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actual_entity

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  • Location
    New Zealand
  • Application Season
    2014 Fall
  • Program
    Classics (Ancient Phil)

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  1. in my case, it was a personal decision: a job opportunity came up for my partner, so i'm limiting my choices to schools within commuting distance of nyc.
  2. nope! but i just turned down harvard and austin, and i think they both do waitlists, so i hope that helps somebody out.
  3. when i was applying at the beginning of this year, i really wished i had access to a good sample of student profiles with admissions data. i got my last result back this morning, so i'm checking out of the grad cafe--nice getting to know some of you guys, and i'm sure we'll all be seeing more of one another in the future! here are my results, my stats, and general retrospective advice on the whole process. it would be great if others could post something similar in this thread once their season is over. that way future generations won't have to spend hours wading through old threads trying to piece together information. --- accepted: harvard, yale, princeton, columbia (clst), ut austin. (all of these but austin interviewed before accepting.) interview: brown, but i withdrew before it occurred. rejected: stanford, michigan ann arbor, chicago. AOI: ancient philosophy, ancient medicine, epic degrees: bachelor of arts with honours from a new zealand university. no further degrees. GRE: 170V, 154Q, 4.5W GPA: this is difficult since i'm an international and my university's gpa scale is weird. my transcript showed four years of straight As. professional stuff: no publications. one presentation at a plenary session of an anthropology conference. no teaching/TAing experience. greek & latin: four years of each. plenty of reading done outside of courses. in greek: four dialogues of plato, two works of aristotle (one lengthy), eight books of homer, all of hesiod, four tragedies, one comedy, two hippocratic treatises, one gospel, assorted shorter things. in latin: maybe half of that. other languages: german (2 semesters), french (1), italian (4), old norse (2), sanskrit (2). also a couple of other languages, self-taught and extremely crappy in both. writing sample: i had two: one was a strictly philosophical paper intended to display competence in ancient philosophy. it had a bibliography of about 85 secondary sources, with about 15 items in modern languages other than English. this one went to yale, princeton, austin, stanford, michigan, and chicago, so about a 50% hit rate. the other was a wackier, more general-interest paper that made grand, sweeping, shakily supported statements about the development of the ancient greek mind. it didn't have as big a biblio, or as many modern-language sources, but it did utilize a very broad range of greek primary sources. this one went to columbia, harvard, and brown. i got far more comments about the second than i did the first. tentative lesson: ambitious displays of "potential" are better than "safe" displays of competence. but that probably depends on what stage of your career you're at, and safe and competent is no application-killer. letters of rec: three from classics professors i'd had good relations with, none of them superstars, but all of them (the equivalent of) tenured faculty. i had a fourth, which i sent to harvard and columbia for reasons specific to those applications, from a tenured english professor. advice for next year's applicants: tailor your statement of purpose to each school. don't just add an extra paragraph at the end--write a new statement in each case, so that the fit comes across organically. name names if you've read something by the name. it's no problem to stress certain interests for certain schools, provided they are genuine interests. you're never going to cover all your interests in one statement anyway, so play to the strengths that you picked each school for. the nice thing about classics is that there are a lot of substantial markers for your abilities and seriousness as a student, mostly in language preparation. this makes admissions far less of a crapshoot than disciplines like philosophy and literature, where a huge amount of emphasis is placed on bullshit like undergrad pedigree, reputation of recommenders, and whether you have some mysterious "x-factor." the best thing you can do to strengthen your application is learn german, french, or italian, and preferably learn more than one. you don't have to be great, and it doesn't take much coursework, because all they want you to do is read. german is valued more highly than the other two, but that's because it's harder. it's certainly possible to get to reading competence in any of these languages within one year. another really good thing to do is set aside an hour or two a day to read greek and latin. pick short works that you can finish in a reasonable space of time (a short dialogue of plato, a book of vergil, a tragedy), this will keep you from burning out on any one piece. keep a list of everything you read and attach it to your application. don't be shy about this; if they don't give you a specific form for it in the application, put it on your CV. one major weakness of my application was that i didn't have any coursework (as in, none whatsoever) in either ancient philosophy or modern philosophy. i had several concerned comments on this from philosophers at interviews. i had, however, written an honours thesis on ancient philosophy, and i had read a lot of philosophy in greek on my own time, and this seemed to reassure them in most cases. i also didn't have an abundance of coursework in classical civ/history, and none at all in art or archaeology. this didn't come up once in all the interviews i had. GRE didn't matter at all, though that may not be the case for US students. i didn't hear anything about my letters except once, and it was vague, so i don't think they are that important, provided of course that they are positive. i would strongly recommend going through all your online applications and sending out letter requests a month in advance. i didn't do that, and on one occasion ended up having to frantically email people begging them to submit their letters for two applications which were due the next morning. pretty embarrassing. for international applicants: i spent one year on exchange in undergrad at a somewhat-selective US college. i think this helped my application, because it showed i was familiar with the way they do things in the USA, and i also had a transcript that was more familiar to the adcoms than my new zealand ones were. i think that year was really beneficial in terms of improving my greek and latin, too. (incidentally for those worried about the cost of an exchange, i ended up saving money in the year i spent in the USA compared to a year's living costs in new zealand. it depends on the cost of living in your home country, obviously, but the USA is really cheap to live in, so it's not a bad idea if you have the time left in undergrad.) at the interview: my skype interviews sucked. i thought i blew them completely, but i didn't. i think that's just the nature of skype. take how well you think you did in any skype interview, multiply by about five, that's how well you actually did. on-campus interviews are a whole other matter. these were the most fun i've had in ages--lots of free food, meeting excellent people who will be future colleagues, and seeing the cities you could be living in next autumn. best and weirdest of all, the celebrities of your particular corner of classics will talk in depth about your research and writing sample. milk that shit. give them extra papers to read and comment on. this is a very rare chance to have your work reviewed by the top scholars in your field. if they like it, you might even keep the contacts if you end up at a different school. i wouldn't panic, though, about proving your intellectual worth. they liked your stats, they know you're good; that's why you're there. the interviews seemed like they were mostly about showing that you'd be a good student and a good colleague. to that end, try to be friendly above all; ask people about their interests and try to get to know them. lots of faculty you talk to aren't going to share any research interests with you, but that's not to say you won't have personal interests in common: these in-person visits are a good opportunity to display a bit of breadth that doesn't come across in your applications. you probably have a number of interests outside of classics; don't be afraid to talk about them. i ended up talking to various people about hume, proust, milton, ralph ellison, blues guitar, rap music, and other stuff. these conversations seemed as important to the interview as ones about my research. try to read something important by most of the people you might end up working with at each school. don't shoehorn it into conversations with them, though--just read it to get a sense of who they are as scholars. if it comes up naturally, go ahead and say you read it. talk to grad students who are in the dissertation-writing phase. they're much happier to be frank with you. keep an eye on how happy they seem, how confident in their work they are, what kind of relationship they seem to have with their supervisors. keep your ear out on your visits. you learn the most about the departments you're visiting from other departments you're visiting. pay close attention to rumours: most of the stuff you need to know isn't written down anywhere, so the only way you're going to learn about it is by word of mouth. ask especially about climate for women, placement rates, and attrition in other departments. ask people on hiring committees which schools produce the most competitive candidates in your subfield. be aware, though, that everybody is perfectly happy to badmouth everybody else (this surprised me). the vaguer the criticisms, the less likely they are to be true. the most important thing: take a notebook. every time you get a break, write down notes on everything you learnt in your last few conversations. otherwise you'll forget it all within a week. good luck!
  4. thanks! adcom reports that harvard was authorized to hire another greek lit specialist in addition to naomi weiss. there's also a search going on for a byzantinist, making five new hires all starting next year.
  5. a funded phd in classics at any decent department means five stable years on a guaranteed, liveable salary; health insurance and partially-subsidized insurance for dependants; subsidized accommodation; free access to a library, gym, shuttle service, etc; plus several free trips to major US metros and free holidays in europe thrown in for good measure. that, to me, is a great job. you don't even need to bring in the usual bromides about the life of the mind to justify it. i can't think of anybody i know who is walking out of their BA program into a job this good.
  6. i can confirm that harvard is sending out acceptances by phone, even to international students. does anybody have inside information on candidates for the three positions for which harvard is currently advertising? the department could look completely different by august. other useful information gleaned from interviews: yale has sent out eight acceptances, all at once, and they'll take however many accept. princeton is interviewing eleven people and will accept nine before the end of next week. so far as i know there's no wait list for either school.
  7. "You are among the small and exclusive group of candidates whom we contact now, which tells you how highly we think of your work!" (why thank you, columbia). this reads to me like there'll be a group of candidates contacted later. i mean, it's no guarantee, but they interviewed in rounds, so it doesn't seem a long shot that they'll accept in rounds. i'll repeat that this is for the classical studies program, not for the classics program.
  8. i just posted an acceptance from columbia (clst), and i should have said in the submission box that i got the impression from the admission email that there will be another round of acceptances.
  9. yep. over here i've got interviews with harvard, yale, princeton, and columbia (and an admission from ut austin). but no word from michigan (which was undoubtedly the best fit), nor chicago, and an outright rejection from stanford. obviously i'm pretty happy with the season so far, but it's made clear to me how large a part luck plays in the whole process.
  10. hi, that's me! i heard from katja vogt, who heads the classical studies program. i know that applications for that program are handled separately from the classics department applications, and i am an international applicant--they may have a different procedure for domestic applicants. bearing all that in mind, and seeing as mine is the only report up so far, i wouldn't give up hope yet.
  11. hi! registering to say that was me, and i applied through the classics department, so i don't think you guys need to worry yet.
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