPhil in Theology is almost never funded, and would have cost around 100,000 with living over three years. Although the US PhD is longer, you are given much better funding.

This seems to go against everything else I've ever heard on here - and other places.

Tough luck, mate. I know quite a few top candidates that were rejected. At the same time, the DPhil in Theology is almost never funded, and would have cost around 100,000 with living over three years. Although the US PhD is longer, you are given much better funding.

I am not too familiar with the Oxford DPhil in History, but having done an M.St. at Oxford and being offered a spot for the DPhil in Oriental Studies, I would say take the Stanford offer. I turned down Oxford for Emory because of the vastly superior teaching and learning opportunities I would have at the latter. Moreover, I have no doubt that coming out of Emory, I will have far better job prospects than I would have had coming out from Oxford.

I second Kuriakos. I've heard other graduates of U of C describe it like marXian did as well.

I have no personal experience, but someone else in my program did their MA at UChicago and described it exactly the way MarXian did.

the pyramid gets steeper the higher you climb
people fall out at every cut
but few are willing to do anything but try to kick the door that didn't open for them in
while i admire persistence, i also value creative problem solving 
my plan b has always been finding a back window that's open where i can crawl through 
and that has worked well so far (i'll have 2 graduate degrees from an elite school despite a hohum ba from a 'party school' with an overall gpa barely 3.0)
 
re a doctoral program, if i apply and am rejected, the ace up my sleeve is such a diversified background, i would apply for a phd or edd
 
but then again
i have enough money not to give a d**** 

Just so you are aware, it is very unlikely that you receive funding at Oxford. I am currently at Oxford for the MSt and have no funding at all. Moreover, coming from Harvard over Oxford, unless you plan on staying at Oxford for the PhD, will be viewed far more favorably by PhD admissions committees in the US. 

It is very easy for Americans to get into UK PhD programs. Americans = $$$ (or £££ I suppose)

I think you hit it dead on. I know a handful of PhD students in England from conservative backgrounds who went there--despite the lack of funding--to avoid certain challenges and because they did not find placement in tier 1 & 2 PhD programs Stateside. I recognize this is a broad stroke; I only am speaking from a limited experience with a few friends.

It's a growing problem that makes Americans having UK doctorates suspicious. It seems a lot of conservative Christians are finding that they can go abroad and maintain their conservative beliefs/the appearance thereof. Having no coursework and 'checking in' with your adviser raises less questions about how 'indoctrinated' one becomes at the American 'secular' schools.