Sparky

A legitimate change in research interest/topic is generally considered one of the few good reasons to move from one program to another. Related would be if your advisor gets a job at a different school, leaving you with no backup advisor in your subfield if you remain at your current school. I don't think that's seen as "dropping out" so much as "transferring," though. Lack of interest in one's research topic with no immediate replacement by another interest, however, would or should trigger major warning alarms on an adcom. How are they expected to believe the applicant won't suddenly "lose interest" in this new topic? I should think the profs writing the LORs would face the same question. "[student] is a solid worker, but seems to lack the dedication necessary to pursue a research project to the next level." (Obviously this does not apply if the "lack of interest" was on the faculty advisor side, in which case, see paragraph #1).

More directly to the point about whether it's a good idea to choose a program based on language requirement: Different programs, and even different languages within the same department, can have *vastly* different ideas of what it means to demonstrate "proficiency" for testing purposes. The Latin test I passed for my MA is worlds, galaxies, and entire universes apart from the one I passed for my PhD. On the other hand, my PhD program was perfectly happy to take MA school's word that I am "proficient" in German (the Latin and German tests at MA school follow the same format. Here, not so much.)

I can't help with the funding, but about the degree thing--some programs which don't usually (or publicly) offer a terminal master's degree, will often grant an exiting student the degree if whatever requirements (finished with coursework, 2nd year research project, etc) have been met. It's usually for students who leave for another program b/c their interests developed in a different direction, or who leave to accompany their advisor when s/he gets a job elsewhere. So that's at least something to consider.

What degree is this for? It's not unheard of to transfer between an M* and a PhD (especially, to my knowledge, in the sciences). If you try to ditch out your first year, however, it will look like exactly what it is--I think I'm too good for you. Remember, you'll need LORs from the faculty at your current school in order to explain to your prospective new schools why you need to "transfer" (aka start over, as grad credits don't always transfer. And "but they don't give me summer funding" is not a good reason for a world where hiring often depends on one's ability to pursue and win grants independently). Will you really have built up the necessary relationships by November? Do you think profs will be able to tell that your real motive is that you think you're too good for them? If it's a combined M*/PhD program, try sticking it out at least through the master's.

I was a humanities (not English, though) RA during my master's degree. I did a lot of footnote and bibliography formatting, and proofreading. I made several indices for a book the prof was editing (subject, primary source, non-English phrases, etc). I spent a lot of time with the copier. A lot. Think all the busywork tasks that you hate. I got paid to do them. If you get paired with a prof who works in something near your field, and if the prof assigns you actual research tasks, it might be useful. Otherwise I would go for the teaching. Is your teaching experience at whatever level you plan to teach at post-degree?

Why the English hatred? ~ ZeeMore is right. The writing sample and the SOP serve two different purposes. No, the SOP is not supposed to be an indicator of whether you can do graduate level writing. It's where you make the argument that that specific program is the right place for you to do your graduate-level writing. It's much harder to judge 'objectively' whether an SOP is good than whether a writing sample is good, b/c "good" changes from year to year and based on department politics, current grad student population, etc. A writing sample shows that you are qualified for a program. The SOP is where you show you are right. As for current grad students and professors making fun of SOPs: well, dude, duh. Have you gone back and read yours? Maybe you are a sparklingly genius writer and yours reads like velvet and dumplings, but mine is the most naively earnest, steaming piling of awkwardness I have ever produced. I will make fun of the thing from here to high heaven. But I guarantee that at the interview weekend, I had numerous faculty--including the art history prof on the adcom, BTW--tell me that my SOP really made my application stick out from many of the others. For a master's program, it may well be that the writing sample is more important. For a PhD, especially at a competitive program, they're both absolutely necessary.

Conferences are all and good, better if you organize a panel/present/etc. But by and large, PhD adcomms do not care about generic extracurricular activities. Also, rereading the OP, the person in question has already graduated, yes? I took a year off between undergrad and grad. In addition to working, I actually registered as a non-degree-seeking undergrad at the local college. Since it was in the spring, it didn't help me with that first round of apps (for the MA), but it *did* give me a great background in the courses I took! And it was, um, a lot of fun. Looking at programs: another way to go, especially if you're having trouble contacting former profs, is to look at which recently-published journal articles and books you have most enjoyed/found most useful/so totally wish you had written. Who wrote those articles? Now go to the intertubes, and find out where those people teach and where they did their own grad work. Odds are that at least *some* of them will either be potential advisers, or have recently come from programs where you might also be a good fit.

Is Link+ an interlibrary loan/consortium exchange? My normal strategy (and this has happened to me, several times) is to go to the physical shelf in the library where the book should be. 99% of the time, it's there, and it's just that the person behind the desk didn't scan it back in properly. If the book came to you from another library, especially one not easily accessible, I would probably e-mail the librarians at *that* library. Give them the call #, your name, school, etc, and ask if they'll look and see if the book was reshelved at their library without ever being marked in as returned. This has saved me at least $35 in accumulated fines (as well as the lost-book fee). So yes, there's hope. Good luck; I hope it works out!

Haha, that's more my thought. I do get where the "My MTS screwed me over in [non-religion] field" people are coming from, but I also wonder how much of that was part of the general 'see? I do too deserve to be in a PhD program' posturing that is the interpersonal manifestation of imposter syndrome. That's interesting! IIRC, the website says something like 3 years of theo graduate work (so MDiv, or M* + ThM, or whatever). That's what an HDS prof I talked to (before I realized how high the app fee is) told me, too. So that's not actually the case? Is that a change, or just a non-published policy? Hmm...

--Religion and theology PhD programs tend to view the MTS and MA as interchangeable. Probably b/c the coursework is pretty much almost exactly the same. --There are a couple people in my current program who have an MTS (including from the aforementioned Harvard) who feel that having an MTS instead of an MA when applying to PhD programs *besides* religion ones counted against them. ETA: A couple of people on GradCafe (who are not in my program) have voiced the same opinion, also with respect to HDS. --The MDiv is a special case b/c of the extra year and pastoral training. PhD programs tend to lump it in with an MTS and a religion MA, but there are a few programs (Harvard Div's ThD, for example) that actually require an MDiv. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that non-religion PhD programs would view this even more skeptically than an MTS. --A master's in religion specifically is not always necessary for admission to religion PhD programs (philosophy and language MAs seem to be somewhat common). However, it is very rare that a PhD program will admit someone who does not have at least one M* degree, regardless of what it might say on the website about accepting applicants with just a bachelor's degree. --Unless a program is explicitly a dual-degree M*/PhD program, don't assume you can just "transfer over" to the PhD after finishing your master's. Usually the doctoral programs are much smaller and waaaay more selective (due to funding). Advice: when looking at M* programs, focus less on what letters come after the M, and more on what programs offer better financial aid. (E.g.: Duke Div funds MDiv students better than MTS, Notre Dame fully funds all MTS, &c.)

Abebooks.com and Amazon Marketplace. A lot of the same sellers list on both, but there is enough of a difference to be worth checking every time. Amazon takes a slightly smaller cut (since they also make money selling stuff directly), so the absolute prices are usually a few cents lower, but they also standardize shipping rate. With Abebooks the individual sellers control the S&H as well, so you can sometimes save a few dollars that way.D Depending on your field, you might have more academic press books than textbooks, in which cases my experience has been that the prof puts the books on reserve in the library, and people in the class take turns scanning sections of the books and e-mailing them around. I've bought a few books for class, but mostly ones that I also know are/will be useful for my research and which I'm tired of renewing through ILL.

I am a diehard late medievalist so don't take this as gospel truth, but: it seems to me that early medievalists have pretty much appropriated Late Antiquity. The whole 'legacy of Rome blending with "Germanic" culture/s' trope is the dominant theme in the recent sweeping early medieval histories--think Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, etc. My general impression is that most text-based work on the early Middle Ages is coming out of England right now. I can think of a few Celtic Studies people in the U.S., as well as some material culture/archaeology-centric ones, but even those tend more towards the Carolingian era (Michael McCormick at Harvard, Bonnie Effros at Florida, Lisa Bitel at USC). IIRC, Rutgers combines ancient and medieval Europe under one subdiscipline, and I know some early medievalists who have come out of that program (and are not yet tenured/able to accept grad students, unfortunately). So they might have one or two faculty as possibilities. And as someone upthread mentioned, Tom Noble at Notre Dame, who has at this point done just about everything early medieval at one time or another, right? Again, take all of that with truckloads of salt, please.

Hmm...yeah, I've been using the 'notes' section to store the extra info (in Zotero, b/c it has space for series and series #, which Mendeley doesn't seem to have). But since at least some of the point of citation software is saving yourself the trouble of formatting when you actually end up referencing the work in question, I'm just being all lazy-like and wanting the program to do all the work for me.

Question for people using Mendeley or Zotero: is there a way to add fields to the entry type templates? Like in the case of a translation of a book, and the original, in one entry (which neither of the two supports, as-is), or the series and series number of a book (which Zotero includes by default but Mendeley doesn't). I want something standalone, but I'm willing to deal with the unstable alpha/stable browserish Zotero if I can make it include all the info I need. #*($&@#$ citation formats that require listing a text's entire publication history in one entry...

At the school where I did my M* (in theo), most of the PhD students had multiple master's. Very few of them had both in religion, though. An MDiv and an MA in philosophy was probably the most common (and most intimidating! except for the guy who had an MS in math. yeesh). I can think of one case where someone had an MA in religious studies and then did an MDiv with an eye towards the ministry qualification, but not the MDiv first. At my current school, whose theology dept* is excellent and fairly representative of "what top schools are looking for," they are very very big on language prep and constantly bemoan lack of language training, so I suspect that an MA in classics, biblical languages, etc. would be highly appreciated. As far as it being a red flag? That's what the SOP is for. "While the coursework and pastoral training of the MDiv provided me with a solid foundation in biblical studies, I knew that my desire to grapple firsthand with the texts themselves required more intensive language skills than I already possessed. I therefore chose to pursue a degree/whatnot in Classical Languages, concentrating on biblical Greek, etc etc." * for those of you who don't know, I'm in an interdisciplinary program--which is absolutely the right call for me--but my background is in theo

Only one example I gave had to do with the crate. Destruction of property, especially (and usually only) around the door/window areas is a major sign of severe separation anxiety. The rescue group I was with saved dogs from three main sources: (1) puppy mill mommies (2) owners who couldn't housetrain (3) owners who couldn't deal with the separation anxiety. In some cases, it was that the dog barked all. day. long. when the owner wasn't there, NO behavior modification training worked, and the landlord/neighborhood association basically said, "the dog goes or you go." In others, it was that the dog--whether in a crate or having run of the house/apt--did severe, repeated physical damage to itself or to the property. The people who had to give up their dogs to us for reasons 2&3 were, without exception, absolutely heartbroken. They loved their pets, they cared for their pets beyond everything, they just simply didn't realize that some dogs can't handle isolation. Or, in a couple of cases, thought that "well, my house alone is better than the cage at the SPCA, right?" I am not making this shit up. Euthanasia sucks. Overpopulation of pets in the U.S. is a big problem. SPAY AND NEUTER YOUR PETS, EVERYONE! ADOPT FROM RESCUE! But. It is cruel and abusive to adopt an animal whose needs you simply cannot handle. A dog is not an accessory.

Just a note--a lot of rescue/foster groups require that foster 'parents' already own a dog, in order to help teach the rescues how to be a pet. This does depend somewhat on what group, however, and is more common for breed-specific groups where a lot of the dogs are rescues from puppy mills. (I have volunteered w/a breed rescue group in the past, FWIW, and I definitely plan to foster! But I also want my own. ).

+10 - adopting through a breed rescue group also allows you more control over what type of dog you get, as well as allowing you to get an older dog as opposed to a puppy (needs less attention). A lot of well-trained older dogs end up in rescue when their owners die or move, so if you're not dead-set on a puppy, it's the way to go. Um...okay, I'm in general against euthanasia and all that, but for breeds prone to (or any individual dog who develops) separation anxiety), being locked in a crate all day with no contact is cruelty. Abuse. Once you've seen furry sweethearts who have beaten their snouts and paws bloody trying to chew and claw open their crates day after day, who have eaten holes in solid-wood doorframes trying to get out of the house to find their owners but left everything else in the house completely pristine, you might start to rethink that.

I've gotten the following advice from students further along in my (humanities) program: (1) Don't get a dog until you're done with coursework. (2) When you are done with coursework, GET A DOG. Practically: different breeds of dog can require very different amounts of human contact to be mentally healthy, as well as contact with other humans and animals to be well socialized. If you do decide to get a dog when you know you're going to be on campus/in lab most of the time (I'm not sure how lab-centric I/O psych is, sorry), be *sure* to take that into consideration. I am so all about getting a dog. I can't wait!

One thing people in the past have mentioned doing is putting their CV online somewhere and including a link to it in the e-mail. That way the prof doesn't have to worry about downloading a file attachment (especially useful, I would guess, if they're checking e-mail via phone) but can still access the info easily. Also, you'd have click-through statistics to see which profs took the bait. But you've got the whole "...currently working on an MTS at Harvard" bit. That's all the CV a lot of theo profs are going to need at this point.

This. Pretty much this, now and forever. If I only get 5-7 years to focus so intensely on my subject, then so be it. That's been my attitude all along. It's also what got me through the worst parts of the first year. ("Yeah, well, at least I'm being PAID to be this miserable!") More practically, I'm preparing myself to teach private high school as well, although my dept is...unencouraging of this goal. To say the least. (They are very, very proud of their placement rate.) Tutoring local high school kids and such. During my dissertation work I might see about teaching summer HS enrichment classes or some such...we'll see. I'm at the mental place where I'm aiming at a job at a good high school, and a college career would be a bonus.

I don't have much advice , but I mostly just wanted to say, Go go gadget women's religious history! (I am not an Americanist, though). One thing that seems to be pretty common--especially, for some reason, for people who end up doing religious history--is to do a year or two with AmeriCorps or one of its religious counterparts (Jesuit Volunteer Corps is maybe the most well known; there are other Catholic ones as well, a handful of Protestant ones, the Jewish Service Corps, and I suspect you could find the equivalent for most major religions if it floats your proverbial boat). The JV alums I know mostly ended up teaching upper grade elementary school, and seem to have had significantly better experiences than my Teach for America friends. A VSC alum worked at a crisis nursery; both of my friends who did JSC wound up in Estonia, of all places, for a year. The other big thing to do is language study--you should be proficient in at least one language before you apply, even as an Americanist. Of course, if you're looking at a non-English speaking community, you need that language. This is mostly what I did. I also worked food service and spent as little money as possible, having expected at the time that I would be paying my way through a master's degree. (Yay unexpected funding+stipend, but it's nice to have actual savings now, I suppose). I'm a big proponent, though, of taking a year off, especially because it means you won't have to worry about doing grad apps on top of your school work this fall! (Seriously--SOP writing is a course or two unto itself. I did PhD apps during the third semester of my MA, and it was less than pleasant).

They do. But it's not the 'Tiger Mothers' you have to worry about--it's the Snowflake Parents. These are the kids who are happy to sign away their rights, because they know Mom and/or Dad will happily get on the teacher's case about Snowflake's F in French 2 even though he's a second-semester senior, was admitted to a law program that starts in the summer, and needs to pass the course in order to graduate.

I doubt it. I'm sure they wouldn't have a problem with you *taking* it, but then the profs would have to grade it. Making extra work for the dept is the last thing you want to do. Plus, you don't want to fail it. Taking the SAT II is a good strategy. But your coursework is probably sufficient, especially if you include self-translated bits in your writing sample. (Citing everything in its source language is essential. The guideline I got from departments when I applied was, if there is a standard published translation, feel free to quote it. But make sure you include the original text in footnotes.) Be sure to include languages on your CV. Also, if you can have one of your LOR writers testify to your language abilities, it would be helpful. Middle English isn't usually considered a separate language, in my experience. Most medievalists I know come in to a PhD program claiming intermediate proficiency in at least one modern language. Our actual ability to comprehend scholarship in that language, um, varies. Since you already have coursework in French, one thing you might do is meet with a tutor once a week or so over the summer and fall, (can you find adjuncts or grad students in French/Italian at a local college or CC?) and in your SOP make some comment along the lines of, "Because medieval French and English literary traditions are so closely intertwined, one of my goals during my year(s) off has been to build on the opportunity I had as an undergraduate to begin studying modern French through more specialized work with an independent tutor" usw usw.

Yuck! I would probably just prepare a short lecture each time about something really cool in the general subject field, whether or not it related to the topic of the professor's lectures that week. No, 50 minutes a week is probably not enough to run a full intro to world history or psychology or chemistry or course, but it's certainly enough to give a one-shot lecture on some famous science experiment that involved a lot of extra-experimental drama or had wild and unexpected results, or to show slides and talk about the history of hell in medieval European art, or whatever. I guess I would think of it like all those lectures we're required to go to, and just try to make the overall subject as appealing as possible. I mean, yeah, as a TA I would be super-wary about straying from what the prof covered, but cool lectures are better than nothing or the equivalent, right?