hannibal254

Thanks for all your input, friends! Very helpful thoughts and observations.

Hi all, Hoping to solicit some advice/wisdom here on choosing a program! I've combed through previous threads on this topic—both in this forum and across gradcafe—but I'm still feeling at quite a loss. It seems that the most consistent advice is to find a good advisor and to choose the program that most closely fits your interests. But do those two criteria need to coexist in one person? By which I mean, does the advisor have to be a perfect fit? And where does "fit" need to be located within the school? To make this less abstract, a brief summary of my options: Program A: One absolutely wonderful PoI who is a 100% match with my interests. Wonderful person, wonderful scholar. However, there is really no one else within this program or within this university who is even remotely close to my interests. (Edit: with the exception of one other person who does really interesting work in a particular methodology I want to learn to incorporate) Program B: Two PoIs who, combined together, match my interests quite well; neither works on my topics exactly, but they've worked together in the past to advise projects similar to mine. A few other people throughout the department and university who work on similar subjects/geographies/time periods and would be good secondary resources. Program C (no colon because automatic emoji): A LOT of people who are very close to my interests, but no one who's an exact match. Advisor would be in a pretty close field/topic. Program D (again with the emoji): One exact match and one very good match, both of whom are in different departments than the one I was accepted to. The department itself would give me good breadth within RS and would let me take a lot of coursework with the professors in other departments, and my advisor would be in my general field/time period, but with fairly different topical interests. Could all of these scenarios be fruitful, just in different ways? I'm especially confused and curious about Program D; for a lot of reasons, I'm very interested in this program/school/location, but would having an advisor who is a little further from my topic be a huge problem? Or an inconvenience? Or would it be an opportunity for broadening? Many many thanks for any thoughts anyone might have! I appreciate you all.

While what @LSiefferman says is true for most programs, my own experience with CUA's Semitics program a few years ago suggests that you could actually end up waiting quite a while. From what I understand, the department has to wait to hear how much funding they're authorized to give each year, and it's not at all consistent from year to year (this is specific to the Semitics dept.; apparently other departments at CUA operate differently). I was admitted to the MA program in late Jan or early Feb a few years back and finally reached out to the department in mid-March to ask about funding. They responded a few days later, telling me they'd just then gotten word on what they would be able to offer. If I were you, I'd just reach out to the department chair and ask gently if he has a sense for the timeline. He didn't seem to mind me asking. Congrats on your acceptance, and good luck! Funding at CUA is, as I'm sure you've heard, pretty hit-and-miss, but it's an awesome program.

I just got an acceptance this morning, actually—email from the DGS, details to follow. Not sure if they send all acceptances in one batch or not. Congratulations! I also had an interview with Princeton in early Jan. Do you know if all POIs inform admits before formal admission? I imagine timing, at least, may vary by subfield; as it's Friday, though, I imagine most subfields would have notified by now if results are to go out next week... Oh well!

PMing you some details!

Thanks! I didn't have an interview, and I was notified by phone. Which field of study were you applying to?

Oh, interesting! WRWC for me.

Nope! Which concentration did you apply to?

Thanks! And it was Princeton University.

Yes, please! Distractions and commiserations are super welcome right now. I'm applying to programs in Early Christianity: Brown, UChicago, Notre Dame, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. So far, I've had an interview with Princeton and have been accepted to Stanford (yay!!). Haven't heard anything from anywhere else, though. Others??

Hi all! Any thoughts on when we might start to hear about interviews at Yale? Past years' postings suggest it tends to be around this time?

Hi all, I have sort of a related question: do students with MAs in Religious Studies stand much chance of being accepted to TT programs in something like History? I'll likely be applying to PhD programs this fall and am finding that the scholars who work on things most closely related to my interests are sort of split between Religious Studies and History; my CV, though, won't really contain any formal training in History. While we're at it, can someone maybe explain to me the practical differences between how one might study a given religious movement at a particular historical moment as a historian vs. how one might study the same thing as a scholar of religion? The idea of "methodological discipline" vs. "categorical discipline" mentioned above is really helpful in thinking about the two fields, but I'm still struggling to think through what that distinction would look like when it comes to research topics and approaches. Or does the difference lie more in what scholars are expected to know outside of their own specific specialties, rather than in how they approach those specialties? Sorry, that's a lot of questions all tied together. I've been doing too much macro-level thinking about what it means to study Religion and am finding myself more and more uncertain... Thanks!

Ah hah, I think I found her contact info on the website. I'll give that a shot. Thanks!

Finally broke down and made an account to follow up on this. How did you hear from CUA—via email? Or by logging into the Cardinal Station? I was accepted around the same time—but to a master's program—and have been waiting to hear. Do you have any idea if they tend to fund master's programs at all? Thanks for keeping us lurkers in mind and sharing.