anonymousbequest

Williams is holding an open house for admitted students and those on the wait list next week.

UMass Amherst is public, so the resources may not be as great as WUSTL. I believe that students TA for much of their funding, which does add workload that can detract from your research. The faculty is a multigenerational, whereas it skews a bit older at WUSTL. I have not heard anything negative about the culture in WUSTL. A big difference in the programs is UMass's "Comprehensive Exam" instead of a thesis. If you want to write a full thesis, UMass may not be for you. At WUSTL students who don't want to advance can take comps, but those with PhD aspirations do a thesis. For what it is worth, I do not think that the lack of a thesis at UMass harms the chances of students moving into PhD programs. You should have a seminar paper you can turn into a writing sample. Williams students, after all, also don't write a thesis. In terms of placement, you find graduates of the program in PhD programs, museums, and as faculty in lots of different places. It's an old program so networking opportunities are fairly rich, and its being in the shadow of Williamstown, and a little defined as such, I think makes graduates perhaps more willing to go the extra mile to help out other grads. I tend to think of it as the second best option for a terminal MA program in New England.

Jennifer Roberts, Harvard; Jenny Raab, Yale; Alex Nemerov, Stanford; Wendy Bellion, U. Delaware; Michael Leja, U. Penn; Susan Rather and Maurie McInnis, U. Texas; Jenny Greenhill, USC; Bruce Robertson, UCSB; Rebecca Zurier, Michigan; Jason Weems, UCR; Michael Lewis and Kevin Murphy, Williams; Rachael Delue, Princeton. Many of the programs have more than one person who does American, or have strong connections to American Studies programs. And, there are certainly other good Americanists around, including Lovell, but these are the schools that seem mentioned a lot on GradCafe.

I would suggest that in addition to funding, you should also give weight to whether the program only offers the MA or also has the PhD. I think that you will get the most "value" from a MA-only program. The funding will likely be better, the opportunities to interact with faculty and build up substantial relationships will be greater, and you will likely also have the possibility of being a TA, to get a little teaching experience in, or be substantively involved as an intern in a campus or nearby museum. There's no consensus on this, but I, and others, believe the IFA and Columbia MA programs in particular to be cash cows that fund the PhD students, but with lesser results for the MAs themselves. If I am advising several PhD students who are applying for prestigious fellowships, networking, finishing the diss., and ready to go out into the big bad world, I'm going to be spending more time with them, not worrying so much about my MA cohort. At an MA-only program, you are the functional equivalent of a PhD student. If you choose not to continue into a PhD program, I think the terminal MA also looks better, easier to get around the "why didn't you continue" question. On this list, without knowing exactly which faculty you could study with, I'd be interested in Williams, UC-Riverside, UMass Amherst, Hunter, and maybe Tufts and UT-Austin. Some might also argue for Chicago's MAPH, but I'm not convinced about it. I'd take Wisconsin off the list, not only because it has a PhD program, but also because the governor has basically defunded it and threatened to do away with tenure, people are jumping ship. I do know that Williams seems to be boosting their offerings in non-Western across the board lately, with a couple of new hires, and the Clark and the Williams museum have some good Japanese and Asian collections, while being at UC-Riverside would put you in striking distance of some of the largest Korean and Japanese populations in the US, with great museum collections to match. Good luck!

I would bet that most of these curators and professors were advised by just two faculty at Kansas: Charlie Eldredge, who must be close to retiring, or the (late) Marilyn Stokstad. 10-20 years ago, Kansas would likely have been in many people's 10-25, and many of the people you cite (at least those I'm most familiar with) are themselves on the back half of their careers. I almost added to my post that students from second tier schools have a much better track record in museums than academia, thank you for bringing it up. There are several programs that have had strong placements in museums, but less success in academia. Curators are more recent to fully professionalize, now lots of positions that would have required an MA from just about anywhere a decade or more ago now want PhDs from the top 25 programs "according to you." Some of the top 10 programs definitely discouraged their students from becoming curators historically, seeing museum work as a waste of talent and time. Yale was really the exception. However, this is changing. A recent Harvard PhD is now the curator at the LSU museum. Let that sink in, both for the dearth of jobs this seems to suggest, and that your competition for a college museum position (that isn't Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, UT, UCLA, Williams, Oberlin, etc...) could be from Harvard by the time you graduate. But go ahead and hold tight to the exceptions. Whatever gets you through the night.

Every season, a few actual professional art historians play Cassandra, warning applicants and recent admits of the difficult road ahead of them at mid to lower tier schools. None of the admits want to hear it, because they "made it" into a PhD program, sometimes after a few rounds or slogging through (and paying for) an MA at a lower ranked institution. I do know that there are many people on gradcafe admitted to HYP, but I doubt they are the ones so invested in arguing for lower tier schools. Marie_Ret is arguing that there's a democratization in PhD programs, which is an old chestnut. I'd say that programs are contracting somewhat because many are realizing that it's irresponsible not to fund students. Income inequality affects institutions too. A subset of that argument is "but your advisor is really the only thing that matters." Where did they go to school? A great advisor can make up a little for institutional reputation, but I'd say this would be of greatest advantage to students at still respectable programs, let's say the 10-25 "according to you". The reality is, except in rare cases (likely because of spouse/partner proximity) or really obscure fields, faculty at fair to middling programs are not going to be the most respected in their field. They work too hard, 3-2s if they are lucky maybe more, up to 4-4s, and can't publish as much as their peers with 2-2 or sometimes even 0-1 loads, no matter how brilliant they might be. Even if they have a manuscript they have to slog through many grant proposals to string together enough for the subvention, at rich schools the institution can contribute most or all of it. Not to mention little things that help, like mortgage subsidies and great child care that make being a productive academic just that much easier. So yeah, really hard to be that fully engaged superstar mentor at smaller public programs. The argument that "you just have to get out there even if you have to self fund to attend conferences" is totally ridiculous. Condivi addressed this fully above, but dropping $1000 per conference usually isn't feasible for graduate students or junior faculty for that matter. Plus, if you are at a school with poor funding, you are probably TA-ing your ass off, maybe not even in art history but in any department you can, introductory lit perhaps. When are you churning out those papers? I've seen trust fund students do it, so if you are part of the 1% I guess it's possible. I'm not saying that you are doomed if you are going to Missouri or Kansas, and you may have a very rich experience which is great. But your best outcome is most likely a TT at a lesser school where you are working that 4-4, teaching often ill prepared commuter students, maybe as the only art historian. Maybe you also "get" to be the director of the art department's little gallery too. It'll be hard to publish, but your tenure package doesn't have to be all that extensive, and you'll be making $40,000 as an associate professor, but cost of living will be lower in your rural community. And you will live the life of the mind as a real, fully credentialed, art historian. It's a small world in most fields, so you will also build a network of your peers, who will likely genuinely respect your work, and privately might say things like, "I really wish more people knew of so-and-so's work" while they are on their third book with California or MIT. I'm also not trying to be a snob, just as others only trying to point out that there really are differences, they are substantial and they are limiting, not just for your career but also your family and future. By all means hold on to that little spot of warmth that lets you want to believe that you'll beat the odds, like the student who got offered the job on the spot on the strength of a paper CAA(?!?!). I hope that person went out directly after to buy a lotto ticket, because they must be the luckiest art historian ever.

Just for a bit of perspective from the other side of the aisle here, remember that your busy application season is (as others have pointed out) professors' busy grading season. Faculty want to get their grading done so they can go off and enjoy the holiday break, it's not a great time for "cold calling" as an applicant. In addition many of them are also writing letters of recommendation for their undergraduate and graduate students for programs and fellowships, which (if you don't want to phone them in and I'm sure everyone here would agree on that) take quite a bit of work to craft, just as your statements of purpose and writing samples do. Finally, now that classes are over and finals nearly done, it's time to turn attention to classes or projects for next semester. If advising students working on senior or MA theses, or with ABDs wanting to file in spring, it's also time to ramp up with them. I'm not excusing rude behavior, there are many assholes among faculty everywhere, but it doesn't sound as though OP's POI was rude, just scattered. I'm embarrassed to say that I have an email from a prospective applicant to my program that just fell off my radar and is now a few weeks old. The graduate and undergraduate students already attending my institution, who are my first priority, seem to like me so I don't think I'm a terrible person. It is essential that you speak with current advisees of your POIs, and also former ones if possible, that's how you'll get the best info on whether they are responsive and helpful mentors should you choose to study with them. Mobilize your networks, some faculty at your current institution likely went to this program, or know people who have, and can either put you in touch with others or give you their impression. I've said this many times elsewhere on this forum, but the right advisor/mentor can make up for deficiencies in your program overall. It's what makes it difficult to rank programs with certainty. Ok back to reading 25 page research papers and making sure I'm keeping up with my LORs. Penn and Columbia were this week? Harvard up next? I think that's right. Happy Holidays applicants!

Texas and UMass Amherst too.

Are you limiting yourself to terminal MA programs? If, so I think there are fewer options, which is why you might have had trouble finding people. Of the schools you mention, the Americanist from Illinois just decamped for USC (and who could blame her). UC Riverside has Jason Weems who works in 1930s-40s but could probably advise on an earlier topic. Americanists tend to be less specialized than other fields. Susan Rather is at Texas and Williams has Mike Lewis plus curators and fellows at the Clark and the college museum who teach American topics. For PhD programs you have a lot more choice including Jennifer Roberts and Robin Kelsey at Harvard, Jenny Raab at Yale, Michael Leja and Gwen Dubois-Shaw at Penn, Rachel DeLue at Princeton, Wendy Bellion and Camara Holloway at Delaware, Melody Duesner at Indiana, Ross Barratt at BU, Alex Nemerov at Stanford, Bruce Robertson at UCSB, Angela Miller at WashU, Jenny Greenhill at USC, Maggie Cao at UNC, Kathy Manthorne at CUNY, Margaretta Lovell at UC Berkeley, and Maurie McInnis at UVA. These are just people I can think of off the top of my head who work or have worked in 18th/19th century. I'm not sure how many are taking students. Of these, Roberts, Raab, Duesner, Greenhill, Holloway, Barratt, DuBois-Shaw and Cao are young or young-ish and the rest are more senior. Best of luck!

My knowledge backs up raisinbrancusi, I understand that Williams is offering better packages in recent cohorts to stay competitive with PhD programs. Michael Ann Holly is filling in until they find a permanent replacement for Darby English. And always remember as you are looking at programs, academic superstardom and good teaching/mentoring do not necessarily correspond.... Another thing to note about Williams regardless of who runs their research program is grad students' access to Clark fellows and the scholars they bring in for colloquia and symposia. These scholars can become contacts at their institution's PhD programs or even POIs. In terms of meeting/working with top professors and sampling trends in the discipline, there's no terminal MA that comes close, and few PhD programs. It's part of why they look at their program as competing with PhDs not any of the other terminal MAs out there.

As others have pointed out above, the methods art historians take toward material culture are informed more by recent trends in critical theory than folklore is, so you should ask whether you want to interrogate objects as an art historian or folklorist (which in my mind is kind of a mashup of archaeology, sociology, and anthropology). However, you have a BA in art history so you can frame yourself as exploring outside the discipline for your MA but still an art historian at heart. I would caution against applying to a "studies" type program, with the cuts to the humanities and social sciences of late I think staying within a recognized discipline is necessary these days. For programs: Yale: Jules Prown was a major influence on the art history side of material culture studies, I'd guess his presence still reverberates in the work that is done there. You might look into Jennifer Raab's (PhD Yale, Nemerov) interests. Harvard: Jennifer Roberts (PhD Yale) is very interested in material culture and materiality. Delaware: the Winterthur program was another main progenitor of Americanist interest in material culture, and there's contact between the program and grad students at Delaware. You should check with their Americanist Wendy Bellion about your interests. Other contenders: BU: I believe that they just hired Ross Barrett (PhD BU) as a replacement for Pat Hills. I think he could be receptive and his work does contend with material objects and their agency in culture (mostly by injuring or killing people). You would also have the resources of the Boston museums to work with, so lots of the material of material culture. Stanford: Alex Nemerov and Brian Wolf, both trained by Prown, are there. They tend toward the Freudian as many of Prown's (male) students tend to do. Also you might just look for Prown's students who are in programs with PhDs and see whether they teach seminars in material culture or would be receptive to your interests. People that come to mind are Margaretta Lovell at Berkeley, Bruce Robertson at UCSB, Ken Haltmann at Oklahoma, etc...

Admits to Stanford I know heard around the time when acceptances showed up on the results board here. Not everyone has accepted their offers yet of course, so there may still be some hope.

I think we are talking about different things here. First, touting a 10% acceptance rate seems like a very unsophisticated, US News and World Report way of ranking programs where differences in fit can be subtle and personal (the "according to you" portion of the title of this thread). 10% simply means that there were a greater number of applicants than spots, it is not a marker of quality. Let's take the acceptance rate argument over to Manhattan. The IFA had a 27% acceptance rate for 2013-14, 17 points more than Rutgers. However, the IFA takes a ton of "self-funding" MA students (100 in residence!), which skews their numbers. In nearly every other marker, including your and the NRC's statistical approach, they come out better than Rutgers. We've also seen a bump in applications due to the Great Recession and other societal factors, so I don't think more applicants correlates to better program either. I might hazard a guess that Rutgers has become attractive to more applicants because it has been less selective. I'm not trying to knock Rutgers or their faculty, as I said I think the program can be fine for some. And second, about your criteria. There is correlation between citations and awards and NRC-type rankings, but it would be interesting to see how that correlation translates to graduate success. I won't name names in a public forum, but as you undoubtedly know being an academic superstar and a good mentor who fosters long-term intellectual and professional success do not always go hand in hand. You mention at least one quite difficult advisor, for example. It seems to me that the point of this thread is to discuss different options for prospective applicants who are trying to chart the best course for themselves in a discipline where it is difficult to understand how all the players and the programs fit together. I don't think your method of looking at statistics is very helpful, after all that's how we got the controversial NRC rankings that started this discussion. But you and others might disagree and that's fine too.

Great advice, just do consider the resources you will need to write that brilliant dissertation. You need a great advisor/mentor, rigorous training, a supportive departmental culture with exciting faculty, encouragement to present your work at conferences where you can get feedback from others, and you need money. If your package offers funding through teaching and/or your department doesn't have a great track record with fellowships in your field (CASVA, Fulbright, etc...) it will be that much more difficult to maintain the momentum necessary for concentrated work on your dissertation. Discussion of late has emphasized job placement (as it should ultimately), but you should also consider outside fellowship placement in your calculus of whether a department is a "top ten" according to your needs. Many of the criteria listed above can be found at Ivies, but can also be found elsewhere. I was actually surprised when I looked at my own program just now, there are quite a few of us from schools we've been batting around as in the "10-20" and most are indeed among the younger faculty. I still contend that the path of an art historian now is horribly difficult with much less hope for any kind of successful outcome that just a decade ago, but if you must go be as forearmed as possible.

Agreed (not surprisingly) with condivi. Chicago and Hopkins are just below HYP, then there's a decently large second tier with Ivys like Brown and publics like Michigan, with some great options (if you can afford them) like CUNY.