lyonessrampant

I'm echoing a lot of the other posters, wetheplants, but I wanted to speak from my perspective having done MAPH with a partial tuition scholarship. I had a great experience, and I'm a much better scholar, thinker, and writer after it. That said, I totally regret it. I regret the debt. Going significantly into debt for a humanities MA is not worth it. I know you've said that your parents will pay for your MA, but seriously, save them 60-70K and ask them to put that toward an eventual downpayment on a house or something like that. Even setting aside who is spending that huge chunk of cash, Ph.D. programs are well aware of the cash cow reputation of programs like UC's MAPH, UVa, and NYU. If you get a tuition scholarship from one of those programs, that's a different issue. Basically, money follows money, so you want to be able to show a Ph.D. program that an MA program has invested in you financially. Just because you or your parents have paid for an MA from a top 10 program like UC doesn't mean that a program has invested financially in you. The UC cohort is huge, and they accept a ton of people largely to bankroll their Ph.D. program. Is their Ph.D. program phenomenal? Absolutely. Is their MA program? Widely divergent opinions on this both from other institutions and from people who have done MAPH. My cohort had over 100 people, and several of us went on to Ph.D. programs, some of which did include Ivies and top 20 programs, but a few high-profile placements loses its attractiveness considering that is a significant minority out of the number of MAs they produce. Sure, BC's Ph.D. program is ranked lower, but there are no rankings for MA programs, and the Ph.D. rankings do not map neatly onto MA programs. BC's program is great, they're investing in you, and there are great professors there who will help you develop as a scholar. One of the reasons that the BC prof may have been somewhat dismissive of doing the Ph.D. in the UK is that other than Oxbridge (and sometimes even then), if you want a TT job in the US, you need to get your Ph.D. here. Basically, asking to do the Ph.D. there shows that you may not know a lot about the way academia works in the US. No offense, but it sounds like you might want to do some more research on placement in terms of percentage of placements out of cohort, the places that accept people with MAs and where those MAs come from, and job prospects in the US (if that's where you want to stay) concerning where various tiers of institutions hire from. Your choice, obviously, but picking an unfunded program when you have a full-tuition offer from a great school in a great city with great scholarly resources is a horrible decision (in my opinion). Again, my opinion and I don't know you or your circumstances, but from the perspective of someone who did MAPH, didn't know hardly anything about higher education when I applied (because I was a first-generation college student), and has benefited from several years of experience, I can't say enough that following an institution's investment in you is far superior to going to a program with a prestigious Ph.D. reputation but tarnished MA one. Lastly, if you want to go to UC, doing the MA there is pretty much a 100% guarantee that you won't get in there for the Ph.D. There are exceptions (way less than 1% per cohort. . . 0% in mine), but if you really want UC, doing the MA there is a pretty good way of making sure you can't. (Don't mean to sound harsh, but I think real talk is really important.)

I think that the program will still probably pay for you to visit even if you've accepted. At my program for the last three years when I've been involved with recruitment, we have several people who have already accepted the offer but still come to the Recruitment Event and we still pay for the same amount of expenses as people who come and have not yet accepted. I think it's worth asking a grad student if you're in contact with one.

Good luck, iwontbelyveit! I hope the funding works out for you!

It is pretty common to have to pay fees, which reduce once you're ABD and have completed a certain number of credits at that level. However, all of the offers I received from Ph.D. programs included a tuition waiver. I'd definitely ask them about that because it seems strange to me a program would accept someone without at least a guarantee of a tuition waiver. I know some places do that, which I think is very unethical, but I would definitely ask for some sort of a) way to cover tuition and guarantee that tuition will be covered for some amount of time (at least 4 years). Would you be TAing or teaching in the program? This is usually how programs cover your tuition and stipend.

Is there an organized visiting weekend? I would definitely decline offers you wouldn't accept over your top choice offer. I'd decline offers until left with my top two choices and visit both of them and then decide. Edited to add that visiting top two might not be needed if you visit your top choice and love it. I visited my third and tied for first of my top three offers, and after visiting my tied for first offer, I knew it was better for me and didn't visit the other tied for first (which was a waitlist) and just accepted my top offer. Basically, visit the top one and you'll know, I think.

I would absolutely not spend more money on another MA, especially after you already paid for NYU's. I'd wait it out and apply next year to a bunch of funded MA programs. Good luck on getting a teaching job!

^Was also going to say that, but I assumed perhaps the OP was confusing Stanford as an Ivy?

Definitely. I totally planned on doing it anyway and wrote a draft of my thesis over the summer before the program and worked through it with the writing tutor for the program and my eventual advisor, but it was still nowhere near enough time to get new letters or prepare a really strong writing sample. I ended up not doing it (and actually had three years between the end of my MA and beginning my Ph.D.) and don't regret that decision at all.

There are ways around that. According to the agreement, schools can't/shouldn't rescind offers before the April 15th deadline, but quite a few programs offer extra perks for accepting earlier. It sounds like the extra $5,000 is one of those types of things, so if OP doesn't respond in 15 days, that goes away but the rest of the funding offer/acceptance would still stand. Either way, sounds like OP prefers B anyway.

^Out of upvotes, but yes. At the one-year program I did, they very, very strongly discouraged people from applying during the program for these reasons.

USNWR rankings are for Ph.D. programs. I am unaware of any rankings for MA programs. One-year MA programs (I did one) are difficult in that you do have less time to develop as a scholar and form relationships with professors. Also, one of the biggest things to avoid is paying (especially substantially) for an MA. If you can get a scholarship for at least tuition, that's good, but a funded MA even if from a program not perceived to be prestigious shows more investment in you as a scholar than a program from a flashy name brand school that just took $50,000 (or whatever) from you. Money follows money. That's why getting funding in the MA is desirable. I'm guessing the one-year programs you're referring to are probably UChicago's MAPH and/or NYU's MA. Search these threads and you'll get plenty of perspectives (on both sides) regarding these programs. After you've done that reading, you might then do a pros/cons list. My advice, though, is to ignore rank since it doesn't really matter for MAs and learn specifics about the programs. Do you get support for conference travel, where have these programs placed students in Ph.D. programs, how many have they placed in relation to cohort size (when I did MAPH there were more than 100 people in my cohort so being able to say "we've placed students at all these great places actually shows a small version of the total picture), what kind of funding do they offer, etc. The other MA threads also have some great advice.

I have a colleague who did this. He was funded, I think, but after the MA he taught at CM's partner campus in the UAE for a couple years. He made a ton of money, got great experience, travelled and then applied to Ph.D. programs and got several acceptances. That's all I know about the program, though.

On positions opening up: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Letter-to-Full-Time-Faculty/190085/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

^Yes, this. I have a lot of thoughts on this conversation, but I've been using grad cafe to distract me from finishing my second diss chapter, so I'll not weigh in, especially as allplaid has expressed many of my own thoughts. I would have just upvoted, but out of those somehow. I think it's great to have and keep having these conversations. Sadly, adjuncts and those on the margins aren't being very effective at forcing change, mainly because the supply is far too great to force change from the institutional leviathans. Unionization can help, but the institutions have ways of getting graduate students and adjuncts to stay quiet. The push to unionization has failed twice since I've been at my university. Have you followed along with the strike at U of Oregon this year? If not, google it. It helps to have tenured voices, especially those at prestigious universities, support these movements, but those voices are almost entirely absent. Hopefully more of our generation of scholars will replace those voices and speak out, but too often people forget the difficulties once they're isolated in tenure, especially at a prestigious university, and the academy in general so easily talks activism but doesn't follow through. I may be jaded, but I think change is going to mostly have to come from the inside (short of some sort of legislative fix, which, let's face it, won't come), but so many of those on the inside aren't invested in making that change happen. Anyway, great thread, and the last thing I'll say is on the subject of debt. It's hard to be inspired, creative, and motivated when you're stressed about paying your rent, buying medicine for a sick kid, or just frustrated with being an adult and still living like an undergrad. No matter how great the stipend is, you'll feel that way at some point. For people with compressed packages and carrying a 2-1 or 2-2 teaching load (I have NO idea how people do that; they're super heroes, I assume), the awesomeness of being paid to read and write about what you like gets lost under the drudgery of subsisting. There's a reason most of the great writers and artists historically have come from situations of privilege and money. It's a lot easier to express your creativity when not worrying about necessities. You'll meet people in these situations at conferences or at universities and colleges where they are adjuncting. Definitely think about Plan B (or C) to avoid getting trapped in adjuncting, but not everyone does or can, and they are used up by the educational institution. Imagine adding a massive debt burden to that situation. Some adjuncts make as little as $2000-2500 per course, and even teaching four or five courses a semester (if they can get them), they're likely around the 20k mark after taxes (if fortunate). Stretch that over 12 months and think about a $600/month student loan bill (ballpark for 60-70k debt) subtracted off the top each month. That's a pretty compelling reason to try to minimize debt. The logic of exceptionalism helps us all think we won't be in that position, but statistically, we're a lot more likely to be there than TT. ETA that not commenting obviously turned into a comment . . . yay paralipsis!

Do you want to stay and teach in the US or would you plan on returning to China (I seem to recall you saying you were Chinese on another thread; my apologies if I'm misremembering). If teaching outside the US is a plan/option, try to get information on whether rank of the US institution matters as much. Maybe it doesn't. Also, that top 25 number is pretty blurry in that different rankings have different schools in the 25-40 or 50 range, which means that outside the big-name Ivies and public Ivies, there's some slippage. As for the UMich waitlist, make sure you email them to say you're enthusiastic about the program and hopeful of an offer. Any things that you may be able to add as updating your application profile can be good to send on (papers sent out for review, conferences accepted to attend, lectures given. . .really anything that you can update since your original application). Since it is an unranked waitlist, showing interest/enthusiasm and ongoing scholarly activity might make a difference. No idea but it can't hurt. Good luck!

Transferring is actually really difficult and not often done because credits often won't transfer so you extend your coursework period. Also, I second SubmarineReflection on MAPH, which I did with a partial tuition scholarship. I had a great experience, but it isn't worth the debt. Search this forum for MAPH and you'll see threads full of debate about it. A new one pops up pretty much every year when MAPH accepts 100+ people.

Don't decline an offer you think you'd seriously consider taking, but don't waste resources for a visit (if you don't use them they can go to someone let in off the waitlist) and sit on an offer when you can't imagine taking it over another offer you already have.

^ So much this. I wish I'd been told this when I applied out of undergrad and accepted UChicago's MAPH with a partial tuition scholarship. I'd upvote you, Hypervodka, but sadly am out of them. Congrats on that clean sweep!

haha! It would definitely be okay for you to post the questions list, but here it is. Also, I'd just be honest with the programs, especially since the money they're giving you won't be enough to cover either visit individually. -PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK -Where do most people do their writing and reading? -What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office? -LIBRARY -What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed? -What are the library hours? -Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research? -Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research? -FACULTY -Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon? -Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work? -Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests? -Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well? -FUNDING -Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t? -How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships? -How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably? -Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding? -If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.) -Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips? -How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?) -COHORT -Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive? -Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey? -How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class? -Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially? -Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned? -Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice? -What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time? -I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program? -JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION -What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track? -What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed? -How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks? -Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves? -If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?) -How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications? -SUMMER WORK -What is encouraged/required? -If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer? -Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money? -Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t? -LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT -What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding? -What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it? -Given my research interests, what languages should I study? -When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.) -LOCATION REQUIREMENTS -How long are students required to be in residence? -How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?) -How is funding affected if you don’t stay? -Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program? -TEACHING -What sort of training is provided? -What types of courses do people teach? -Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp? -How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field? -How many courses do you teach per semester/year? -How many students are in your classes? -How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study? -How do students balance teaching with their own work? -Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes? -How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes? -What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them? -METHODOLOGY -Is a theory course required? -What methodology do most people use? -Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading? -Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken? -Typical graduate class and seminar sizes -What should I do to prepare over the summer? -Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me? -Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program? -Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements? -What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required? -What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating? -What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field? -Ask professors: what have you been working on lately? -Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students? -How long are class meetings? -How often do professors teach graduate courses? -Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)? -Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see? -QUALITY OF LIFE -Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in? -Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment. -What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing? -When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look? -Is it easy to find a summer subletter? -How close to campus can—and should—one live? -What grocery stores are there in town? -How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open? -What do people do to make extra money? -Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)? -Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide? -How far does the stipend go in this location?

I can't speak to Michigan specifically, but an unranked waitlist usually means that whenever a first-round admit declines an offer, the committee reconvenes to talk about the waitlisted people and decide, based on interests/professor and department needs/cohort balance, which of the waitlisted applicants best fits the opened spot. It means that it is a much less transparent and predictable process on your end, but it does mean that you've got a more equal chance at getting the offer each time a spot opens up rather than knowing that there are X number of people ahead of you. Good luck!

^Or a deserving person gets a TT offer; I wish that were true! Edited to add that once you're in a program, you'll find that your time fills SO much more quickly than you think it will. There are events to go to, speakers to go listen to, graduate student organizations/groups to be involved in, grants and things to apply for, conferences to apply for and attend, papers to revise to send out for publication, etc. Basically, your fall may look open, but I would wager that once you start, you'll find your time filling up surprisingly fast. It is unfortunate that you like your part-time job; I suppose you could always keep working there and not tell the department or see if the job would let you work there over breaks and summers and then more again if you want later once you're off that specific fellowship.

Rank matters in terms of perception of prestige, but those schools are all pretty close together, so I wouldn't give a lot of thought to rankings. I'd focus on stipend, yes, but make sure to factor in cost and quality of living. There are indicators online that you can use. Additionally, visit and see which program appeals to you most. Get information about placement rates, student support, additional funding and research opportunities, etc. The list of questions below may be helpful in terms of things to consider when weighing programs. I'd look at that list and take into account things that are personally important to you and then choose on the basis of those reasons rather than rank, especially since these three programs are all well known and ranked similarly. -PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK -Where do most people do their writing and reading? -What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office? -LIBRARY -What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed? -What are the library hours? -Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research? -Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research? -FACULTY -Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon? -Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work? -Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests? -Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well? -FUNDING -Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t? -How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships? -How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably? -Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding? -If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.) -Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips? -How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?) -COHORT -Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive? -Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey? -How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class? -Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially? -Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned? -Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice? -What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time? -I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program? -JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION -What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track? -What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed? -How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks? -Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves? -If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?) -How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications? -SUMMER WORK -What is encouraged/required? -If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer? -Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money? -Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t? -LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT -What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding? -What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it? -Given my research interests, what languages should I study? -When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.) -LOCATION REQUIREMENTS -How long are students required to be in residence? -How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?) -How is funding affected if you don’t stay? -Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program? -TEACHING -What sort of training is provided? -What types of courses do people teach? -Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp? -How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field? -How many courses do you teach per semester/year? -How many students are in your classes? -How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study? -How do students balance teaching with their own work? -Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes? -How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes? -What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them? -METHODOLOGY -Is a theory course required? -What methodology do most people use? -Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading? -Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken? -Typical graduate class and seminar sizes -What should I do to prepare over the summer? -Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me? -Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program? -Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements? -What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required? -What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating? -What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field? -Ask professors: what have you been working on lately? -Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students? -How long are class meetings? -How often do professors teach graduate courses? -Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)? -Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see? -QUALITY OF LIFE -Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in? -Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment. -What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing? -When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look? -Is it easy to find a summer subletter? -How close to campus can—and should—one live? -What grocery stores are there in town? -How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open? -What do people do to make extra money? -Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)? -Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide? -How far does the stipend go in this location?

To add some info to the Minnesota yield stats. Those include both the first round admits and waitlisted people who end up getting extended the offer. For the last three years our cohort has been 12 Ph.D. students.

Coming out of undegrad, teaching experience is neither required nor expected. For applicants with an MA, it is often needed because lots of places offer different packages for people coming from the BA and those with the MA (University of Indiana for example). In those cases, teaching experience is helpful, but that is only for certain programs and only for people with an MA.

I echo the others encouraging you not to go into that amount of debt for an unfunded MA. If you do eventually want to do the Ph.D., be aware that some people take government loans they might apply for while doing the Ph.D. Sometimes the stipend doesn't stretch far enough, your car might break down, you may have a child to support, a wedding to pay for, etc., etc. Basically, life can get in the way. This means that you don't want to be adding to 70K+ throughout a Ph.D. program. Ideally, you won't take any loans, but I added a few thousand to cover relocation expenses, fees the first semester, and some living expenses after being laid off and unemployed the previous summer with a partner who needed time to find a job and take the bar in our new location. Those few thousand add up once you add interest over the period of a Ph.D. program, even at the government loan interest rate. I did UChicago's MA with a partial (about half) tuition scholarship. I didn't know that funded MA programs existed. I was pretty oblivious about everything grad school, and while I had a really great experience at UC, probably would have given a limb to stay and do a Ph.D. there, and am a much better scholar and writer as a result, the debt WAS NOT worth it. It's a one-year program and I did some distance work for about 16 hours a week and still about doubled my undergrad debt to cover tuition, fees, books, and contribute to living expenses. This was in Chicago, which is expensive but not awful if you live on the South Side. You'll be in New York for two years; those living expenses are going to be way higher, especially at a private school, as others have pointed out. Some debt for an MA is fine, I think, especially if you have other circumstances that limit relocation, are doing it at a state school were tuition will be lower and funding opportunities will pop up, or don't accumulate a lot of debt. You've got to think about repayment. My combined undergrad and MA debt was about 10K less than what yours would be with the 10K + 60K and my monthly payments were around $500 (or maybe $600, don't remember exactly). Anyway, it was a huge amount of money for someone not making a ton of money, which is a real likelihood post Ph.D. for a year or so to manage the job market. You don't want to strap your future self so much if you can avoid it. Maybe you applied for some other MAs that fund their students or are at least much cheaper, but I can't say enough that I really, really regret the debt IN SPITE OF an amazing academic experience. If Fordham is your dream Ph.D. program, an MA there might actually disadvantage you from getting in there. A lot of private schools (and schools in general) don't take on their MA students if they want to avoid the reputation of their MA program being a feeder program. This is not the case for schools like Penn State, for instance, whose MA is often a stepping stone to their Ph.D. I don't know about Fordham, but that is something you should find out. I know you feel like you want to go to grad school right now and that this is an opportunity you'll regret passing up. I felt that way about UC, and even having had a wonderful experience there (like I said), I so wish I could go back and not do it again. A year off to focus on your application materials and apply more broadly to funded or at least mostly funded MA programs and maybe a mix of MA/Ph.D. programs would let you avoid this debt. Also, don't think that paying for an MA will guarantee you admission to a Ph.D. program. I knew a lot of people from my MAPH cohort who didn't get into Ph.D. programs. I also knew people who got multiple Ivy offers, so I don't mean to say that it will prevent you, just that it isn't a golden ticket. People from MA programs where they teach, develop their scholarship, and form strong connections with professors will be just as if not more competitive than an applicant with an MA from a seemingly more prestigious but unfunded or largely unfunded program.