IbnRushd

Hi! I can't tell you anything about the programmes but in terms of living, both Lausanne and Zürich are great places. Zürich can be very expensive though. Do you speak any French? German? If you intend to go to Lausanne, you will need some French, we don't take to kindly to people who directly assume that everyone speaks English ^^ In Zürich you could probably get away without speaking any Swiss German but it's always better to at least try to learn it. Both cities are located at transport nodes within the Swiss railway system with easy access to the main cities or the Alps (which you have to go to if you end up in Switzerland). From Lausanne you can even take the train to Paris or a few other French cities, from Zürich to Vienna and Berlin. So if you want to explore a bit of Europe whilst you are there, Switzerland is the ideal choice :-) I haven't visited the University of Zürich, but Lausanne has a beautiful campus, slightly away from the city centre but very well connected (Swiss cities are small anyway). There are plenty of opportunity to get involved with the campus life, from taking part in radio shows to organising cultural festivals. For Konstanz, I've only been there once and as far as I can remember it's a very pretty town, conveniently located between Germany and Switzerland.

Thanks for this useful comments. I have been accepted to the MA in Middle Eastern Studies at UChicago and I was thinking of maybe applying to do a joint degree with the MPP, but I'm not sure if would not be better to simply do some classes offered by Harris as part of the MA instead. Any thoughts?

I don't believe it does, as I got a place at St Anthony's even if my offer is still conditional. I think it depends on how many applicants each college has, and on the efficiency of the staff there. But you should definitely send the paperwork as soon as possible :-)

you have to have submitted all your transcripts before you can enrol (cf. http://gradadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/requirements/, section "Transcripts")

It will be my first trip to the Middle East, so I'm really looking forward to it!

If everything goes as planned, I will be coming end of June - end of July

When does your course start? in any case you can't apply for the visa earlier than 120 days before the beginning of your studies in the US, so you still have time. I don't know how it works for your university, but for mine, once I accepted the offer my department asked that I submitted a couple of documents proving that I have the financial resources to cover for the costs of the course, as well as a translation of those documents. Once I did that they sent me the I-20 form by mail. The whole process was quite quick, the longest will probably to wait for the i-20 form to arrive via mail! You can always contact the international affairs office of your university, they should be able to help you out and explain how this work for your university. Good luck! P.-S. I'll be going to your city this summer to improve my Arabic :-)

I've found this: https://www.facebook.com/UChicagoAdmittedGraduateStudents and this https://www.facebook.com/GradAffairs; not sure if there is anything else...

Apparently, once we accept the offer, we should receive an email explaining in details all the documents we need to satisfy the requirements for the I-20 or DS-2019 forms and how to submit them to the faculty. Once this is done, they have to send the form by mail, so it might take a while to get to us (between 2 weeks - 1 month, but might be even longer!). In any case, we can't apply for a visa more than 120 days before the beginning of the programme, so there is still time

Hi! I was accepted to the M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies :-) Anyone else? Really excited, but still hesitating between this programme and a similar at Oxford...

MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies :-) still pondering whether to accept or go to UChicago, depending on scholarship results

Hi! I was also accepted to both the MA in Chicago and the MPhil in Oxford, and deciding between the two is quite difficult, especially since I'm also coming from a different field. As I currently reside in the UK, I had the opportunity to go to Oxford's Open Day and I have to say that the students and faculty I met were all fantastic, so much so that I would have never thought I would be admitted! I was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity and openness of the professors we met: when I applied to another department for an undergraduate programme it was completely different, so much so that I no longer wanted to go to Oxford... But the Oriental Institute seems radically different in atmosphere. And the city is truly amazing and in itself conductive to any intellectual endeavours, so definitely a good choice :-) And it really doesn't get much better in terms of intellectual stimulation that Oxford's tutorial systems! Now Chicago... I've never been there personally, but I hear that it is a brilliant city and Hyde Park a great neighbourhood to live in. In terms of the programme, it has two substantial differences from Oxford: a larger number of different courses to take and the 'survey course' which lasts throughout the first year. Whilst Oxford focuses strictly on the recent periods, this survey course gives a background on the history/philosophy/literature etc. of the Islamic world from its inception, which means that upon completion of the course, we would be able to understand better the roots of modern phenomenon. In my opinion, it is particularly important for your fields of interest. It is my sense also that Chicago offers more opportunities in terms of life outside academia (in particularly engagement within the community through outreach programmes etc.). I don't know if that's important to you, especially if you want to go straight into a PhD/DPhil afterwards, but I personally need sometimes to be able to leave the comfortable sphere of academia to interact with the 'real' world :-) Well, good luck with your decision!