staplerinjello

I'm not going to comment on how well people generally do in the job market coming out of state schools, but being acquainted with IU's Religious Studies department and having done some graduate coursework there, I'd say definitely go for it. The program is well ranked and they have extremely strong faculty in some areas. For example, if you want to study Religious Ethics, it's an amazing place to be with someone like Rich Miller. If you want to Islamic Studies from the perspective of the History of Religions, it's an amazing place to be. Also, the faculty is extremely nice and supportive and the professors there have great relationships with doctoral students, going out with then for lunch and coffee regularly, and inviting them home. You also stand to gain from the Center for Humanities which holds weekly meeting discussing important texts in the humanities with professors from German, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, participating. You also have to do a minor for your PhD degree which leaves room open for further expanding your horizons and learning from strong faculty in other departments.The faculty also work realllly well with one another so you won't have to worry about being caught between advisers and professors. The fact that they work so well together really allows students to do very interesting and theoretically innovative work. You mention gender studies, and I'm sure you know how well IU is known for their work on gender and sexuality. I will say thought, it is quite a competitive program. They take very few people every year, like 5 or 6 at the PhD and 1 at the Master's level (the masters is funded) and there's many more faculty members than places for new graduate students so your chances of getting in also depend on whether the department collectively feels that your potential supervisor is entitled to a graduate student at that point. I think there's also a growing concern in the department about training the students for post-PhD life so that you can be mentored in things like pedagogy, etc., if you want.

I would suggest one thing though. I'd try to look at smaller schools that don't have PhD programs but have masters programs, esp liberal arts type colleges that have a masters program on top. I've looked at a couple for religious studies and they do have funding for masters programs which would have been near impossible for a big state school or private school with an established phd program.

I'd also give the same advice as everyone else. 80,000 is too much money. Add your loan repayment to your home mortgage after you're done, and you most likely end up giving most of your pay check away. I'd go to Syracuse, work super hard and try to make any possible connections possible, either during the summer or through professors or any other means possible. But I'd never pay 80,000 of money I did not have at the time to pay for any school any program whatsoever unless it came with an ironclad garuntee that I could repay it within a few years of coming out. 80,000 sounds like way too much for good connections.

i'd also like to contribute a bit to this thread as i am experiencing analogous emotional difficulties and strain near the end of my masters program which was a very intense experience for me. i've come to realize that one of the hardest parts of graduate school is not just the studying itself, it's the other stuff. i came in think i'm smart and a good student and academics is what i do well so i should get along just fine because it's more of the same, just at a higher level. but it comes packaged with all sorts of weird stuff like the lack of a supporting social environment, indivualistic study, very high expectations of yourself and other, the acute awareness that if you were a big fish in a little pond before there are tons of other big fish here now, this obssessive compulsive desire to know and learn everything and be the best couple with an increasing awareness of how small your and how big your field and the academy and the world of knowledge are so that you get helpless, professors who want to mould you much like metalwork is done, the increasing conflation of your personal worth with your academic success and the kinds of anxieties and self-doubt and self-identity issues it generates, etc. all of these are very real problems that i think many of us share. i personally have found relief or have begun to find relief in beginning the process of self-help through cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. the envioronment and your relation to it generates all sorts of modes of thinking that generate great unhappiness and all sorts of emotional highs and lows and confusion and exhaustion. There's a book called feeling good written by an enormously successful practicing psychiatrist that teaches the tools for coping with different forms of depressed states that I am find very helpful. It's called feeling good. For me it comes down to the recognition that while graduate school is a difficult environment, especially when coupled with other personal complications like moving, relationships, personal histories, the kind of impact it has on you (not talk academically here, but as a life-situation) depends a lot on how you deal with it, deal with yourself and the world, the same way it is for other things. But it is special in that it is more difficult than many things most, at least in developed nations, will go through, so it's definitely not merely like anything else. But in another sense it is, and for me the good news was that there are better and worse ways of dealing with it and other things (better and worse in terms of my emotional and mental health and happiness). Maybe this helps?

What everyone is saying about the on-campus thing is reasonable enough. Actually all graduate students have the option of not getting the meal plan or at least residents of Wilkie have that option and all grad students will be at Wilkie (their was one other residence open to them but that's been filled up). All the rooms are single as well actually. You either get a suite with or two other people so the bathroom and the lounge is the only thing you share or you get a single standalone kind of room which shares a bathroom with another room of the same sort and then there's the shared laundry and kitchen for the entire floor. I'm international, have never lived alone by myself in another city, and completely averse to apartment hunting and the possibility of finding a roommate who I may not like in the end so I'm sticking with the on-campus thing for convenience. But off-campus for subsequent years makes a lot of sense.

I'm heading to IUB for an MA in the NELC department. How come everyone here is looking at off-campus housing? No one looking to live on campus? They're sticking the grad students in Wilkie this year. I think the on-campus housing isn't too expensive considering you get someplace that is within walking distance from the department, has a telephone and internet access, utilities paid, air conditioning and a great lounge, store, and movie checkout place within the building. I think a single room with a shared bathroom is like 6,500 dollars for the year. Doesn't that come up to about the same as what a 12 month apartment lease would cost?

Hey guys. I just wanted to know if there are any current graduate students at Indiana's NELC department on the forum right and any people who will be joining the department's MA or PhD program this fall? I'm heading to IU in the fall as part of the MA program. My focus is premodern Islamic thought and history. Anyone have any info on what the department is like - beyond the information made available on the website - and how is grad life as part of the department.

Very impressive qualifications. I'm actually looking to get a PhD in Religious Studies or possibly History focusing Islamic Studies as well though right now I have to get my MA from a NELC department. I'm thinking your seminary education would be something like Hartford Seminary's program?

Well one MA is what the prof I was most interested in working with told me. I suppose it's understandable as well because the financial aid section on their website says they offer funding to 4-5 new MA and PhD students every year. So they probably took 4 or 5 PhDs and one MA because the latter is not so of a priority particularly because its going to cost the department and won't bring in any money for the university. He quoted the precise number of applicants as well so I'll take his word for it. He said the religion department had faced severe funding cuts from the university's side and then on top of that their policy about not taking anyone they don't offer funding to.

Oh and the change doesn't reflect on the OneStart thing. It hasn't yet for me anyway. I had to ask though, do MA applications always receive responses after PhD applicants? Why the delay and how much is it usually?

I was the one who added the result of the MA application. I got a response from the department secretary in response to my email asking her how long the decisions would take. I then mailed a professor in the department asking about about my application and how I could strengthen it. He said my qualifications were great but the department only accepted one MA applicant out of the total 129 MA&PhD applications it recieved this year. Apparently they have a policy of offering admission to only those people who they can fund and they didn't really have any money this year because of the whole economic crisis.