ldoone

^ If the housing is the NYU MacCracken housing I thiiiink it's for 12 months, but that's still expensive.

^ everything music said. I love the NHS. And students are actually in a good position because they get access to university health services as well as the usual NHS stuff. Also, I see you got accepted to Oxford. If you're going there, you'll find there's a university and usually also a college counselling service (depends on the college you're at, but we had one at mine and I think that's the norm) in addition to your GP, specialists and the JR hospital, so you should have a lot of support. There are various student-run support groups as well, and from what I've seen the university is generally v responsive to health problems of all kinds, especially mental health issues. But anyway, I imagine most universities are so you really should be fine from that point of view wherever you go!

Totally agree. Suggesting that a context of structural racism/sexism significantly influences the relative power of individual race- or gender-related slurs isn't exactly revolutionary. I'm not sure why it's generating defensiveness. Also the Shannon Gibney situ is so absurd I almost thought it was a parody...

I didn't mean it should be downplayed! I said that I think we need to acknowledge that it's different to the point that it wasn't comparable. Not to recognise the difference between the two is much more seriously to downplay the fundamental inequalities that minority groups suffer/have suffered from in the past. That's all I'm saying.

Look up 'intersectionality'

^ RE the stuff on 'whitey' above - this is off the subject of men in women's groups and probably opening a whole can of worms, but I'd've thought that we'd all now pretty much acknowledged that there's racial slurs and racial slurs. The difference between a term like 'blacky', which targets a group who are still the subject of widespread institutionalised discrimination and have a long history of oppression based on the colour of their skin, and a term like 'whitey', which targets a group who, by and large (I know there are exceptions, I'm talking generally here) aren't and haven't, is enormous. Both terms are insults, and insults aren't cool - but the weight of those insults is entirely different. If, in say Europe or the US, you insult a white person based on their skin colour you're definitely being a dick, but you're not oppressing them and you're not contributing to massive institutionalised discrimination. If you use racial slurs against a POC then you pretty much are. The two things just aren't comparable.

'Paint a picture' is more idiomatic but I wouldn't necessarily use either

^ thanks so much. But also don't give up - i feel like it's still really early in the process, it's not even march... Congrats to whoever the Columbia acceptance was btw!

It was an email from the Dean with the letter as an email attachment. And hahaha thanks. I'm going to request to Skype my potential advisor next week so maybe I should slip the question in...only maybe a bit more subtly than that.... It does sound like they're notifying the joint program at a different time though, and I think that's what they've done in recent years (though I mean I'm judging purely on the results page). Maybe it takes longer from going through 2 departments or something?

Hey - if it helps, this is exactly what the DGS said when I emailed her on Monday: 'Our expectation is that people will hear from us by the end of this week, so while there's a little bit of indeterminacy, it really shouldn't be very much longer. I hope that's helpful'. Obviously I spent all week trying to analyse precisely what that meant...make of it what you will! I'm the one who posted the acceptance btw, and my subfield is late Ottoman lit/culture. Has anyone else heard?

ugh

I emailed the DGS cos I have to respond to a different offer...but she was quite vague and didn't say what it meant if you didn't hear. So obviously I've been unable to concentrate all week

Ross - i've emailed mine back saying thanks, i'm really flattered/surprised and i'll make my decision as soon as poss. it surely can't do any harm...

I'm C19 Ottoman (Arabic) lit/culture

^ good to know. Ugh this wait is so painful

i feel sick

Scrap the above, apparently we should hear from NYU by the end of the week. Urgh.

i think NYU is usually march. ideas on yale? although i feel like maybe that happened earlier in feb.....

anyone know when yale happens? has it happened already?

Czesc - my issue is that I'll be working on C19 Arabic literary and intellectual culture, so late Ottoman, and whilst the texts are mainly Arabic I will eventually need Turkish and Persian. I'll have time to learn them on the course, but apparently it's better to start with them. And yeah I think you're right about the Masters. I can't say I approve: there's so little funding for MAs that it must cut huge numbers of people out of the running based on wealth, which is like, not cool. I'm mostly looking forward to the MA I hope to do in the UK but sometimes it just seems like a really expensive hoop to jump through...especially cos PhDs have 3 years of MA-style coursework attached in the States anyway! Atoraya88 I'm not really sure what you're asking. Do you mean 'trying to take middle east studies courses' outside of an MA? Is that possible? Is it expensive? Where would you be taking them? Also - out of interest - what was your undergrad/do you have a background in ME studies?

Hi! I'm in an incredibly similar position - applying for NELC PhDs this year, but although my French and Arabic are fluent/excellent, I also speak Spanish and I will have some basic Hebrew by the time I start, I'm pretty sure I'm going to suffer in the admissions process due to my lack of languages. I'm from the UK - did my undergrad in French/Arabic - and so I have also applied to UK Masters (SOAS, Edinburgh) because they're much much cheaper than US ones. There's little funding, but I can probably stand the cost using savings if I live at home/don't eat for a year, and it's a great time to learn a language as part of the course. Plus, for some places (including, according to Muhsin al-Musawi, Columbia) not having a Masters can be a way of cutting you out of the app process, so it can be important. However, I'm spending this year working as a researcher at a museum and I'm also told that that kind of academic/research experience can in some respects be considered at least equal to or even more useful than a Masters. We'll see! However, I'm assuming you're from the US, so things are trickier. Taking time to learn a language would be a good alternative to a Masters if you really can't take the cost (it's worth looking at UK Masters at Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and SOAS though - they have great ME Studies depts and I think it's still cheaper than the US, even for internationals), but could you do it in a research institution in the US or preferably in Turkey? Or otherwise combine it with some sort of research experience/relevant work experience? That kind of thing would help a lot more than just having a language course, especially if you don't intend to do an MA at all... Don't know how useful that is, sorry!