museum_geek

@phyanth that’s great news! I’ve had poi’s respond within a few hours to a week or so due to them being busy/in the field.
for the phone call/Skype interview - treat this as an interview for the program even if it is only with 1 poi. Last year I had a Skype “chat” with 1 poi that turned into a group interview with every archaeologists and bioanth on faculty (to my surprise), other Skype chats were with just my poi. Basically, just be on your game and be yourself regardless of who/how many people may be there. But congrats!-that’s awesome and shows their interest in working with you! 

@museum_geek, that is good to know! I wasn't sure what the policies were. I actually received some more responses today, so that's encouraging! Also, one of the professors wants to skype with me to talk more about my project, so I figure that has to be a good sign right?! I'm about to pass out over here, haha. I get really nervous talking with people I've never met. Especially in this kind of situation.

I wouldn't worry too much about not hearing back from professors - it's a busy time of year, plus some have policies of not speaking with potential students until after they've had a chance to read applications (something I didn't find out until after I applied).  Last year, only about half of the POIs I contacted responded to me, and of those that did only about half were meaningful responses beyond "Interesting project, I encourage you to apply, good luck, etc."  As for timeframe, four business days is certainly reasonable, but I did have some faculty respond to me weeks after my initial email, explaining that they were on leave or in the field.  The important thing here is that you've heard back from your top three choices - way to go!

I wouldn't worry too much about not hearing back from professors - it's a busy time of year, plus some have policies of not speaking with potential students until after they've had a chance to read applications (something I didn't find out until after I applied).  Last year, only about half of the POIs I contacted responded to me, and of those that did only about half were meaningful responses beyond "Interesting project, I encourage you to apply, good luck, etc."  As for timeframe, four business days is certainly reasonable, but I did have some faculty respond to me weeks after my initial email, explaining that they were on leave or in the field.  The important thing here is that you've heard back from your top three choices - way to go!

I wouldn't worry too much about not hearing back from professors - it's a busy time of year, plus some have policies of not speaking with potential students until after they've had a chance to read applications (something I didn't find out until after I applied).  Last year, only about half of the POIs I contacted responded to me, and of those that did only about half were meaningful responses beyond "Interesting project, I encourage you to apply, good luck, etc."  As for timeframe, four business days is certainly reasonable, but I did have some faculty respond to me weeks after my initial email, explaining that they were on leave or in the field.  The important thing here is that you've heard back from your top three choices - way to go!

This is a great starting point for your SoP.  I think writing about your intention to study these issues in whatever region you want to work in should be more than enough, and mentioning some of the theoretical frameworks you're interested in (as you've already done) is plenty.  I don't think adcomms will expect you to have a fully formed project just quite yet, especially coming straight out of undergrad.  
I wouldn't spend any time writing about your lack of ethnographic research - instead, write about what you have done.  What you're working on in your thesis, how you see your current research contributing to future work (if at all), etc.  You should also spend at least a paragraph writing about your fit within the department and which professors you want to work with. 
Feel free to PM me if you want someone to look over your SoP.  I'm also happy to share what I wrote for last year's application cycle - this goes for everyone applying this Fall!

Hey @timetobegin
it looks like you want to go the bioarchaeology route so it can get a little complicated on how to situate this. I’m a bioarch myself. 
I would be very specific in how you structure your research interests given the interdisciplinary of the research. For your example, I would say something along the lines of “I’m interested in studying the effects of vitamin deficiencies, such as B12, D, and etc.., among infants in rural Chinese communities during the X time period to understand the transitional health through political whatever” or something to that effect. That gives it depth and it shows that you thought about the topic beyond then “disease are cool”. 
You should check out my colleague Christina Lee who does bioarch work in Mongolia and all over Asia/Egypt. She’s at Cal State in LA and I think they have an MA program? - I’m not sure about PhD

If you don't mind, let me just direct you to this other post on this subject I wrote: 
 
This idea seems quite specific to anthropology (my field of comparison includes sociology, linguistics, and many humanities: other disciplines I can't say)—that your SOP should be a mini dissertation proposal. I think this idea is a) pernicious and b ) incorrect. I suspect it's fed mostly by the fact that the best/only anthropology sample SOPs available on the internet are the ones from Duke, which shared only essays from applicants with master's degrees. Those essays are really good! It's great that Duke made them available! But that they're only from applicants with master's seems to distort how other applicants picture what they should be aiming for. Your interests as listed above are somewhat too broad, yes; you'll want to make them more specific for your SOP, as I'm sure you know. 'Miniature dissertation proposal' is, however, not the correct standard. (It's not even the correct standard for the NSF GRFP research statement, which asks for a longer and more detailed attempt at defining your research project than do regular applications; there are a lot of winners who acknowledge uncertainty about their projects, even while they propose a compelling, narrow-ish set of questions to investigate.)

This is a great starting point for your SoP.  I think writing about your intention to study these issues in whatever region you want to work in should be more than enough, and mentioning some of the theoretical frameworks you're interested in (as you've already done) is plenty.  I don't think adcomms will expect you to have a fully formed project just quite yet, especially coming straight out of undergrad.  
I wouldn't spend any time writing about your lack of ethnographic research - instead, write about what you have done.  What you're working on in your thesis, how you see your current research contributing to future work (if at all), etc.  You should also spend at least a paragraph writing about your fit within the department and which professors you want to work with. 
Feel free to PM me if you want someone to look over your SoP.  I'm also happy to share what I wrote for last year's application cycle - this goes for everyone applying this Fall!

That's a pretty good list of schools you're applying to, but I'd advise you to drop Johns Hopkins - their PhD program focuses solely on sociocultural anthropology.  You also might want to check out Stony Brook and Penn State, which are both known for having strong physical and biological anthropology programs.

Your background sounds absolutely standard for an anthropology PhD student in my program, at least—and I even know one student who won an NSF GRFP that way. That said, you do need to show signs that you're thinking about theory and that you will eventually develop a coherent theoretical approach. I would strongly advise you not to frame your theory in broad terms you don't understand very well ("cultural materialist approach"). Rather, what books or articles of anthropology tackle problems or issues that are interesting to you? Can you tell what approaches they use? If you can figure out that your topic could be usefully approached using analytical frameworks from kinship and bioethics, say that. If you can break it down further and discover that works on some of the topics that interest you use diverging models of kinship, all the better. Are you more sympathetic to one or the other? Are you interested in both until you've learned more? Both of those are fine to say.
In general, for students (like myself) who come into another field without much background in it, I advise a more exploratory tone than somebody who has a master's degree in the field. (If you want examples of the ideal master's degree kind of application, check out the Duke anthropology website. They are useful in general, although I did not try to emulate that degree of mastery of theory. I didn't have it!) So you can say, I am interested in the ethics of wildlife management in Japan's southernmost islands, which I am interested in approaching through theories of kinship and bioethics, especially as explored through multi-species ethnography. So-and-so's book is a touchstone for my approach because of this interesting stuff it does, although I would be especially interested in using this different perspective to look at the issue. I have also been interested in the transmission of these ideas at different scales, which I could explore through media theory.
Note how all of that is rather broad, and uses "could" more than "will." In theory, you don't have to follow up on any of it at all, although I will say that you'll probably end up at a program with a better fit if you do pursue at least one of the themes you mention. (For a personal example, I threw in media theory at the end of mine and spent all my visit weekend at my current university talking excitedly about its possibilities—turns out it is basically not relevant to any of the problems I want to tackle. Oh well! They still admitted me and now I'm not using media theory.) However, even if it has a bit of a brainstorming quality to it, it shows that you've read enough of the literature to have identified some promising paths you'll investigate.
It sounds like this is going to take a lot of reading for you. Is that right? I would advise that you start reading in the anthropology of Japan and see what catches your eye, so you can shove some of the bigger themes in the literature into your brainstorming-type theory paragraph. What made you decide that anthropology was the field you wanted your PhD in? Was it anything you read? If so, it would be smart to return to those books or articles and try to see what approaches they're taking and, especially, who they cite. A key thing to look for is which, of the works they cite, they agree or disagree with. That'll be a clue to current topics of interest and inquiry in the field.
If you don't have access to a good research library right now, FYI, you can start cobbling some reading material together using JSTOR's three free articles a month, as much as Google Books' preview feature will let you read, and articles scholars you're interested have posted on their pages on academia.edu. 

If you are asking whether or not it would be worth it to put in the effort and time necessary to turn your manuscript into an article that would be accepted by a journal, then my answer would be "maybe". As long as the time doesn't detract from other things you really need to be doing (coursework, other application materials etc.) then yeah, it is much better for you to have a submitted article within the next month than for you to put in the same amount of work but spread over a longer period of time and not getting it submitted until next summer. However, whether or not it is realistic that you can get the amount of work necessary done in time is something you have to decide (perhaps with consultation with an advisor/mentor). I find that most people, including myself, underestimate the amount of work necessary to get to the submission stage.
However, if you are asking if you should just submit whatever you have now just to say that you did submit something, then I don't think that's a good idea. I would only submit something that is truly ready for submission and peer review!

NYU is supremely difficult to get into so you might as well apply to both programs.

NYU is supremely difficult to get into so you might as well apply to both programs.

Only half of the professors I emailed last cycle responded.  Of those who did respond, only about half had meaningful responses beyond "just apply and we'll see what happens."  I didn't have any prior contact with the professors at the school I ended up choosing, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I did a standalone MA (in interdisciplinary social sciences, not specifically Anthropology) before starting my PhD and I think it has been useful so far.  Doing the MA first helped me to formulate more concrete research interests which was nice for PhD applications.  It was also helpful in that I had the opportunity to write a thesis and do a few conference presentations, which provided me with better writing samples than anything I would have had applying straight out of undergrad.  Spending an additional two years in grad school before starting a doctoral program was certainly a pain in the ass, but on the whole I think it was a valuable experience and I certainly got offers from schools that wouldn't have given me serious consideration were I applying with only a BA.

Hey @rhlabbasinejad ! Welcome to the dark side (aka anth, haha). Before any of us can really answer your main question, what are your specific research interests within anth? What do you want to study, where do you want to study (research location, not school), and how do you want to study it? Since goodness of fit is super important in an application, answering these questions may help us narrow down programs at which you would be happy.
Now, as for the two questions you have listed. Other than a lack of classes, I know nothing of your background. Everyone has a chance to get into a PhD program, but there are a lot of factors to consider. What can you leverage that would make you a good anth applicant? Have you tried to attend conferences, done any research outside of school, spent time exploring what anth has to offer outside of the two classes you took? Furthermore, is your research topic connected to your previous studies in Mechanical Engineering or can you leverage that degree towards your future studies? I don't know much about mechanical engineering, so this example may not connect, but I did a project where we partnered with Nissan to explore how people interact with parking and how that might change with the adoption of autonomous vehicles. Most anth programs will state that they consider your SoP (aka where you show goodness of fit) the most important factor in an application with GRE and GPA seen as less important and usually used to create a basic cut-off more than anything else. Given your different background, I have no idea how your GPA will factor in, but GRE scores should have the same weight. 
As far as funded MA, that's tricky. There are many MA programs in the US that do not state they are funded (and quite a few that do), but they actually provide employment opportunities that can cover or reduce tuition. For instance, I did not attend a funded MA, but I became a TA and had my tuition waived (plus a monthly stipend) the last year of my program. In the first year of my program, I worked as an RA and had a federal grant reduce my tuition. It may be safer to go Canada first (don't mean to pry and no need to answer, but I am a bit curious about what kind of family issues make all of Canada not an option), but, as an ignorant citizen of the US, I know very little about Canadian programs. 

Grad school is all about the process of specialization. In fact, the whole point of PhD training is to become "a X person" with a deep, rigorous knowledge of a particular place, community, group, or way of life. You need to indicate in your SOP the rough outlines of a project that will entail site-specific fieldwork, and once you get in, you will need to build expertise in the area in which you will conduct fieldwork (through language, courses, etc) and prove it through qualifying exams. Most PhD programs will require you to do 3-4 fields in somewhat recognizable categories, one of which will likely be an area-focused list such as "Anthropology of China" or an outside list such as "History of Latin America & the Caribbean." If you can't commit to this process or you don't like the idea of specialization, an anthropology PhD is probably not right for you.
Also, I wouldn't base your SOP on the cumulative work of senior scholars, because it's comparing apples to oranges. You'd be hard-pressed to find an anthropologist whose dissertation research was about India, Mexico, and England, though their career might later encompass multiple places. Think about it this way: you are learning a method (which includes specialization and a commitment to local knowledge) that you can later apply to other sites you may wish to study. But you will never be admitted to a PhD program without demonstrating commitment to a first project -- the dissertation is difficult enough to complete, even for those with single-minded focus!
FYI -- multi-sited ethnographies are not usually comparative in nature. Building on @hats, they might compare the trajectory of a single group of migrants across multiple locales, track the production of commodity X, or explore the imagination and implementation of international governance code Y. 
 

Hi all,
I applied last cycle and I'm now in the first year of a PhD program.  I'd love to stay active on this forum, so please feel free to use me as a resource during the upcoming application cycle.  I'm happy to offer advice, edit SoPs, share my own application experiences, etc.  Best of luck to everyone this application season - feel free to reach out for any help you may need as the (incredibly long) application cycle keeps moving.

Wow that was not correct English —“was. Emy. Lose” translates to “was very close” in extremely tired graduate student lingo haha
 
sidenote: do people still use the word lingo?—asking for a friend...

@museum_geek thanks so much! I'm trying to do some work on them this weekend.

@Bschaefer I have no doubt you'll get in this cycle, especially after how close you came last year with only a couple apps sent out!

Super late response but yes, feel free to send me your SoPs!  I remember how stressed I got about writing a SoP when I applied last year - I ended up going through 4 or 5 drafts before I felt comfortable submitting applications and even then I wasn't totally confident in what I had written.  I'm happy to pay it forward after all the great advice and edits I got last year, so feel free to get in touch!

My response is always the same: as many as you can afford money-wise and application-materials-wise. 

IMO, because professional academic history is so compartmentalized and due to your specific circumstances, I think a running start may be a better (and more challenging) way to go, especially given your area of interest and experience level relative to some of your classmates.
I recommend that you select three to five academic journals related to your area of interest and spend time going through 10+ years' of volumes. I recommend using physical copies rather than digital versions. Try to put your eyes on every article, historiographical essay, extended reviews, presidential address, and round table. Read very selectively those pieces that strike you as vitally important and/or very interesting. As @DGrayson points out, you'll see a variety of methods used but you will start to see patterns/rhytms in how historians present the questions they address within the contexts of ongoing debates.
I cannot offer much in making specific recommendations IRT journals for you to select. One article that may help you get your arms around your field is Mark T. Berger, "Civilising the South: The US Rise to Hegemony in the Americas and the Roots of 'Latin American Studies' 1898-1945,"  Bulletin of Latin American Research ,Vol. 12, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 1-48 available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/3338811 .
 What follows is a list of the 54 journals related to Latin American studies available at Jstor. 
Afro-Hispanic Review 1982 - 2013 The Americas 1944 - 2012 Anales de la literatura española contemporánea 1981 - 2013 Anales de la narrativa española contemporánea 1979 - 1980 Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century 1973 - 1980 Anales de la novela de posguerra 1976 - 1978 Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 1974 - 2013 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 1997 - 2013 Bulletin of Latin American Research 1981 - 2006 Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes 1984 - 2010 NS, NorthSouth 1976 - 1983 Caravelle (1988-) 1988 - 2013 Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien 1966 - 1987 Caravelle (1963-1965)1963 - 1965 Caribbean Studies1961 - 2015 Chasqui1972 - 2013 Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures1976 - 2017 Confluencia1985 - 2013 Cuban Studies1986 - 2015 Desarrollo Económico1961 - 2015 Diálogos: Artes, Letras, Ciencias humanas1964 - 1985 Economía2000 - 2015 Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos1986 - 2017 Demografía y economía1967 - 1984 Estudios Económicos1986 - 2016 Demografía y economía1967 - 1984 European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe1989 - 2016 Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe1974 - 1989 Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos1970 - 1973 Boletín Informativo Sobre Estudios Latinoamericanos en Europa1965 - 1969 Foro Internacional1960 - 2017 Guaraguao1996 - 2013 Hispamérica1972 - 2013 Hispania1917 - 2015 The Hispanic American Historical Review1918 - 1999 Hispanic Review1933 - 2013 Hispanófila1957 - 2013 Historia Mexicana1951 - 2017 Iberoamericana (2001-)2001 - 2014 Ibero-amerikanisches Archiv1924 - 2000 Notas: Reseñas iberoamericanas. Literatura, sociedad, historia1993 - 2000 Iberoamericana (1977-2000)1977 - 2000 International Journal of Cuban Studies2008 - 2017 INTI1974 - 2013 Journal of Haitian Studies1995 - 2015 Journal of Latin American Geography2002 - 2013 Yearbook (Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers)1984 - 2002 Proceedings of the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers1981 - 1983 Publication Series (Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers)1971 - 1980 Journal of Latin American Studies1969 - 2011 Latin American Antiquity1990 - 2014 Latin American Literary Review1972 - 2013 Latin American Perspectives1974 - 2013 Latin American Politics and Society2001 - 2013 Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs1970 - 2000 Journal of Inter-American Studies1959 - 1969 Latin American Research Review1965 - 2013 Luso-Brazilian Review1964 - 2011 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos1985 - 2015 Mexicon1979 - 2014 Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica1947 - 2016 NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids1992 - 2012 Nieuwe West-Indische Gids / New West Indian Guide1960 - 1991 Christoffel1955 - 1958 Vox Guyanae1954 - 1959 De West-Indische Gids1919 - 1959 Portuguese Studies1985 - 2017 Problemas del Desarrollo1969 - 2013 Reis: Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas1978 - 2015 Revista española de la opinión pública1965 - 1977 Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos1976 - 2015 Reflexión1972 - 1974 Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana1975 - 2014 Revista de Historia de América1938 - 2011 Revista Hispánica Moderna1934 - 2013 Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana2003 - 2014 Revista Mexicana de Sociología1939 - 2013 Social and Economic Studies1953 - 2013 The University of Miami Inter-American Law Review1984 - 2014 Lawyer of the Americas1969 - 1984