Sparky
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Posts posted by Sparky
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Well, the invitation was signed by Joseph Wawrykow, but the actual email was sent by the administrative staff. It also felt very "form letter"-ish, and the wording definitely suggested that this was the prospective student weekend for the department. Now, as to whether they sent all the invites out at once (or any rejections), I have no idea. The first sentence stated, "The faculty in the Department of Theology has completed its initial review of applications to our doctoral program." It also stated that they're inviting twice as many people as can be offered admission to the program.
1. There is one interview weekend. I'm not in the theo department proper and have no knowledge of any subfield splits.
2. Those are (slightly) better odds than in previous years! Good luck, Ubi caritas!
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Yup, U City or the Central West End, which is actually where WashU's med school is. If you want any shot at living car-free, those are pretty much your only options. But it is a SUPER car-requiring city. The light rail line...well, it tries. (It does stop right along the main campus as well as at the med school/hospital--but you can't get very many places on it.) The bus system is consistently losing funding. Apartment price in the CWE varies really, really widely due to the nature of the neighborhood (age of building and safety of location--the city is gentrifying along certain boundaries and it REALLY shows in housing price!), so it really depends on what you're comfortable in. Come to think of it, this is *almost* as equally true of U City.
A lot of the city social scene for our generation is actually downtown in the loft district. There is some fun to be had there. The Loop wants very, very badly to be a cool city somewhere else (sorry...I grew up in StL and the Loop is SO tainted with high school memories for me; I have a hard time seeing it as a place where anyone older than that hangs out!), but there are some nice concerts in various venues there. Like amlobo said, Forest Park is AMAZING, and it is basically 2 miles of lovely bridge between WashU's main campus and med campus.
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My guilty pleasure as a medievalist is Doc Holliday XD
My guilty pleasure as a medievalist is to read about the Reformation.
- seaofghosts, pudewen, dr. t and 1 other
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1. Too many B+'s got a friend of mine kicked out of our PhD program. This happened. (And as a warning to those of you who didn't read the thread on the history board--that has made me, personally, very cynical on this matter, so please judge my comments accordingly).
2. My dept has not blinked at the handful of A-'s that I have, but I certainly would not call them "prevalent."
2a. That said, I had a 4.0 GPA for my M* (...when I sent my transcripts!
).3. I imagine that undergrad in a grad level class is a whole different world from grad student. Both here and at my undergrad, it is *usually* (not always!) the practice to give slightly different sets of work to undergrads and grads. So as an undergrad, you might have a midterm, final, and much shorter paper or papers. As a grad student, especially in English, most of your grade will likely be based on 1-3 papers, period. This has been my experience, from both sides. A grad program is not so much interested in your ability to pass midterms. They are very, very interested in your ability to write formal literature papers.
4. Bridging off magicunicorn: grad school is a time of transition, for PhD students, from student to professional. The standard you want to reach is not really an A, that's kind of a formality, it's to write papers that are publishable. If you are earning solid A-'s across the board, your work is almost certainly not up to that quality. Which is a problem.
5. I know this sounds terrifying (YOU MUST GET A'S), but really, I promise, it's SO much different once you're there. It's not even like pressure to get A's. Nobody cares, because it's less of an expectation than an assumption that you'll do near-publishable work (and thus get an A). You just...do. It's hard to explain, but I promise, that's how it is. I am not sure it is so much 'rising to the occasion' as it is, everyone here is just that darn good.
6. You are in English. You will be writing papers. Writing papers is a good chunk of what many/most of you hope to do for a living. You would not want to do this if you were bad at it. YOU WILL BE FANTASTIC.
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if they're calling you, you've been accepted. short of threatening them, at that point I think you're past the how-can-I-fuck-this-up stage of things.
Or calling to offer you an interview, as happened to me. I advocate voice mail. Because I am a wuss.
Some programs do interviews over the phone or Skype as well, but for something formal like that they would set up a time in advance. The other situation where it seems phone calls are likely is an early January scenario in which the department is sending out feelers to gauge top candidates' interest in their program, tease out who is likely to accept the offer and who not.
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Check the results search for last year's results from the programs? (Or...don't, because that is not a rabbit hole you want to go down).
Notre Dame usually does late January notifications for late February interviews. IIRC, that has tended to be on the later side. My impression has been that most humanities depts who do interviews hold them sometime in Feb.
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It very much depends on the discipline, with some variation in departments. Like, language and English people very often get their classes.
My dept does not assign TAs full-blown classes; we either lead discussion sections or are mainly graders. However, there are opportunities later on in the program to teach as an instructor-of-record if you seek them out--basically, being hired as an adjunct professor. Nearly everyone here does that at some point or points, either at our school or at the women's college next door. I think that's a pretty common progression, actually.
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I played my lack of coursework as part of the reason X program was such a good fit for me. "I am eager to take advantage of courses in [semi-obscure subject" (well, worded better), and in your case you could add something about backing up your experiences.
It worked.
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1. No, of course not. Apparently my choice of schools is special. Hence me being the doom-and-gloom prophet, and everyone else disagreeing with me!
2. I do, in the end, have only my friend's word about GPA and grades. (But no reason to suspect of dishonesty. And it has been made very, VERY clear to us that B+'s are unacceptable.)
3. It is not a question of one semester and done, but rather an accumulated 3 semesters--almost all our PhD coursework.
4. First semester does not count even at my school, or else I would not still be here!
5. I have a couple of A minuses from after my first semester, and no one has said one word to me about those.
6. Be aware that this expectation of getting an A--it can be a realistic expectation, because the people here do work of that caliber. (And with my A-'s, I have some idea of the boundary). That means if you get in, you are capable of working up to the level. I see this as a TA--my good students tearing out their hair studying for the final, when I can predict in advance approximately how each of them will do. Simply because the ones who are diligent will be diligent and put in the work, the ones who compound that with extra brains will do superawesome, etc. My friend being asked to leave is a HUGE exception. Generally that only happens here when people fail comps. (Uhhh... ::swallows nervously::
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My MA school/dept and PhD school dept both make it very, very clear that an A is the expectation of all grad students. That is not to be confused with easy classes or standards; the point is that grad students should be doing that level work, or they should not be in the program.
I'm not saying that a 3.7 will get your app thrown in the trash without being looked at, but I do think that an A-minus average is nearing the point at which you want to have professors maybe speak on your behalf. Especially if you're talking about a semester of all B-plusses or some such (which I realize is not in the OP and her situation might be different).
I am the TGC voice of gloom-and-doom on this because I watched a very close friend get kicked out of our program over essentially a 3.7 (mix of A's and B+'s). I accept that more optimistic perspectives may apply in many cases (ETA and I will be hoping this is true for you, OP! you seem cool), but I'm not going to have one of them.
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Applying to M* programs at the same time as a PhD is quite common! Especially as PhD admissions have gotten more and more competitive. I'm not sure about at the same school, though; hopefully someone else has some experience with that.
I do medieval religious history, but started with an MA in historical theology. Fields, in other words, that are nuts about languages (if a different set than HB). Try to get as much formal, in-classroom experience as possible. Professors are much more likely to view that highly; some even discount "independent language study" altogether. Um, please don't think I'm implying anything bad about you or your MDiv program, but--I wouldn't take the school's verdict that you knew the languages sufficiently to test out as proof of ability to conduct research in those languages. I passed my MA school's Latin exam quite nicely, thank you very much, and still got nailed to the wall my first PhD semester (my Latin professor expressed her surprise that I was a "real student here."
)I don't mean to suggest you are not working your butt off on languages independently, but formal coursework will probably make you more competitive in the eyes of an admissions committee. Otherwise, you would want to be sure that your writing sample and at least one letter of recommendation testify to your language skills--through use of the language, and through a prof or tutor praising your ballerina-like dexterity with the nuances of biblical Hebrew.
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Here are the two I was thinking of (courtesy of straight-up Google; I am not a fan of the MLA site):
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I've seen some stuff about "rethinking the dissertation", but most of that has focused on entire departments that are changing their requirements. A lot of it centers around some flavor of 'digital humanities' (...for your particular value of digital humanities, whatever that may be). Probably the MLA blog archives would be a good place to search.
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When you say you "can't afford" another master's--there are actually quite a few funded M* programs out there in theology, good ones. Duke MDiv, Notre Dame MTS, and I know there are people on TGC in the past who've had very good luck getting funding from Yale, Harvard, and Vanderbilt for their M* programs. Might something like those be a good backup option? Like jdmhotness, it's really not unusual for incoming theo M* students to have multiple master's. The PhD cohort I started my own (fully funded! with stipend!) MA with was *mostly* people with two master's. Talk about intimidating!
I started my own PhD with a real deficiency in language, and trying to make up the difference pretty much destroyed my first semester (and then, emotionally, me for the next year or so). Please, don't do what I did.
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How many to bring? As many as you can fit.
What to cut? Inevitably, the ones you leave behind, sell, and give away will turn out to be exactly the books you want. More practically, and as someone in a field very similar to you: I find it most useful to have my own copies of primary sources in translation, so I can make my own notes in them. (Original language is of course most excellent, but I mean, a single volume of the Corpus Christianorum is like $350). As far as academic books go, I rely very very heavily on the library and scanned chapters, but find it useful to have a personal copy of many of the most popular works that I use. They are the ones most likely to be checked out from the library or placed on 2-hr reserve by a professor, so if I need quick access, that's the way to go.
I am also a fan of reference handbooks like the Cambridge Companion series, when I need background or bibliography on a topic but don't need to go seriously in-depth. However, many schools (including mine, which is on your list) subscribe to the Cambridge Online database so you have PDF access to the whole shebang.
Humanities grad school is the process of learning how many books you are in fact totally dying to read--while being faced with a mountain range of books that you, in fact, are required to read. (Some of which will wind up being worth it.)
A couple other pieces of book advice, for the other end of things:
Don't buy anything from the bookstore. Amazon Marketplace, Abebooks, half.com. Don't buy books for your classes unless they relate pretty directly to your field or are foundational for your discipline as a whole; library, scan, swap with someone else in your class, or ILL if necessary. This is a good way to help combat book glut. (You probably knew all this already, but it's still worth pointing out.)
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I still don't see how that's politics--it seems pretty standard. They ask for preferences, make assignments, not everyone gets their first choice. That's how it works here, and they've certainly never consulted us for second pickings. I just don't see how there is room to see this situation as you being targeted in any way.
...They'll probably tell us our spring TA assignments sometime in January. If I get my first or second choice for which class, it will be the first time in four semesters (once they didn't even ask us our preferences!).
(I wouldn't be so quick to judge things based on faculty traveling to the far campus. Rotational teaching can be a required part of departmental service, required or "optional").
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I am not sure where there are "politics" involved? I imagine that no one wanted to make the 1.5 hour drive, for the very good reason that it is a 1.5 hour drive. You, as you point out, are on the bottom of the seniority ladder in this case. That seems fairly clear-cut and not like any kind of personal animosity is in play.
I think requesting to swap out another quarter-time RA ship, or convert your quarter-time into a half-time position (that could be funky with funding, though if the school's covering it I imagine it could work) is a good place to start.
- R Deckard, tauren, fuzzylogician and 1 other
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This year gets about a zero, perhaps a negative. My first two years were awesome, even the hell that was my first semester. I expect that if I make it through comps, it will return to being awesome.
(FWIW--comps in my dept are much more fearsome than even parallel departments at my school--and are openly acknowledged as such. Also, professors enjoy failing students, in some cases at apparent random--also openly acknowledged.)
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You don't want all your degrees from the same institution. Otherwise, when you apply for jobs people will be asking whether it's *your* success...or the school's.
It is not at all unheard of for someone with a BA from a school with a tip-top PhD program in their subfield to return--but this usually involves at least one degree elsewhere, like in waparys' case.
Some departments have an absolute ban on admitting their own students, so you would want to find that out.
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...Right, I suggested you compartmentalize and have your LOR writers mention your grades,not stuff it all into your SOP. I'm assuming you will have different writers to comment on your undergrad vs grad grades, right? Or perhaps your SOP could discuss one, and an LOR writer could discuss the other?
The point is, an A-minus average in your MA program might be seen as a potential problem, a sign that you're not up to handling grad-level work. You need to supply proof of the opposite, and it is probably a good idea to explain that the A minus does not reflect your actual potential (including explaining how the health problems are unlikely to reoccur, etc).
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Well, on one level your GPA is what it is, so there's not much use *worrying* about it.
On the other, you have every motivation to do AWESOME in the spring, right? Generally, graduate GPAs are expected to be as near to 4.0 as possible. In PhD programs, and pretty much extrapolated to M*s, the idea is that "graduate level work" is an A, with B+ or anything below a pretty big warning marker. (A close friend at my school got kicked out over too many B+s). So from that standpoint, an A-minus average might be a concern for PhD adcoms. But it shouldn't be any kind of killer. Just make sure your SOP and writing sample are unbelievably awesome--you know, exactly the same advice as if you had a 4.0!
Still, it might be a good idea to get one of your LOR writers to mention that even in the midst of health problems you were able to push through beautifully.
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It depends on the program. Some depts will only allow professors to serve as primary advisors if they have tenure. (Especially if the dept has a history of denying tenure, or of profs choosing to leave before tenure review). So you would want to make sure that's not the case.
Otherwise, I think, it really comes down to the proverbial luck o' the draw. Is it that professor's turn this year to get a grad student? Is the dept even accepting candidates from your subfield this year? Did your prospective advisor make a deal with another professor that this year, she'll get 2 students and next year he'll get 2? Factors totally out of our control.
All that said, there is nothing wrong with mentioning junior profs in your SOP, although if you're looking at a primary advisor situation, it's probably a good idea to e-mail and ask. I'm not sure you'd get a reply at this point, though (end of semester crunch and all).
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Interdisciplinary programs are risky. There are a *handful* (and I really do mean a handful, maybe fewer) with well-established reputations and good (such as it is) track records of placing people in academic jobs. "Interdisciplinary" is an academia buzzword, yes, but the way academia is structured, jobs tend to be in a disciplinary department. And then from there, it's hip to involve other things in your research. Migration Studies and Women's Studies would also fall under interdisciplinary. There are a couple of jobs out there in WS, for example, but most departments of it are comprised mainly of profs with a primary position in sociology, psychology, literature etc. who cross-list many of their classes as covering gender topics.
Get in touch with the department; ask them for placement statistics. Be sure you're getting honest data, and not the standard "everyone who wants an academic job gets it." Ask about tenure-track positions, number of students who drop out of the program before completion, the careers pursued by students who do not find permanent work in academia, etc.
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It is my comps (-rehensive exams) year and it is brutal. Just plowing through piles and mountains and nebulae of occasionally good writing and a truckload of utter crap that I could have done a better job writing in high school (...and that's just considering the native English writers).
I love, love, love what I do; I love, love, LOVE diving into my own research and not realizing I haven't slept in 28 hours and 2 AM runs to the library to look up a word in the early modern German dictionary and the time to daydream about how my little slice of Empire fits into the larger fabric of the medieval world. But right now, I have too much *#(@$Y@ reading of crappy books that aren't really relevant to my research and I'm never going to get through them all and guess what, my program actually enjoys failing people, and oh yeah they moved my cohort's exams up two months, because.
My first semester was hell, but at least it was mentally engaged hell. It feels like this year is just plain sucking my soul away.
Anyone got inspiring quotes, funny GIFs, *anything* to give me a nudge this week?
School Lists 2013 (Where are you applying?)
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Posted
Ever read Snow Crash?