Sparky

Gah, I didn't mean to sound so snotty. I'm sorry. To answer my own question, it's a world in which the usual paper topic is something lke "Write 25-30 pages. About something involving the economy. In early modern Europe. Or anywhere else. Or in the Middle Ages." "Tell us about your intellecutal background" starts to seem pretty specific after a few semesters of that!

Don't be confused by the anachronistic use of "Juris Doctor." In modern academia, a law degree is the equivalent of a master's degree, not a Doctorate of Philosophy. Saying "A JD could do it just as well!" is the same as saying "But you only need an MA in poli sci to know what you're doing! Why should I have to spend four whole big extra years..." Possibly true, but entirely beside the point, because, as Tufnel said, a university position is not only about teaching.

...And in what world are those extra questions not considered "prompts"? I just meant they don't tell you "Go write us a 500 word statement of purpose, period, end of story." It's "Write a 500 word statement of purpose in which you may want to describe the elements in your academic career that led you to consider Q program, your research plans, your favorite joke, and so forth." That's a prompt.

Well, just a couple of thoughts, quickly: There are a lot of places to get a PhD in religion, probably more than many disciplines due to the seminary factor. What there are NOT, however, are many *good* places to get a PhD. Religion/theology is really, really insular--like, if academic theology were a social group, it would be Old Money--so the top schools and even some of the "decent" ones will only consider applicants from the other top sc hools. It also doesn't seem like religion people apply to as many programs as applicants in other disciplines. Partly b/c there aren't as many good ones, I'm sure, but I think also religion applicants are often older and have more local ties limiting choices. In English, philosophy and history you see people applying to 10, 12, maybe more schools; I don't think rel people usually go for more than six, *maybe* seven at the most. ETA: The being-older part might have something to do with people being less worried about what they're doing after. Like, if you've been a Presbyterian pastor for fifteen years, you know you can do that, and maybe you even want to go back to that. Also, at my MA school, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that everyone was intending to teach. It still seems odd, now that I'm in history, when people ask me what I'm going to do with it, instead of, "You want to teach, right?" If everyone is planning to teach, there's no reason to talk about WHETHER to teach or not.

I...I just...there. are. not. words.

{a} Seriously? You don't know who the top people in your general field are? {b} Who advises you and who you mention as major influences in your SOP are two different things. My advisor is Bruce Springsteen; in my SOP I think I mentioned Jimi Hendrix and Two Steps From Hell (i.e. one huge star; one who has made a giant contribution to the field overall but is often unacknowledged and/or ignored--except by you, of course). Like that. {c} Ask your current/former profs who work in the same area, or anything remotely close. They will know. (I bet you couldn't find three professors of European Late Antique history who don't know who Peter Brown is. Heck, I don't know if you could find three undergraduates studying Late Antiquity who don't know who Peter Brown is). {d} Go on Dissertation Full Texts & Abstracts (database) and look up a recent dissertation on something related to your topic. Chances are it will have a lit review at the beginning in which the person will acknowledge the top scholars. {e} Who wrote the textbooks for your classes? Who wrote the articles your profs assign as homework? {f} Footnotes of an article, especially the first couple, which often are a billion miles long and contain a lit review. Some articles will even have a "Any work in hocus pocus of course owes a significant debt to Mandrake the Magician" etc. {g} Who have you cited in *all* your papers in this field? {h} Who wins the book awards in your field? {i} I know this isn't what you want to hear, but: if you don't know who The Superstars in your field are, you probably shouldn't be looking at PhD programs. ETA 'cause I don't know the alphabet, apparently.

Careful. Some online applications will actually truncate your SOP if it is too long. You don't want to end accidentally with "[Z] is the most perfectest place for me to study [Q] becau". THIS, times a million. I also think it betrays a lack of confidence in yourself. Imagine if the Declaration of Independence ended with "...we pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. And we thank Your Majesty for considering this humble request."

@ ticklemepink Tell me about it. We should get special avatars or something. @ OP: Piece of advice #1, 2, 3, *and* 4: Forget about the US News "rankings." The USN&WR grad school rankings are a joke. Look up the "top 10" African history programs on their list...then go to the websites of those schools and count how many of them actually offer a PhD track in African history. And nobody's going to bother to rank "mid-20th century U.S. cultural history with an emphasis on the intersection of race and disability" programs. The way you find the best program for YOU is to find where Professor Rockstar teaches. The name of your dissertation advisor can be very, very important in the job search, just as if not more important than school name. If you try to look for schools based on what is "good," you are much less likely to end up applying to places where you are a good fit; if you are not a good fit at a school that is anywhere near the top 10, you won't get in. (And even if you did, once you got there you'd probably be miserable). Example: the philosophy PhD from the school where I got my MA (not in philo) has maybe a 35 or 40% job placement rate, in a good year. Students who study medieval philosophy (a.k.a. do-you-want-fries-with-that) under Prof. Rockstar have about a 95% placement rate. This is not on the website. People know this because they know she is Prof. Rockstar, and would be worth it even if she were at Northern South Dakota State. And 95% is a hell of a lot better than you're going to see people for people coming out of [ivy] with Dr. McMediocre as their advisor. There is no such thing as "good assurance" that you won't be rejected. Any PhD program that accepts a pleasant percentage of applicants is not a program from which you want to have a diploma. UT Austin last year, for example--they have 12 subfields, right? They accepted seven people. That means that if you applied for, say, Asian history, but they had already decided not to offer a spot to anyone applying for Asian, you could be the awesomest candidate ever and you still wouldn't get in. And so on. Larger programs will of course accept more than one person per subfield (so, maybe...two?), but those programs will also likely have more applicants. The admission rates listed on any site besides the school's webpage (and the ones bandered about on TGC from last year) are inaccurate, out of date, or both. And it's meaningless to talk about a "program" acceptance rate when at most schools you're competing only against people applying to your subfield. If they get 200 applicants for U.S. and 20 for Africa, and can take one student per subfield...see what I mean? As far as switching fields once you have a job goes...well, the university would hire you to teach and research 20th century U.S. So sure, you could go from, I don't know, 1920s intellectual history to 1960s economic...but in order to get tenure, and then promotions (assuming you get tenure!), you have to build up a solid body of scholarship, which means concentrating in one area. Once you are Peter Brown or Caroline Walker Bynum, then maybe you can start to think about stretching your metaphorical wings...but then again, look at what Bynum has published: female saints, invention of the individual, monasticism, blood cults, resurrection of the body, werewolves...ALL of those still fall under "later medieval cultural history". "Terminal MA" programs are different from "PhD programs where they give you an MA after you pass comps." We are telling you to apply to at least some of the former. No, your credits are not likely to "transfer." But for goodness sake--you're getting paid to go to class and talk about what you love. Why on Earth would you want to rush through that?!?! My current program grants a master's on the way to the PhD. Every single student here had at least one master's degree before they came. You might be able to test out of survey classes--but come on! If you're at a school that has Dr. FitzAwesomeness, take advantage of it!!! If that doesn't sound like a dream come true to you--if you don't understand the emotion with which I am typing all of those exclamation marks--if you don't have a research area that makes you pant like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally...there's no point. Here is one final piece of advice for now: ticklemepink and I don't always agree, but when we DO agree, I don't think we've ever been wrong.

It's not worth it.

Except for the GRE score, I don't see what's wrong with what you have. Not all, but some, schools have an unofficial GRE cutoff of 1200. But it's October--you have plenty of time to take it again before most app deadlines, yes? As far as subfield goes: it is *usually*--not always, but usually--possible to switch subfields once you get to a school, if there is no one there working on your new interest enough to advise a dissertation, you might be out of luck. (Someone else is going to post on this thread about how there are ways around that. This is true, but they are often complicated and it may not work out in the end). Letters of recommendation...it doesn't matter all that much what department your profs come from (um, within certain limits). What's important is that you get profs who know you and who will write you stellar LORs. If the prof is a Big Important Name in her field, it will help at some schools. To look for programs, a good way to start is to look at what recent books and journal articles have inspired you. What book do you wish you had written? Which articles? Who are the most important scholars in your sub-subfield? Find out where those profs teach! (Google is your friend). That's the program you want to be at, not a random Ivy just for the name on the diploma. Also, consider applying to a few MA programs as well. PhD admission rates in the humanities suck in general. If this truly is what you want to do with your life (...with every second of your caffeinated, stressed-out, haven't-slept-more-than-4-hours-a-night-since-undergrad, life), hedge your bets.

It doesn't seem to be all that common, but it's not unheard of. At my MA program, there were usually 2 or 3 students who would visit for a day in the fall (usually prospective PhD students). The way it worked there was, they contacted the department, who then set up meetings with individual professors with whom the student had expressed interest in working (if possible). Also class visits, and then the dept would bribe one of the current students into taking the visitor on a campus tour. It's probably better to let the dept do the legwork in setting up a meeting w/a potential advisor, although I should think that you would still want to contact the prof beforehand. One of the programs to which I applied said they welcomed visitors *except* during the time period between the application deadline and when decisions were sent out. I don't know if every dept has that rule, but it seems like a useful guideline to me. But a visit is probably not necessary. I don't know about geology/geosciences, but many if not most science and science-ish programs with which I'm familiar do on-campus interviews for a group of finalists. A handful of humanities programs have them as well, including mine. It's a weird combination of you competing to get in and the school competing to get you to come there. Places that don't have interviews usually have an 'admitted students' weekend' for visiting purposes.

If you're looking for a 'big seminary' experience, isn't the Boston theo consortium going to be perfect? Also...do you really want to let your crappy undergrad years ruin your longtime dream? (that's not a rhetorical question; I had to ask myself a parallel question once upon a time) And is starting seminary in fall 2011 an imperative? You couldn't just run the camp for a year or so, take a few classes, then when you're ready to move on from the camp, enroll somewhere as a full-time MDiv/MTS student?

In what world is a 670V score *low*? As long as you're above 90th percentile--and with that score, you are way above it--you'll be fine. Save the worry for your SOP and writing sample. A stellar GRE score never got anyone into Columbia; an outstanding writing sample might.

WIth respect to the objective case--I think you (in other words, I) only use the 'the' when the school name is "University of [x]" (or College of). Like, you would say, "I'm applying to Emory University", but "I'm applying to the College of William & Mary." The suggestion about checking the website is a good one. Also, I'm pretty sure GW--George Washington--is another The school (The George Washington University; at least, that's what their buildings say). ETA: In colloquial English, I often hear 'the' used in the nominative case, too, when the school name starts with 'University of." Like, "And the University of California at Berkeley would be a good choice." But at the same time, if you're acronym-izing--which you should not do in your SOP, it would be something like, "And UC Berkeley would be a good choice." Don't stress too much, though--my current school is technically a 'University of,' although I have never heard *anyone* use it (even our acronym doesn't have a U at the beginning), and I don't think I *ever* used that in my SOP.

Ughhhh MINE DOES. If I had to hand in my dissertation proposal tomorrow, it would be something like, "Why the Middle Ages Didn't Start Until at Least 718 C.E. So Medievalists Aren't Responsible for Studying Anything Before That." You know Milton's line "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven"? This place is like both happening simultaneously.

Most schools give you a prompt of sorts--a few questions to answer--rather than just saying "Send us a statement of purpose." Usually "what you intend to do after your degree" is one part of the prompt. Not every school/program does this--actually, where I am right now doesn't, although I included it in my SOP anyway as it led right into a psedo-snappy conclusion--but every other program to which I applied, asked. Check out the applicaion instructions on the website of the department to which you're applying (not just the general grad school page). Incidentally, although my current program didn't require it in the SOP, it was one of the questions they asked us at the interview weekend.

Well, it's probably more realistic than thinking that your great grades and GRE scores will get you in everywhere!

Well, generally in history you would start out with a geographic region and era, then study suicide bombing in that specific context. Not because a comparative history of, say, suicide bombing is any less valid a way to study it, but because that's how history teaching jobs work. You're hireable as a colonial Americanist, or a 20th century Asianist, or whatever, not as a "historian of suicide terrorism"--because you have to be able to teach a wide variety of classes, not just "Suicide Bombing in the 20th Century" "Suicide Bombing in the Early Byzantine Empire" etc. You might find a few comparative history programs, but in general you will have to narrow it down to a more specific time/place. You write your dissertation on suicide bombing in a specific area at a specific time...then you publish a book on comparative terrorism history. It's a fairly common process, from what I understand. So with that in mind, one way to look for programs/profs to work with is something like: you decide you want to study suicide bombing in the early Byzantine Empire. Well, what profs are writing articles and books on early medieval war tactics? Who is publishing on peasant unrest in late antiquity? etc.

Alette is right. Pick one--the SOP isn't a binding contract; you can change once you're there. Likely you will have to take intro classes in multiple eras/themes of lit, and some of the profs will be trying to 'evangelize' for their particular era. But for the SOP, pick one. Something like, 'as an undergrad, I developed a strong interest in 18th century nature writing and hope to pursue this further' or whatnot. It shows that you have actually put some thought into what you might want to do and are not just applying to grad school for the heck of it. I think the difference between this and a PhD SOP is that for an MA you don't have to be AS specific, not that in an MA SOP you can say "I want to study EVERYTHING!!eleventy-one!!). I applied to MA schools telling them in my SOP that I wanted to study modern Africa; I showed up that fall saying I didn't know what I wanted to do and no one complained the least bit; I am now in a PhD program in (Western European) medieval studies. Go figure. (Oh, and I basically followed what I said above--for my MA SOP, I more or less said "I want to study religion in modern West Africa;" my PhD SOP mentioned a very specific sub-sub-geographically-focused topic within medieval history, and a possible direction towards a dissertation idea I might consider. I'm pretty firmly set in my sub-sub-topic, because it's the awesomest thing ever, but I doubt I'll pursue that particular research angle).

I know nothing about creative writing, but in general an SOP for, shall we say, "academic" (not the right word, I know) subjects contains the following, in some order: 1. what you want to research (specifically; this can change once you're in the program, but for a PhD it should be pretty focused) 2. why you want to research that*, and why you are qualified to (not just a rehash of your resume and transcript) 3. why you want to study it at this particular program (this is the "fit paragraph" that everyone talks about--what professor(s) do you want to work with, what resources does the school have that will help your project, etc) 4. what you want to do with your [name of degree] - for an academic PhD program in the humanities, you should almost ALWAYS say 'research and teach'; programs want to be able to brag about the % of students who get jobs in academia, and you won't be doing yourself any favors by saying straight off, "I will lower that percentage" (public history and the like being exceptions) (other people may disagree with this, but I stand by it) 5. if absolutely necessary, explain any holes in your record or why your lack of a specific qualification doesn't matter * In general, this means from undergraduate onwards; it's not a great idea to talk about your childhood visits to the aquarium or how you've *always* wanted to study something (unless maybe you're applying to study neo-Platonism and you want to emphasize that you're on board with the preexistence of the soul and the return to the origin...).

Short answer: no. Some programs require applicants to have an MA, but not most. Longer answer: If you look through the 2010 thread, you'll see that a lot of people without MAs did just great, and a lot of people *with* MAs had a rough year. I do have an MA, although it is not in history (I am concentrating in history, within an interdisciplinary program, but my MA is in religion). If you have an MA when you are applying to PhD programs, schools will generally expect to see a more-focused statement of purpose, likely a more advanced writing sample, etc. One of the major reasons for an MA is to give you extra time for language study. I'm not sure how much of a concern this is for you--obviously you know French; do you need Wolof or anything for your research? The other major bonus of an MA first, of course, is that it gives you more time to solidify your research interests, so that when you *do* apply for a PhD, you can find the right program with the right advisor. "Modern France and Francophone Africa" is pretty broad; can you get more specific yet? (I certainly couldn't right out of undergrad! Thank goodness for those 2 extra years ). Oh, and I <3 your screenname forever. That's awesome.

When you say "PhD in Literature," do you mean English lit or Comparative Literature? For the latter, not having at *minimum* a second language will disqualify you almost everywhere. (What literature are you going to compare, American and Canadian?) English lit, it likely depends on your era--if you're a medievalist, not having Latin (and of course either Old or Middle English) is harmful. As for recommendations, my general impression is that it's best to get three profs who will say you are the best thing since the peanut butter sandwich. Also, the more recent the better. For what it's worth, I definitely had profs from outside my current field. Actually, all of them. (Hehe, I just picked the profs for whom I wrote my three best papers. I put soooo much thought process into this, can you tell?) English is not my field, but from what I gather, your writing sample will be the most important part of your application by far. In comp lit, the statement of purpose is probably critical, too (not that it's unimportant in English!), because you usually have to sell the university on your proposed course of study, as it tends to be fairly specific to each student. At least, that's how the Lit PhD works at my school. Be sure you apply to some non-top 10 schools as well. Admissions last year were really rough, and I'll be decently surprised if they're not as bad/worse this year.

Mostly, it shows interest in the school--that you're not just dashing off another application "for the heck of it" or "because it's YALE, dude." Also, however, it gives you a chance to check out not just whether you would be a good fit for the program, but also whether the program is a good fit for you. (And likewise for the prof with whom you'd want to work. It's good to find out if the two of you just don't click, or if s/he is always busy and doesn't even have time to speak on the phone, etc). I'm really grateful for this, actually--it saved me a nice $105 on a Harvard application fee I didn't pay. But this is likely more important for a PhD program than an M*. I didn't contact any of the MA programs to which I applied, although technically one did contact me, and I was accepted to all of them. For a PhD it's critical, though. It would be nice if you could get a rec from the prof who has been tutoring you in Aramaic, to show that you legitimately know the language and aren't just the usual "language super-autodidact" who wouldn't know how to decline a Latin noun if one fell out of the sky and landed on her head. Maybe also look at Emory and UChicago? Second Temple Judaism is, um, not my area of specialty, but I was thinking those had several people there doing work around that area. As a master's student, it might be more important that you have a range of classes to take in your specialty, than an individual prof who matches your interests perfectly.

Caveat: some schools with online applications actually set a limit on the number of pages you can upload. So it's not necessarily a great idea to send a 20-page-plus-bibliography paper to a school that only stores the first 15 pages you upload. I don't know how widespread this practice is, though, and of course you can get around it by mailing in a paper app (assuming the school still accepts those).