psstein

@telkanuru has, as usual, hit the nail on the head. I'm at UW-Madison, so I can tell you that our placement record is quite good and there's a very strong emphasis on non-academic jobs, at least so far as I've found. Bluntly speaking, a mediocre program can and will shut doors for you that a good program will not. Academic jobs are few and far between, so you should maximize your chances with an excellent program. Illinois-Chicago, Baylor, and Purdue do not strike me as great places. I can't say anything one way or the other about Vanderbilt.

Right, so here's the rub. Don't just apply to places because you want to get in somewhere. Berkeley/Princeton/Harvard will set you up for success down the road. OSU might, as they've someone well known. Florida will not. I have an acquaintance who received a PhD in American History there and is working as a high school teacher. You are absolutely correct that Byzantine Studies is a narrow field. There aren't many job openings most years, which is part of why I chose to work in a different field myself (I wanted to do Byzantium too!). It isn't bad to have only top choices. I largely applied to the top programs in HoS and was a competitive candidate despite having no direct coursework in HoS proper. Keep in mind that you will be on the job market someday. Having a degree from Harvard will help. Having one from a second-tier program will hurt. Also, I'd recommend adding UCLA and Wisconsin, if your interests match with the faculty. Michigan has unfortunately had a wave of retirements and Chicago no longer has a scholar who could direct you. Notre Dame may be a good option too, but I don't know much about their staff.

Oops, you caught me! This is why I'm not a classics person. I think the point stands, though: students from second rate undergrads aren't, with few exceptions, going to attend top 10 programs in history/classics/etc.

Didn't know that, thanks. On the other hand, many American universities lean towards teaching, rather than research. Ideally, you'll have both. This is becoming a factor in the job market, to the extent that my sub-department may start requiring grad students to prepare a syllabus as part of prelims.

If you want to get an academic, tenure-track job, you need to have teaching experience. A research institute will not give you that.

Wisconsin has some very good people if you want to do gender history. PM me if you want to know anything about the program.

Generally speaking, yes. Rightfully or not, the best PhD programs will want the best applicants from the best universities. What that means is that you're much less likely to see someone who went to University of South Carolina as an undergraduate working as a graduate student in classics at Johns Hopkins or Yale. Unknown or lower ranked universities are often seen as less academically rigorous than higher ranked ones, which also means that a 4.0 GPA would not mean as much as a 3.4 at Reed (which is an excellent college with brutal grade deflation). There are ways to get around it (impressive language preparation, publications, outstanding application materials, etc.), but it's more of an uphill climb than it would be from somewhere else.

Just so you know, Cornell is a little more traditional than a lot of programs (doesn't really do Atlantic World, for example). Indiana's HSPC has some real problems. You can PM me if you want to know more, because it's not appropriate to report them in a public space. I would suggest applying to UW-Madison as well. Judy Houck is very close to your own area and hasn't taken a grad student in at least two years.

Lee Wandel took a grad student this year, so I'm not sure if she'd take another so quickly. She's not bad for your interests, but Johann Sommerville is probably better, should you choose to apply to UW-Madison. On another note, the academic job market for history is way better than for religion, and history of religion is actually a growing field. It's not "one grad student at a time," but generally speaking, departments like to be equitable to all faculty and spread out their grad students among faculty members.

It depends what you want to do. The academic job market for art history is probably far worse than it is for history.

I would suggest not mentioning it at all in the SoP. You could do one of two things, mention in it some supplementary material (every app has a dedicated space for this) or alternatively, you could use it in your writing sample. Either one of those are fine.

I can't really commentate positively or negatively on the quality of Liberty's history program (all that really needs to have been said has been). I would submit that, if you're looking to get into a good-quality PhD program, a MA from Liberty is not going to help you. Rightfully or wrongfully, degrees from very conservative evangelical institutions (like Liberty or a comparable institution) tend to be looked down upon by faculty at most universities, including fairly moderate confessional ones, such as Notre Dame or Baylor.

I was partly referring to that. I knew that primarily through one of his former graduate students. Some of the anecdotes I've heard are... somewhat terrifying.

Not sure what you want to do, but keep in mind that Charlesworth is probably not the best choice. I can't attest to this personally (different field), but I'm told he's not really able to effectively advise anymore. I'd rather not go into why this is, obviously.

Yep, you develop the feeling like "this is never going to end." And then it ends, and you're anxious about acceptances and rejections.

Medieval science is an absolutely fascinating topic! Send me a PM and I'll try to help you. I'm in late medieval/early modern science myself. I can speak as to the HoS side quite well, but the history side is better left to others.

New email. Sometimes people miss emails because they're busy or distracted. I do it semi-frequently.

Oh man, you're in a field I absolutely adore, but didn't go into for a number of reasons (many to do with ecclesiastical politics!). You're making the right decision by going into another masters' program. Many top tier divinity schools look down on evangelical institutions for a number of reasons. The only program I don't like on your list is HDS, but they're good by all accounts. PM me if you want to talk about your research interests, as I can definitely help you there (I wanted to do NT for almost two and a half years).

The AHA is a good source but not the be all, end all. My advisor isn't on the list, though she's supervised quite a few dissertations. The best sources often come from the departments proper, though some are more hesitant to provide them than others. Also, keep in mind that those figures don't tell the whole truth. "Academic, non-tenure track" could mean something as nice as a one year replacement appointment or something as awful as adjuncting.

It varies from program to program, but generally, yes. A colleague/friend of mine was in the MA at Indiana-Bloomington and awarded financial aid early on. By the way, one piece of advice to everyone. Make sure you contact your PoIs EARLY ON and know whether or not they're taking grad students. I wasted money on at least two applications last year (Harvard and Princeton) because my PoIs were either not taking graduate students or retiring.

Say the second.

I'm not a religion student, but I'm pretty current on NT/Early Christianity: 1. Non-historical-critical approaches to the NT are in vogue and will be for some time. There was a recent article in a pretty well respected journal about "queering John's Jesus." 2. Reader-response criticism continues to gain ground. 3. Renewed skepticism about the Two-Source Hypothesis 4. Recognition of earlier biases.

Applications may be down, but anecdotally speaking, 2017 was a very rough year for history applications. I think Stanford took a smaller than usual cohort, and I think Columbia had it's smallest in several years.

Oh man, that's a really fascinating topic, and sounds great for HoM! Try Gianna Pomata at Hopkins (though there are other things to be aware of if you apply to Hopkins, PM me for details).

You're being kind. I almost did Byzantine History before I found out that the job market is non-existent (Notre Dame hired two people, which was an absolute shock). The two fields I was interested in (outside HoS) were NT/Early Christianity and Byzantine History. NT/Early Christianity has had one TT job advertised in the last year (at least at a top-ranked university, not a seminary) and Byzantine History has none.