Gigsed

I talked to Penny Burness not five minutes ago; she said that the committee are still meeting and making decisions. They are, she noted, sending them out slowly but should be done by next week.

No, they don't all charge a maximum of 3390! I think your confusing the undergrad and grad degrees. Fees are as follows for Cambridge, LSEPS and SOAS :- Cam - http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/gradstud/funding/costs/courses/costs2010.pdf SOAS- http://www.soas.ac.uk/registry/fees/postgraduate/ LSEPS- http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/tableOfFees/2010-11.htm Incidentally, pietjekanarie you are doing IR right? You should take a look at this cause http://www2.admin.ox.ac.uk/studentfunding/fees/coursefees.php5 if you do go to Ox they are going to be hitting you for like 5 grand in tuition. Then they will take you for another couple of thousand in college tuition.

No worries. Feel free to PM me.

The cut-off at cambridge is 65%. However you are right I can only think of one medical anthropologist in Cam and she specialises in the Amazon. My advice, if you are flexible regarding where you are prepared to go to earn your PhD cast your net wider. Look at places like Leiden, the Max Planck Institute and ANU. At least two of these allow you to apply year round and have an application process that is supervisor based. Furthermore, you are not going to pay more than you do in the UK.

Having relatively recently completed a taught Mphil in Cam I might be of some service here:- 1/In my year I think they enrolled 21 but the usual enrolment figure was 11-12 out of 100 or so applicants. 2/The course is regarded as a conversion course; the immediate question is going to be 'why is someone with a research masters coming to do a taught Mphil?'. It largely involves material that if you've done a BA in anthropology you will be familiar with i.e. the work of Bourdieu, Radcliffe-Brown, Geertz, Gluckman etcetera. Thus I would imagine much of it will be redundant for you. 3/At around £7,000 in fees as an EU or Home student, and 13,000 for an overseas student, it is expensive and beyond that you need to have almost 10,000 for maintenance costs. Seriously you have a high pass in an MRes if you want to go to Cam you are better off applying immediately to the doctoral program. Also who do you intend to work with?

He/she is referring to this http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/

I seem to recall that UCSF offer a doctoral degree specifically in medical anthropology (I believe Bourgois was a faculty member until he moved to UPenn). I have no idea as to how the program is regarded though.

Excellent. This will sound a bit rude and nosey but what are your specific area interests?

Dear Ibn Anthropology Thanks for the overview of Irvine; it is so much more positive than the accounts in the city guide section. I have to say I've only heard good things about the department itself. The weather factor is interesting. My entire family are basically in favour of me accepting simply on the basis that it gives them the excuse to visit and enjoy the warm weather. The expenses thing is good to know but I suspect that it will take me a while to regard anything in America as expensive on my past visits to North America everything has always appeared relatively inexpensive compared to the UK in particular and Europe in general. Good luck with you apps (your applying to Rutgers as well right?)

Well my current ranking system, based purely on 'fit' mind, is like this:- Tier One (in no particular order ):- Irvine, UMich, Brown, Rutgers Tier Two (ditto):- Austin, NYU Tier Three (ditto):- Boston Uni, UIUC Tier Four:- Northwestern The short answer is yes Irvine is one of my top choices on the basis of fit but I haven't really considered academic reputation, placement rate or lifestyle yet (by the way did you receive a long email from Bill Maurer and a shorter one from Tom Boellstorff as well). On the last score I've heard some pretty negative things about Irvine's public transport which as someone who refuses to drive and likes to walk/take PT everywhere are quite concerning. Returning to your original question I will probably take up the department offer to go and see Irvine. However, I am going to hold off making a decision until next week when hopefully I've heard back from a few more schools. Then if I am lucky enough to receive another acceptance I can take one trip as opposed to having to fly over the Atlantic more than once in the space of weeks.

Hey thanks. In answer to your questions:- 1/ Yes, I am an international applicant. 2/They said info about funding was to follow. So I don't know how much or for how long. 3/Yes, that concerned me as well so I emailed Director Chavez before I applied to the program and he said yes they were in severe financial turmoil but that they had some limited spaces for internationals so mulled it over and applied anyway.

I dunno mate I am thinking I will have to have a long hard think on it. On the one hand it's a bloody long way to travel from Ireland and despite their very generous offer to pay $400 or so it's going to set me back at least £350 rtn to get from London to LA and more than a couple hundred US to get to London. On the other I don't like the idea of attending a school without sussing it out and meeting the faculty. So to after that long winded exposition I suppose the answer is I really don't know. I figure I've at least till we receive formal notification to make up my mind. But never mind my whinging and wailing what about yourself?

I can't speak for the others but mine was from Leo Chavez, the DGS.

I'm not sure how it works in history but in anthropology most departments have more faculty than places. So a faculty member might indeed have gone to bat for you but seniority, access to grant money and just plain simple 'it's my turn this year' will probably also come into play.

Yeah I heard about the Hmong didn't a large number of the men die the first couple of years they were their from homesickness?

Thanks. Good luck with Duke and your other interviews.

I didn't but I was trying to avoid just rehashing my personal statement and as I had like two lines on that particular point I sorta felt that they would have known that already. Your right that smaller places are often interesting in that way. I didn't know till recently for example that their is apparently a significant Laotian presence in Providence. The USA is just filled with crazy awesome research opportunities in general. And I agree by reckoning Magana would have to be pretty hot stuff to be in a tenure track position effectively one year out of grad school. I already like her though cause she's committed to action anthropology.

That's am inmtesting theory about Goldstein. I was just interested because with the exception of one question during my interview he was the only one of the pair who did any speaking. Because Magana was relatively new I wondered if it was a junior senior thing (she only graduated two years ago in 2008 I think), a result of the medium or that he was a take charge kinda guy. My interest in New Brunswick is as follows:- my theoretical interest is in small scale populations incorporation and my particular geographic focus is on Mongolian-Americans. New Brunswick was one of the original sites of Kalmyk Mongol migration in the 1950s and they have been holding a Chinggis Khan celebration in New Brunswick sine the 1980s. So for those reasons it is one of the initial sites I wanted to take a look at along with along with Philadelphia.

Hey thanks for the update. Yeah, I have to say I really like Rutgers as a program and the attraction is increased cause New Brunswick is one of my fieldsites. By the way I am dead jealous of you getting an interview with Prof. Schein as she is who I was actually angling to work with (there aren't that many anthropologists working on transnational and diasporic Asian American communities in suitable departments). Just out of interest was your questioning dominated by Goldstein? (Well to the extent that anyone can dominate half a dozen questions!)

No worries blud. Happy to be of service.

In short:- 1/Yes as Rocio Magna and Daniel Goldstein 2/ Two people 3/Regular phone, they seemed to not be able to ring me on skype; which is weird cause I just had a conflab with someone on it the other day. 4/I mean that they seemed to be rather new to the whole process but I'm from Northern Ireland and so my observation might just be down to cultural differences. 5/Not really, Goldstein said it was a long process and then invited me to email either of them any time. Hope that helps. Seriously the whole thing is very formulaic you have nothing to worry about. Once again good luck

I also was invited to interview; in fact it was conducted earlier today. Whole thing seemed passing strange for exactly the reasons you've outlined. I think I managed to overwhelm them with my tendency to ramble though. I was told though that they are currently on their long list and that they have 3/4 places. Now given that each interview takes 15-20 and they said that the choice of time was 920-1020 on Monday roughly the same time again on Tuesday or Tuesday afternoon it would seem unlikely that they are interviewing significantly more than two dozen applicants. Of course I do not know how big the admissions group is (could be they have more than one set of interviewers). Anyway good luck if you haven't already done this.