MadameNon

In that case, pick the most academically rigorous program.

I have to be really honest with you, every assistant curator I know has a PhD, unless it's a much smaller, regional museum. Do you mean curatorial assistant? I know it seems nitpicky but an assistant curator is an actual curator in the same way that a tenure-track assistant professor is an actual professor. You don't have less education, just less seniority. A curatorial assistant is more like what it sounds. Interns can do anything from cleaning out and organizing old file cabinets to assisting with research and writing to entering data to helping curate exhibitions.

I don't think it's a bad idea, especially if you'll be in the area. But some departments prefer to set up these meetings, so if I were you I'd contact the department secretaries and ask about the specific professors' office hours. Explain that you are a potential applicant from out of the country and that you'll be visiting from this date to this date and they will help you from there. Likely they'll put you in touch with the individual prof, in which case I don't think a CV is necessary but certainly briefly (BRIEFLY!) describe your background in the field and then talk specifically (as specifically as you can at this point) about why you are interested in them and the uni.

I was offered very generous financial support and I will already have an MA. And this time I was accepted everywhere I applied.

Has anyone heard about the Adelson? I'm 19th/early 20th century American, BTW. I haven't decided where I'm going yet, though.

Yes. I'm sorry to say it, but the pollution in Riverside is terrible. During my first quarter as an undergrad there, I had to start using inhalers. There are many days when you can actually see a brown haze over the city as you approach. I think it's worse there than in Los Angeles.

Okay, I take this back. I was accepted! I am completely shocked.

Indeed! No BU love for the mesdames.

No question, BU.

I was notified of my WUSTL waitlist status (PhD, not MA, so maybe not the info you're looking for) a few weeks ago. I remember when I applied to ND two years ago, I was emailed by the graduate adviser pretty early in the process - maybe late February but definitely by March. However, this year things seem to be happening much later than in previous years so maybe things haven't been decided yet. Finally there is a Boston admit! (Not mine, unfortunately!)

I attended the recruitment weekend a few years ago (and ultimately didn't go because I wasn't accepted off the waitlist) but I thought that it seemed pretty great. I liked most of the faculty and students I met, the art library was really nice, the museum was great. We got to see where some of the grad students live (an apartment not far from campus) and it was really cute! Ann Arbor is a cool town. There is a Museum Studies certificate you can earn concurrently. There is money for travel and students seem competitive for the bigger fellowships out there. Granted, at a recruitment weekend they are selling it so of course it would all seem great. What is your research focus? P.S. Love your screenname.

Look, maybe you are the Neville Longbottom of graduate applicants, but you'll get your chance in the last year when it really counts. So you were practically a squib your first year. You'll patiently take a back seat to the Boys Who Lived, take a few for the team, and bag a Horcrux to save the situation. Then become a super-famous professor at Hogwarts. It could be worse! Remember, it isn't that you couldn't have been the boy from the prophesy, it's just that tons of circumstances outside your control made them pick the other one. And for what it's worth, I'm currently quite anti-social in my current MA program, and yet I've managed to be the only one going on to a PhD. So I think Harry Potter references aren't a deal breaker.

This was my experience as well. They even had waitlisters at their recruitment weekend. This was two years ago.

I swear the consumer/producer of knowledge thing used to be on Columbia's art history webpage. But it is a very good point and there has been a lot of good advice in this thread. Certainly people from top 20 art history programs get jobs and can be successful, so widen your consideration and then focus again when the time comes to apply, not on Ivy names but on good fits for you.

The same thing happened to me when I applied the first time (I'm also in art history). I got an internship, did an MA, retook the GRE, and this time I've been much more successful. I cast a focused, rather than wide, net and I looked at things like adviser fit and success of graduates from the program rather than prestige/name. I was really discouraged the first time and very depressed about it, so I completely understand how you feel about it and I wanted to just give up a million times but if I was honest with myself, there were things I could have done differently (better SOP, etc) that I just needed a little more time and training to improve.

No. For one thing, an acceptance without funding is not a great position to be in. For another, these programs are inundated with applications competing for fewer spots. They have to make hard and fast lines somewhere, and GREs are one way of culling the numbers. Finally, even if the department doesn't use GRE scores as cutoffs, graduate divisions do.

My mistake. Apologies. Thanks for pointing it out. I still feel like my post apropos, but to StarlaJane's (and it seems that most of this thread shifted to her points, anyway).

Fairy floss

It wasn't the original poster who expressed anger for what was perceived as bad advice? Because I'm pretty sure it was.

People are fleeing back to grad school under the false assumption that it's somehow a good way to ride out the economy. Coupled with diminished financial resources in the programs and you have the most difficult few years for grad apps there ever was. I even read an article, maybe in the NY Times, that people see the humanities as more insulated from the economic crisis than, say business, so they're going back for PhDs in English rather than MBAs or something. I have no idea if that's true. I will say, however, that I do not think the original poster's anger is entirely unjustified. I know I had the same experience two years ago and I was definitely frustrated with the advice I'd been given and the attitude that I was somehow guaranteed to get into one of the nine PhD programs I applied to (I didn't). As a somewhat naive undergraduate in a relatively small program, I didn't know. I thought I was doing the right thing by talking to my professors and trusting their advice and I took my lead from their attitude. I was absolutely blind-sided and crushed by the sweeping rejection. In hindsight, I think if they had realistically appraised the situation, they might have advised me more conservatively but you know, I was (still am) a hard worker, a great student, extremely driven, and producing good work. I am absolutely flattered that they believed in me. But you know what else? My GRE scores were average, my undergrad institution isn't super prestigious, and I was a transfer student with spotty community college transcripts from moving so often. I sent out grad applications and a month later the economy collapsed. Whoops! I came very, very close at one good program (more from my letters of rec than anything else, I'm sure) but in the end, I had to go for an MA and try again. And this time it's working out for me, but I was significantly more conservative and this time I knew how to advise myself. I think what the original poster and I are trying to say is that as an undergraduate, I didn't even know what I didn't know, and I expected my advisers to fill me in, not to give me answers, but to make sure I knew which questions I should be asking. So I do not think it is unreasonable to expect realistic advice from them.

You have to assume that people who were accepted there probably were accepted elsewhere. So it can lead to admission as things shift around. You would think they'd come up with a better system, though. It feels like the top handful in your field hold everyone's fate in their hands while they make their decisions, and the rest of us hang on the waitlist and hold onto our other offers, where their waitlisters are suffering through the uncertainty, and so on. Then, you freak out and accept what you have by April 15, only to get accepted from a waitlist right after, when it's too late for you to do anything about it. Inefficient.

Things to consider - 1) Where are you ranked in the waitlist? 2) Will you receive a funded offer if you're accepted? Will that be as good as the prestigious fellowship you've been offered? 3) Ignoring the rank of the programs for a second - what do their graduates actually go on to do? Which is more closely aligned with what you ultimately want to do? 4) Can you talk to some profs and grad students in the program where you're waitlisted? Maybe some of your questions will be answered without having to visit.

People use FB for different things. My friends and family live all over the world, it would be impossible to keep in touch with everyone on a regular basis. But we still want to know what's going on with one another. FB is a really easy way to do that. Who are you guys friending that you are uncomfortable with them seeing that you're in Madrid or accepted to graduate school or engaged?

I'm just making some observations on what I have noticed about this process, having gone through it before. I'm also in graduate school. And yes, I am making observations (sorry, I wouldn't call them assumptions) that reflect on me - I try to be more practical about graduate school and what it is. It's all very romantic and dramatic to have this grand, profound decision to make that everyone is hanging on but I don't think it's very practical or realistic. I'm sorry you thought they were jerks but A) creating their cohort isn't, surprisingly, about you (this is a general note) and how many days were you going to congratulate yourself on having five offers before you turned it down?

I am going to say this as nicely as possible. When you know you're rejecting an offer, you need to just do it. Other people are waiting for you to make up your mind. I know it's fun to be the center of the universe and do I ever understand how self-absorbed this process makes a person but taking months to make a decision, even a complicated one such as this, reads as immature to me. Like, did you really never consider these possibilities? You've had plenty of time to research them and ponder them in the abstract.