[University of Chicago - MAPSS?]

On 13/11/2017 at 11:24 AM, ironshieldmaiden said:

So I'm actually in the MAPSS program right now and I wanted to kind of offer an honest opinion of my experience so far.

I seriously regret accepting their offer. I would rather have not gone to school for another year than experience what I'm going through right now. I love my preceptor, but I despise the MAPSS program. The mandatory Perspectives course is a waste of time and only 18 out of the 270 total students in the program got As on the midterm. They played it off as having high standards, but it really was the result of having a badly written essay prompt, improper course planning, and a badly written article to work off of. The professor teaching the course doesn't finish his lectures and goes off on tangents. It's honestly not worth even attending the course.

Course offerings have been abysmal. I've never had issues trying to find relevant classes to take and I'm seriously upset that such a "great" school doesn't offer anything relevant to my areas of research. There are at least seven ethnomusicologists that teach at the university and not a single one of them is offering an ethnomusicology course. We're not allowed to take foreign languages even if it's for research purposes. We're allowed to take any courses in the graduate school, but good luck getting into the classes you need. I got locked out of a methods course because there were only 15 slots and the professor wouldn't give me permission to take the course, but gave me permission to take a computational data analysis course that they would be teaching in the spring. I study anthropology, so I'm really confused as to how they think computational data analysis will benefit me when we don't use that type of data.

I do appreciate the chance to do research, but I feel like I'm vastly under prepared to take it on. We have to go through the process of IRB approval, getting approval from our informants, finding a willing faculty advisor, continue working on our thesis, and do our classwork all at the same time. I often feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I have to do. You do have the option of doing a "ghost course" to work on your thesis, but my preceptor wouldn't let me do it even though I had already made great headway on my thesis.

I often feel like MAPSS students are the butt of some joke at the university. Professors don't seem to take me seriously and I feel like a lot of the PhD and MA/MS students feel sorry for me that I wasn't "good enough" to get in through the traditional channels and got passed off to an alternative program. I feel like my "degree," which is a Masters in the Social Science and only exists at the University of Chicago, is going to be completely worthless and I won't be able to teach community college like I had planned to after I receive it because I won't have enough credit hours to qualify. You can try taking classes only in your field, but good luck with that. Oftentimes you won't find anything that interests you or they will all fill up within seconds of course registration opening.

During orientation they told us that most of us will be too burnt out to consider continuing on for a PhD. That's the reason why they have a 90% fully funded PhD placement rate. I'm an extremely academic person, but I've begun to hate the culture that surrounds the university. It's very stuck up and people tend to live within a bubble. The amount of income disparity in Chicago is appalling and is one of the reasons for the large amount of crime in the area. I was nearly mugged this quarter and watched a man get beaten up for his wallet. A 19 year old kid was shot in the head in a drive by shooting down the street from me. It's appalling how the university ignores how it contributes to this vicious cycle of income inequality and how they try to shelter the students, especially the undergrads, from that reality.

Take my advice and stay away from this program. I took out over $50,000 in loans to come here and the thought of having to immediately repay those loans is the only reason why I haven't dropped out. It's not worth the unreasonable amount of stress and pressure they put on you. If this is your only offer, just try again next year. I'm utterly miserable in this program and wish I could go back in time and convince myself not to accept the offer.

Hey ironshield. Has your situation turned any better? How are doing those students interested in economics or political science? Your description of all the experience is quite shocking. I was interested on this program, but I am not sure anymore.