dudgeonmaster

hey JPR. how did it turn out for you in the end?

i have been offered a place to do a PhD at University College London, and also won the competition for a research scholarship from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council - full tuition and an amazing stipend for all 3 years!!! i'm so excited! also, i'm already planning a year as a visiting doctoral researcher at the Sorbonne in 2k10. it's all come together! best of luck to all those who haven't heard yet, and congrats to those who have already found a place.

call them. they have decided already.

By the way, semper ubi. Did you call directly to the department chairs? I would like a bit more information myself but don't want to irritate them.

excellent results semper ubi! all i have so far is a rejection from berkeley. apparently i had next to no chance from the very beginning as international students cost considerably more to fund than domestic at UC schools, and funding cuts have made the situation much worse.

yikes

has anyone heard any news from Classics programs?? nothing yet here, and i'm tearing my hair out!

Just thought I would update this thread after a recent e-mail I received from the head of the adcom at UCLA regarding my query about the Classics program (I am a UK citizen): However, the really bad news is that we cannot fully fund non-US citizens past the first year, because they can't establish California residency; the department cannot afford to pay non-resident tuition for students past the first year. (Let me know if you want a more detailed explanation of this boring and depressing issue.) not good!!!

How do phone interviews work? Do they arrange a time for them to call you back?

rising_star is right. I had a similar issue with a few of my colleges and it worked out fine. Apologise profusely and let them know that the missing recommendations are being sent in immediately - you should perhaps also ask your recommender to e-mail the respective departments explaining the situation, and to confirm that the references are indeed on their way.

j.p.r., worcester is really beautiful - i occasionally sang in their choir, although i was officially a choral scholar at Queen's. i went to jesus under armand d'angour from '00-'04.

HeyJ.P.R.! Thanks for your reply. Your profile looks very strong, and your research topic sounds like really good fun too. The metaphor of 'poetic weaving' immediately made me think of Theocritus Idyll I, where he describes a young boy fashioning a cage for a cicada out of reeds (or something like that), which could be taken as a metaphor for the act of poetic composition. Vergil also uses that metaphor at the end of Eclogue 10 if i recall ('These songs, Pierian Maids, shall it suffice Your poet to have sung, the while he sat, And of slim mallow wove a basket fine'). Anyways, I want to research the role and influence of Epicureanism in the literature of the late Republic and early Empire, with an emphasis on Cicero H,orace, and Vergil. My MA thesis was on the possible influence of Epicureanism on Vergil's Eclogues given his recently confirmed association with the Epicureans in his youth. There are quite a few people who I would love to work with - Sumi Furiya and A.A. Long at Berkeley, for example, both of whom are excellent on Roman Epicureanism and Hellenistic philosophy. At Harvard I would like to work with Richard Thomas too.

I have a First Class undergraduate degree from Oxford and a strong M.A. in Classics from University College London. My GRE results are 690V, 700Q, and 5.5A. Hopefully (!!) I should also get 3 strong and personal recommendations. I am applying to the Ph.D. programs at UC Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Chicago, Cambridge, Oxford, and University College London. Do people here reckon I stand a chance?

Many thanks for your help and congrats on your admissions so far. You have some great places to choose from there! As for Columbia, I may well take you up on that offer if anything materialises. My plan is very much like yours actually- I'm applying straight out of the B.A., so if I don't succeed this time around with American grad schools I will probably give the Cambridge Masters a shot in order to bolster my overall profile (and then reapply Stateside). I've done the Oxford thing, so it would be fun to check out 'the other side'- out of interest, did you did you do the Oxford M.St. or the Cambridge M.A.- how did you find it?

well i applied to the following to focus on Hellenistic poetry and its reception in Roman poetry: Berkeley- reject (told that i would probably have been accepted if it was not an international applicant) Harvard- reject (just missed the cut apparently) Boston College- admit+funding (i won't take it though) Columbia- pending UCLA- pending Chicago- pending i'm really gutted about harvard and berklee though- i was hoping an Oxford Classics degree would help me out, but you just never know i guess. i have only recently come to realise how competitive the Classics grad field is! where have you got in so far?

top. anyone with news?

How did it go?

thanks so much for replying. i was sitting here slightly freaking out because i was certain hopes for my dream school had just bitten the dust. finger crossed!

I noticed on the results board that someone had been notified by phone that they had been admitted to a program I applied to. I haven't heard anything from them, and I was wondering if this most likely means I have been rejected. Are phone admissions only made on a case-by-case basis by professors who choose to call grad students who will be working with them next year, or is it standard practice for some departments to notify all accepted students (meaning I have been rejected)?

That's interesting. I wonder if the e-mail sent to me says anything about the quality of my application, though I know with these things its impossible to tell- it is my first response from a college, and it would be nice to take something positive out of it!

I have just experienced this first hand too. I am an applicant from the UK and I just received this e-mail from UC Berkeley, and I am stunned that the website gave no hint that this might be the case for international students: You will soon be receiving (or may already have received) a form email bearing my name, but I did want to write to you directly to say how sorry I am that we were not able to admit you to our program in Classics. As we are painfully reminded every year, the number of qualified applicants always far exceeds the number of offers of admission we can afford to make. In your case, there was an external factor that weighed heavily against your application from the outset. Because UC Berkeley is a public, state-funded institution, we operate with a restricted budget and a peculiar fee-structure. International students are much, much more expensive for us to support than students with US citizenship, because they can never establish "California residency" (thus qualifying for radically reduced fees). We can't afford to have more than a very small number of such students in our program at any given time. As a result, we often find ourselves in the position of rejecting applicants that we would otherwise be eagerly competing to recruit. With all best wishes, XXXXXXXX Associate Professor, Graduate Advisor & Chair of Graduate Admissions