Pierre de Olivi

I turned down Stanford, withdrew from Toronto, and turned down a waitlist position at Princeton's history department. Hope this helps!

Just committed to Harvard's CSR PhD program! Good luck to all on waitlists and making a decision; hopefully this can cause some waitlist movement at other programs.

Thank you for sharing this harrowing report. I'll be honest and say I'm not entirely convinced that most of the decline has little to do with covid, but I'd need to see more on their data collection method and raw data to be sure (I actually have a background in stats, so I'm not BS'ing here). With that said, there's no denying that this is a big drop and we're unlikely to see a bounce back for at best several years (if ever). I'll reiterate the advice I gave on the PhD applications thread that people considering applying or matriculating to religious studies PhDs in the near future shoul

Rejected from Chicago! Honestly, after two "virtual visit weekends" and having some great conversations with faculty and students at Harvard, I'm almost relieved!

I interviewed there as well. However, the interviews may be determined by subfield/POI and it may be possible to be admitted without an interview -- the results for past years are unclear. I'll reiterate that on one level, no news is good news. What subfield or POI did you apply to work with?

Thank you! It's definitely up there but I'm waiting to hear back from Chicago and will probably make my final decision based on how conversations with grad students feel. But I looooove the academics and faculty at Harvard and Cambridge is a very convenient location for me!

Thank you! I've heard 4 thrown around but am not sure how accurate it is. A faculty member told me I was the only applicant selected in my area of focus.

I got accepted to Harvard!!!!! The news came last night; sorry I didn't update the thread sooner.

If you're thinking about getting an academic job don't be afraid to ask them about the placement rates of their advisees in particular (as opposed to the department generally). Conversely, you can ask them point-blank whether and how they would advise you differently should you choose to seek an alt- or non-academic job. Questions about their attitude towards publication are always wise, but you may have already asked them earlier in the process. Even with the COVID vaccine out, asking what steps they are taking/have taken to accommodate current students in light of the crisis can be

Sure, most of my research focuses on Late Antique Eastern Med. I applied to do an interdisciplinary track adjacent to the History of Christianity track with additional faculty from Islamic studies. I don't know if they interviewed me as an interdisciplinary applicant or moved me into a more conventional track. I hope this helps! ETA: you can DM me for more information about my application/interview if that's helpful, but I don't want to share too many details publicly.

I had an interview there last week, and I'm under the impression I was one of the later people to get interviews. Judging by past years they've let people know in late February or early March (=2-3 weeks after interviews finish), so it may still be a week or two out.

Welp, just got rejected from NYU's ISAW. I was half expecting it since others have already heard back, but still feels a bit bad. Out of curiosity, did anyone get into ISAW this cycle applying with a focus on late antiquity?

Glad I could help! Yeah I've heard that the CSR is accepting fewer people but I haven't heard the exact number of 2 admits. But if you heard it from other Master's students it may just be that my info is out of date. And yeah, I'm not sure exactly what the deliberations entail. My advisor didn't mention them at all and between that and the lack of commitment about a time I'm not sure we can definitively project when we'll get results based on when they occur. Still, it's useful to have any information we can! Good luck!

My advisor basically said things got off to a slow start. He made no committment about when applicants will hear back so far, which is fine. They're doing at least one faculty search concurrently which is likely eating into their time/energy. What were your sources for the total number of admits and when they started deliberation?

It sounds like some/all professors who are categorized in a given field of study (you should have gotten a chance to specify this in your SOP or on the application, examples may be things like "archaeology" or "Greek philosophy" or "late antiquity") get to choose the student(s) they most want to admit who match their field of study, and then the different fields discuss it to decide who actually gets admitted to the department. There's a parallel process in the history departments I'm applying to, so I think this is relatively common in the humanities.