Seeking

Ideally you should look for another professor or another person in professional journalism for whom you may have worked. I don't think a TA's letter will be taken seriously.

Applications usually have a separate section for awards and distinctions and you can mention your awards in art activities there. It will add strength to your application. As for what you should emphasize, it depends upon where you are applying and how the Art History program is oriented there. There are schools where Art History and Fine Art are parts of the same Department. The courses emphasize artist-specific styles and techniques in various genres. In such places, your emphasis on your studio work will be an asset. A look at the courses and the professors' research interests can show if the department leans towards artistic styles and techniques. On the other hand, there are schools where Art History takes a more interdisciplinary approach, making connections with subjects such as Archaeology, History, Religion, Literature, Sociology, Performing Arts etc. Professors' research interests and courses show a leaning towards more broader contextual interpretations of art. It's not to say that style and technique are not taught in these places, but there is more stress on other aspects of studying art history. In such places you'll need to demonstrate your ability to study art from a more interdisciplinary perspective. You have to tailor your CV according to the place where applying. Perhaps you will be more comfortable at schools in the first category, but of course it's only my impression. I may be wrong.

Ok, go ahead and apply and see how it goes.

To begin with you'll need to have completed 6-7 courses in the new area with good grades at the time of application. Your writing sample should be in energy research. Besides, you should be able to link your Masters project with what you want to do in PhD - which I assume is possible.

If you don't have money you should apply to a funded PhD. It's easier to get funding in PhD than in MS. Look for funding information on university websites. Those who have funding for International candidates clearly say so. Make sure your grades are good, you have three people in your field willing to write a strong recommendation letter for you and see what kind of writing sample and personal statement your program requires. Work on those. Get Good scores on the GRE and TOEFL/IELTS.

Dfindley, You need to understand some pragmatic aspects - You may be right about points, ranks etc taking precedence over pure research, but that's how it is and the Graduate School is not going to change because an applicant says so. If you want to get into their program, play by their rule. When you actually reach the Professorial rank, you can begin to change the system your way. But as long as you are on the receiving end, you can't change the system. Till the time you become a Professor, you have to play by their rules, or you don't get there - it's as simple as that. 1) So, I would say, postpone your application till next year. This year, take a couple of non-degree credit courses in your area of research and do well in those courses. This will also give you the two more referees you need at the moment and you will be able to show better grades in the area you want to research in. 2) Further, it's true that your book may be ground breaking, but the academia looks at the publisher's name on the front page before reading the book. Therefore, the suggestion given above is really good that you should send your book to two professors in your discipline to get comments about how to revise your book for a publication from a well-known publisher. Revise the manuscript according to those comments and send it for publication to a well-known publisher. If your book is ground breaking, some or other good publisher will definitely publish it. You may have to contact several publishers before you get accepted by one and you may have to face rejection by a few, but you'll make it if your book is good. Tell the publishers that you have sought comments from scholars and have revised the book following those comments. Use this year to do all this. Then, next year you will be ready to apply to Graduate school with a book accepted for publication by a well-known publisher, with better grades and with 3 references. 3) Finally, you should take into account the fact that your ideas may be innovative, but it's not possible to elaborate upon all your innovative thoughts in a 2 page personal statement, which is the most important part of the application. Writing sample also helps, but they usually don't have the time to read through every sentence in depth to understand the innovative thoughts that have gone into making of the writing sample. They have about 300 applications to go through. They will most probably skim through your writing sample to see if you have the potential to write academic papers and will look at your personal statement. So, I would say apply next year to whatever school in the US you want to go to, but also apply to UK and some European universities. This is because in Europe you have to submit a full-fledged research proposal instead of a personal statement. A research proposal will give you the opportunity to highlight your theoretical arguments and to discuss how you want to further explore these ideas. besides, in a research proposal you also have to show how your research is innovative and ground breaking. Because of the nature of the application format in Europe, I think your application will be more successful in Europe than in the US. And if you apply to top ranked universities in UK and in EU, you can get a job in the US with that degree.

I guess most Sociology departments would have a political-religious sociologist who would like to advise that kind of research. Applying to Sociology would also make your application stronger since you have a Masters in Sociology.

This link gives some very useful information about transition from Graduate School to an academic job - https://career.berkeley.edu/phds/phdtransition.stm Comments about experiences from recent Graduates/About to Graduate and faculty at various levels are welcome.

I read recently that if there are on an average 12 candidates coming for the job you applied to, then you need to apply to 12 positions to land a job. Anyhow, the economy seems to be looking up now, so you may land a job if you keep on trying.

It varies by the school. In many schools you have to pass a proficiency test after a year of study and are required to translate modern text of moderate difficulty level that discusses a topic from the discipline taught in the Department. That translates into Intermediate level proficiency. It's difficult to believe that a person could have passed Italian exam after 4 days of study. They may have meant these words just by way of encouragement. Or perhaps in this school it's that easy.

You already have a BSc in the subjects you are teaching from North America. So, repeating Undergrad courses doesn't make sense. This could be the reason for your Undergrad application getting rejected. If you want to get a feel of the program and the professors etc, you can enrol in a couple of Master's level non-degree credit courses or a certificate course if it's available over the summer and see how it goes. These credits will also help you in the application process when you apply to Grad school.

Ideally, it should cost next to nothing. You should join a program that gives you full funding. There is no point in doing a PhD from a university that is not funding your PhD, because most well-respected PhDs are funded, especially in STEM. As for the Criteria and eligibility factors, look at the university websites. Type "List of US Universities" in Google to get the entire list.

They won't look for specific details about how many hours/classes a week you have done a particular course. They know that universities in different countries have different systems. Many countries don't even have the hours/credit system. What they will look for is that you should have done at least 6-7 Art History courses in your undergrad level and at least a couple of them should be in the area that you want to study at the Grad level. It will help if you've got good grades in these courses. Music theory is not necessarily unrelated. In many Asian cultures visual and performing arts are inter-related. There are paintings based on music. I don't know if this is the case in Japan, but you don't have to talk about Music theory in your personal statement. Just focus on your primary area of research. Of course, wherever you apply, make sure that there is a professor there who specialises in your primary area of research.

In the US, you get the maximum benefit from your Undergrad and Grad level education if you can orient most of your research paper assignments along the area you find most interesting and possibly you would like to research in at Grad school. Your courses in other disciplines can be supporting to this primary area of interest. In short, your study should be focused. Scattering the focus often leads to problems at a later stage. So, if you are interested in modern Japanese art and visual culture with secondary interest in music, it would be better for you to develop this area further. Perhaps, you can work more in Japanese visual culture from the modern and contemporary period for the time being. Taking this as the general area, you can decide upon an artist, a group of objects, or an idea that you would like to work on. For example, in some American universities a course on Art and Body in contemporary Western culture is taught. Within this course, one can take a group of paintings by a particular artist from the 20th/21st century and study issues of gender, power relations, or identity and explore the representation of the human body in these paintings from these perspectives. It's not always necessary that similar questions would be relevant for a non-Western culture such as Japan. But this is only an example of how one goes about devising a topic for one's assignment. Taking an analogy from above - if you are interested in Modern Japanese visual culture for example, you can select a few examples of paintings, objects, sculptures, photographs etc from the modern Japanese culture and study how the human bodies are represented in the examples you have taken, what particular questions are relevant in studying these images, if it is possible to study what questions were important for the artist while making these works of art, what it means for the Japanese society for that particular time and place, whether these representations are influenced by the contemporary Western aesthetic sense and you can even question if it is at all relevant to explore Japanese art from a perspective of studying the human body and why. I would also like to underline that while exploring these questions, at many US schools the study of style and technique involved in art making remains very important, as also the styles of different artists. So if your courses deal with fine art, this method may appeal to you. However, it may not appeal much to those who are interested in methods that don't deal much with artist-specific style and technique. Above is just an example. You don't have to follow it. But you can use it as a guide to devise your own topic.

Take a chance and apply. You should get it.

Naoko, There is a vast diversity in the kinds of assignment topics Undergrads and Grads get at different levels. If you can outline what you've been used to in Japan in your Art History program, I can tell you more about it.

MD152, Certainly a slightly better Quant score would be good. But if you are applying to non-Quant intensive programs, you can take a chance and apply - if the rest of your application is strong. Make sure your SOP and writing sample are great.

S/he has already signed up for the 6th time and has posted another thread about it.

I guess it's rather late to re-take anyway for Dec deadlines. Schools with late deadlines will most likely accept a Quant score of 153. You can write to the schools where you're applying and ask if your Quant score is likely to keep you out. Point it out to them that you've taken Quant-intensive courses relevant to your program and did very well in them. If they specifically say that they are looking for higher than 153, then drop them and apply elsewhere. If they don't specifically say this, take a chance and apply. Highlight in your personal statement that you have taken statistical courses relevant to your program and have done well in them. Make sure that your writing sample and personal statement are great.

GRE doesn't test research potential - and that determines how likely one is able to succeed in Grad school, not the GRE scores. The tests administered in undergrad levels are very different from the GRE and in any case, Grad level classes rarely have tests. So, there is no point in having the GRE on the presumption that it tests a candidate's potential to do Graduate work. The truth is that it doesn't in any way, because it doesn't test research potential or skills. When you write long papers or dissertations in undergrad level, you are developing research skills to some extent. It's not as if Undergrad courses don't train people in research skills at all. besides, every candidate to Grad school has to submit a writing sample, which demonstrates research skills - this is precisely why writing sample is one of the most important parts of the graduate application. But regarding GRE - it doesn't test either research skills or research potential and hence, is not relevant to Graduate research at all. It's just a filter that has been developed to keep the flood of candidates out, nothing more. And candidates have to spend a lot of money and undergo unnecessary trouble to test themselves on this filtering mechanism, which is unfair. Personally, I feel General GRE would make much better sense if it was divided into 3 types of tests for STEM, Social Sciences and Humanities - STEM GRE should have highly advanced quantitative section and a verbal section that tests general English writing and analytical skills, Social Sciences GRE should test more evolved English writing and analytical skills with Quant section dealing with only statistical analysis, not the high level maths required in STEM disciplines and the Humanities GRE without the Quant section, but testing highly advanced English writing and analytical skills. Within this, candidates for Biological Sciences who don't have to deal with advanced Maths should test on the Social Science GRE. Further, analytical passages should draw from within the STEM, Social Sciences/Biological Sciences and Humanities disciplines for the 3 GREs. They should test innovative and critical thinking rather than the way they are designed now. Current "One size fits all" model doesn't make any sense at all and it wastes a lot of time, energy and money of the candidates. If the GRE has to make any sense, it should follow at least the above 3-GREs model.

No they don't. Most people's GPA and GRE scores don't line up. I repeat - GRE is an expensive nuisance that has nothing to do with Graduate Research. But yes, taking it for the sixth time is unseemly.

Well, if we think that way then almost everyone's education fails them since almost everyone has to prepare for the GRE after going through all the Undergraduate work and the Undergraduate work doesn't prepare anyone for the GRE. But I think this way of looking at things is to reverse the importance of academic work vis-a-vis the GRE. The point is that the aim of the Undergraduate education is not to prepare the students for the GRE. It's to prepare them for Graduate school. It's the Graduate education that is in focus here, not the GRE. Ideally, GRE should not be there at all since it is no test of research skills needed at Graduate school. GRE is essentially a dispensable filtering mechanism developed to screen candidates out of the Graduate school - and there is really no logic why the GRE should be an index of this filter. It is essentially an expensive nuisance as far as Graduate research is concerned. GRE has nothing to do with Graduate Research.

If your more recent grades are good and especially if you have done well in International Relations courses, I don't think you need to re-take those introductory level classes. If you haven't done well in quite a few Quant-intensive courses, then take a couple of Quant-intensive courses, but only if you are confident you'll do well in them. If you've done well in Quant-intensive courses in more recent years, you don't have to worry about those Ds, if your overall GPA is good.

GRE is no test of research skills, especially for Humanities disciplines.

You don't have to look at your Japanese Studies degree as "irrelevant." Rather, you can see (and explain) it as your strength because it gives you insights into another culture that you can use to develop strategies in developmental economics at a later stage in your career. It helps all the more because you got a good GPA in it. Sociology is of course, related to developmental economics.