ProspectiveProspective

"thank u, next"

Fake?

Don't be insane.

Does anyone know if all the offers typically come out in one go? I.e. if we haven't heard back from Harvard/Princeton by now, is it safe to assume that we've been rejected?

Don't do law, that's what I combine with, and I can tell you first hand it's not the kind of thing you want to undertake unless you're truly committed to staying the course. Wait it out & good luck.

@papereverwhere to be perfectly honest, I'd take anywhere that'd have me! My research interest include cross-cultural and multimodal contemporary art. I think @feelthebern16 probably had the right idea in not telling anyone ... people keep asking me how the process is going ... it's inexorable.

Yeah, I'm at Sydney

Hey @papereverwhere Just out of idle interest, what Australian uni did you attend?

Currently oscillating between absolute confidence and crippling inadequacy... love this process. I've applied to 6 American PhDs.

Great advice! Thanks @condivi

I suspect I may be covering well worn ground, but I wanted to get a sense of what people think in relation to two problems that I've encountered in writing my SOPs. The first issue is: how much detail am I meant to give about my proposed PhD topic? That is, I can't quite work out if I'm overreaching in the amount of detail that I've included about my proposed research (thereby alienating potential supervisors), or if I've been too scant? What is the balance? Should I just say "contemporary art" and then give a few broad strokes, or really home in on a particular topic? The second issue relates to applications asking about my future career prospects. It seems so strange to be talking about an ideal job that is likely more than a decade away. Am i meant to name a specific position? Or is that overreaching!?! Thanks for reading and indulging my questions/rant...

Thanks for the feed back! I'm from Australia, and score guidelines here tend to be quite definitive - so it's good to hear that these ultimately won't make or break the application.

I'm applying to Columbia (among others) for an Art history Phd, and noticed that some of my GRE scores fall a little short of what they expect. Their website states that "[a] prospective students should aim to score at least a 166 on the verbal, 160 on the quantitative reasoning and a 5.5 on the written essay". I got AWA: 5; Q: 157; and V: 168. Am I still competitive - despite coming up short?