Concordia

By now there can't be more than a few dozen classicists nationwide-- won't they all know each other and be able to evaluate you through word of mouth? (/JK) This isn't going to be like sorting out budding economists or computer scientists. That said, if you're thought to have gone to the one school that really sucks at teaching Latin and Greek, the knives will be out. So maybe ask around a good graduate department to see what they know or think they know.

There seem to be two kinds of PhDs-- those hotshots who go straight in after undergrad (to whom you're comparing yourself), and everyone else. Don't worry about people whose experience you will never have; just do what you need/want to do for yourself right now. As far as being 30 or so when you're done, I have no idea what that will mean for the job you want. But you'll hardly be the oldest person fighting for it. Oh, and I'm more than twice your age. Matriculated last weekend.

Through all of this, simplicity has real value. I'm in the process of reviewing a book based on a new PhD's dissertation, and I found it so convoluted that it was impossible to read, even though it had clearly had a lot of good research go into it. In desperation, I pulled a copy of the dissertation, and by comparison that was as clear as water. Why the author (or editor) decided to twist everything up to make it attractive to the public, I will never know. It totally destroyed the value of the research.

Give them some readings published by the Cambridge University New Testament Society.

In the meantime-- noise-cancelling headphones.

No idea. The last time I applied for a job, it was out of business school, where someone had to read my resume (and what I chose to put on it). There would also have been calls to faculty members before the interview list was drawn up.

You must have a departmental GPA for your major. Sounds like that will be a lot higher. In any case, are there faculty or employer contacts that can get you past someone's software filter?

Your transcript will be part of the package, so the trend will be obvious to anyone who looks. You might persuade your referees to make a brief mention of the earlier years their letters: that what they know of you is very good, now that you've come through a difficult period, etc. If you need some more confidence, take a non-degree course or two somewhere else after graduation and blow those out of the water, just to convince the skeptical that you're on a good track. Good luck. One of the worst parts of depression is believing that you'll never escape. Not true! Sounds like you already have, so take pride in your achievements.

Just make sure they aren't both i-banks with 90-hour weeks! As for the rest-- balance skills and contacts acquired with resume suck that will look good to someone who knows nothing. Make sure that you can leave each job behind when you're out the door. Otherwise the stress will kill you. Will alternating days deliver relief, or deep confusion?

As a historian, I might be biased, but... isn't the question still relevant?

At some point, an organization gets so large that it becomes a collection of small ones. That can be good or bad.

I had a classmate at Yale SOM who was in the same boat for a few years. (SOM was a little weirder then, so she really didn't want any other business school.) I don't know what caused admissions to cave in and admit her. For something like HKS, which is sort of analogous, I would suspect that if your grades and scores are over some minimum, you may either have irrelevant or insufficient experience-- OR, more likely, you haven't figured out how to sell it and yourself as a good fit for whatever you would do at HKS.

Oxenforde, for a DPhil. Arrive at my college Thursday afternoon. Truth be known, it was the only place I got in, although that was largely because I withdrew applications from Cambridge and London before the respective universities could bless their committees' recommendations.

Put another way, sounds like your file won't give you a guarantee to anywhere, but you'll nevertheless be jumping over any reasonable hurdles. Now find a place you like, and that will like you. At least a few of your options are likely to be very good.

You should call to withdraw your re-application to Lehigh, and tell them why.

There are different degrees of outlining, too. When I was doing 4,000-word essays, where I had to tee up a certain amount of evidence to prove a thesis, it was useful to break it up. First in thirds (maybe) to cover the main components of what I was arguing, and then making list of bullet points under each of them. Each bullet then became a topic sentence. Right now, I have a book review (2,000 words) that I'm having trouble getting started on. I can start with Intro (author ID, basic topic, summary thoughts of why we'd care), then a section summarizing each for the (not-too-many) chapters. Some wise observations and closing thoughts to end it. This way, I can at least put some structure on the task and start to grind through it.

The Harvard Extension School won't let you do the whole degree online, but you can probably kill most of the prerequisites that way. By the time you are ready to take the pro-seminar and start your real concentration, you may have more flexibility in your schedule. If you don't mind struggling to get attention from the right person, there are plenty of resources available. Not that this is a perfect solution, but quite a few people with undergrad or master's degrees from the Extension School have gone on to doctoral programs. After considering that, I ended up doing a part-time MSt degree at the University of Cambridge instead. I preferred Cambridge because the modules were much more focused as far as time commitments: four long weekends in Year 1, and four or five Saturdays in Year 2, which was more tolerable to me than an endless stream of Tuesday and Thursday nights. You do have to be in England for most of those commitments, not that visiting Cambridge is a hardship. In Year 1, you have 3 weeks to go through your readings, and then 4 weeks after the module to get your 4,000-word essay done. Year 2 is the dissertation, which can be done anywhere you can get the research and writing completed. The program will work to find a supervisor for you, which may not be so simple at Harvard. When the obvious candidate to supervise mine wasn't going to be arriving until my second year, for example, they shopped around as far as Oxford to find the right guy for me. Of course, there are fewer curriculum options at Cambridge. Since I started in 2014, the program(me) has been anchored by one piece of the cohort doing British local history; the other group changes year by year. I got lucky in that they chose US History to get the new format started. The next alternate group will be doing Global History-- whatever that may mean. If you have a topic in mind (and you will need to spell it out while applying), take a look. https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/mst-history

Without further info, 1). You'll get a good reference for your current work in addition.

Affirmative action has many guises.

Maybe get a plastic tarp and ductape to seal in the bed. Which might not address the whole problem. For moths, it is usually recommended to keep an imperfect seal on for 2-3 days. Obviously, you want a way for the oxygen to escape out the top.

Carbon dioxide. Living things hate it. You can use it in garment bags to get rid of moths. Not quite sure of the most practical way to enclose bedding, but it is worth a try. Garbage bags for the smaller stuff. Or if you're going away for the weekend, a few hundred pounds under the bed while taping the doors shut. www.lifekind.com sells bedding of all kinds that either don't attract, or otherwise thwart bugs. Not necessarily for student budgets, but the workmanship is very good.

Maybe dry ice combined with cases for your mattress and pillows.

UK doctoral program(me)s require a master's before applying. My bachelor's degree is far enough in the past, though that I'd have needed a more current credential to get in the groove, even I were applying to a US department that makes you do its own MA. Also, I'm sure that doing well in the master's wiped a lot of sins off my college transcript.

I doubt this has much to do with other divisions of Harvard, even if there was a phone call from the President's office over to the Dean. It does probably tell you something about the K School, though. They tend to be interested in power and its sources the way the B School is interested in money.

One option would be to have your recommenders address the issue, alerting the AC that you got a decent grade in spite of your writing skills at the time, and that your English has vastly improved since then.