MarthUser

Sorry to hear that Here's to everyone still waiting for Harvard though

Great job! When do you hear back from them about an official decision?

For some masochistic reason, I found Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate an appropriate response to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXGUNvIFTQw

I'm glad to hear this but part of me is always afraid of schools going down the Yale route and the graduate school rejecting the professors' recommendations

Would you have a much more narrow date for when Princeton's Graduate School will get back to applicants? I've only received the answer of "over the next few weeks".

Do you mean Princeton Theological Seminary or Princeton Department of Religion? I don't know about Princeton Theological Seminary, but for Princeton Department of Religion I was told that the professors submitted their finalists to the graduate school early last week and am expecting we should hear back from them sometime this week or next week. Here's to all of us keeping our fingers crossed...

Interesting since Paul Lim hasn't taught at Gordon-Conwell since 2008. I wonder if the rumor implies that they may have given it to a recent Gordon-Conwell graduate who was studying the Reformation or if it was a student who took a class with Lim nine years ago and is currently applying to PhD programs.

From my experience, a ThM helps a ton. Last year, I applied to PhD programs with just an MDiv and got rejected from almost every one except for TEDS, which I got in but no funding. After doing a ThM-like degree this year, I received four interviews and acceptance. As a caveat though, I would suggest you choose where you do your ThM wisely and target professors who have reputations both within the seminary context and outside. TEDS is a good school if your target are Theology Schools/Christian Seminaries. However, if you're looking to get into a Religion Department, it would be more helpful to do a ThM from a religion department school (based on feedback from even my seminary professors).

If you're doing something along the lines of historical studies, below are some questions I've gotten from interviews: 1. What got you into wanting to study this field? 2. What type of history are you thinking of writing/how are you approaching the question (cultural history, social history, intellectual history, institutional history, biographical, etc...) 3. Are you familiar with X work? (since they're experts in the field, they may ask if you're familiar with someone else's work) 4. How is your work different or engaging with X's work (building off of the previous question, but still working on your familiarity with the current scholarship) 5. What's your long-term goal? What schools are you hoping to find employment in after you graduate from this program? (This question is about knowing what type of schools the department targets and the focus of the program compared to others, like seminaries vs. liberal Christian schools vs. state schools)

I believe we're all in the same boat, and will probably be so well into next week as well.

Duke rejections just got sent out for those who are waiting (and hoping) for Duke

Thanks for the update! I suspect that this is the process for most (if not all) schools/programs. In all my interviews so far, the professors have mentioned that the first step was for the professors to come up with a list of students to submit to the Graduate School and the decision will ultimately be made by them. I guess that means one to two more weeks of waiting.....

I found that even after acceptances, rejections don't come until early March which means a long wait to go...

Vanderbilt had their interviews earlier this week and I believe narrowed it down to nine folks, one in Religion Department American Subfield. PM me for more details, but I'm also interested in your encounter with Stanford!