Rabbit Run

"Yay" to HDS if funding is comparable. However, BU is a great school and your mascot will be the "Boston Terriers." I think this is an important consideration.

You won't need CPE for College Chaplaincy/Ministry. You definitely need CPE for hospital chaplaincy "clinical" chaplaincies (aged homes, group homes etc.) as well as for ordination in many denominations. Heres my understanding of CPE units: You do "unit 1" first, which is usually a Summer program although you can do a year long at many places. Unit 1 is usually what people do for their denominations ordination process. Unit 1 is also usually a prerequisite for year long CPE residencies, which qualify you to be a hospital chaplain. Again, I'm not in that field, but thats my understanding of how CPE units work from friends who have done so/are chaplain I can speak to college chaplaincy, and I worked in an Episcopalian context. You won't need CPE as a requirement for most college ministry--your seminary degree will qualify you for many positions--although CPE can only help. Many Episcopalian and other mainline chaplaincies (and there are fewer and fewer) require or prefer someone who is ordained. I have seen at least one job positing for an Episcopalian college chaplain which sought a lay person (check out the lay job listings on Episcopal Digital Network every now and then).

Last week's interviews were just for the Hebrew Bible half of the Bible department. Not department interviews. Don't know about their decisions, but historically PTS releases decisions for all departments either the 3rd or 4th Friday of Feb.

One important factor here is the end game: the job market. In my program the standard time is 5 years, but people will stay for a 6th year or (less likely) finish in 4 depending on their luck on the job market.

Yeah this did happen, its called an "MA(TS)" (Master of Arts in Theological Studies). Its in its second year and funding is comparable to the M.Div (generally 80% need based for non-PCUSA and 100% for PCUSA, with some merit based 100% for non-PCUSA students).

I've seen a number of people who do a one year UK program as a sort of the equivalent to an American ThM before doing doctoral work.

If you're a masters applicant @918Philosophizer is correct. If you're a PhD applicant you won't hear until late February/early March.

Often schools will count your highest score in each area. If you get a 5 in Writing I'd say don't retake. Then you can have 164 V, 159 Q, and 5+ W, which are competitive scores.

A lot of depends on where you end up. I'd advise the M.Div at Harvard and PTS since they have a lot of flexibility, but recommend the MAR at Yale. Others can weight in on other schools or challenge these judgments. Of course, at many of these schools you can switch from one degree to the other without much problem. Personally, the M.Div was helpful for me in terms of building relationships with professors, learning languages, and narrowing my interests. I had mostly applied to MTS/MA programs going into it though.

You'll probably be accepted to most of the M.Div programs you mentioned barring anything unforeseen. I'm not sure how the MSW acceptances work at all these schools. At mine (Princeton Seminary), students apply for the dual degree during their Middler year and most get in. Another one to look at the M.Div/MSW program offered at Union Seminary/Columbia University.

You will have proof of your 3 years of undergrad coursework in Greek on your BA transcript too though. A line in your SOP about that and your current participation in the reading group is the best plan as things stand now.

So I believe the Theology PhD is pretty new (within the past couple years I think). Before they only offered a PhD in Philosophy, which had some sort of Religious/Theological track. I've been impressed with the people I've met from there. James Wetzel is excellent on Augustine and is spoken of very highly by the students and professors I interact with. They've gotten some quality post-docs recently too, and I I've heard they're trying to build inter institutional relationships with other schools in the area. I met and read the dissertation of one student there who was in the Philosophy/Religion track and it was well done. I think you're correct that its best for jobs at small Catholic colleges. Edit - Real reason you should go there: I went to a conference where they not only had the best conference food ever, but a student homebrewed beer specifically for the conference.

List of other schools is fairly common: lets them collect data on what sorts of schools they compete with for students. Often its optional; I doubt it impacts anything. As for the video: thats strange, you sure you're not applying for "The Amazing Race" ?

I think these are good scores; you should survive any cutoffs.

Focus your efforts on the verbal and the writing, but do work on the math as well. Do some self assessment with math first, then find a few points you can fix relatively easily (e.g. formulas etc.); simple things like this can bump you up a few points.

Retaking is something to think about. It sucks, but if you laser focus on your weak points you might be able to get even higher scores on the other portions too. The first time I took the test I had a 4.5, along with verbal and math scores that were a few points less than that yours are now. Worried by threats of AW 5 cutoffs, I retook the test and prepared by focusing just on writing and some verbal stuff I knew I could be better at. Ended up raising my writing up to a 5, and my verbal/math up 5 and 3 points respectively (to where you are basically).

My GRE was roughly the same and I ended up somewhere. If you get a 5 or higher on the AW then don't worry about it.

In my understanding is that yes they are separate schools, but the GTU itself grants certain degrees as its own entity (the Ph.D. and an M.A. I believe). The GTU does not have a campus separate from the schools that compose the GTU. Hopefully someone from GTU can correct me if I got any of that wrong.

Don't know much about the school itself, but a major selling point for Starr King is its affiliation with the Graduate Theological Union, which would allow you to take courses at any of the 9 schools in the GTU.

For comparison, I when I applied for Masters degrees, I applied to 3 of the schools you listed, had basically the same stats as you, and got into 2 of them. The big name divinity schools and seminaries generally have admissions rates in the 50%-40% range, so the best strategy is to apply to several schools (6 or 7 is reasonable) so that you have a better shot of getting good financial aid somewhere, not so that you have a better shot of getting in somewhere. This might be different for NYU; I don't know the specifics for NYU, but schools like that tend to have smaller cohorts for masters than divinity schools and seminaries and thus can have stricter admissions requirements (but also more possibilities for financial aid in some situations). I echo xpathos' advice about the Mdiv verse MA. Some Mdiv programs have pretty strict requirements for courses, meaning you don't have the ability to take what you want/need in order to prep for PhD work. However this isn't the case for all Mdivs. I did an Mdiv and found the 3rd year critical for applying to PhDs: the third year gave me more time to figure out my interests, develop relationships with Professors, and learn languages. To be fair I was in an Mdiv program that had a fair amount of flexibility, but something to consider. Finally, if you're going to apply to Mdiv programs you need to think about what sort of formation you want. I say this because you have an Mdiv program at a Catholic school listed alongside programs at Protestant (or historically protestant, ecumenical institutions at least). The Mdiv degree has a fair bit of faith formation built into it, while this isn't universal, I won't recommend a Catholic do an Mdiv at a Protestant institution or vice versa, because of this aspect of "fit."

Helpful resource; while I'm glad the author thinks my alma mater is #1 (go Ligers!), its better to just ignore the rankings and just see it as "a list of good seminaries to consider." Agreed. While I'm an outsider to be sure, I thought there were some strange places included and some notable omissions (I would have included Beeson and Baylor for one, maybe Calvin as well).

You sure they won't give you a certificate? Where I did it I didn't have anything on a transcript, but I got a certificate of completion.

Congrats! I'm also a Ph.D. admit in Theology (Ethics) at PTS (I did my M.Div. here as well). Feel free to PM me with questions.

Hands down BU in my opinion. While Boston might not be as prestigious as Chicago, but its up there. Anecdotally, one of my professors told me that theres not really a reason why BU shouldn't be acknowledged as "first tier" school (which is a very subjective category I know) even though its not often mentioned in the same breath at Yale/Harvard/Duke etc. In the end, going to Chicago (or anywhere for that matter) will not guarantee a PhD acceptance and 40K is a big gamble to throw down on that.

They are looking to hire a junior and senior scholar each in OT and NT. Barreto in the NT junior and Smith the OT senior; so Gorman would makes sense at the NT senior scholar. If so its not public knowledge yet.