roving99

Highly likely no. It is usually about a week from when the 'review results' panel changes in the application, and generally speaking decision emails start rolling in very early in the AM. I would assume we do not hear earlier than Friday, if not perhaps Monday.

So I think those of us in the humanities/socsci are waiting any day now right, they would've just finished convening an hour ago. Any clue how quickly they have sent out notifs from previous years? will we know tomorrow? monday? next week?

Howdy! Has anyone else applied for this? Figured I would start a thread. The waiting is absolutely killing me. This fellowship would be a life-changer for me (as I am sure it would be for many) so I am just looking to commiserate. Art History here!

What are the major publishing houses in your field? Keep abreast of their new and upcoming scholarship. What are recent dissertations written in your proposed field? Take a look at their work and their arguments, look at their bibliographies. generally, use bibliographies. They are extremely helpful in finding new/alternative sources that you may not know of, particularly if it is interdisciplinary/a new approach. are you engaged with professional organizations in the field? They would probably offer book/article announcements and prizes that would be useful to you as well.

There’s nothing wrong inherently with a terminal MA program. Williams for instance has a stellar one. Tgere are many others as well. which program offers the best funding? which program has the best advisor for you RIGHT NOW? I would focus on those two questions the most. Many times after two years you will find that you have a more nuanced understanding of phd programs and advisors that align with your interests, so I don’t think wether the school has a phd program or not should be a defining factor. Consider this two years of training for the real application cycle. Also, I’m not familiar with Boston’s etiquette but there are also some schools that will NOT have MA students move to the PhD directly, so that is just something to consider.

For a master's degree, hands down, you should be going to the school with the best funding package, unless you are independently wealthy or have other means of paying for school. This is not a field that offers much in the way of payout post-graduation, so if there is a good advisor for you at each of those schools, funding is the most important for an MA. However, if there are any schools on that list who really do NOT have an advisor who is a good fit, I would write those schools off maybe even before funding. There is no use going to any program without the right faculty to guide you, since the work you do while in school will be far more important than the name of the school on your diploma at the end of all of it. If they all have comparable funding and comparable advisors, the choice is pretty subjective. consider the following: - Where is it located? Do you feel good about moving to this location? - what is the cost of living there? Will your funding package cover your living situation in said location, or will you have to get 1 or more jobs to offset that cost, or take out extra loans? - What benefits and opportunities do these schools provide for their students OUTSIDE of work in the classroom? -How long is the program? Will you be rushed through, or can you take your time and make sure you are absorbing as much as possible? -What is the culture like on campus and specifically in the department? Talk to current students and recent grads to get a sense of how it feels to be a part of that academic system. -What are recent post-MA placements? Are they doing the things you want to be doing after graduating? Getting into the schools you want? Working in the types of museums you have interest in? Just my two cents/some tried and true advice.

Absolutely! Feel free to shoot me a message on here and we can get to chatting about specifics. I'll say honestly, particularly in Contemporary LatAm, the Ivies are one of the worst places you can go. If you want to do anything remotely cutting edge or ground-breaking, you want to stay FAR away from the Ivies which are largely very stuck in traditional canon narratives. They emphasize colonial latin america through a Eurocentric lens and they focus on inserting Latin America into the pre-established canon rather than mapping it in its own right. Find an advisor who is doing the kind of work that you want to be doing, and go where the advisor is. Don't go to the "school." The field is still so small that you could end up at a great school with no advisor or a HORRIBLE advisor, and then the degree is worthless because you haven't been able to learn and frame your thinking in a way that is helpful for the field itself.

Congrats! Hunter is a great school for an MA, particularly in contemp LatAm. If you can swing it financially I'm sure you will have a good experience there, though I think I have heard too large of a cohort can be a problem. (don't quote me on that) contemporary LatAm is my field exactly so feel free to ask any questions you might have. Hunter does have a very good reputation for Art History regardless, particularly if you are looking to go onto a PhD. If so, work really really closely with your advisor and get to workshops, conferences, etc, and polish your writing as much as you can.

Have you reached out to your student advocate and/or your institution's omnibudsperson? That would be your best route through all of this to start. You need a paper trail proving what is going on that you can use to bolster your options in the future.

I’m not sure if there is a program that does this. It’s quite a niche field. You may need to build your own degree at a school that offers law, forensics, art history, and museum studies altogether, especially since your career goal similarly isn’t a position that just exists - you’ll need to build a brand for yourself and market yourself as such, I think it will end up being like a private investigator type of situation, and you may need those credentials as well.

Given the current climate of the world, I would 100% choose the school with better funding. Both of those are great programs and the cost of living at UI will be much less than DC. DC is a nightmare.

This is a crummy experience. I’m so sorry this is how you’ve been treated during a time when students need support the most. Unfortunately, your experience is a relatively common one. Many many terminal masters programs are just cash cows for their respective universities and students end up with the short end of the stick in a majority of these situations. I would continue to badger them. You need SOMETHING out of them, not just pure dismissal.

For me, 0$. I would NOT have pursued the MA/PhD if I was not fully funded. It’s not worth it - the time it will take to get you out from under that debt considering the academic job market just won’t add up. Especially now since we have no idea what the job market will be looking like the next few years.

You should also look at Rutgers. Tatiana Flores is a stellar scholar and recent hires have really bolstered the program. (Nicole Fleetwood, amber Wiley.) There is also a very good Latin American/Latino studieS program there as well.

I agree. There’s potential there for it to be 50% or more online to promote social distancing, especially in relatively major metropolitan areas. If you are taking out major loans to go to places like NYU, Columbia, Temple, SAIC, I would highly advise to reconsider the fall semester. I don’t think you will be getting what you are paying for. however, if you have a funded masters or PhD offer, I see no reason why not to continue. In my program, professors are acutely aware of the struggle and will go out of their way to bring incoming students up to speed as soon as possible. Also, with a summer of preparation, virtual grad courses will be much more successful in the fall. I actually have not minded the transition education-wise. If no one accepts funded positions, departments have the potential of completely losing those lines of credit and therefore having less spots to open up to future students. You may ask to defer, but they might not be able to do it come next year if they lose the funding.

You shouldn’t have to respond until April 15th. It’s an agreed upon date by accredited institutions. Sounds fishy to me if they have a deadline before then.

I agree with many of the above posters. If you are interested in pursuing the PhD or anything above these masters programs, DO NOT attend a program which requires countless loans and monetary input unless you are independently wealthy. IFA and Columbia ARE cash cows. It is not only talked about on gradcafe but also in the academic world. I am in my second year of a university PhD and people mention it all the time. They don’t have a stellar reputation, regardless of their university name.

New Brunswick is really not rural! I went to undergrad in rural Pennsylvania and worked for a year in NYC. Central NJ, in general, is definitely more urban/suburban, though obviously not as much as NYC and LA. New Brunswick itself feels very urban. Many people live in Newark, Brooklyn, or Manhattan and commute down into Rutgers if that's a concern for you, as well. It is only about a 45-minute train ride from Penn Station if you time it right to get on the express train. I personally have two people in my tiny cohort who are commuting from the upper west side and from Newark, respectively. There is a HUGE Latino population as well. Speaking from personal experience, I can attest that there are tons of Latino communities on campus. The Department of Latino and Caribbean studies is a major player in on-campus events, and the Center for Latin American Studies hosts tons of panels, conferences, film screenings, and events every semester. There are also a bunch of student groups and organizations. Grad life is cool here. The vibe is fast-paced, supportive, and welcoming. Rutgers has a lot of stellar opportunities for research/professional advancement and can be highly interdisciplinary as well. I'm in the humanities, which is distinctly different than the Engineering school, but I honestly love it here. Queer/LGBT life on campus definitely exists as well. There are lots of campus groups that focus on LGBT communities, and as grad students, you can participate in undergraduate clubs and organizations as well.

In an application world where committees are sometimes going through hundreds of apps, I'd suggest following the instructions as closely as possible. Not following instructions can sometimes be reason enough to get thrown out of the running. If Stanford said 20 pages max, I would cap it at 20 max. Can you condense your images to 2 pages and/or remove some for the sake of the sample? With that being said, I had my best luck in using dumb loopholes to get around the word count (11 pt font vs. 12, decreasing line spacing by a very small increment, etc. My professor actually suggested them to me when I ran into the same problem. Another differing factor is using footnotes vs. endnotes, and whether or not you will include a bib or just use full citations in your footnotes/endnotes. My page difference was actually three pages between the two!) Some apps won't specify images and others will ask for NO images. I added my images at the end, which I could choose to use or not to use depending on length. I went with a happy-medium 15 or so pages of text and then adjusted as necessary for each program. That worked out well for me over 8 applications.

I think this REALLY depends on the individual program. A lot of programs don't fund their MA students in order to save funding for Ph.D. candidates, or at least it seems to be pretty common from everything i've seen on the boards and from my own application round this past fall. I'll be attending a large public state school in the fall, fully funded, but again, it will be the BA-PhD program. I don't think they fund MA-only candidates. I also know, however, that Columbia does not fund MA candidates in my field, they only fund Ph.D. students. Not sure if my thoughts help at all, but an interesting topic nonetheless.

Hi, all! I'll be attending Rutgers (New Brunswick) for a PhD program in the fall, and am hoping to connect with anyone else who might be entering into an MA/PhD/etc, as well. Please do shoot me a reply or a direct message if you'd prefer - I'd love to connect with some new people! I haven't seen too many posts about Rutgers this cycle.

I think you will likely be best served by filtering through faculty listings at schools you are interested in. Also, find books and articles which you have read and liked, and research whether or not those scholars currently teach and where they do so. The only one I can suggest looking into is Eric Thuno at Rutgers, he's not near retirement yet. (Not my field, so I really don't know many!)

Wow, I didn’t realize the cohort was going to be that small. Thanks for the info, and the best of luck to you!!!!!!

Would any Rutgers admits care to message me? Haven’t seen too many on the boards!

I think a lot of this decision is going to come down to what you are willing to/not willing to sacrifice to get the degree. Personally, I wouldn't be able to navigate that 30K loan gracefully with a fully funded offer also in place. What makes you concerned about the MFA? I've noticed in my internships and other jobs that a lot of contemporary curators come from non-traditional backgrounds. I think working directly with artists and critical dialogue will likely be a help for you rather than a hindrance. Specifically, when talking about curating contemporary art, the practice is much more nebulous than someone who specializes in Roman Art/European Modernism, etc. Also, this is a degree offered through UC Irvine which is already a reputable and respected institution. It's not like you'd be attending some random no-name school coming out with a funky MFA. I wouldn't write it off so quickly - I think it would be worthwhile for you to explore that option a bit more. When it comes down to it, though, you have to follow your gut. I've heard an overwhelming amount of advisors and colleagues tell me to never consider taking out loans for the MA, but you have to decide what is most important to YOU, not anyone else. If UC Irvine is just not your place, then boot it off your list and start looking at the other choices you have. Have you spoken to any recent alumni if those programs? That might be a good next step for you because you can get a feel for how the program operates at each institution, and how that kind of program might impact you better/worse than the others. Gathering as much information as possible will likely help you make a more informed decision. It might also be helpful to ask program advisors/directors where recent graduates have ended up in the last few years. (I.e., did they get curatorial positions in museums? Move on to PhD programs? exit the industry? etc.)