Pierre de Olivi

Stepping in from an adjacent field (religious studies) with my two cents on the relationship between CS and your historical interests. In my view, vital to the question of whether you should stay in your program or try to switch soon is the issue of research interests. What area of history would you like to focus on, and what approaches or methods might you bring in? Conversely, is your CS degree mostly training you to be a "code monkey," or does it include a substantial theoretical or mathematical component? Neither of these is necessarily bad, but they will affect your set of "hard skills" and ability to spin your training for history. In my own sub-field, there is a growing interest in digital approaches to pre-modern texts and especially "digital philology," which can include things like OCR, various sorts of technological analyses of manuscripts, and even word frequency analysis. A background in CS could let you fit right in here, and a background in theory could allow you to contribute to fundamental questions and developments in this field that some scholars working with these methods might not be qualified to discuss. This could merge into various approaches based on computational linguistics and, job-wise, could lead into archival or library work in addition to academia. As noted above you could always go the history of science/technology/mathematics route. Don't assume that because your training in CS you have to focus on the past two centuries -- computation theory runs surprisingly deep and a good CS graduate degree should give you a set of technical skills that you can place in dialogue with much earlier forms of scientific and technical thought with the proper historiographic foundation. Also, since your background is also in sociology, you could use CS as a framework to study media/mass cultural phenomena. Here, again, the technical background could be quite helpful and give you an edge on other job/grad school applicants in your area. Her work is more in the realm of anthropology, but E. Gabriella Coleman's work on the hacker movement is a good example of what you can do with a strong foundation in the humanities and a semi-technical knowledge of computers and code.

Hey everyone, I hope everybody has approached a decision with which they are happy. As some of you know, I applied to a few PhD programs directly out of undergrad and did not get into my top choices, which is fine and I can honestly say I am not bitter about. Since I applied relatively young and ultimately decided to pursue an M* degree, is it worth it to contact my POIs at those schools (whom I had already spoken with before applying) just to express my interest in re-applying in 2-3 years? If so, does anybody have tips about phrasing these e-mails? Thanks!

I just turned down my PhD admissions offer from Indiana. The faculty there were great and I respect their work, but the overall offerings of the program did not make it a perfect fit, and I decided I wanted to take more time to build skills and apply to more places next time, especially now that I've gotten into a funded Master's program. I e-mailed my POI, who is also the director of graduate studies, and included in the e-mail a form formally turning down my offer. It was difficult but I hope the professors at Indiana understand, and will update this thread regarding the responses I receive.

Hey guys, I have another quick question about M* programs I could use some insight on. But first, thanks again for all your wisdom and especiall your answers to my other questions in this thread! Does it look bad to PhD programs if one attends an M* program without funding, even if one does well in the program? Leaving aside the issue of whether one can graduate without debt or not, do PhD adcoms percieve one as a flawed or less competitive applicant if one cannot secure funding when applying to M* programs? Or is one's performance in the M* program far more indicative?

Hey everyone, I don't know if it would be better to create a whole thread for this, but does anybody know how relationships between concentrated MAR students at YDS and professors in the religious studies department at Yale tend to be? That is, are there a lot of opportunities to take classes in religious studies and are faculty in that department generally willing to work with YDS students? Or is the divide relatively rigid?

The Academia Stack Exchange tends to give useful advice and has a few regulars involved with academic/graduate religious studies. But, as its title implies, it is not specifically about religious studies (much less grad school in religious studies), and it is in more of a Q&A format than a "forum" per se.

This probably doesn't fulfill your criterion for "top tier," but Rutgers' M.A. program accepts new applicants until June 1 without any loss of funding eligibility. My original plan was to apply to their program if I didn't get in anywhere else, but it seems that will be unnecessary.

I'm not who you were responding to, but do you think it would be appropriate for me to contact the financial aid office about this issue even if I don't go to the open house? I would like to go but unfortunately I do not have access to a reliable means of getting to Boston and back, although I would like to discuss competing offers with the office.

Haha, I actually applied to Indiana for a Master's and got into the doctoral program! I'm mostly holding out on Notre Dame, although I also haven't heard from HDS or YDS yet. Barring Notre Dame's program I'm torn between CUA and Indiana -- both are great programs and I'm tempted by the opportunity to start a doctoral program soon, but Indiana doesn't exactly match my research interests or teach the approaches I hope to cultivate. So I've been doing a lot of research about my opportunities at each program. Where else are you looking?

I believe I am; I posted in late February pretty soon after hearing back and haven't seen anyone else post a waitlist from that program as of a week ago. I also wish we knew how deep the waitlist is, although I hear they have pretty consistently taken at least a few people off of it each year. Good luck!

Hi, I'm actually on the Early Christian Studies M.A. waitlist, not the MTS waitlist. I got a personal e-mail from the director of the ECS program; from my understanding you basically just have to wait it out and confirm you're still interested by a certain deadline (mine was in early March, but I confirmed my interest pretty much right away). If you're on the waitlist and haven't gotten in touch with a POI or the department chair yet, you may just want to write to confirm you're still interest in the program.

If you're talking about the PhD program in religious studies there, I'm afraid all first-round acceptances have gone out. They hosted an admitted students event this past week and I didn't hear of any open (non-waitlist) spots. But if you haven't been rejected, you may be on a waitlist!

What is the etiquitte surrounding asking questions about funding after you have been admitted but before you are notified about funding? I got into CUA's Semitics program and was told "funding decisions will be forthcoming" in an email from the graduate admissions department (not the Semitics department). It's a great program but I really need more information on funding before I can commit one way or the other -- is there any harm in e-mailing my POI or department chair about by what time I can expect to hear about the funding, or will this be seen as rude or greedy?

Making meals and freezing them is a good idea. Here are some ideas I've gathered and practiced for (keep in mind that YMMV based on your location, lifestyle, diet, enjoyment of cooking, etc.): 1) Buy in bulk, but don't waste. In addition to places like Sam's Club or Cotsco, you can usually find a lot of food at fair prices at salvage or discount grocery stores, which I'm given to understand are becoming increasingly common. Farmer's markets sometimes offer good deals if you buy in bulk too. And farming co-ops, if you live near them, will often times give you a lot of crops for what you pay -- sometimes you can even work for them instead of paying, saving more money (but costing time). If you're a meat-eater, buying large, undivided cuts of meat or more esoteric cuts (including offal) from a butcher's shop or Sam's Club can save. If you like spices, you can buy them in bulk online or through ethnic food stores. If you bake (bread or pastries), Baker's Authority sells ingredients at a very low price per unit, although shipping can be brutal if you don't pick them up yourself. The important thing with this is to let as little food go to waste as possible. Aside from the environmental and ethical issues of food waste, you will see your costs per unit rapidly increase. You'll want to look into preserving foods (freezing, or see below). Related to this, use everything. You can make stock or broth with parts of vegetables or meat you would otherwise throw away, for instance. 2) Look into recipes that are highly passive. Braising, smoking if you have a yard or patio, slow-cooking, and many kinds of baking with leavening are good examples of this. There are thousands of good slow cooking recipes online, and you can fake the majority of them with an oven and a good braising pan or oven bag if you don't want a slow cooker. The central idea is, whether you're cooking for the week or for the day, you minimize the amount of time you actually spend cooking while remaining in control of flavor and nutrition. 3) Preserve. Cooking a meal for the week and freezing it is a good idea, but you can also freeze raw ingredients to vastly extend their shelf-life. I personally can and pickle foods, and I highly recommend this to maximize the length of produce, especially if you can get it organic and fresh (but make sure to follow only USDA approved methods and recipes for canning and pickling, so you don't get botulism). There are other ways to preserve foods without refrigeration, including drying and curing, which I'm not as familiar with. I admit the advice here is quite esoteric, but I've personally found it fun and cost-saving in the long term. I hope this helps!

I also got rejected from a program (Stanford, Religious Studies) via their application portal a couple of days before receiving an email. Strangely, the letter was dated about a week before it was uploaded, and people in my same area of specialization got accepted a week before that.