Tiglath-Pileser III

How long one waits really depends upon the kind of program and the internal processes of the department. But here are some very rough (and in no way scientific) guidelines. Rejections that are done administratively (e.g. you did not meet minimum requirements) => FASTEST (as early as January). Acceptances for the very top candidates => FASTER (typically in late February/early March) Acceptances for the good candidates => FAST (typically in March) Rejections that are done after considering applications by faculty => SLOW (typically late March to April) Acceptances for the waiting list and marginal candidates => SLOWER (typically first two weeks of April) Rejections for everyone else => SLOWEST (early April to never) I got my acceptance in late February, the day after my interview with the faculty. However, I would not take this as being in any way typical.

Truer words were never spoken.

Some schools arrange funding opportunities prior to the acceptance process since doctoral programs in the US are most often offered alongside funding. The problem comes when they inform the students of the funding and the student implies that an acceptance was also in the works. The arrangement of funding does not necessarily infer that one will be accepted into a program. I had something like this happen to me with UCLA. I was rejected and then a week later was informed that I was receiving a generous fellowship. It truly sucks but you cannot count your acceptances before they are delivered. The good news is that, even as a Canadian, if you get into a PhD program in the USA, then you will most likely get funding of some kind. Best of luck.

They won't do anything until they receive all the documentation. The website will say "complete" whether or not all the information is supplied. You need to ensure that the admissions committee has all your documents. They usually decide pretty fast once they have all your documents, usually less than a month.

At my local megamart, the beer from Wisconsin is shelved among the imports. Go figure.

NMC informs their PhD candidates pretty early, usually mid-Feb. Their MA's are informed around mid-March.

I would encourage everyone here not to give up. Some programs are highly competitive and some years are worse than others. I went two seasons without an acceptance, and I had called my prof. to thank him and let him know I was calling it quits. He encouraged me to try one more time, and it was he who specified the institution I should focus on. It can work out. And if by some chance you only get offered a master's degree, by all means take it. Sure it is a consolation prize, but it is still a prize. It looks a better to have several graduate degrees (even if only masters) than it does to have only a bachelors. Hang in there! We're all in this together.

Sure, I admit that I have research biases, but that doesn't mean I'm not also open to other points of view. I just want the evidences that I'm presented with to be sufficient, valid, and plausible. I don't think that's unreasonable. Quite frankly, I'd rather debate with you, someone who has a reasoned hypothesis, than what I normally get, i.e., "Aren't the pyramids giant alien landing pads?" Egyptologists tend to attract lunatics.

I think it is probably more fair to say that I consider both conceptual and physical evidence. However, it is not good scholarship to ignore the physical evidence that one does not like. While I appeal to ontology of monostatic interpretation of logos originating in Maat, it is because the idea of hypostases ("forms") is so strong in both Egyptian and Greek literature. But please consider for a moment that my conceptual argument is not just conceptual, it is also textual and linguistic. I use comparative evidence, archaeological evidence, and original sources. What is in question here is not similarity but ontology. Heraclitus might be similar to the DaoDeJing but it is also very similar to Pythagorean dualism. There is simply no evidence to suggest that Greek thought was highly influenced by Taoist thought. There is no "smoking gun" as it were. And which source is more reasonable? To suggest otherwise is (at this point) wishful thinking that encroaches on the extreme fringe of modern scholarship. The problem here is that the use of the bow as an example is ubiquitous in the ancient world. The bow is found in practically every culture of the ancient world. Even to suggest that these two example texts are similar seems to me that a particular interpretation of similarity is being read into the texts. Furthermore, as the evidence stands, it seems more likely to me that Toaism could have been more influenced by the Greek writers than the other way around; that is, of course, assuming that there is any influence at all, which I greatly doubt. I think it is much more plausible that Egyptian dualism became Pythagorean dualism which became Heraclitus' dualism. And there is a lot of good evidence to support this: a Greek trading colony on Egyptian soil, reports of an imported philosophical tradition, direct borrowing, and conceptual similarities between texts. Notice that I don't discount conceptual similarities. But I do regard it as only one avenue of evidence. The Toaist hypothesis has a few conceptual links. The Egyptian hypothesis has multiple lines of evidence which are not only conceptual but material as well. It is a matter of which hypothesis is more plausible given the evidence. Sure, I think traditional interpretations of history should be challenged. As historians we need to constantly re-assess our understanding and challenge old ideas. And I would indeed encourage the venturing of new hypotheses when conceptual themes establish sufficient warrant to challenge the prevailing thought. Nevertheless, I think we also need to do so on the basis of the evidence. The kind of historiography that you suggest is very postmodern. However, constructing history so that it suits us is not building upon knowledge; it's a self-styled artifice. While material evidence can be interpreted subjectively, it is not all to be subjectively interpreted. Therein lies the problem with a postmodern historical hermeneutic--it rendered subjective similarities as greater evidence to other kinds of evidence based upon nothing other than it agrees with us.

The problem with such an analysis is of course the establishment of links. Despite all wealth of texts from Qumran, we actually know relatively little about the Essene community and how it interacted with other groups. For example, from what can be best determined the Therapeutae and the Essenes are distinct groups separated by geography and belief. The Essenes being more akin to the Judaism near the proximity of Jerusalem, whereas the Therapeutae are more hermetic. Pythagoreanism is pretty well established by the fifth century BCE and is predicated upon Egyptian texts that are attested as early as the 13th century BCE--I'm thinking here particularly of the Leiden Hymns. Any connection between Thomasine Christians and, well, anybody else is probably pure speculation. The Ionians had contacts with the East because they lived on the front line with the Persian Empire. However, it is important to remember that the Persians were not big Taoists; they were Zoroastrian (a Media-Persian religion). Heraclitus' use of the river metaphor really should not surprise us. Even though it is sometimes compared with the ideas of impermanence found in Taoist and Buddhist thought (a dubious comparison at best), Heraclitus intended the ideas of "logos" and "panta rhei" to be converse ideas, i.e., there is a static monostasis that is beneath all reality, the "logos," to which change must be subject to while the appearances of those ideas are subject to constant change. It would not be a stretch to say that Heraclitus extended Pythagorean dualism into something similar but distinct from Platonic dualism (also an expression of Pythagorean dualism). The difference here is a matter of text versus speculation. While some modern writers speculate that the Greeks got their ideas from Eastern religions, the evidence is circumstantial at best and at odds with the written texts that we have. Even if we grant that there is some similarity between Heraclitus and Taoism, we must also remember that similarity does not imply ontology. On the one hand, the origins and dating of Taoist writing are hotly disputed by scholars. The oldest fragments of Taoist text are late fourth century BCE, which quite frankly post-dates Heraclitus. On the other hand, the problem is further compounded by the fact that Greek writers, e.g. Diodorus and Sophocles, specifically attribute the philosophical tradition as an Egyptian import, whereas no ancient writer attributes the philosophical tradition to an Eastern source. Which makes more sense? Arguing where there is an absence of evidence? Or going with the evidence we have? Well, we have to see these concepts in light of their respective cultures. The concepts have similarities, and it is not hard to see how one influenced the other. Maat is the idea of "cosmic order." Logos means "word, idea, plan." Maat is both a concept and a goddess, and so it has divine properties. Maat was maintained by Pharaoh and by Amun, king of the gods. The Egyptians feared "disorder" or things that fell out of their natural place. All law and religion in Egypt was governed by the concept of "order." The Greeks could easily have extrapolated upon the idea of Maat into the monostasis, which the Greek philosophers called "logos."

I'm 41. After my BA, I had a high-flying corporate career. I went back to graduate school when I was 35. Three graduate degrees later, I am now launching into PhD studies. While being older hasn't helped me get in, especially given the grade inflation problem, I was better prepared to study going back as a more mature student. I study better, smarter, and have more perseverance than I ever did in my twenties. It is possible to do this in one's thirties and forties, and it is possible to do it well.

Yup, the Therapeutae, Cainites, Ophites, and Sethites. There is a lot of presocratic influences; however, that's because Pythagoreanism is essentially Greek-imported Egyptian religion that made transit via the trading colony of Naucratis. I didn't find much (or anything) in the way of taoist or buddhist influences however, since most of the religious tenants that I was dealing with had their origins in native Egyptian source materials that predated those two religions by at least 600 years.

I think you have completely missed the point of what I was trying to say. It is not about doing justice to what you study or relaying that information accurately. Look, like you I have theological degrees. And yes, I think how one interprets the Bible affects how one lives. And while I suspect that you and I take differing sides on the hermeneutic debate, I would suggest that it is neither your job nor mine to seed doubt in people's minds through the explanations of our particular fields of academic interest. First, if someone asks what you are studying, they are not asking to have their beliefs challenged. The question is polite talk at best. Explanations in polite conversation are generally unwelcome. Second, if you try to change the way people think in such a ham-fisted manner, all academics will be perceived (by association) as heady, high-minded, and arrogant. We all lose when you do that. I wish I had a dollar for every person who has said to me, "I knew a guy once who was educated like you but he was so insufferable." Third, your 30-second explanation, should be much simpler. It should be "I'm a Bible scholar." It should be something everyone can understand. Fourth, what I actually study does have a huge impact upon peoples lives because it challenges core assumptions on the reliability of the Gospel documents. The origins of Gnosticism have been used to challenge earliest developments of the Christian church, e.g., the Gnostic gospels of Elaine Pagels. However, in casual conversation people just don't need to know that information. Fifth, I don't really study "pyramids, tombs, or mummies." I study asiatic migration patterns in Egypt during the Ramesside period, which is around the time of the Biblical Exodus. Would this have an impact upon how people perceive the Bible? Yes. Would people understand that if I told them? Probably not. So, I tell them something they do understand. Again, casual conversation is not about being right or accurately conveying the exact nature of your studies. Casual conversation is about being polite, or in your case, not being rude. Well, the first question is not genuine question. If you were savvy enough to recognize it, you could have responded accordingly. Perhaps a counter question instead of an explanation would have been more appropriate. The second question could be answered with a simple "yes" or "no, I try to understand XYZ." And even the third question could be answered with tact. You do not need to explain comparative linguistics or source critical methods or redaction criticism or Bultmannian demythologization or any of that other worthless garbage that non-academic people really don't care about. If you want to talk about that junk, save it for the classroom. And you can tell an explanation is too complicated because people show signs of being irritated. If you cannot explain it to someone who is in Grade 5, your explanation is probably too complicated. I think you misunderstand. Just because people have polite questions, doesn't necessarily mean that they care about the answers.

In the year that I applied to Johns Hopkins, the Ancient Near East department had a GRE cutoff of a combined 1350. And while I had a score above that cutoff, I have only been accepted to schools where the GRE was not considered at all. I don't think my GRE scores hurt my chances but they didn't seem to help either. I don't think that the GRE plays as big a factor as ETS would like us all to believe. My only concern would be for students who have a very low score in a certain area. I've seen it used as a way to whittle down the pool of applicants, i.e., to administratively reject students with less than a 500 on verb/quant or a 4.0 in writing. Nobody wants a graduate student who cannot write an essay, read a graph, or understand the vocabulary in a journal article. Such students are a drain on the system, and such administrative rejections are indeed justified. Some admission committees are even savvy enough to understand that the GRE is a test that can be studied for, and a low score could be perceived as a sign of a student's lack of preparedness; also a justifiable reason for a rejection as it forecasts how a student's prioritizes his/her preparation for a major exam. Most schools do not publish their GRE cutoffs; however, a lot of schools publish the averages of the GRE scores for students that are admitted. You'll find that at a lot of major universities the average can be remarkably low, e.g., 1150 for the PhD program. This should tell us that a lot more goes into making these decisions than just the GRE scores. In fact I think the most important factors to admissions are (a ) grades, yes grades do count, (b ) how does the student express his research intent, and (c ) what does his recommendations say about the student. I had an adviser of mine once tell me, "If I receive a recommendation from prof. X, I know he is going to give me a frank assessment of the student's abilities. He doesn't mince words. If he says that the student will perform well, I can bank on it." There is a "street cred" among scholars that is still worth more than the artificial results garnered by the GRE.