studyordie

Which 2 round out your top 3? Are you considering crossing the pond?

danielm43- My friend who studied under an Iliff grad who told him not to go to Iliff said the guy's main complaint was that the profs were distant and not around to help out Ph.D. students that much, his specialty is NT. He has a good job but it probably has as much to do with his denominational affiliation as with anything else on his resume, of course that's only one grad. Theostudent- Your interests seem very similar to my own, when its Ph.D. time I would encourage you look at UVa. Milbank has of course been gone for a bit but I'm reading Charles Mathewes right now and if you like the conversations postmodern Augustinians get into he is as good as anybody I have read plus he actually makes sense within an American context (something I don't always get from RO and am actually coming to appreciate since I'll probably be here for the rest of my life). The postliberal approach is also well represented there with Ochs on board...

No invite for ND Systematics , maybe my sample paper should have been less weird...

Congrats on GTU deamondeac, I went to undegrad in LA and the only redeeming thing I can say about California is that the people from the northern part of the state that I got to know were interesting, down to earth people. If you end up out there my only advice is to stay north of Santa Barbara.

I also had to do this for one app. I agree with an earlier poster, my preferences are variable and on that day at that time that school was my top choice. On this app it also said my preference order had no bearing on my admission, but come one, why else would the question be asked on an application for admission? Also, I think a lot of lower tier schools would believe that you want to go there over an ivy league school. These people are convinced that they are interesting profs in interesting programs. I would just be ready to justify such an ordering in an interview if need be.

Aaahhh- after celebrating the completion of my last app. tonight with a glass or three too much wine I couldn't help but post here: danielm43- I know how you feel, I found this board a month or so back and it has been a great support/tool for me to get informed and vent at the same time. I know of one person who went to Iliff, now has a good tenure-track job, but has advised a friend of mine from the same field (NT) not to apply there. I will find out the specifics of his hesitations with his alma mater and post them here this week. One question though, from your posts thus far you seem to be a decent match for Princeton, why didn't you apply there? Also, I will share your experience with Vandy with the prof from whom I got the theory of northern and southern schools and their opposing views of evangelical applicants, he'll enjoy the confirmation. To those of us who have gotten a rejection (explicit or not), though I haven't yet it's only a matter of time, and I will tell you what I tell myself: it only takes one acceptance to get where we want to be!

I applied to 5 schools, all are top tier in my discipline and I will be ecstatic with a single acceptance letter (w/funding, of course). My rationale was that if I'm going to go to a "backup school" I need to take very seriously the possibility that I will not get a job within my field since the market is so competetive. If I come up empty this time around, that's what I'll be thinking about as I consider going for round 2 next year with a different list of schools. Also, the five apps I've (almost) completed were so time consuming that another one would probably not have been completed with the sufficient attention to detail that they require. If I am still doing this next year, I'm at least glad I will have a better taste for what to expect and how to put quality apps together. All that to say that I do have some hesitations about only applying to 5 very good schools, but I'm still comfortable with my decision.

Thanks for the update on UVa and a big congrats. If the conversation on UK schools isn't over I'll put in my two cents b/c I've spent countless hours looking into that option. I gave up b/c it's too hard to fund, UK people get the 1st go on funding, then EU people, then everybody else (Americans are among everybody else). From a few different proffs I respect I was told that if you want to work in the states get your Ph.D. in the states. Our programs have comps, their's don't, those tests and the corresponding coursework seem to be the main difference. That said- I wanted to study with certain people and so I was still going full steam ahead until I realized I would end up on the other side of the pond with a hungry wife and kid and no $$. If your spouse is an RN though, you could probably make it work.

I'm in a very unrelated field but if I were you I would study up on the research interests of the faculty you're meeting and then in the meetings have something to say about how those interests correlate to the research your coursework has led you to become interested in (even though you haven't gotten started on that research yet).

If I do get in somewhere I'll be insanely happy for like three days and then I'll start trying to figure out how to get my wife a job in the area of our future home. If I don't get in anywhere I'll try next year but I'll also look into accelerated programs for nursing. There's a massive shortage of nurses and I'm so sick and tired of being one of the many who want a few spots that it would be nice to be in a world where I had people competing over me.

I'm glad you started off this thread with an apology deamondeac, I for one am infuriated I could not vote for "theologicalish things" and had to settle for "theology" ....

I still have one more app due (Villanova) and I'm glad because it's kind of keeping the neurosis at bay. It's not really working, however, so if anyone would like to distract themselves with frivolous gossip... This is a couple steps removed from the source so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but a few years back Vandy really liked an Ancient Near East person from my seminary and in consulting with her faculty advisor they said they had to know whether or not she would attend vandy if she were admitted because they do not use a wait-list and end up losing whatever spots they offer that are not accepted. If what I heard is true, is that not the stupidest thing you've ever heard? I don't personally have much hope for my application there so this is more curiosity than concern, but that sounds like a good way to miss out on great candidates.

It's a practical degree, very much not a Ph.D. and the only proff I've had with an M.Div. lacked the background of the rest of his peers. My seminary has a D.Min. program and I've seen it work for people and not work for people. The people it works for are self-motivated ministers who would be educating themselves regardless of their enrollment in a program. Example: a friend of mine whose D.Min. project sends ministers to the Holy Land to give them a less "American" perspective on the violence in Palestine just got a Lily grant for a one-year sabbatical. I'm guessing the D.Min. and the great project did not hurt his application. It doesn't work for ministers who simply do it because their church is paying for it and it's a week off work. Example: another friend of mine taught a one-week D.Min. course a few weeks back in which all but one of the students freely admitted they had not read a page of the pre-class reading. Having had a one week course at the Master's level before, you don't get much out of it if you haven't done any of your reading. Other programs require students to move take classes full-time for one calendar year and then do their projects, I would guess that that is a better approach than the one-week class format my school has adopted.

I'm not aware of a standard rating system that has any respect within the field. It would all come down to your sub-field and who is at each department within your subfield. R.R. Reno published his own list on First Things a year or two back (available from their website), it's largely interesting because it indicates how variable "rankings" will be from professor to professor, and at the end of the day that's who will (hopefully) be giving us all jobs one day. I don't now squat about UCSB but all the others are highly respected from what I've picked up on. It still all comes down to a correspondence between their faculties' interests and your interests. Look at who is publishing what. Asking proffs is good if your interests closely match. If not, you should know more about the programs you're applying to than they do (at least if your putting in for the Ph.D.).

Are there any procrastinators out there who were frantically throwing things together last night? Not that I was, just wondering :roll: .

I'm getting ready for Vandy and Chicago on the 15th and am really having second thoughts on Vandy. My original inspiration in applying there is that they have a few people who sound conversant in psychoanalytic critiques of culture (Volney Gay and a Lit Crit guy who's name I can't remember). Problem is, I'm interested in that stuff in so far as it feeds into a constructive Christian theology, and I'm not so sure that they are. I can't/don't want to obfuscate that point in my application. I feel bad saying this (since it could be taken to support the imposition of the application fees I despise) but at this point I would consider not completing my application to Vandy if they had a fee. Since they don't, however, and I've already sent the other stuff in and made people write recs for me, I'm going to go through with it.

probingtheology That is good news, guess I got a bit overworked. The article that Morganstern posted is interesting and exactly the opposite of something I read a few weeks back that stated GRE registration was up 10% (but that might have been a blog or forum, I can't remember). In theory, I can see the whole "economic crisis" thing go either way regarding people like us. Currently it only further compels me to apply to programs because I'm already a dirt poor grad student so I have nothing to lose and bad job prospects. A year and a half ago, however, I had a decent job and would have thought harder then I did at the time about giving that up to go back to school had the economy been where it is currently.

That was my first thought when I saw this

http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=14 ... 0084024526 This article makes it seems like the various departments will be cutting their budgets their own ways, so the task will be for us to convince the religious studies department that we are worth cheaper wine at departmental functions, or maybe those of us interested in UVa could offer to do some mowing and pruning around the department's building .

My interests revolve around the transcendent orientation of reality (as opposed to closed causal systems that posit reality as pure immanence) and the inadequacies of most modern ways of reading the Bible. Kovacs, Ochs, Hart, Marsh, Mathewes, Childress and Wilken (if he's still actively teaching in the fall) are all scholars I'd love to work with. I worked pretty hard on my purpose statement and I hope they will be impressed. Now that apps are in I am further familiarizing myself with the faculty that interest me but with whose work I am less familiar, so as to be able to make quality contact with as many of them as possible as the process gets going. I said I was bummed to find out UVa is probably taking less folks (out of more folks applying!) but my faculty adviser instills in us that the whole thing is a crap shoot and to give it your all if you even want a chance, so in reality it's hard for me to be more disillusioned than I already am .

The info is from one of their senior faculty after I emailed him regarding my application to their department. I'm bummed because it is far and away my top choice.

Uva says they are expecting a record number of applicants and budget cuts (i.e. fewer fellowships), I would imagine this is more of a national trend than an isolated instance.

I think I read a post here that talked about Chicago's need to have an M.Div. program per its charter, so you end up with funded M.Div. students that probably would not be funded in more academically focused degree programs, if you go for that distinction.

I have two prospective MA programs I will be applying to if I come up dry on Ph.D. app's in theologicalish things I've already posted. Both of the MAs are philosophy programs with app. due dates in April when I should have a good sense of my luck with the Ph.D. apps. I'm currently finishing up an M.Div. I looked at a few more "prestigious" Theology master's programs than the one I'm completing and was honestly horrified by the prospect of doing a repeat of my current program. I also think a MA in a different subject would look better to Ph.D. programs later on. So I vote for the dual master's in different subjects.

Two things: 1) Relative to the "who should write for me?" question: 2 months ago I didn't know my thesis advisor very well (he's retired so he doesn't teach, he got in a conversation with me about my thesis one day and offered to oversee it). I asked a younger ANE proff to write for me because we know each other pretty well, he just finished at Harvard three or four years back so his head is still "in the game" so to speak, and he said a vague letter from my thesis advisor who is known in the field would be far better than a more specific letter from him, since he's in a different field and, more importantly, no one's heard of him. Also, my buddy had an interview with an experienced proff at a top program earlier this fall and was told that they wanted letters from people they knew. Sounds like a letter from a big name saying you've been a good student for two months is the way to go. 2) I just turned in my first app (UVA)! I'm sure some of you are way ahead of me here, and obviously there's more to the process than this, but I've been working so long on this stuff it feels incredible to actually have a little piece of the puzzle done. I also realized my first mistakes in this process, but currently the relief is outweighing the horror, so I'm going to go with it. Also a big congrats to deamondeac on the GRE scores, and to academiccricket: your LOR is huge, in some programs that probably goes further than an GRE score could ever take you.