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Redondo

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  1. Also someone asked about this earlier in the thread and I feel like I've posted elsewhere but w/r/t funding at Williams admin can be cagey but if you're not offered funding out the gate you can just ask the DGS for it. Haven't heard of a case where they failed to come up with a stipend.
  2. Few things...echoing the comments already made by some about the many factors that contribute to a person's choice to choose one program over another, with regards to Yale, and modern/contemporary specifically, the strength of that program dipped exponentially after the exodus of Nemerov, Joselit, and Jones around 2012 and is honestly only back on the up and up since Pam Lee started in the fall. Over the last five years CUNY was objectively the better program for the contemporary track. I also can state for a fact that 3 williams grads in 19th century from the last 3 years turned down Tim Barringer for Bridget Alsdorf at Princeton (x2) and André Dombrowski at Penn. Given the tilt in the field towards the study of art of the last 200 years, it tracks that if Williams too is primarily producing modern/contemporary PhD hopefuls they wouldn't place at Yale (except in the case of the sole first year at Yale from Williams who pivoted to medieval studies--so you wouldn't have caught them--and incidentally the Pitt person is also a medievalist). Between Princeton and Harvard there's definitely 10 williams grads in years 1-3 and more who are ABD; two in each class at Princeton and 3 in Harvard's second year class alone lol. I've actually begun to suspect that if there's any problem with Williams' placement it's that they're producing too many hyper-qualified candidates. Where no more than 5 -7 years ago you could reasonably graduate with an MA and get a half decent museum job, the trend towards professionalization in museums has made competition for PhDs even starker. Of course programs want to bring in classes with diverse intellectual backgrounds, so when 4+ williams grads with the same LORs and similar CVs apply to work with the same advisor maybe they can only justify taking one (this may or may not have happened w Rachael DeLue at Princeton in last year's cycle). The above is pedantry in any case: bottom line no one should pay for an MA in art history, and the Courtauld doesn't fully fund. You can tell yourself what you want about placement trends at Williams, but it doesn't graduate students into the extremely bleak job market/PhD circuit saddled with 10,000s in debt.
  3. If you can't get the recommendations from the profs who told you they don't think you're a great candidate you're going to have a hard time. However, if you're serious about it, and you have the emotional and financial wherewithal, I think you should try anyway. You won't know if programs won't see you as a good fit until you apply? And tbh no one on this forum can "rate you" or give you odds... as you can probably tell from scouring these forums, it's impossible to divine the secrets of grad admission. Plus the bleak truth is that based on numbers alone, it's actively irresponsible to encourage any person to pursue art history. Admissions rates to "top" PhD programs are hovering around 5% of applicants these days. Yet here we all are. What follows is exactly what we know you need to do to get in, which is exactly what is written on the application pages of every graduate program website: you need to be able to explain articulately what you plan to do during the course of your graduate degree and why you need to be at X institution to do it; you need to prove you can both write well and think well; you need to have decent letters of recommendations; you need to have a decent GPA and an average to above average verbal GRE score. Yes a BA from a fancy school is helpful but you'll notice it's not a stated requirement. W.J.T. Mitchell went to Michigan State. Alexander Nemerov went to the University of Vermont. As for your non-art history background, all programs also state that they welcome applicants from non art history backgrounds. I'm in an MA program now with a handful of classmates who hold BAs in other liberal arts and they have never been at any perceptible disadvantage here. I would spend your Fulbright year, as much as you can, reading art history and trying to familiarize yourself with current discourse in and around your subfield in order to determine whether your ultimate career goals will truly be best served by an MA in art history. Off the top of my head there are two amazing scholars of Russian art of the revolutionary period I can think of - Christina Kiaer at Northwestern and Matthew Jesse Jackson at Chicago. Both of these schools have great Russian/Slavic Studies departments as well (you might look into graduate programs in those departments as well). Only Chicago has a terminal MA but that may be a good option for you (provided you have the means as this program is at best partially funded) to determine whether a PhD in art history would take you where you want to go.
  4. Redondo

    Fall 2018

    echoing @unanachronism's sentiments here. Someone in my program apparently got a call on Friday from Harvard also but I don't believe they shared it on the results sheet. So that's two legit entries and one likely troll. Speaking of: TrOLLS BE GONE! Earnest fretters are over here trying to gain accurate insights from the deeply flawed, partial data represented by the results sheet! Jeez!
  5. Redondo

    Fall 2018

    Longtime lurker chiming in here. Thanks for calling and sharing the intel @storiadell'arte Is it alarmist to assume that it's all over based on the results entries? or is it naive to be hopeful despite them? Looking back at past years it would seem that acceptances at some schools go out in waves - last year for example someone posted a Harvard admit four days after the first acceptances from them appeared. Related do we think its over for U Chicago hopefuls lol
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