Ajtz'ihb

The University of Arizona, Vanderbilt, Tulane, and Brown are all places I would suggest taking a close look at. @bioarch_fan is correct that your main concern should be finding a program that combines (1) a potential advisor who can supervise the specific analytical work you want to do, and (2) potential committee members who are experts in the geographic/culture area you want to work in. While it can be great to have an advisor who does both, it's not always the best fit, and sometimes it can stifle your own creativity because you wind up doing a dissertation project that's very similar to your advisor's own work. And you really should consider funding very carefully. It can make or break your success as a researcher, and it certainly contributes to the overall sense of support or competition within a department. I'm a Mayanist and I'm doing my Ph.D. at Tulane, so if you have Maya-specific program questions feel free to ask me.

"One thing to consider, if your funding comes with any kind of TA/RAship that is probably your link to uni health insurance, so you may have to buy your own out of the grant pay which means the raise wouldn't be as much as you think." In most cases that I'm aware of, stipend, RAship, tuition waiver, and insurance are all separate components of the "package." I took NSF funding for two of the years I otherwise would have been on stipend but had no trouble continuing on with the university insurance or my RAship.

Also, somebody mentioned the GRFP. Everyone--everyone--needs to apply for this. Apply your first year and if it's not accepted, try again your second year. It's a big chunk of no-strings-attached money and you can combine it with your university stipend assuming you're offered one. A lot of undergrad advisers neglect to mention the GRFP to their students who are applying to grad school, and some PhD advisers I guess just assume their starting students already know about it. It's a complete dereliction of duty on both counts. Everyone should be applying for this fellowship. Seriously. Apply.

@eggz Congratulations on your acceptance! Madison is a fantastic city and a wonderful place to be a student.

How do ethnographers/anthropologists think about their relation to theory? Too much. Anthropology has staggered through more "turns" in the past three decades than I care to list. Is anthropology/ethnography a relatively comfortable place from which to do serious theoretical work? If by "serious theoretical work" you mean "the continental tradition" as manifest in literary criticism, then yes. These days that probably describes a majority of cultural anthropologists, although its a very theoretically pluralistic discipline so you will also be exposed to a great many other theoretical perspectives if you delve deeply into anthropological literature. Anthropology's great strength has always been its balance between theoretical pluralism and empirical observation, and many anthropologists tack comfortably back and forth between what you might call a "critical" identity and a "scientific" one. Fieldwork remains the nerve center of the discipline, so if you're looking to develop a professional identity as an anthropologist or ethnographer, you will need to do fieldwork. Since you're already in a religious studies program, I suggest you delve into the large body of work on the anthropology of religion if you haven't already. Are you already pretty familiar with e.g. Turner, Douglas, Bloch, Geertz, (early) Graeber, etc.?

Yeah, sending out emails just around the beginning of the academic year is a good idea. People won't be too busy yet so they're more likely to have time to respond.

I think the pinterest/polyvore links above give a pretty good idea of appropriate dress for female applicants. And that savage minds article is a classic. For men, I would recommend something along the lines of oxford shirt, chinos or dark jeans, and leather shoes (e.g. oxfords or chukka boots). I don't think a jacket is necessary unless the weather requires it. My own general guideline would simply be to look like you care and that you have some sense of contextual appropriateness: nothing flashy, nothing sexy. Just, y'know, "nice."

The Leisure Club in Pensacola is great, and they do good food in addition to coffee. There's another place down at the end of Palafox called Bodacious Brew that, despite the unpromising name, is also quite good. I'll have to check out The Cappuccino Trail, sounds awesome. I'm an archaeologist working in Guatemala, so my actual area of research is pretty far off from yours, but coffee is something I try to stay close to.

That sounds like a really interesting project, AnthroFilm. I used to work in the coffee business during an interlude in my anthropology career--it was very interesting to see the different ways that people across the commercial-specialy spectrum talk about origin, producers, etc. I'll be curious to see the directions that project evolves in. Have you seen A Film About Coffee? I can't speak to Gainesville, but there are a couple really nice places in Pensacola I can recommend should you ever find yourself out that way.

Were you offered a tuition waiver? Because my advice will be somewhat variable depending on whether you're also having to pay tuition: No tuition waiver: Do not go. You'll rake in a mountain of debt, and the fact that you're working full-time to cover yourself financially will drastically reduce the time you have to focus on your studies/research. That in turn will probably mean it takes you longer to finish your PhD, which could make you less competitive for jobs after you finish, which in turn will make it that much harder to pay off your debt. Bad idea all around. Tuition waiver but no stipend: My advice here is a little more wishy-washy, but it comes down to the fact that at least you're not taking on any debt in order to pursue your degree. I would still advise against it personally just because time is already a very hot commodity in grad school and you'll be losing a whole bunch of it working, but you gotta do what you gotta do. If the program has good job placement OR you're not necessarily that worried about landing an academic job after you graduate, it might be worth it. In this case, it comes down to how much you want to have a PhD irrespective of the particular jobs/career you hope it lands you (because let's face it, most people in these programs today will not get academic jobs).

That's true for their undergraduate admissions policy, where the top 10% of students from every Texas high school are automatically accepted. At the grad level, their admissions program works just like everywhere else.

Yeah, faculty understand that people with MAs will have more fieldwork and will have had more time to narrow down their focus. Don't worry about it too much. Also bear in mind that every program is just a little bit different, so while Duke may want to you write some epic, massively-cited beast of an SOP, a lot of other places won't. OP, the level of specificity you indicate for your interests should be fine as the basis for an application, but I would begin thinking about what part of the world you'd like to do fieldwork in and what sort of questions jump out at you from the body of theory you find most compelling. For instance, you're into relations of power and marginalization. Okay, are there holes in the arguments of thinkers that get cited a lot--Foucault, say--that you think could be filled in? Is there a particular instance of marginalization that you think cries out for fieldwork? These are the kinds of questions that will get your started on finding a specific research topic.

A couple things: 1: Your background in no way flags you as a strange candidate for a Ph.D. program. Anthropologists of all people are interested in diversity, and any advisor you'd actually want to have as your advisor will likely see your background as a plus. You're clearly read up enough to have a general sense of debates and perspectives in the discipline, so don't feel like you're handicapped. 2: The single most important thing you can do in support of your application is reach out to potential advisors--better yet, several professors in the programs you're interested in--before you apply or during the application process. It's the most reliable way to let your POI know that you're interested and serious. They might not respond to your e-mail right away or even at all, but you should still write them. 3. Publications are fine, but they're not really important for getting accepted. More important is to think hard about what topics you're interested in and what sorts of projects you might want to take on for a dissertation. You're obviously not expected to have a dissertation plan starting out--if you do, it'll change dramatically over the first two or three years anyway--but you absolutely need to demonstrate that you've put some time and effort into working out what you'd like to do. 4. I'm an archaeologist and you're a cultural anthropologist, so the specific expectations for an SOP in your sub-field will be slightly different from mine. I didn't cite a single source directly in mine, although I attributed a few quotes the way a journalist might. In any event, it's true that the SOP is the most important part of your application, and you want it to do three things: (1) demonstrate intellectual seriousness and depth of knowledge about the discipline as a whole as well as your particular area of it (which means you'll need to have some sort of topical or areal focus); (2) demonstrate that you've thought about what you might like to do, although you're not expected to be married to a project; and (3) state very plainly, explicitly, and it detail why you think the foregoing make you a good match for the particular program you're writing to. Absolutely mention professors by name and explain why each of them in turn appeals to you as someone to study under or work with. Do the same with on-campus resources like libraries or research centers. This shows that you're not applying on a lark and that you're taking the application seriously, which will prompt professors in the department to do the same. Hope that's helpful!

Sure, I'd be happy to take a peek. Feel free to shoot me a PM.

Agree. Be absolutely direct, which is not the same thing as being a sycophant. Consider the difference between: "Professor X wrote the most amazing book about Y and since I love Y I think it would be super cool to work with her." That's bad. and "Professor X's work on Y has exercised a major influence on my own thinking about Y, and I would be very interested to take her course on the subject." Much better. Basically, what you want to do is make it super clear to multiple faculty at every institution that you're at least a little bit familiar with their work and that you think you would benefit from working with them directly given your own interest in the same topics/approaches/etc. When I applied to my present institution, I basically wrote a paragraph about each professor whose work I knew (even if I didn't know about them before applying) and talked about why, specifically, I thought I could benefit from taking courses or doing research with them.

3-4 schools is fine. Any more than 6 I think is really stretching yourself too thin. Remember, you need to write a personalized statement for each program, so while you can obviously cut and past a lot of sections, that still adds up to a lot of essay writing. Talk about your travel experiences and the way that both travel and work have shaped your outlook on the topics you're interested in. You don't have to make some tortured connection between subaltern labor and OMG Marx Was Right!!, but you can use work and travel as an example of why you're more prepared for graduate study than some random undergrad who's just graduated and never held a job in their life. Mine were mostly some variation on "Institution X is a super big deal in my field. I want it to be a super big deal in my career as well."

Don't bother. If there is nobody there who appeals to you to work with, and you want to do something that doesn't fit with the existing faculty's interests, then among other things it seems vanishingly unlikely to me that you would be accepted in the first place. Better to dedicate your energy to writing the best applications you possibly can for the schools you actually want to attend. Yes. I actually think this should be blanket advice for everyone applying to any graduate program in anthropology. There is a great deal of horse-trading that goes on when it comes to determining who gets a student in any given year, and your application will be far stronger if you have a faculty member or two beyond your POI who can say "Yeah, I remember them. I think they'd be good to have here." That way it's not down to your own POI--assuming they're interested--reading off their impression of you and asking their colleagues to take their word for your potential. And in the event that your own POI is a little on the fence with your application, having multiple voices supporting you can help you find a spot in the department anyway.

Rising_Star makes a very important point: prospective students too often look for advisors who do exactly the kind of work they want to do in exactly (or very nearly) the same part of the world the student wants to work in. That's perfectly fine. But it's worth remembering that really innovative work can happen when a student is matched with faculty who have similar-but-not-too-similar research interests and geographic areas of expertise.

I think the idea that you need to apply to "at least" 5 schools is ridiculous. Apply to the schools that interest you and seem like good matches (and offer decent funding), and not one more. You'll only wear yourself out. And yes, throwing your energy into the NSF rather than a bunch of applications that your heart's not really in is a good idea.

My experience matches farflung's. You may be able to count on a consultation or maybe assisting them with a "loose ends" kind of project that they're just now getting around to, but you absolutely should not apply to any program specifically to work with an emeritus/emerita professor.

I'll also add that while I mostly agree with the post farflung links to above, I think Kelsky is too caustic in her appraisal of what will and will not make somebody competitive for "a wide range of jobs." I think it's especially inappropriate to advise that one avoid "second- and third-tier programs like the plague, regardless of what they appear to offer by way of programs in your area of interest." This ignores the fact that many organizations in the private, governmental, and nonprofit sectors are themselves headed by Ph.D.s who fully understand the value of a degree from a less-famous school that's strong in a particular subject.

While this is of course a little bit tangential, I'd like to give my two cents on the two questions KNP asks. Anybody applying to graduate school these days should be fully aware that the prospects for a tenure-track academic teaching job are horrendous and, frankly, will never improve short of a major society-wide realignment. The "adjunct crisis" is a real thing and it is partially a result of young scholars insisting on sticking with a college-level teaching career in the hopes that something, some day, will turn up (all the while playing right into the hands of those who seek to corporatize universities and cripple academic practice). This is the way things are, and everyone contemplating graduate school should know it. But. I don't think most of us go to graduate school because we want to be tenured professors more than anything--we go because we are intellectually curious, because we want to do research, because we want to contribute to a better/fairer/safer world, etc. There are a thousand useful (and well-paying) things you can do with a Ph.D. in any discipline, including Anthropology. You just need to be open to the fact that academic careers will never again look like they used to, at least for the vast majority of us, and make peace with it. Consider all of the "Plan B's" and alternative careers you might be able to pursue out of graduate school: nonprofits, CRM, government work, museums, journalism, starting a business that does things the way you wish other businesses would...these are the things you should really have in mind. If you go into graduate school planning for a cushy professorship at the end of it, you are likely to be bitterly disappointed (as are many of those who give you the panicked "don't go to grad school whatever you do" speech). If you go in because you love your field, want to contribute to it, and are content with a wide variety of possible career outcomes, by all means go for it.

Mary Douglas should be your point of departure, I think. Check out Purity and Danger. There's also an excellent literature on categorizing and cognition in the subfield of ethnobiology, which looks at the way different peoples cognitively and linguistically organize the biological world. Google around for "ethnobiological nomenclature" and check out the work of Brent Berlin, Scott Atran, Douglas Medin, Eugene Hunn, Cecil Brown...those are just the people who've worked in Mesoamerica, which I know best. Here's a good article to get you started: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00271.x/abstract

How much more do I need? I think that's enough--the whole point of a Master's degree is to expose you to the ideas that interest you in greater depth and allow you to develop a little more focus. While a POI is useful for this, I think at the Master's level your focus should be more squarely on the program as a whole: look for places with faculty and facilities that match your range of interests to give yourself maximum room to explore. I imagine a lot of MAs in archaeology offer a lot of similar courses This is true but only to a point. Most MAs should offer general courses in theory and maybe a handful of more specific methodological courses (GIS, geoarchaeology, etc.). That said, there are some programs that have really good topical offerings and others that don't. If you're thinking seriously about continuing to a PhD in the future, I would try to place yourself in a Master's program that offers topical courses that interest you--they'll introduce you to new literature (which is always helpful) and keep your critical thinking skills sharp. -- I never got a terminal MA so I can't tell you how different your application needs to be. But I will say that, in general, you should target your application to an entire program rather than to a single POI--this is true even at the PhD level. Hope that helps.

I have not worked in CRM. However, many of the students in my program did and I think it's fair to say that any and all field experience you bring to your application makes it stronger. Professors like to see that an applicant is (a) intellectually mature, (b) experienced enough to know what they're getting into, and (c) methodologically equipped for fieldwork. CRM experience will help a lot with the last two, and as long as you read during your time off you should be all set with the first as well. Note too that CRM experience may be given more weight depending on where you want to work. If you intend to focus on the archaeology of North America or Europe, CRM experience will be huge. If you want to work in the Andes or East Africa, probably less so. Hope that helps.