formerroadie

I agree with Philonic and JMR. There is a tendency to view the ivy league and famous names as somehow better than other schools based simply on name. I would say there are exceptions. Yale has top grade profs and I have heard nothing about in-fighting. Emory is split politically as are a number of others. Also, many of those schools have become centered on historical criticism and are having a hard time adapting to new paradigms. Change is not coming easy to places like Duke/Brown/Princeton, etc. What I would say is find someone you want to study with regardless of school. It's not the school but the mentor you are going to be under. If Yale or Harvard have that person, then apply, but don't limit yourself to such places. My mentor is a well respected member of the guild and one of the only female presidents of SBL. She did not teach at an Ivy League school and I'm happy with that given the time and attention I have gotten from her. The faculty at my school are more impressive than some of those ivy league schools, even in historical criticism, because there is a turn around happening in terms of regular senior faculty at those Ivy League schools. Profs at my school have continued to advance the field and I found my seminars to be just as challenging as anything I sat in on at say Chicago or Yale. I'm not trying to defend my education because I don't need to. I'm just saying that, for those of you who are applying, don't limit yourself to those schools you think of when you think "biblical studies" or "religious studies" and look around for great scholars that may be at smaller schools.