fortiesgirl

German annieca, kotov, Kelkel, Ganymede18, grlu0701, hbeels (veeeeeery rusty), Orient, ticklemepink Spanish annieca, crazedandinfused, Ganymede18, grlu0701 (kind of), CageFree, StrangeLight, pudewen (very rusty and basically useless to my work), ticklemepink (reading), fortiesgirl French theregalrenegade, Ganymede18, CageFree (reading, can speak a bit), StrangeLight, Safferz (Franglais), hbeels, sandyvanb, fortiesgirl Hebrew uhohlemonster, crazedandinfused (ktzat), ticklemepink Italian fortiesgirl (reading, can speak a bit) Latin Kelkel, Ganymede18 Greek Ganymede18 (New Testament) Russian ticklemepink (really, really basic), ReallyNiceGuy Polish runaway Romanian kotov Japanese kyjin, pudewen (sort of, it's in process) Portuguese CageFree (reading), StrangeLight (reading, swearing), fortiesgirl (reading, some comprehension) Hungarian StrangeLight (swearing only) Somali Safferz Arabic Safferz (reading), Orient (MSA) Chinese pudewen (modern and classical) Turkish orient (modern an ottoman) Persian Orient (reading) Yiddish ticklemepink

Well, what would that make you for having come up with such an original master plan? You are too much!

Not sure if this was directed at me, but in the event that it was.... I taught full-time while earning my M.A., so my school district paid for my degree in full. I had to stick with the district for one year after completing the degree, but that wasn't an issue because it was an awesome district to begin with and I loved my job. It took me longer three years (taking 2 courses per semester) and one year for researching and writing the Master's thesis, but I have no graduate school debt. Yeah, the price tag was daunting.

If one professor and the fact that she perhaps had an "off day" is the only reason for your decision, then I would definately say go with School A. Not all faculty make personal connections with their students right off the bat (as with all relationships in life), and it goes without saying that we all have different personalities and idiosyncracies to deal with in academia. You already acknowledged in your post that this person was "potentially exhausted" at the end of entertaining people of a three day conference (which, according to your post, she had planned by the way). I wouldn't say that you should trust your instincts based on the reaction of one person who may have been physically, emotionally, and mentally drained. I think you really need to evaluate the situation based on how her other students view her and the other aspects of the program, compared with those of program B. Good luck in your decision.

I've heard the same thing--from academics affiliated and not affiliated with NYU. I'm not sure if the profs at NYU frown upon internal applicants applying, but I've definately heard time and time again (from academics outside the university) that it's pretty much well understood that once you earn a terminal MA at one university, it's "time to move on" and pursue doctoral work at another institution.

Thanks for the tip! Given my interest in transnational history and empire, I am in the process of planning an independent study for the fall and one of the faculty members recommended Cruz. Perhaps I will contact him.

If I'm not mistaken, your program requires a Master's thesis in lieu of a comp exam. Some MA programs require a thesis whereas others require a comp exam. Some allow the candidate to choose depending on whether or not they are tracked for a Ph.D., i.e., doctoral track candidates would opt to write a thesis whereas terminal M.A. candidates would opt to take the comps. This program in particular is not Ph.D. tracked but that should not prevent you from applying to doctoral programs in the future if you wish to do so. I'm pretty well-acquainted with this info because I did my previous grad work at NYU and took some courses in their French lit department. I wrote an M.A. thesis and am now headed off to do my doctoral work in the fall. I was accepted to a number of programs, so I would venture to say that no, not taking an exam does not make your degree any less valuable to a potential employer. I pasted the requirements for your MA project below in case you haven't read it. Case in point--I taught French for four years with my degree (after having taken the Praxis exam for teaching-- and I got my teaching license while teaching in the process). I think writing the thesis was a great experience and an invaluable stepping stone that paved the way now that I want to progress toward doctoral work in Modern French history. Best of luck to you in Madrid or as they say buena suerte! What is the M.A. project? The M.A. project is a substantial piece of original scholarly work that students begin working on in the Research Methods Seminar in the fall and complete in the spring and/or summer. Completed under the guidance of an advisor from the faculty, the M.A. project gives students an opportunity to demonstrate expertise in their chosen area of research.The topics of the research projects area are as varied as the interests of our students.Typically taking the form of a 40-60 page research paper, M.A. projects may also consist of an undergraduate-level teaching unit, a commented translation, or a piece of original creative work in the field of Hispanic studies.All students present their research at the NYU in Madrid Graduate Research Symposium in April.

I officially accepted an offer from the University of Delaware yesterday. I was really impressed with the cohort of students, faculty, and overall program when I visited the school a few weeks ago.

I agree with this. The first two times I took the GRE my scores were pretty awful. I scored in the 500s for both verbal and quantitative, and I'm pretty good with languages so it didn't make much sense. I practiced quite a bit for my third try, and I raised my verbal to the 95% and my quantitative to 620. For me it wasn't that I didn't know the vocab (but I learned even more!!) but that I always picked the wrong answer choice among the two similar answer choices. I really worked on my strategies, especially for the reading comp section and the analogies, which I find to be god-awful sections. It takes many classes to raise a GPA. I'm not sure that a few classes would make that much of a difference. You could try enrolling as a non-marticulating student somewhere and taking a grad class and then having that transcript transfer. That way, you should show your credibility that you are capable of doing graduate level work.

Who told you that you can't begin a grad program at 30? I will be turning 30 in October and I was just accepted to 3 PhD programs this year. This is my second round of admissions. I would say that you absolutely DO NOT have to give up. And like many others have posted here, you don't have to put your life on hold in the process. I also have a son and a a wonderful husband who is very supportive of my ambitions (we've been down the grad school route before so he knows the deal). I have also found that there are a wide range of ages in grad school, with people of all different backgrounds and family situations. I really wasn't expecting that--at 29 I thought I'd be one the oldest entering students, but that was far from the case, as ka pointed out. Keep your chin up!

I know others have mentioned this, but I would examine the requirements for both MA and PhD programs. Take a look at the language requirements in particular. Keep in mind that (for most schools--at least for the ones to which I applied) language exams must be taken by the time you take your comps, so that leaves you about three years into your doc program to take them. I'm not trying to inundate you here with language requirements, but if you have to master Latin, Greek, French or German, and possibly Biblical Hebrew for a program, it will be nearly impossible to do that (if you're starting from scratch for all of them) within three years of starting a PhD program if you are also taking coursework. I say this because I had a few different areas of history that I wanted to explore/pursue for my PhD following the completion of my MA: Eastern European/Judaic studies, Modern European, and Atlantic World. Once I began looking at the language requirements for EE/J, I realized that it would be pretty impossible for me to develop the reading competancy I would need in Polish, Hebrew, Russian, and German in time for me to take the exams. I nixed that idea pretty quickly and began to focus on my other two since I had pretty much equal desire to explore all three at the time--and my interests meshed well with my language fluency in French and Spanish. I've studied Polish and Russian but it would take quite some time for me to develop the level of reading proficiency I'd need to read archival material, not to mention that I'd have to learn two other new languages as well. If you begin on an MA, then you could really explore your options and see if Ancient or Renaissance history is the way you want to go. Best of luck to you.

Agreed

You will most likely be admitted. Exactly what fuzzylogician said. It's basically the department's way of communicating the decision to you early because things can get held up on the Grad School end. Congrats!

The letter did not indicate that it was from the Advancement/Alumni Relations/Fundraising/Supporters committee, though I did think of that at first. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions in how to handle this matter. I do intend to write the school a tactful letter and explain what happened with regard to admissions and that they should remove my name from their mailing list. After much consideration I've decided not to post the name of the institution in a public forum. It could have been an honest mistake. Yeah, I know I'm really giving those tactless and greedy bastards the benefit of the doubt here. I pm-ed those of you who have that option available and who wanted to know the name of the school.