phoskaialetheia

Hot damn! Congrats!!

Oh man, that sucks. I feel for you. I hope you can in touch with them soon!

A buddy in my program called HDS this morning to ask if decisions would be posted today, and they replied that they couldn't answer that, and they still weren't sure if decisions would be finalized by today. I don't know if this is to cover their bases, or if they really don't know. So it sounds like they may or may not actually be posted today at 5 est.

Wow, that sounds very similar to my evening. I really ought to write that draft of my senior thesis... Best of luck!

Liberal Mormon with Krister Stendahl-esque holy envy of reform Judaism, and a healthy respect for Eastern Orthodox liturgy. Where my people at?

Nice! Congratulations on what seems to be a very successful admissions cycle for you generally so far!

They say by the 15th, but historically they have been posted by the second Friday in March by 5pm ET. Barring snowpacalypse delay issues, I will be therefore be expecting a decision on the 11th.

Best of luck! Crossing my fingers that you get a generous package to alleviate the high COL in Boston and allow you to attend what appears to be a great program for you!

That sounds right. It's getting hard to keep track. And then there's transatlantic post to wait for. I am trying not to think about it.

You heard back from Oxford? By which deadline did you apply? I'm still waiting on an mphil decision.

Snail mail. Theirs was actually the fastest turnaround of the bunch that I applied to, so hopefully it shouldn't be too long for you.

After over 3 weeks of fruitless OPUS runs, tonight the visit paid off. I am in at Emory/Candler (MTS).

Congrats! Do they include funding info, or does that come later? Too and also, I just got my first stateside school decision back in the post. Vandy accepted me for their MTS in Biblical Studies, but with only 40% tuition remission. I know Nashville is cheap, but this would be tough to swing. I hope other programs can do better, but I kind of doubt it.

Opus. We just have to keep checking like idiots until the decision is posted.

Still waiting... I'm a full week outside their typical two-week window now. Called them this morning, and got the usual 'try back in a few days' spiel. Someone on this board had heard back about a week ago. You still waiting too?

When I called them they told me that the notifications are all sent by mail, but a couple posts on this board have mentioned a few phone calls for some top scholarship recipients.

I did too but my last recommendation wasn't submitted until Feb. 1. Hopefully I should hear soon. This waiting is gonna kill me. I check OPUS compulsively several times a day.

That's great! When did you submit your application? Did they send you an email letting you know the decision was ready or did you just keep checking opus?

Congrats!!

I think I'll go ahead and psyche myself into believing that its either a postal delay or a different MTS vs. MDiv admissions timetable standing between me and a sweet Vandy scholarship package. Hopefully we'll hear soon!

Me too. Do you know whether the notice was by phone or by post?

Very helpful responses so far. Departments are obviously a lot less candid about these issues than students, so it's always great to get current PhD students' perspectives. It's actually kind of a relief that its the quant score I'm worried about, as it is much more learnable than the verbal. Its just a matter of knowing all the formulas and interpreting the questions to know how to apply them. I'll know in the next few weeks how much these scores matter at the masters level. I feel like I am getting a better idea of a target score for PhD admissions.

I have heard random and completely opposing opinions about the effect of the quantitative score in Religion admissions, and am curious what the consensus is around here. I have heard from some that it is completely ignored, from others that schools look only at the composite, and from others still that both V and Q need to be above a certain threshold. I don't want to start another polemic about whether cutoffs exist. I just want to get a better feel for the weight given to this one section in particular. In the interest of full disclosure, I do have a dog in this fight. My verbal was in the 97-98th percentile, but my quantitative was much lower, as I decided very much last minute to take the GRE (no math since 9th grade and studied for maybe 8 hours total for the entire GRE). I will probably have to take it again before it changes just so that I can go up against the devil I know rather than learn a whole new test style to try and up my quant score. I'm trying to plan the few months I have left to do so, and look forward to whatever perspective your responses might yield.

Indeed I was writing about CGU. I didn't realize you were referring to CST, but I had been wondering what had happened to the NT program at CGU. A shift to CST would explain a lot. It sounds like some of the issues that alumni had been facing are being addressed and hopefully resolved by such a move. And the MA/MDiv funding package sounds amazing. Thanks for apprising me to the change.

My program has a few faculty who fairly recently took PhD's from Claremont and GTU/Berkeley (I don't know anything about fuller). The two from Claremont are both NT, and are great scholars in their niches (Nag Hammadi, Oxyrhynchus, papyrology generally), but had some complaints about the program. Apparently Jim Robinson is kind of bitter and not so fun to work with for complicated reasons, MacDonald has some moments of brilliance with narrative in the NT, but hasn't been taken as seriously as he once was for a while, and the biggest complaint is of course Claremont's notoriously terrible funding. Neither professor got a red cent in funding and both went to the program because it was the place to do what they wanted to do. It's hard to fund your grad students when there isn't an undergrad population to foot the bill. That said, they have a pretty good placement record at schools on the west coast and mountain west, and have some very strong emphases. I don't know much about Claremont outside of NT/EC, but again, their papyrology/Oxyrhynchus/Nag Hammadi resources are impeccable. The GTU/Berkeley alumni I know are in HB and are pretty good, but both had some people on their committees who are now emeritus or retired, and some of the newer hires are somewhat unknown quantities for me. Some of what I hear is that Gruen was great for Second Temple stuff, but is emeritus, Boyarin has some great ideas, but can be difficult to work with, and while the combined Berkeley/GTU faculty are great, there are some administrative quirks that accompany interdisciplinary approaches (AHMA interdisciplinary faculty, a lot of Classics crossover, etc) common to the programs, let alone inter-institutional issues (don't know too much about straight GTU degrees). Again, the Berkeley/GTU program still has a good placement record in Universities in my region. I have no idea how these programs fare in non-Bible specialties.