cadences

Yes; I believe xypathos was thinking of the DMin when s/he was making her/his remarks on the DD. In the UK, the DD is an honorary degree too, and considered the highest honour a theology/divinity department can confer.

Hi All, I'm reviving this thread because I don't want to start a new one for my question (also about languages). I am starting an education master's soon, in which I will have about 15-18 credits of electives. I'm planning to apply to programs in Patristics after, and an (Early Christianity) professor advised me to spend my electives on Greek and Latin courses in the university's classics department because I lack formal language courses. His rationale was: 'We prefer for students to arrive with advanced language preparation so that they can take courses from the beginning [of the program] that presuppose knowledge of the languages.' My question, then, is: if I have already taught myself a language to an intermediate level, will a single third-year course be sufficient to produce paper proof of 'advanced language preparation'? I'm asking not because I want to be lazy about this, but if I can free one more elective to take, say, Intermediate Syriac instead of another third-year Greek course, wouldn't that be better? Thanks, all! Hope to glean some wisdom from y'alls on this, haha. -- cadences

This is true. One of my professors just made the same observation to me a couple of weeks ago about the newly-arrived ThM students in his seminar...

Two cents worth: in addition to what newenglandshawn has said, I think Notre Dame is a great option for HB/OT theology as well; and the best part is, they all cut their scholarly teeth on the ANE (all the HB full professors there are students of the late Frank Moore Cross, and they just hired Gary Knoppers), so you get the best of both worlds. I'd definitely try really hard to get into their MTS.

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Hi Teluog, Just a quick question - is it be a master's degree or a PhD program that you intend to apply to? I think the rules of the game change somewhat with the program in question.

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Hi MidwesternGuy, I think you should be fine. An MTS is considered a basic theological master's within the field of theological education, so it's not That competitive in comparison to a top-tier MA that admits only, say, 5-10 students each year? (Although Notre Dame is the exception here.) Your stats are fine; having strong recommendations really helps, so you're good there too; as long as your writing sample and your SOP are strong, I think you have nothing to worry about, really. Just a few thoughts: 1) Yale has two streams for their Master of Arts in Religion (they don't have an MTS): a comprehensive MAR and a concentrated MAR. The former is decidedly easier to get into, so the conventional wisdom is to apply for the former and, after you get in, transfer to the latter in your second year. Based on what I know from the various Yale students who have commented here in the past, if you have demonstrated that you have the academic prowess for the concetrated program, then switching mostly a formality. 2) You should be fine for Duke and Marquette. Duke will be more competitive, though, because everyone and their plumber applies to Duke. Oy. 3) Notre Dame is easily the most competitive among your four options, because they guarantee funding (at least full-tuition, I believe) for every admitted MTS student. So, statistically, you would be facing the same odds as though you were applying to a PhD. Hope this helps some! Good luck!

RedDoor, The best person to ask would be Bockmuehl himself, actually. It's quite standard in the UK fo potential supervisors to be contacted by prospective students to see if they are available for supervision; besides, in the UK, I believe the one who ultimately decides how many doctoral students he or she will be taking on for each year is the professor himself or herself. So, do drop Bockmuehl an email and see what happens from there. Good luck! I hope it works out!

Ok, noted. Thanks (to both of you) for the advice!

Crap, I just remembered: PTS is really big about training people for ministry and they'll want a pastoral endorsement as part of your application, so you being an agnostic might be a problem, admissions-wise. Sorry to let you down! My bad

Caveat: we've lost quite a few NT scholars recently, but we've gained Dale Allison and hired one of our PhDs, who's quite fantastic IMHO. Still, it'll take a while before the NT department becomes as solid as it was before our losses, so I thought that it's only fair to inform you of this downside.

Putting out a plug for Princeton Theological Seminary! There's the MA(TS), and we've been intentionally increasing our intake of international students of late.

As far as you can, get them for credit - I'm personally sacrificing certain thematic courses to take languages instead. From what I know, admissions committees much prefer to see formal evidence of your language proficiency, and while having a few more OT courses on your transcript might help you some during applications, having very few languages recorded down will really work against you.