actual_entity

APPLIED  Toronto, Cincinnati, UT Austin, Cornell, Brown, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, Michigan, Penn, Nottingham, Sheffield.
 
RESULTS: 
ACCEPTED: - Toronto, Cincinnati, UT Austin, Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham, Sheffield
 
INTERVIEW:
Michigan (IPCAA) – still to come.
 
 Columbia (Classical Studies) – I do not know what is going on here – have been in contact with department chair who says they are ‘quite hopeful’ of an offer, but it’s been snarled up in their bureaucracy  due to them wanting ‘field distribution’. Whether this is a nice way of them saying I’m waitlisted I don’t know…I can’t see why they would say what they have unless they meant it.
 
REJECTED:  Cornell, Brown, Berkeley, Penn (AAMW) – I do not know for sure about Penn as they have said nothing. I assume rejection.
 
AREA OF INTEREST: Classical Archaeology, Aegean Prehistory. Specifically the Late Bronze Age. Public Space in the Ancient World and the construction of Social order. Relationships between Text and Archaeology. Ordinary life in the ancient World.
 
DEGREES BA (Hons), MPhil both  from Cambridge.
 
GRE: 165V, 147Q, 5.0 Writing.
 
GPA: N/A as international. For those familiar with the UK system 1st Class BA, ‘High Pass’ MPhil (Averaging over 70%, which some Universities call a Distinction).
 
PROFESSIONAL STUFF: No publications or conference presentations. No teaching experience.
 
GREEK AND LATIN.  I had the ‘traditional’ British Classical education. I started Latin at 8, and Greek at 13 (I am 23 now). Texts read – a lot both in Class and in my own time.  This is a truncated form of the reading list I sent to several Universities:
 
Calpurnius Siculus, Eclogues, (1,4,7).
Cicero – Pro Caelio (entire Text).
Cicero – Pro Lege Manilia (entire Text).
Cicero - De Oratore 2.216-90
Cicero – In Pisonem (About half)
Horace – Satires (Book I).
Livy – Ab urbe condita (Book XXI)
Lucan – Civil War (Books VIII, IX)
Lucretius – De rerum natura (Book III).
Martial – Epigrams (Book X).
Persius – Satires (1,5,9)
Petronius – Satyricon (Cena Trimalchionis).
Phaedrus (Book V)
Plautus – Asinaria (complete).
Pliny – Letters (6.16, 6.20).
Seneca – Apocolocyntosis (complete).
Seneca – Thyestes (complete).
Seneca – Medea (complete).
Suetonius – Lives of the Emperors (Nero).
Terence – Hautontimorumenus (complete).
Virgil – Aeneid (Books II, IV, IX)
Virgil – Eclogues (entire Text)
Anonymous – Gesta Francorum (complete).
Anonymous – Origo Constantini imperatoris.
Augustus – Res Gestae (complete)
Caesar – De Bello Gallico (Half of Book 1)
Cicero – Pro Roscio Amerino (Half)
Cicero – In Catalinam I (complete)
Cicero – In Catalinam II (complete)
Catullus – all shorter poems.
Florus – Epitome of Roman History.
Lactantius – De Mortibus persecutorum.
Juvenal – Satires (1, 2)
Manilius – Astronomica (50 lines)
Sallust – Cataline (half)
Silius Italicus – extracts (about 100-150 Lines)
Suetonius – Augustus
Statius – Thebaid (about 30 Lines)
Velleius Paterculus – Book 1
Aeschylus/Pseudo –Aeschylus – Prometheus Bound (Complete)
Aesop 102, 228, 229,292
Aristophanes – Birds (Complete)
Euripides – Helen (Complete)
Euripides – Alcestis (Complete)
Euripides – Trojan Women (Complete)
Euripides – Medea (Complete)
Herodotus – Book 1 (Half)
Hesiod – Theogony (Complete)
Hesiod – Works and Days (Complete)
Homer – Iliad (Books 1,3,6,9,18,21,24)
Homer – Odyssey (Books 11,18,20)
Lucian – Prometheus (Complete)
Lysias – Speech 1 (Complete)
Pindar, Olympians 1, 6, 7, 9
Plato – Crito (Complete)
Plato  - Protagoras (320c-324c)
Plato - Symposium (189a-193e)
Thucydides – 1.1-15, 2.1-65.
Arrian – Anabasis extracts (about 20-30 pages in the original)
Aristophanes – Clouds (Complete)
Aristophanes – Frogs (Complete)
Aristophanes – Thesmophoriazusae (Complete)
Aristophanes – Ecclesiasuzae (Complete)
Aristophanes – Acharnians (Complete)
Aristophanes – Knights (Complete)
Aristophanes – Lysistrata (Complete)
Aristophanes – Peace (Complete)
Euripides – Cyclops  (around a quarter)
Homer – Odyssey (Book 10)
Pausanias – Book 1 (about half)
Plutarch – Alexander
Quintus Smyrnaeus – Fall of Troy (Book 1, 2)
Sophocles – Oedipus Rex (200 lines)
Xenophon -  Cyropaedia (about 20 pages)
Xenophon – Anabasis (about 10 pages)
 
 
OTHER LANGUAGES:
French – studied 7-16 at school can get through stuff in it.
Modern Greek – based on knowledge of ancient have read stuff in this, very slowly with grammar and dictionary.
German – rudimentary.
 
FIELD EXPERIENCE – 1 Week. It is not true you need tonnes to get into Classical Archaeology Programs.
 
WRITING SAMPLE:  Varied depending on length. Either my 12,000 word MPhil dissertation or a 5000 word essay from my MPhil. Both on Aegean Prehistory.
 
REFERENCES: Two from senior Professors, both of whom are well known , one in Ancient History/Art History, one in Roman Archaeology. The other from my MPhil supervisor, who specialises in Aegean Prehistory. In talking to a Professor post-admission at one Program he said he had rung up and talked to one of my reference writers so this is something to bear in mind in choosing writers. He also said that he’d contacted a Professor who I’d mentioned in my Statement as having influenced me in choosing the Program, but who did not write me a letter of recommendation.
 
ADVICE FOR FUTURE APPLICANTS
Think very carefully where you apply, particularly if you are an archaeologist or someone with slightly unusual interests. Fit will be particularly important, and more so than ‘prestige’, whatever that is. For a Bronze Age specialist UT Austin and Cincinnati were always going to be top choices – do not be seduced by ‘top 10’ lists, but rather where you think you will get in. When I look at my rejections it is completely clear in each case what the weakness was – namely that at those departments while Aegean Prehistory had some place, it was very much on the periphery of the department.
 It’s worth pointing out that I got rejected from Brown’s Joukowsky Institute program, and other pure ‘archaeology programs’ that I contacted, with the exception at IPCAA were less keen given my Classics Background – if you want to get into Classical Archaeology with a Classics undergrad then it’s definitely worth targeting ‘Classics’ Departments.
Looking back I should have reviewed Faculty lists more carefully than I did and I think I would not have applied to two of the Programs I did and got rejected from.
That said it is OK to go for different places stressing different interests – as has been said before, so long as it is the truth. I would be very happy to write an eventual PHD thesis on Aegean Prehistory or Space and Society in the Ancient world – hence I could happily apply to a Program like Columbia’s Classical Studies stressing an intention to move away from Aegean Prehistory – at this stage of my life/career, I would be happy to take either path – the problem was applying somewhere like Cornell and stressing my Aegean Prehistory to a huge amount, when it is only a minor part of what their department does.
My GRE Verbal and Writing are good, but not exceptional for Classics applicants, and my Quantitative is appalling – I can only surmise it is totally irrelevant, or a minimal part of the application.
I wrote a new Statement of Purpose for each institution, although certain core sections were the same in their thrust – mainly describing what I did for my MPhil Dissertation and the theoretical and factual questions I asked in it and what I wanted to go on and do in a PhD – one Program contacted me and wanted to know more, and admitted me after I went into a little more detail.
Languages: personally I feel they are overestimated. I have very strong Latin and Greek, but only decent, compared to some, modern languages – I’m not as convinced they are as much as a deal breaker as some people have made out.
 
INTERVIEWS
I have only thus far had them on Skype. I will be going to Michigan later this month. Skype interviews are inherently awkward experiences and I thought they were all awful, although the three I’ve had resulted in one invitation for an in-person interview, an acceptance, and the maybe not sure situation I have at Columbia (see above). A note to people applying in the UK – UK grad interviews are nothing like US ones, they last about half an hour so there is no disadvantage to not coming in person.
I got asked all sorts of things ranging from what my interests were, to defending a point I made in one of the papers I sent over. Two questions that caught me out were ‘who is your favourite theorist’ rather than the standard ‘favourite book/article’ question, and ‘if you had to plan a graduate level seminar course what would it be on?’.

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!

I don't have the time to post something as detailed as actual did, but here are my results and thoughts.
 
accepted: UCLA (after interview), UWashington (no funding)
rejected: Princeton, Cornell, Stanford (after Skype interview), UMichigan, UChicago
 
AOI: Historical linguistics, prose stylistics
 
degrees: Bachelor of Science (Mathematics-Computer Science, Classics) from Brown University, Master of Arts (expected - Classics) from University of Kansas
 
GRE: 169V, 170Q, 5.0W
 
GPA: 3.93 undergrad (3.86 in Classics), 4.0 grad
 
professional stuff: no publications or presentations. 5 semesters experience TAing Latin/Classics (4 as instructor of record) [5 semesters experience TAing computer science]
 
greek & latin: both since high school; transcripts show 6 semesters advanced undergrad Latin, 4 semesters advanced undergrad Greek, 5 semesters graduate Latin (1 taken while an undergrad), 3 semesters graduate Greek.
 
other languages: german (3 years), italian (1 year), french (1 semester reading course).
 
writing sample: The introduction and first section of my MA thesis, a stylistic commentary on Cicero's Post Reditum ad Quirites.  This was a bit of a gambit because it's atypical as a sample.  Both UCLA and Stanford mentioned enjoying it.
 
letters of rec: Three from classics professors at my MA program, one of whom is very well known, one who is fairly well known, and one who is rising in the field.
 
advice for next year's applicants: I have no idea how this process works still, and it feels kind of random.  The school to which I was accepted with funding is the school to which I submitted a personal statement with a blatant typo.  It was, however, the best fit given my interests.  The other school to which I was accepted was naturally the worst fit given my interests.  I'd echo actual's advice of changing more than just the last paragraph of one's personal statement for each school.  The importance of reading lists depends on the school (KU admits to essentially ignoring them, for instance).  Additionally, check to make sure your person of interest is young enough to be still taking on advisees.  It was heavily implied by Stanford (during the interview, no less) that, although they expected me to get into a good program and do well, they would be rejecting me because my person of interest was no longer taking on students.  And finally, days on which you receive multiple rejections are hard.

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!

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.

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.

This is an absolutely disgusting and inaccurate characterization of Leiter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.