ba2923

Just received my first rejection - Harvard! Got a notification to check my application on their site. Don't feel terrible about it oddly.

They sent me an email earlier today. Still have yet to hear back from Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, UcBerkeley and McGill :/

Just heard back from my first school. Waitlisted at UCLA so I'm guessing they have informed their accepted students. Still feeling hopeful but haven't heard from anyone else yet :/.

Hi Mrs Salad I am interested specifically in post colonial theory, gender/sexuality/queer theory and critical race theory. Thanks for the extra info!

Thank you so much for your responses hj2012 and artbrute. I think I will be adding Williams to my list for sure as well as Oxford and Goldsmiths. Kellie Jones is totally a person I admire and certainly would love to work/study with. So I have another week before my GRE retaking and just have a query about the GRE scores standing in terms of the admissions process. I'm dyslexic and because my diagnosis was so long ago ETS told me that I would need to get re-diagnosed. As I'm in a rural area without much access to these kinds of resources and the time restraints from ETS I was never able to get my normal accommodations to take the exam. I know in many if not all of the applications there is a section for further things the admissions staff should know. It's here that I was planning on describing my difficulty getting test accommodations through ETS. I've been focusing on the quantitate section since the last time I took it but I know for a fact my verbal and writing would be far higher scores (I got a 5.0 for the writing and a 163 for the verbal). Essentially for these top schools I don't know how much to worry about the Q section for art history. To be frank when I took the exam and was doing the verbal section, reading the large blocks of texts to analyze on a screen without being able to underline/markup, the words were jumping all over the page for me. Of course in the real world I have many techniques for reading and analyzing texts which includes a whole system of highlighting and underlining and marking up texts. In an on screen text format none of that could be adapted. Sorry just kind of freaking out that these schools are not going to consider me due to GRE scores despite having good grades/recs/writing samples/resume. Should I be stressing myself out so much about this?

Hi Guys Thank you for such useful information! Was recovering from my first attempt at the GRE (retaking in October to boost my quantative a little more). I've been thinking a lot about area of focus and with a background of growing up in a former british colony I would like to focus on other former british colonies so either Africa/African diaspora or South Asia/South Asian diaspora. I have 8 years of french education but its pretty rusty right now, I had to read some french academic texts during my senior thesis research and while it wasn't like reading English, I could do it. Another reason for wanting to go straight into a phd program is funding. I've been attempting to see through all the opaqueness that surrounds funding in grad school and I dont think I can afford to take on more debt which seems likely if I go into an MA route first. Do you guys know MA programs that are fully funded? Bard Grad Centre looked really promising in terms of what I'm interested in but I'm guessing it'll be VERY expensive.

I'm focusing on Art History because I love finding ways to clarify and bridge the abstract world of theory with material culture as well as the positions that museums have in opening up knowledge to a general audience. For that reason I really am hoping to find a school where interdisciplinary studies is welcomed. Berkeley was on my list but tbh I am not sure about language requirements and getting into their PhD programs without knowing what kind of language I should learn right now. My guess is that German will be the most useful language for me to learn but I'm not sure. In the same respect I am unsure what area of the world I want to work in. That being said African/African diaspora, the Caribbean and South Asian areas are really something I am fascinated with in terms of locations dealing with coloniality and especially in terms of the impact on gender/sexuality through that colonial history.

Hi modmuse Thank you so much for your response. The main reason I'm looking into going directly into a PhD program is that I'm in my late 20s already and my advisors have told me that I don't want to graduate too late with an advanced degree for fear of age discrimination in the job market. That being said I will start doing research into MA programs as backups too so thank you for the advice. Oh I was also wondering how important the math section of the GRE is for these programs?

Hi there! Long time lurker but now that I'm actually applying to grad schools this fall I felt the need to come out of the shadows. I just graduated from a well respected small liberal arts college (east coast) with a BA in Art History and Studio Arts. All of my professors in Art History want me to apply to PhD programs in the field (each with their own unique opinions on where to go etc) and I frankly love academia and hope to teach/curate someday. So I'm taking the GRE this week and currently am focusing on trying to get good verbal/written scores for that. My interest is in postcolonial diasporic visual culture(s) (especially queer art) through intersecting lenses of postcolonial theory, critical race theory, gender/sexuality/queer theory. I wrote my undergrad thesis on Yinka Shonibare and wax print textiles and plan to use one of my chapters as a writing sample. Right now I am considering the following schools - Yale (Kobena Mercer (a major fan)/school of British art), Harvard (Sarah Lewis, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (feminist theory), Homi Bhabha (post colonial theory and the backbone of my thesis)), Columbia (Kellie Jones, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (postcolonial studies), UCLA (George Baker (critical theory), Steven Nelson, frankly the whole experimental critical theory department). That's it for now but still researching. I am deeply indebted to theoretical approaches from other disciplines (obviously comp lit is the home of post colonial studies). My question is what is a good home for someone like me? My dream really is Yale because of Mercer but I'm very open. Thanks!