CriticalPlay

I posted the Penn acceptance. Acceptance arrived via email from the DGS (with whom I had previously spoken). Normal admit letter, including funding, no details about the class. Only that admission was competitive, blah, blah, blah. Field: modern

It would be helpful if people on here who are discussing their "informal interview" would note which University these conversations are occuring with... Just a thought

I've spoken extensively with faculty at Duke, and my impression was that the interview/invitee weekend might be a thing of the past considering recent funding cuts. If this is in fact the case, it would push back the timeline for notifying students.

What I think would be helpful for those of us reading this thread now (especially as applications have finally been submitted) is to hear from fellow thread-readers when we are contacted by departments. Not always, but frequently, departments contact the prospective applicant just to check in and make sure you have a pulse and a brain in addition to looking good on paper. At some schools this is an integral part of the admissions process (Northwestern, for example), and others are more willing to accept you without this intermediate step (Chicago, Harvard). Each school approaches this differently, and often on a case-by-case basis. In the past, I was contact toward the end of January and beginning of February for interviews etc. So what i'm proposing is just that if you get contacted you check in here! In, like...well...3 weeks or more! lol.

Hm...I don't know. In every case where I have contacted a professor it was because, ultimately, I was planning on wrangling an in-person interview. These interviews certainly helped me as I was accepted at all the schools I visited (Yale, Princeton, Berkeley, and Chicago). In any case, I should currently be a PhD student at one of those schools in modern art, but I declined in order to take a righteously awesome fullbright grant to study in the Berlin Bauhaus archive over the past year. And now am reapplying. I didn't take a deferral last April because I wasn't sure how my field of interest would change over the course of the year... In all honesty, I'm not obsessed with the Yale/Harvard/Berkeley/Blah blah blah. There's so much more to a department than a name, and as I think I am more advanced in my studies than most, my biggest concerns are supportive faculty and good funding. Those are both hard to find. Anyways, this year, I've applied to: Penn, Chicago, Northwestern, Yale, Duke, Princeton, and WUSTL. I just submitted all of my applications today, now, let the wait begin.

Right. So I wanted to address a few things I have seen posted here. First: A terminal MA is *not* seen as a disadvantage provided it is from a top program. The Williams program is the sine qua non of terminal MAs and no one places students as consistently in top-ten PhD programs as Williams. A terminal MA from, say, NYU might be treated a little differently. The Williams program is widely considered to be a venue of extreme professionalization for students, and is as competitive as many PhD programs in terms of applicant calibre and number. Secondly: Contacting Professors before the application cycle. Always a good idea. You need to be able to establish a rapport with this person, in fact, I suggest visiting the department itself. Especially at the big schools (Yale, Princeton, etc), this is something they encourage. Thirdly: your GRE scores really don't matter. They come into play when the department puts you up for University fellowships. A close friend of mine, who is now a PhD student at Harvard (and who was accepted everywhere) had a 310 on her Q, no one even blinked an eye. They only act as a red flag when the verbal score is exceptionally low.