condivi

A lot of professors have a policy of not meeting with students until they are admitted, so don't take it personally if they do not respond to your enquires. It's worth writing to them, but don't write them off if you don't hear back.

Apply to the PhD program. Usually, if you don't get in but they see potential, they will admit you to the MA program as a consolation prize, and you can make your decision then--though I would not recommend an unfunded MA unless you or your parents have the money to fund it yourselves (for all the reasons you can read about in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, the Professor is In, etc...).

Your efforts are better spent writing a really good personal statement and writing sample. Your GRE scores matter the least in the application process, and your verbal score is not so bad so I wouldn't worry so much about it.

It's a different system. When you're in the PhD program at Courtauld, you're only writing the dissertation (that is, if you're not working any other jobs to fund your studies), whereas in the US a PhD program typically consists of two years of coursework (after which you get an MA), one or two of teaching, and three to four of writing the dissertation.

Uh, Williams is in the NE! And I wouldn't discount it out of hand, because, as has been mentioned, they do offer some funding. I'm afraid you'll have a hard time finding programs that will let you enroll in an MA program and, then, if you feel like it, continue to the PhD; some of the less prestigious programs require you earn an MA first and then require you to apply to the PhD program after. That might be one route--though I'm not sure how competitive it is. Make sure you think long and hard about why you want an MA and what you hope to do with it. If you're not totally committed and highly talented, you shouldn't even be considered a PhD for all the reasons you can read about in the chronicle of higher ed, etc.

I would consider it just below Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Yale (in no particular order). It is one of the best programs, and gaining in reputation, but people with degrees with the schools I mentioned still dominate most of the country's AH departments.

Well, I'm not a modernist, but all are pretty good schools. Overall, I'd say Chicago probably has the best reputation now, then Penn, Northwestern, and CUNY, but that does depend on subspecialty. Beyond that, a lot depends on where you want to be and how you like the dept and the profs. They're not the best of the best, but if you do very well at those schools--publish, write a great dissertation, etc--you should be OK.

Yes--THIS! Spot on.

I don't think that is what anonymousbequest is assuming at all. I think we're both assuming, however, that you don't want to be an adjunct teaching with no benefits for $5000 a course, because, sad to say, that is the most likely course. Certainly, getting a degree from Harvard/Columbia/Yale/Berkeley/etc. won't guarantee you'll be teaching "elitist" kids at Princeton (also, what makes you think they're elitist?); on the contrary, the odds that you'd get a job like that from even the best programs are vanishingly small. And that's my point: even from the most prestigious programs, your options will be incredibly limited and your job prospects scarce--years on the job market, possibly multiple post-docs, no choice about where you'll live, etc. When a job is posted, literally hundreds apply, even to jobs in the middle of nowhere at decidedly non-elite institutions. If the hiring committee has a huge stack of apps, in most cases they will just throw out the ones from less prestigious programs, because they can, and they don't have time to go through all of them. I'm not saying it's fair. It's not--but that's the way it is, and you should go in with open eyes about the realities of the job market out there. There's been a lot of debate lately about the ethics of schools like Kansas maintaining PhD programs in the humanities: it's good for them because they get cheap labor to teach their undergrads, but then their PhD's have very poor job prospects. So: you should totally do what you want, and you can of course have a happy career coming from a place like Kansas, but know you'll have a tough road ahead of you, and don't kid yourself about just how tough it will be. If you want to go down that road, I can't say it's the smart decision--and many would agree with me (just look at the chronicle of higher education)--but some decisions come down to other things.

I see your PhD acceptance was Kansas. I would think very carefully before deciding to go there. What is their placement record? I've been around for a while, and I've never met a Kansas PhD student in AH with a prestigious fellowship, or a professor at a major university with a degree from there. Honestly, I would not recommend going to any school not in the top 10. Even the next tier I would think twice about. Kansas is even below that. The job situation is rough and not getting better. And though it's not fair, prestige matters--a lot. I would say get an MA and improve your skills first, if you can afford it. If you can't, maybe you should reevaluate your plans, at least if you plan on getting a tenure track job or a curatorial job, because the truth is, the odds aren't good if you're coming from a place like Kansas.

I'd say about half of my POIs didn't respond to my emails, including some who eventually accepted me. Don't worry about it. They're busy people, and some have a policy of not responding. Don't read too much into it.

Publications are not at all important, and at this point in your career no one expects them. In fact, I would strongly recommend not publishing anything until you're well into your PhD program. You will probably come to regret them later on--who wants their juvenilia floating around? If your writing sample is good, that's all you need, but even that needn't be necessarily "publishable." Mine certainly wasn't.

I'm sorry, but their record for placing graduates doesn't seem to me all that good to me. http://www.brynmawr.edu/gradgroup/alum.html A quick google search of the people at some of the "name brand" schools here reveals that many aren't in tenure track jobs; the rest either are in no name schools or, even worse, don't seem to have jobs. Furthermore, I've been around for a while now, and I've heard of or met very few of their students getting the most prestigious fellowships--CAVSA, Kress, MET, etc. I'm not saying Bryn Mawr isn't a good program, and that the professors aren't highly regarded, and that the students aren't smart. What I am saying, though, is that in this job climate, you're doing yourself a major disservice by not going to a top 10 school. This may not seem important now--you'll be the exception, you'll say--but this is really something to consider. Now, if you're doing this for yourself, and money isn't a consideration, then you'll surely get a good education at Bryn Mawr, or schools of similar relative prestige.

It's not a bad program, but quite small...and certainly not what it used to be. If you have dreams of getting a tenure-track job at a top school or being a curator at a major museum (which goes for any school not in the top 10), not to mention if you'd mind the absence of a sizable graduate community, I'd think twice.

I would say make sure you don't ask them anything you could get from the website or the dept administrator (to whom you should direct all questions about the nuts and bolts of the programs, because they are the ones who really know what's going on). Not only will such questions--I, for example, would not ask them about TA/RA load--annoy them but they probably won't even know the answers to the more technical ones. Make sure you read their latest work and read about what they're up to next, and ask them what directions their work is taking. Describe your interests and ask them if they think it'll be a good fit. Ask them if they have questions for you (some will; some won't). Ask them about what kind of work their current students are doing. Ask them anything that'll help you make a decision and show that you're smart and interested. It's not easy--I always found this the weirdest part of the process--but try to make a good impression.

For the PhD, I don't think internships really matter. Professors care about your academic work--your potential to be a productive scholar. Pushing paper around for a gallery won't help you, and if you're not getting paid then I would say don't do it. Now, if you can work for a museum and do real work--i.e. research, maybe some writing--then that might be useful. Especially if you can get a good rec from a curator you worked closely with. But that kind of internship should be paid. As said above, getting a research language (or two) as good as you can will help you stand out most.

I don't think it really matters. At this stage of your career, you wouldn't have done enough to have a real academic CV. That's fine. In any case, I wouldn't recommend writing short paragraphs. What you say you did should work well.

When I was thinking about grad school, my professors told me (and I think it's sound advice) only get a PhD if you can imagine doing nothing else. Try other options first. I think you owe it to yourself to try this gallery position, if it interests you at all. The job market for 18th-century specialists is not good. If you can be happy working in a gallery, you'll have the satisfaction and security of having a real job and salary now, as opposed to 6-10 years of grad study, plus 2-4 years of post-docs, plus who knows how many years of adjunct positions before you find a tenure track job in God knows where. If you decide later that your true passion lies in the 18th century and that you must study it in grad school, then you certainly won't have burned any bridges. As long as you have research experience in the eighteenth century from undergrad, working for a couple years in a gallery won't hurt your application. In fact, it might help it, since you'll be able to say definitively, maturely, that studying the 18th century is what you really want to do.

Hmmm...well, first of all, make sure you really want to go to grad school. I'm sure (I hope!) you've been told all of this, but make sure you know it: there are very, very few jobs out there (the odds are that you won't get a tenure track job, plain and simple; and even if you do, you will probably have to move to middle of nowhere Iowa or Kentucky for your first job. Doing pompier painting makes you even less employable; it had a moment 20 years ago, but I think it's less desirable now, but if you write something spectacular you'll be able to stand with all of those gericault and manet scholars out there), you will delay adulthood until your mid-30s (or later--I don't know how old you are), accumulating no savings or benefits along the way, as other people your age are beginning to become real adults and able to support families, and you have a lot of catching up to do (esp. learning languages). If that sounds OK to you, then I would say: First, it seems you're not ready to apply directly to a PhD program, so apply to MA programs. The programs you list are good, but for an MA it doesn't matter too much where you go, though Courtauld and Williams (especially) will give you a leg up. Just make sure not to go into debt--that will haunt you for a very long time. Second, you MUST learn french if you want to do Pompier painting, or any kind of French painting; this will make or break a PhD application; it will also greatly help your MA app. So getting cracking NOW. Third, your grades aren't great, it's true, and you'll be competing with very smart kids from the Ivies for a spot at the top schools, but your letters and your writing sample matter most, so don't get discouraged. Hope that helped!

I don't think you could wrong either way--I know people in both departments, and they seem generally pretty happy. I assume you're not doing Italian painting, because neither has an Italian Renaissance specialist on the faculty at the moment (though I also understand Harvard is about to hire an early modern Spanish specialist). If you're doing non-Italian European, I've heard that Christopher Heuer at Princeton did not get tenure, so he will be leaving--something to keep in mind. The other early modernists at Harvard and Princeton all have very different approaches and personalities, so I think it depends on how you get along with them, what you think of the department's culture, and of course the surrounding town. Talk to the grad students, and talk to as many as you can, because there's always one sour (or for that matter overly enthusiastic one) in the bunch. Congrats and good luck!

Hard to say without knowing how "not amazing" this second MA program is, but for the MA the prestige of the program is not nearly as important as it is for the PhD. Do you like the faculty there? Do you think you'll get along with your advisor? If you write a good thesis, then you should be Ok for getting into top PhD programs. But if you have doubts, look into their placement record--that'll be the best indication. In any case, you don't want to go into debt for an art history MA, so if that's the only choice you have for sure, your decision has kind of already been made for you!

The defensiveness, the insecurity, the misplaced aggression and personal attacks! Oh, academia.

There is no reliable ranking of Art History programs out there. A lot of it depends on your specialty. But as a rule, I think most people would agree that the very top include, in no particular order: Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, Chicago, Hopkins, IFA. But there are other good programs out there, some of which may be stronger in some areas than the ones listed above. The best is to talk to your professors. They'll have the best idea.

I can only imagine how difficult it is to be a person of color in such an overwhelmingly white field. I'm disturbed (and, sadly, only a little surprised) you've been the victim of so many "micro-agressions" from students and guest speakers. May I ask what kind of harassment you've faced? Often people are insensitive without realizing it–I mean, grad level humanities depts. are some of the most PC places on the planet, and the majority of people (I hope) don't mean to be condescending/insensitive/racist. Perhaps if you shared what kind of behavior you've had to face, people would have more awareness of this problem and take steps to avoid being (perhaps) unknowingly offensive. As for how to gage how safe a school feels, the best way is to ask other students, especially other students of color. Don't just ask students in the dept., but also other students in grad student organizations. Ask around, and trust your gut.

Hmmm...except for a few local museums, if you want to be a curator at any level you'll a PhD these days. With an MA, you could do museum ed, but even some of those people have PhDs now!