DuchessRavenwave

I'm going to be entering the Italian department in September. I applied for grad housing, but my preference was Keystone. I really like the gym feature. I want a studio or whatever - small - but I need my own space. Anyone planning on looking for outside housing as well?

Thanks for that lxs. I am always afraid of sounding like an academic/intellectual snot. Though I guess this would be the kind of forum where I'd be less likely to get in trouble for that, right? 8) I would say that the problem with IFA and funding has more to do with the general profile of many of the students they accept, ie, a significant portion of them come from the Upper East Side to get a Ph.D so they can be a buyer/executive for Christie's or Sotheby's. So they don't need funding because they can easily afford to pay their tuition. Not guaranteeing funding to everyone they accept keeps a lot of people away from applying (like me). I met a woman (defended a year ago) who had gone to the IFA for a year, ran up $50K in debt for lack of funding, got told there was not going to every be funding for her even in year two, and she applied to transfer back to her undergrad institution and got in with a full ride. Now, not that I'm saying wanting to work for one of the auction houses is a bad thing, it's not. I think it could be pretty neat. But it does give the IFA a (deserved???) reputation for being a "finishing school" for socialites. Per the "what do you want to do with degree thing" in SOP - I put that I would be interested in teaching and researching/publishing. So whether I did want to end up teaching or not, I know that didn't hurt me. I was serious about wanting to publish, though. 100%

I apologize for butting my nose in, but I wanted to express my empathy to lxs. This is my second year applying to art history progs, and it looks like I will be getting all rejections this year, too. (Luckily I applied to Italian programs, too, and got accepted at UCLA.) It's all kind of ridiculous. My boyfriend is a 5th year in art history, so he vetted my application and even that didn't help. I similarly have a masters, speak fluent Italian, have degrees from prestigious schools and had a kick ass writing sample and personal statement. Also, I work for an artist and have been auditing classes in art history to make my CV look better. Last year I think my application was poor, so that explains that, but this year, it's either a) bad timing for the profs I wanted to work with or b)given that art history is generally dominated by traditionalist views of the canon no one wants to take on a student that has an idea outside of another useless dissertation on Michelangiolo or Picasso. So it could also be that you had a really cool idea that no one wanted to take a risk on. Which is probably where my problem lies. (I wanted to write my dissertation on 20th Century Italy - arte povera, scuola di pistoia, il gruppo 68, poesia visiva, etc - but c.w. says that's not good art and not worth being interested in... *sigh*) I apologize if this sounds haughty and/or conceited to people. I don't mean it to be, I just wanted to offer another possibility for what can happen.

Per UPenn - my friend is a professor of Art History at Johns Hopkins (my boyfriend's advisor, in fact) and he is close friends with Michael Cole. So that's how I found out. I (would like to) work on 20th Century Italy with Chris Poggi, but I guess I don't see that happening...