Vagante

Among the schools you listed, as far as I know: Case Western and Williams do offer great funding, Tufts offers partial funding, IFA and Columbia do use MAs as cash cows, check out the recent thread about the horrors of the Courtauld borne out by years of evidence, Fordham is great but financial support is not guaranteed, York has great medieval studies but the programme structure is similar to the Courtauld. Curatorial: Case Western is closely affiliated with the Cleveland Museum of Art, Tufts with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and Williams with the Clark. If you are interested in medieval art and the curatorial side of things, think about these museums’ collections. York, of course, is in a medieval city itself! Make sure to get in touch with profs at these schools and ask for emails of recent or current students.

Thinking about medievalists: Places that will accept you without an MA: Wisconsin, Oregon, Chicago (but Kumler just left) Places to think about for an MA: Williams (Low), Tulane (Flora), Case (Gertsman in western, Bolman in Byzantine), Tufts (Maranci — Byzantine but they are looking for a western medievalist to start next fall), Fordham (Rowe) I would not go to BU.

An MA from Williams, Case, or Tufts (all with a strong museum emphasis) will help you get into a good PhD program. I strongly caution you against BU’s grad program. It is brutally unsupportive.

Case offers merit-based tuition and stipend to both tracks for sure. They might place you on the waitlist for funding but as far as I know they don’t accept more people than they can reasonably fund. Tufts also offers merit-based tuition remission and stipend. They often offer partial funding from what I hear, no more than half so you still have to take out loans. Hunter often offers tuition but not stipend, I am told. sorry, don’t know anyone who went to UNC but I terms of your GRE question, no one will hold it against you if they don’t require it! think also about cost of living, Boston vs Cleveland vs NYC