Hey all, I'm new to the forum, and, having done a little wandering around the English thread, I joined in the hopes that someone out there could help with some information. I was rejected by NYU's English PhD program about a month ago, and last week I received an invitation to apply to the Draper Program--what appears to be a pretty interesting interdisciplinary/humanities thing at NYU. (From what little I could gather, last round applicants who are ultimately rejected have their info forwarded to Draper). It's actually a bit eerie how accurately they assessed my potential interest in the program, based on my SOP (I'm into social theory and science studies, within the rubric of literature). I'm interested, but I live in California, and moving out to NYC would represent a significant effort to do an expensive MA, preparatory to reapplying (all my app's were rejected this year, like a lot of other people's). I could shoulder the debt, and my wife is a native New Yorker, but I don't want to go unless it can serve the dual purpose of acting as a form of entree once I start looking at PhD's again.
My ultimate question is then a request for information regarding the program. I'm aware of the rhetoric surrounding interdisciplinary degrees and the sense that they exist solely to create revenue for universities; it's primarily why I'm asking for info specific to the program, rather than just the obvious criticism of institutional greed. Has anyone here gone through Draper, or known someone who has? Or, perhaps, does anyone know what the upward mobility of past students is like, and where they end up? My own interests are primarily theoretical, and something like this could provide me with a good footing in the direction I started going in during my upper divisions. But it has to provide an equal amount of utility for the chaos it would put my family through. Thanks for any help.