katherinegm

Thanks so much for your advice. I'm glad to hear that it likely won't instantly disqualify me from a PhD program. On that same note, I don't have any academic awards, conferences or scholarships on my resume either (tuition for residents of Quebec is extremely low so there is less of an urgency to apply for bursaries and scholarships). Together with the lack of publications, I feel like I have much less of an "academic" application - rather, I have a lot of practical experience in the "real world" of the art history field on an international level (I work as an art appraiser/cataloguer at an auction house and am also cataloguing a major Canadian private art collection, and previously did curatorial and collections internships at US museums, studied abroad at La Sorbonne). I feel that all of these experiences complement each other well and can be incorporated into my PhD topic and application, but I guess I'm wondering how universities would view this type of applicant as opposed to someone with experience mostly or exclusively in academia. Thanks again for your help! Trying to make this less of a "this is my personal experience-what are my chances of getting in?" post, and more about what schools are looking for in PhD candidates in general.

I am finishing my Masters in Art History at a Canadian university, and am strongly considering applying to PhD programs in the US, UK and Canada. I feel I have a very strong application with regards to grades, relevant paid work experience and internships, research assistant positions, study abroad semester and language (bilingual in French), but the only category that is weak is academic publications. (I have a few publications in small exhibition catalogues, newsletters, etc. only) I am wondering how important are academic publications for a Phd application, especially for competitive US and UK programs? Would it be preferable to wait a year to apply to programs, and spend the year trying to publish my thesis and/or portions of it? What is a typical number of publications for a PhD applicant? I really want to develop a well-rounded application going into this daunting process.