coffeekid

Would anyone be willing to claim the Duquesne Clinical Psychology acceptance posted on the results board on Monday (2/25/19)? It could be legit, but that would be about a week earlier for them than usual. I'm wondering if this was intended as a School Psychology acceptance, given that there were a few other School Psych acceptances posted that same day.

Welp, hard to argue with this! I'll take your word for it, 11Q13. I think it's safe to say that they don't make a habit of it.

I think we can both agree that disputing the semantics of "rare" isn't especially productive or insightful, and I take responsibility for honing in on this term. My bad. I'm also interested in your remark on the breadth of merit, suggesting that M-- programs have a broader idea of merit when offering scholarships. Are you simply referring to, as sport01 noted, the fact that they "hone what they consider a rich, full class, considering life experiences quite heavily"? That is, merit isn't limited to GPA/GRE/Pubs? The follow up question would be, is this a bad thing? Again, to bring things back to the OP, you note your community service as relevant to the application process, which I believe is fitting.

I'm sorry, but I have to respectfully disagree here. Vandy, Yale, Harvard, PTS, Candler, UChicago, Syracuse, Drew, Eden, Duke, and many many other programs offer 100% tuition offers on the basis of merit. You are correct that they can be competitive (perhaps less than 30% of accepted students receiving these offers among these schools), but describing them as "rare" might be a bit of an overstatement. I was only fortunate enough to get one good offer as a masters student, but I had several friends who received 3-4 full offers, some of which had stipends as high as $15k. To be clear, I am not saying that theological education has a surplus of financial resources. Many people do in fact go into substantial debt in pursuit of an MTS, Mdiv, or MA. Rather, many programs realize that this line of work is not the most lucrative, and do their best to incentivize people to come.

Regarding Vandy: Balatro and I have had this dispute before, I believe. Every year Vandy offers 10-20 full offers, many of which have $10K stipends (mostly to MDivs). I've spoken to the administration directly about their policy because I was curious about this rumor about lowball offers. They said categorically that they do not modify offers, and try to be as generous as possible. Again, I know this becomes a he said/she said, but this is my insider's take. I will say, OP, that your stats stand a respectable chance at VDS for a full-ride. Though it's important to keep in mind that the SOP is vital, and stats only do so much. For what it's worth, I've known a few people with nearly identical stats as you who've received a full-ride, but they said they put in a substantial effort into their SOPs.

"Some editing" definitely does not constitute second authorship for your advisor. An acknowledgement or footnote with the title offering thanks to your advisor will be more than enough. For one, if you're submitting to blind peer review (as most reputable journals do), then a name is not going to do anything for you. In fact, if you are submitting to bling peer review, I would hold off on the acknowledgement until it is potentially accepted, so as to keep things anonymous; you will most surely have the opportunity to revise after your initial submission. Second, a good advisor will want her or his students to get momentum with their own scholarship. If you genuinely did research/writing/editing (e.g. - a volume) together, then they will likely want the credit, because they have their own publication expectations and will have spent substantial time toward it. But for something like this, your advisor should be excited that you have original research of your own to put forward. Third, regarding the "big name in your field attached to your article," my vote is that a recommendation from them will grab more attention than a line on your CV, which you'll be lucky if an adcom examines carefully. Lastly, professors grade, edit, and make recommendations for pay, as their job. They are not copyeditors, but they are there (among many reasons) to invest in the quality of their students' work. Sadly this isn't always common, but it is to be expected. That said, best of luck on your work and (eventual) applications!

On the first matter of whether a recommender outside of your field will be less helpful than someone within your field: I agree that if none of your recommenders were in your research area, this would be a concern. But given that you will have at least one or two recommender in NT/EC, then I don't believe this will be a real issue, so long as the others are still in religion. I applied with a mix of recommenders in my area and also in philosophy and theology (which for me were similarly neighboring fields). My now advisor remarked to me how impressed she was by my recommenders outside of my area, suggesting that I had ability to thrive in multiple places but chose to focus there. If you want to play the mental game of looking into the heads of adcoms (not that I would necessarily recommend this), I think a relatively safe bet is that if the adcom respects a neighboring field, and if that neighboring field thinks highly of you, then it's a good recommendation for your chances. I would say a similar principle goes for the white (Christian?) man trifecta. There are many places that this will be a non issue. If the departments you're applying to are heavy on postcolonial readings of the NT, for example, then yeah, this will be an issue. That said, I would venture that three strong recommendations from three white men would be better than two strong recommendations from white men, and then a woman, trans, queer, or "diversity" recommender who doesn't know you. If you're committed to this field and branching out, then start developing academic relationships with new people. It's never too late for that.

Fuzzylogician and Zencarrot, Thanks for your insight on this. It's always encouraging to find others thinking similarly about problems that you're just beginning to encounter for the first time. The issue of relevancy in scholarship is pretty significant, perhaps for me in particular. Something I fear for myself is not committing sufficiently in the few disciplines from which I draw, alienating myself from them all. So this approach might give me a reasonable foot hold in enough circles to sell myself. And yes, Zencarrot, I hope my post didn't come across as arrogant. I realize that these are ambitious publishing goals, and I'd be lucky to have the opportunity to have anything published twice by the same, reputable journal. Perhaps the strategy would be to space out submissions to the same journal, allowing time to elapse between making similar contributions, stemming from specific research interests?

Let me affirm for you the confusion about the CPE process. Even when you can find some guidelines about requirements and the process, details can be unclear. ACPE states that, to be eligible for a unit of CPE, one must have "a written application and an admissions interview, has demonstrated the ability to participate in CPE, usually one who has successfully completed at least one year of theological school" (http://www.acpe.edu/faq.htm#faq21, question 8). From the outset, this requirement might seem to preclude you from CPE. The problem is that CPE is mostly designed for people who will be using their CPE education in conjunction with another theological degree (usually MDiv, sometimes MTS). However, I would encourage you to call around to a few sites and speak to the CPE supervisor (don't settle for any pastoral care administrative person) and be forthright about your intentions. The supervisor is going to be the person deciding your entrance into a program, so talking to her/him will be best. Some supervisors are old school, only looking for pastors and chaplains in training. Others are more open minded, liking a diversity of perspectives for the group process, and realizing that CPE has a lot to offer many different career paths. You will definitely have a great perspective to offer any CPE group, and I really hope they will let you in. But you will have to be very honest about your intentions, and reflect on it a bit beforehand. Look over the ACPE guidelines and application details. Above all, be a bit persistent, especially given some obstacles you might face. I was originally told that I wouldn't be eligible to go straight into a CPE residency because of a variety of vocational (academic) and experience issues, but I ended up being accepted into a good program, and my supervisor and I now have a great working relationship.

I agree with the first part. But is this second part right? I look at a lot of veteran professors' CVs, who completed their PhD (normally straight from undergrad) in only four years. Even then this was a bit fast, but I've been hearing that the average length for current PhDs is 7.5 years. Are you referring to something in particular when you say this?

Hey friends, Let's say you're a few years away from entering the job market, and you're setting some reasonably ambitious publishing goals for yourself. Maybe four peer-reviewed pubs over the course of a few years. My question is: Is it better to repeat publish in the same journals multiple times in a span like this, or would it be better to diversify. Naturally you're going to be aiming with journals with a high reputation or impact factor, but if you're going to manage this either way, which would be better for entering the job market? I understand that if you're in the hard sciences, if you could have all four articles in NATURE, then yeah, screw diversity. I'm thinking largely about the humanities and social science in which there are touchstone journals for certain subfields, but nothing that trumps them all.

Yeah, Vandy has its fair share of alcohol friendly events, include Al's Pub on Fridays, which is what you're alluding to. It's normally pretty good beer, too. We're usually like, "You got a KEG of THAT?! Awesome!" And yes, lots of good bars in the area and house parties. Refocusing though, I've got to agree with jdmhotness that even though these events might be great for your sanity, they're not going to somehow establish strong professional relationships for you, especially with faculty. The worst thing you could possibly do is turn event like these into networking, because you'll end up feeling like you're still on the clock academically, and the point of them is precisely the opposite. Again, rock out your coursework, seek out faculty's advice on your work, do all the stuff that serious academics do because they care about the quality of their work.

I've been at Vandy a few years now... Yes, you can definitely rent a two bedroom place for that much in Bellevue or West Nashville. Easily! My wife and I live in a two bedroom, 1.5 bath apartment in West Nashville off of Charlotte Ave (closer to Vandy than Bellevue) for $625/month. The grounds are kind of funny, and the apartments aren't glamerous, but at 850 sq feet, central heating and air, dishwasher and basic appliances included, it's pretty hard to beat. Check out Croley Court Apartments as a starting point (I'd love some other student tenants in the complex!), but unless you're looking for something really in the downtown or Vanderbilt/Hillsboro Village area, I think it's safe to say you can lower your price range. Bellevue is a little better groomed than the Charlotte Ave area(think: old money), but you can still easily find a two bedroom there for under a thousand. Again, a stipend goes a long way in Nashville, which is a huge selling point for its universities.

This is a constant point of conversation, but I have to say that the math section is pretty worthless for religion/divinity. I say this because I'm actually pretty solid in Math, and it didn't seem to do too much for me, really. I was usually 5% below most of my real competitors on verbal, but 20+% better in Math, and this did not usually offset in my two application rounds, even though I had a higher "combined" score. Honestly, get to a point where you think you can get in the 60% range on math, and then forget about it in your studying. Focus on verbal, focus on verbal, focus on verbal. And very jealous of you doing Middlebury! I got into the intensive German summer program a few years ago, but ended up getting married instead. Glad I got married, I guess, but still dying to go through a program like that.

Wow! Totally jealous of you here. Tell me more about this! I've thought a lot about a Fulbright (also to Deutschland). Do you have any sense of how competitive that was versus PhD apps?