wilsonrg

I've no doubt his credentials are very impressive, I'm more concerned with his ability to offer advice to people lower down on the food chain in a non-condescending tone. It's not very hard at all.

Lol, okay. Let's take a look together at what just happened so we can all come back to reality. In my original post I indicated I was looking for religious studies/theology programs with faculty that work in philosophical theology. I acknowledged that I made a mistake by applying to philosophy programs, and that both my grades and my GRE are not spectacular. Then some guy jumps in to tell me I made a big mistake by applying to philosophy programs, that my grades and GRE are too low, and then provide no info on programs that line up with my research interests. "Accurate" I guess. "Helpful" no. If this is one of your "well respected" posters they aren't exemplifying anything they've done to earn that title in this thread.

The first four schools I listed were philosophy departments, the fifth was UVA's religious studies department. I preferred philosophy programs to theology/RS programs this application cycle at the recommendation of my thesis advisor who admittedly got her PhD in the 80s/90s, and probably doesn't have the best grasp on the current state of grad admissions in other disciplines. I see now there's no real point in applying to PhDs outside of theology/RS no matter how interdisciplinary my work so far has been. You don't have to point out to me my grades and gre aren't exceptional, I'm well aware bud. I've regularly worked 40+ hours while taking 15+ class hours, I don't have the same grades as someone who has mommy and daddy's money to sit on and I've made peace with it. Also, the number of schools I applied to had more to do with how few departments are working on the intersection of continental philosophy and religion than anything else. I didn't include comments about my high school education in my statements of purpose, but I do applaud you for reading my post just to find a way to be condescending at every turn, and then not actually answer my question.

This year was my first PhD application cycle which resulted in four rejections, and one waitlist that resulted in a rejection. To give a bit of my background: I had kind of an odd high school experience where I was reading Greek philosophy and political theory (Pretty much from Socrates to Kierkegaard) at 14-17 so my interest in those subjects piqued early. When I was 17/18 I stumbled into John Caputo's writings on Derrida and Christianity. One of the main things I took away from his work was the way every theology assumes a philosophy that makes it coherent, and since then I've been interested in drawing out the philosophical assumptions behind theology. My undergrad degree is from Belmont in Nashville in Philosophy of Religion where about 60% of my classes were in the theology department and the other 40% was in the philosophy department. When choosing master's programs, I opted for theology over philosophy and went into the MTS at Brite in Fort Worth, partially to be closer to family and partially to study philosophical theology with Namsoon Kang. When the time came to apply to PhD programs, I felt a bit restrained by some of my theology classes; drawing attention to the philosophical component of whatever is going on was sometimes seen as distracting from the important "explicitly theological" questions. So I opted to apply to four philosophy programs and one religious studies program. (Fordham, Loyola Chicago, DePaul, Duquesne, and UVA, respectively) I had hoped that my undergrad being in philosophy of religion, along with most of my credits at Brite being in the vein of philosophical theology, it would demonstrate some philosophical competency to make me a competitor for these philosophy programs, but I was mistaken. I was on the waitlist at UVA until May 16th when I received my rejection. I intend to apply there again next year, but I wondered what other departments there are like it. My GPA and GRE are /good/ but not exceptional. I waver around 3.4-3.5 GPA and my highest GRE score (which I intend to re-take) was 157/149/4.5. I know spots like U of Chicago and Boston College are the hot places for people interested in continental philosophy of religion, but I feel as though my numbers aren't high enough to be seriously considered at such departments. My understanding of UVA is that they value your personal "fit" in the department over prior academic achievement. I saw several rejections go out to people with higher GPAs and GREs while I was still being considered. I intend to re-take my GRE, work on getting published/presenting at academic conferences this year, and next year I'll be able to use my MTS thesis as my writing sample which I think will be a much better example of the research I want to pursue. tl;dr get to the point: Religious Studies/Theology programs with faculty in continental philosophy of religion and/or political theology? Alternatively, are you aware of philosophy programs that might be more apt to admit an MTS?

Student finishing their MTS this semester at Brite here. While I was /able/ to take twelve hours while working part time (20 hours give or take 3-5) I found one of my grades suffered. My first semester was 3 As and a C (the C was in Church History 2 at 8am. No amount of caffeine could get me to fully boot into my brain that early). At the same time, I had a friend who took 15 hours one semester while working part time and he got all As. Its all about what you can handle. At Brite we frequently have 1-2 week long intensive classes happening after the fall and spring semesters, as well as a handful of classes offered over the summer. You need 49 hours to graduate, one hour of which is your thesis writing in your final semester. If Duke is relatively on par with the hours that were required of me, and you're trying to be done in two years; you could take four 9 hour semesters. Then you would just need to nab 12 more credits during january/may/summer classes that could easily be taken one at a time. Some might advise against taking classes during your thesis writing semester, but approaching the tail end of it, the classes I'm taking have ended up informing my thesis quite a bit, and I wouldn't have done it any other way. Good luck on your studies!

Looks like another UVA rejection was posted.

I'm on the waitlist for the modern religious thought AOI. I sent an email to the graduate admissions person a week and a half ago and didn't get a response. Trying to interpret the silence as the possibility that I have a real chance of getting in but they can't say for sure rather than just ignoring my email.

I was put on the wait-list for the PhD about a month ago and haven't heard anything since then.

My thesis advisor actually advised against it, which I understand. Professors are drowning in emails as it is, but also I'm willing to bet it happens enough that it wouldn't have any negative effect on your standing.

I was put on the waitlist for UVA's Religious Studies PhD on February 21st. Specifically the Modern and Contemporary Religious Thought AOI. My research is on the intersection of hermeneutics and ethics so Bouchard was an obvious choice. Based on the posts from last year I'm worried I won't hear back until mid-April. ?

Rejected from Loyola Chicago, Fordham, and Duquesne, with the caveat that I could be admitted to Duq's MA program. I'm still waiting to hear anything from DePaul. Is it safe to say that if I haven't heard anything from DePaul at this point I'm most likely rejected?