Samuel: haha yeah it's pretty crazy! um i looked around here on gradcafe and people were talking about how it can be difficult to access professors at UChicago for M.A students, and how because its a one year programme you have to be on top of your game from the start. But I spoke yesterday to an alumnus from my undergrad uni who went through the MAPSS programme herself and loved it, and her take on this was that professors are going to be a bit hard to access anywhere--at any uni the PhDs will come first, and she thought Chicago was actually much better than most universities about this problem. i don't know too much about NSSR in this sense, so i don't know if this problem exists there. After talking to her, i'm probably angling more towards the UChicago programme, because their strength in South Asian studies is pretty unbeatable and i'm not sure that it's one of New School's strong points. Other than that i think the whole 2 years/1 year thing is what's giving me a bit of pause here because doing an entire M.A in one year is crazy intense and sounds kind of scary haha--at New School I'd have 2 years so maybe a bit more breathing space and time to explore a little before I write my thesis. But then I do have a fairly specific research interest, so it may not end up mattering too much. That's my current thought process about this anyway, would love to hear your input!
