marvel2375

Has anyone heard back from Harvard?

I was told by Harvard's graduate program coordinator that decisions will be posted around February 18.

It depends on the department. A few departments get back to applicants as early as January or even December (although it is not as common), but most departments as you had correctly guessed, notify applicants in February or March. If you have been waitlisted for a program, you may get off the waitlist as late as a few hours before the April 15 deadline that most U.S. graduate schools adhere to.

I would suggest you check online to see if there are graduate programs out there in your field that consider applicants with a GPA that is bellow a 3.0. Some graduate programs may or may not have a GPA cutoff. If you find a particular program that you are very interested in, yet has a GPA cutoff, you could try reaching out to the department to see if they would consider waiving the GPA requirement.

It is not unheard of for graduate programs to send out decisions or for POIs to reach out to applicants during weekends/holidays. Anything is possible!

Hello all! Figured I would start a thread on campus visits and admitted students/recruitment weekends, so that it would be helpful for folks who are applying to multiple programs to be aware of conflicting dates and plan/prioritize their preferences accordingly. If you get invited to visit a campus (either after being admitted or while interviewing for a program), or if you are a currently enrolled student in an anthropology graduate program, please post the date(s) in which your program/department will invite finalists/recently admitted students to your campus this coming spring, and if possible, describe what others could expect from such visits (i.e. is it for admitted students or for interview finalists? does the program fly out applicants for a campus visit or are applicants expected to self-fund themselves? etc.)

I sent my recommenders handwritten thank-you cards.

You should be fine!

Hi Carlos, I don't know of all universities out there that specialize in visual anthropology, but the University of Southern California is one of them. You might also consider broadening your search and and look at linguistic anthropology programs, as a lot of linguistic anthropologists work on photos and videos. Hope this helps!

Has anyone heard back from Michigan State University?

What usually happens in Skype interviews really depends on the personality of the person/people interviewing you! Some Skype interviews tend to be informal, short, and more of a 'here is an opportunity for both of us to meet face-to-face'. In other cases, Skype interviews could be more formal, structured, and longer than what you might be expecting. Unless you have been assigned a specific time slot range (i.e. 1:00pm-1:30), I would advise one to block out an hour of one's schedule. A good way to prepare for Skype interviews is to familiarize yourself with the work of the person who has contacted you. Even if you haven't heard of this person until the day he contacted yet, you still have time to read (or at least scroll through) the last academic piece that he has published. You don't need to be familiar with ALL of the work that this person has ever worked on, but try to know enough so that you can show this person that you are seriously interested in joining his lab. Be prepared to discuss with this professor your research interests, the lab that he is running, and any questions you may have that could not be answered online through the department's website or graduate student handbook. How you dress has a lot to do with the conventions of 'professionalism' in your field. In anthropology, we tend to dress casually for conferences compared to academics from other fields, such as economics or political science. What is more important is that you don't have any distracting objects in your background (i.e. a poster or a tv screen that is likely to draw the attention of the interviewer away from you during the interview). Lastly, interviewers are probably aware that graduate students are nervous, so don't be too hard on yourself! Just be yourself and try to enjoy the interview while it lasts! Hope this helps.

I would get in touch with the respective International Student Offices at the universities that you are applying to.

I am not applying to anthropology PhD programs this application cycle, but I am curious to hear how others have been finding the application season so far. Good luck to all who are applying!

Which UC schools are the most accessible without a car? I'm specifically thinking of applying to UCLA and UC-Irvine this coming year, but wanted to get a sense of how realistic it would be for me to live there without having a car...

Brandeis University offers some funding for MA students.