Abdelazar

How important is it to modify one's statement of purpose when reapplying to programs? In my case, I was close to being accepted at each of the programs to which I am reapplying (first on waitlist; POI wanted to accept me but there turned out to be no funding this year; invited to interview on campus). My main research interests have not changed and the new academic work I have done since applying last season (paper presented, language class) is probably better presented on my CV or elsewhere on the application rather than mentioning it in the SOP. I will likely change up the wording in some parts, but my main question is how substantial should these changes to be? Should I write a new "hook"? I'm guessing that the admissions committee will not hold up my previous SOP to my current one and do a close textual analysis for changes, but I am concerned about seeming lazy if my SOP is largely unchanged.

A recent report ranks PTS as having the highest number of doctoral grads in faculty positions at Association of Theological Schools, which covers a variety of seminaries (https://www.ptsem.edu/indexmobile.aspx?id=25769809577). How an MDiv from PTS will look on an application or resume will depend on where you are applying. PTS is well-respected among mainline denominations, but if you are considering working in a more theologically conservative church or ministry, a PTS education may be respected but looked upon with some suspicion, depending on who you're talking to. For applying to PhD programs in the future, it also depend on the program. For example, biblical studies programs that are more focused on languages, ancient near eastern history, and archaeology may not think of a ministry degree like the MDiv as highly as an MA while other programs are happy to take PTS MDivs.

I noticed recently that the AAR annual meeting next month has a Transhumanism and Religion group (https://papers.aarweb.org/program_book?keys=transhumanism&field_session_slot_nid=All). Some of the presenters may be more in the field of religious studies than theology. I'm not sure if Ted Peters (Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, part of Graduate Theological Union) is still taking doctoral students (I suspect he may be near retirement).

Here's the page on the SBL site about regional meetings: http://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/regionalMeetings.aspx Regional meetings are most often in March or April. The location and date of 2016 meetings will probably be listed on the site sometime in the next couple months. If you're a SBL member and you have listed your location in your member profile online, you should also get an info and call for papers email about the meeting in your particular region. While you're waiting, you can start preparing a 10-15 page paper to submit! I've found that meetings are usually pretty low-key and a nice time to meet people and get feedback on your work. Many students looking to apply to PhD programs schedule meetings with professors they'd like to work with at the annual meeting. There is also the Catholic Biblical Association which has annual and some regional meetings as well as American Schools of Oriental Research if you're interested in ancient Near Eastern archaeology, languages, and history. The Association of Jewish Studies also has annual meetings and there are some sections on Hebrew Bible topics.

You can write "expected May 2016" or whatever your expected graduation date is on your CV for the ThM. Check CVs of people on academia.edu for the proper format for that. There is no need to wait a whole year after receiving your degree to apply. You may also want to check whether the schools you are looking into regularly accept students coming from MDiv or ThM programs or whether they prefer students coming from MA programs. My sense is that secular institutions may prefer the MA while divinity schools may be happy to take students coming from MDiv or ThM programs. You could try asking around or contacting the department on that.

It's true that if you're doing religious studies, and particularly comparative work, the languages you might need or use are less defined by the field (as in biblical and theological studies) and more defined by your particular interest. But if you don't have a particular research focus (at least a provisional one), you probably aren't ready to apply to PhD programs. But it's safe to say that you'll need German and French to read scholarly work. Whether you need Latin, Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, or something else depends on what you hope to research. At least for the modern scholarly languages (i.e. German and French), you should be able to acquire facility with them that will be enough to pass an exam (or work your way through a scholarly article with a dictionary) with a semester or two of study. The "German for Reading" or "French for Reading" courses are usually a semester or two long. Learning to read scholarly articles is not a different "level" of learning per se, it's just a different set of vocabulary. Think about your knowledge of the English language. You know the conventions and vocabulary of English that is specific to religious studies, but most of us are probably much less familiar with the conventions and vocabulary of gastronomy, engineering, or cardiology. As others have said, taking a conversational class may help and be a better method of learning but when it comes to getting things done and setting priorities, you're going to spend a significant amount of time in a conversational German class learning how to ask for directions or order coffee and you probably won't learn much of the vocabulary that is specific to religious studies. I should also mention that the Anki flashcard software has Theological French and Theological German "decks" with vocabulary that is relevant to theology. Just use the search here: https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/ My professor has told a story about one of the top American scholars in the field of Semitic languages. He was traveling in Israel and someone stopped him to ask him a question in modern Hebrew about the date and time of some particular event. He couldn't think of the correct modern Hebrew expression off the top of his head, so in trying to explain he used the biblical expression for a woman's "time of her menstrual impurity"!

I meant to mention, but forgot: German Quickly: A Grammar for Reading German by April Wilson is a textbook many people use in courses or to study independently. For French, it's French for Reading by Sandberg and Tatham. I would also recommend Ziefle's Modern Theological German. Many institutions offer courses for learning to read German or French for humanities students. April Wilson taught such a course at UChicago for many years. Learning to read articles and books in another language (with the help of a dictionary) is a lot easier than learning to hold a conversation in the language. It's also a very different set of vocabulary. In modern language courses, Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur cds, etc. you'll spend a lot of time learning to ask for directions, order food, ask the opposite gender if they would like to go to dinner, and so on. None of that will be very useful for reading scholarship. No one learns a language "completely"; we learn for particular uses. For academic purposes, it's most important for you to be able to learn how to read scholarship in modern languages. If you want to learn how to order a sandwich in German, that's fine too but it won't help you very much in grad school. As far as finding time, if you can take a course, great. If not, study as much as you can independently using the textbooks mentioned above. And I think you will find that as you get further in your studies and get serious about a particular research topic, there is a lot more than just one or two articles on your topic that haven't been translated. Learning to read German and French may not be interesting to you, but the reality is that you won't be able to get through a PhD program without them. For motivation, try to find an article that is a "must read" (i.e. it's commonly cited) in your field of interest that hasn't been translated and make it your goal to be able to read it.

If you're hoping to go into a PhD program, most religious/biblical/theological studies programs (along with the humanities in general) will want you to have reading knowledge of German and French at some point, preferably one of those before you enter the program. Probably most students only acquire reading knowledge rather than conversational abilities, although if you're able, that's good too since you'll be able to participate in international conferences where papers are given in languages other than English. I know it's hard to believe, but there's a world of scholarship out there that isn't in English! If you're serious about your studies, you're going to encounter many articles and works in German, French, and other languages that have not been translated into English and probably never will. Also, depending on the school, some applications want you to list all relevant courses you have taken along with your grade, so try to up your C- grade if you can!

Looking up course prerequisites at the schools you're applying to may give you an idea of how much primary language prep they would like you to have (e.g. "Prerequisites: two years of Biblical Hebrew"). This doesn't apply to modern languages like German and French, but many programs specify on the website when you need to pass proficiency exams for modern languages. Often you need to pass a proficiency exam in one modern language before matriculating and another one after the first year. In some cases, you can opt out of the exam if you've taken (and passed) a course in the language at their school. I know someone who was a "finalist" candidate at several schools having only studied German independently, but in general it's best to be able to document your language study with coursework.

It seems that the faculty issues still stand. When I talked to current GDR students recently, they didn't seem to have any hope that they would be resolved any time soon. However, Vanderbilt requires a minor field and you can still minor in NT without any difficulties.

I've heard from multiple people that Vanderbilt has not notified them at all still. The other day I emailed one of the applicants (for HB) who was interviewed back at the beginning of February and she said that she was accepted to the program for the one available spot. I understand that administrative people have lots to do, but it seems wrong not to let people know what's going on at the earliest time possible.

For anyone waiting to hear about HB at Vanderbilt, it will not go to the wait list. Laura, I sent you more information in a PM.

I've noticed that for Harvard in general, if you don't get an email from your POI, they seem to notify first through the website (a link will appear on your application page saying "Decision Status: Available beginning 3/xx/15") and then through an official letter in the mail. I'm not sure if this is how HDS does things, but it seems to be true for GSAS. So you could try checking the website from time to time if you haven't been already.

Waitlisted for Harvard NELC (Hebrew Bible)! I haven't received an email yet, but I found out by checking the website.

Waitlisted for Harvard NELC (Hebrew Bible)! I'm really grateful. Now just to wait a little while longer.

I just saw someone posted for today an acceptance to Harvard NELC with the note "Unofficial email from POI. Letter on its way." Congratulations! Does anyone want to claim this and would you mind saying which sub-field?

For the MA or PhD? For the Hebrew Bible PhD, Vanderbilt is accepting 1 student this year. They interviewed 2 people but no notification yet.

Have you looked into UCLA? I get the impression that it's less competitive/selective than UChicago, Hopkins, and NYU, but still an excellent program.

For anyone interested: as EnkiKnows said, Peter Machinist will be retiring soon. This upcoming Fall will be his last semester. Prof. Levenson has no plans to retire soon. His own work has been directed more toward ecumenical/inter-religious ends recently, but it seems like he would be happy to continue to supervise Hebrew Bible work. Andrew Teeter is up for tenure soon I believe. Other than that, Prof. Machinist's chair and the archaeology chair formerly occupied by Prof. Stager are endowed chairs so they will repopulate them at some point. As you can imagine, fields like Hebrew Bible are unfortunately on the periphery of the administration's concerns and unfortunately it seems like they are not in a rush to make sure the department is well-populated with faculty. The program certainly isn't the superstar NELC faculty it was in the past with people like Huehnergard, Hackett, Stager, and Frank Moore Cross. With that said, they still do offer courses in Akkadian (Steinkeller), the LXX (Richard Saley), and archaeology (Robert Homsher).

Nothing yet. From results page, it looks like NELC POIs generally sent out acceptances by email around the first week of March and official acceptance/rejection letters were received in the mail the 2nd or 3rd week or March. It's possible everything may be delayed some because of the weather last month.

Why do you say that? Do you mean with Harvard's NELC PhD or the difficulty of finding work in general?

That's what Prof. Levenson told me also, but when I met with Prof. Machinist the next day he told me the information I mentioned above. I got the understanding from him that CSR will try to admit 1 (maybe 2) Hebrew Bible PhD students a year, but that there are no "reserved" spots for HB students in CSR and that you would be competing with all the other CSR applicants. And I remember him specifically saying it would "not" improve your chances to apply to both. It might be best for anyone who wants clarification on the details (whether students often apply to both; how many HB students CSR takes a year) to email admissions. Really? Where did you see that? By the way, looking at current and recent Harvard NELC HB students, I noticed that many have come internally from the AM program (1-2 year Master's program: http://nelc.fas.harvard.edu/graduate/am),although some are accepted after completing MDiv or MA programs elsewhere.

Also, your reference to NELC as "more focused on purely linguistic and philological issues" is not really how the program is right now. You would be taking the same Hebrew Bible professors whether you applied through NELC or CSR and neither Prof. Levenson and Prof. Teeter have linguistics/philology as the main focus of their work in the way that Prof. Hackett and Prof. Huehnergard (formerly at Harvard, now at UTexas) do.

I think you mean NELC vs. CSR (Committee for the Study of Religion: http://studyofreligion.fas.harvard.edu/pages/phd-program).Both NELC and CSR are under GSAS (Graduate School of Arts & Sciences). Like Shawn said, CSR seems to take a little more of a "religious studies" approach. For example, all CSR students have to take Religion 2001 and Religion 2002 (http://studyofreligion.fas.harvard.edu/pages/requirements-and-timeline). The requirements in that link also specify "other languages as required for specialization." NELC requires a major language (in the case of Hebrew Bible: Hebrew) and a second departmental language (http://nelc.fas.harvard.edu/graduate/phd). If your interests are less in a traditional ANE/languages/archaeology approach and more in a "religious studies" approach, it's possible that CSR may be a better fit, although I wouldn't apply through CSR only to try to get out of taking a cognate language like Aramaic, Akkadian, or Ugaritic. For completion times, CSR may be shorter than NELC but it sounds like it will depend on how quickly you progress with things The timeline on the CSR page says "Students are expected to complete the Ph.D. in seven years. Only in unusual cases can the program be completed in less than four-and-a-half academic years." For NELC: "While the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences requires a student to complete the PhD program within ten years of entering the program, the target for all students is completion within seven years, and under current rules no Harvard funding will be available to students beyond the seventh year" (http://nelc.fas.harvard.edu/year-five-and-beyond). I asked Professor Machinist whether students ever apply to both programs and he said that applying to both would not improve your chances. He also seemed to indicate that students applying through CSR are competing with all the other applicants to different fields through CSR (e.g. African Religions, Buddhist studies, Comparative studies, etc.: http://studyofreligion.fas.harvard.edu/pages/research)and that there aren't necessarily Hebrew Bible spots guaranteed for CSR each year, while there will always generally be 2 or 3 spots through NELC. You may want to contact him or admissions for clarification on that. All the info I gave you except this last paragraph is on the Harvard website, although you have to do a little digging around. Hope this helps!

That's a shame. I've heard, though, that professors may have varying levels of say on admissions committees.