qkhitai

News is in! TAship is guaranteed whatever happens (woo!), but jury is still out on a scholarship. I'm really excited now that it's official! I'm 99% sure I'll take it, but a part of me is still curious as to what else I could do. I haven't applied anywhere else, but many deadlines still have yet to pass outside North America. A lot of people are pressuring me to apply to Oxbridge (including an old mentor now at Cambridge), but I'm still on the fence about that. I also got an email from a professor I was corresponding with last year about a fully funded opportunity in Eurasian Studies. The program isn't a fantastic fit, but as a left-field option it does interest me a lot. That sounds great! Did you have free reign to design that summer class yourself? I'd be stoked to do something like that and bore the pants off some poor undergrads about medieval prosodic patterns I got a lot more details about the program today and there does seem to be a ton of support (including awards for publishing, which is crazy). At any rate, if first year/semester is just leading seminars and grading then that doesn't sound like too much of a deep end to be thrown into. How many undergraduates are there, roughly do you know? And how far did your TA pay cover you? Tuition is actually surprisingly cheap (I didn't actually check before..), but the campus accommodation is quite pricey it seems.

Ah awesome! One of my current professors is Canadian (although a McGill guy) and he put me onto it; otherwise I might not even have known about the program. I'll probably have loads of questions once I get my bearings a little. Did you TA at all? That's one thing I'm curious about, because the scholarship is tied to grades and I'm anxious I might not make the cut. I've been warned I may have to teach Chinese language (daunting because I'm not a native), but I'm kind of okay with that. Are TA's expected to just lead seminars/grade papers etc, or do they have to teach full classes/devise syllabi etc? And do they TA in their first semester?

@kyjin Cheers! The program at Alberta.

I'm pretty hopeful. I talked to the department and there seems to be a lot of money going around, in either internal scholarships or TAships. I'm still waiting to hear though; I got an informal 'you got in' last week and today the website tells me I have a place (conditional on receiving my end of year results), but I'm waiting for full info on the offer and any funding. My experience is with the UK system, so it may be a little different, but I've heard mixed things in general about additional language training post-BA, pre-PhD. Some professors have recommended it, others have said you can pick it up along the way, some have done it themselves, others haven't bothered/needed to. If you have HSK 5/6 then you just need more exposure to the kind of Chinese used in your field, which is gained from experience working with relevant materials, rather than more classes. If you're only at HSK 4 proficiency then yes, extra language training is definitely required for a PhD. We typically don't go straight from BA to PhD here anyway though. MA's are considered the time to begin working on your research languages, whilst preparing you for a PhD. Maybe because that's how we do it I'm a little biased/ignorant of the American way. My reason for recommending an MA over going back to Asia is simply that you only need to be 'in country' if you don't have a solid grounding in the language, or need to get your speaking/listening up to scratch. If you just need to work on Classical and modern reading, you don't really need to be in China, and you can pursue both of those during an MA, which will also have many other benefits. But if you have good funding to go to Taiwan (we have something called BACS here that funds language programs in Taiwan; I imagine the US has similar organisations), then that might be a great opportunity. That being said, there are plenty of MA programs (outside the US) that offer intensive Classical training, additional Chinese classes and even ab initio Japanese for research purposes. My point is that an MA is definitely an option for you and not an avenue you should close off. Take some time (if you haven't already) to look into programs and see what's available, especially abroad. Even if you did do language training in Asia, you still might have to do an MA afterwards anyway to get onto a PhD program. Both are good options, language training and an MA; both also dependant on money. If you have funding to go to Taiwan (sorry I didn't see that the first time I read through your post; seems like you have money for it?) and can't find MA funding right now, then by all means go to Taiwan; you've nothing to lose. If I don't do an MA this year I'm planning on returning to Asia myself (for Mongolian, rather than Chinese though), before reapplying next year. Keep us up to date though I would also be interested to hear about your research area more, as there may be some overlap with what I do. Always nice to meet another pre-modern scholar.

Ah this looks like the place to be! I have an offer for an MA East Asian Studies in Canada, focussing on medieval Chinese literature. Just waiting on full details, but if I get funding then I'll definitely accept. @archimon what HSK are you? It sounds like your modern Mandarin should be fine, you just need to work on your Classical skills. I'm in roughly the same boat (my Classical is okay with dictionary use, but I can't read fluently), but MA programs should give you the opportunity to improve your Classical and pick up your next research language - Japanese usually, although you may want to consider Classical Mongolian for Yuan studies, that's what I'm doing. I would recommend a 1-2 year MA, but if you're really worried about your modern (not Classical) Chinese then you could return to Taiwan for a year, or pursue a PRC government scholarship and go to the mainland for a while.

I was a little rushed in preparing my applications and the deadlines for many of the US programs I was considering passed me by (plus I didn't have time for all that GRE nonsense). I wasn't expecting a Trump win and I'm a little relieved that I didn't apply, as it would seriously have impacted whether or not I accepted any offers. Whilst the rise in hate-crime and xenophobia is naturally a concern, the next four years for America are very uncertain (in my eyes) and I think a lot of us abroad are quite scared about what might happen - inasmuch that anything could. It doesn't seem particularly stable and living in the US seems not a little frightening. At the very least it will be interesting to see what happens and I'm grateful I have a year or two elsewhere to see what happens before I consider my PhD options.

Cool to see a couple of folks doing Asian history! I just got an early offer for an MA in East Asian Studies (researching medieval China), waiting to get the full/official details next week. It was the only program I ended up applying to, so it's definitely a relief.