CyrtomiumFalcatum

I've created an account just to emphatically disagree with what I feel are some highly spurious claims being made in the above post. I graduated from Columbia's terminal MA program a couple years ago and found that my experience was far removed from that being detailed here. The post above gives the impression that you join the MA, pay up, and then don't see anyone for two years. Aside from the seminars that everyone takes anyway, I was seeing professors in office hours basically every week, and I was frequently in close contact with at least four tenure(-track) members of faculty, all of whom greatly shaped my work and, for what its worth, helped me throughout the various stages of the PhD application process. (The idea that even PhD students are neglected by Columbia faculty is also far from from the truth.) I would also like to mention especially that the director of the MA program is fantastic (and a graduate of the program herself), and makes a concerted effort to create a sense of community for the MA students—this includes, among other things, 2 MA-only methodology and practices courses, day-long thesis workshops every semester (attended by faculty), and visiting lectures from people in the museum and galleries sector. In the last few years I have known (myself included) many people from Columbia's terminal MA program to receive multiple PhD offers from what this Forum likes to refer to as "top programs": Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, UCBerkely, UCLA, or be hired by institutions such as the Met, Frick Collection or Chicago's Art Institute. In my PhD program there are currently 4 Columbia MA/MODA graduates. All this said, it is an expensive program, so this is obviously something that should be factored into one's decision. I also know several brilliant graduates of the Williams MA in my current PhD program. Ultimately, what one "gets" out of any of these programs is a function of what one puts in. My point however is to say that the opinion given in the above post seems to be entirely conjectural and, at worst, outright false.