Hi all, I've been a long time lurker here but have made the definitive decision to apply for a PhD in Art History or Visual Studies. I'm applying for fall 2019 so I have a lot of time to prepare and I'm going to need it! I don't feel very confident about where I'm at right now and that's mainly because the schools I attended did not offer much (if any) guidance on surviving in the real world or how to continue along the path of academia.
I have a BFA in Visual Art (3.8 GPA) from a CUNY college and an MA in Critical Theory and the Arts from SVA. I jumped into my MA kind of quickly and have been trying to live life in the "real world" ever since I completed my MA, which was 3 years ago.
My question to you all is how do I spend the next year or so making my application more competitive?
Here are my concerns:
- Recommendations: I have one that is solid. I haven't kept in touch with my other teachers and it's been 3 years since I graduated so I'm wondering if I should try to get the other two recs elsewhere.
- The schools I've attended are not very high brow- not much I can do about this.
- Between my BFA and MA, I've probably only taken 5 classes that are strictly art history related and not theory driven.
- The work I've been doing between graduating from my MA and now hasn't been related to the art world (I've been doing work like project manager, graphic design, admin assistant).
I've been gathering a list of things I can do to make my application look better based on my personal research online and came up with the following:
- Gain research experience (How do I go about doing this?)
- Take an art history class and try to get a recommendation out of it
- Have some written work published
- Study for and try to get a high score on the GREs
Is there anything I'm missing? Like I said before, the guidance I've received in the past has been very limited so I'd love some guidance from this forum as to how best to spend my time over the next year.
Thank you!
MG
