AbrasaxEos

@ac40507 if you have the money to pay almost double the rent in Back Bay/SE, then yes do that, especially if you can walk to campus in 10 minutes. Dorchester isn't that bad in general, but if you can afford the $1200 in rent there isn't really much of a question in my mind. If you are trying to save your money in exchange for a less convenient commute and a slightly gritter, less manicured neighborhood, then Dorchester, depending on where it is would probably be ok (it is a pretty large area so I can't speak for the entire thing obviously).

While you may not need to do a deep dive into the critical reception of comparative projects at this very juncture, you may want to think carefully about what it is you want to compare, and to what ends. The answers to these questions are in many ways the things that have received criticism, moreso than the enterprise itself. While you probably won't find anyone chomping at the bit to replicate Eliade (everyone's favorite comparative whipping boy), there are a number of interesting projects out there that might fall under the rubric of 'comparison,' none so influential as J.Z. Smith. Not that this approach hasn't received its own fair share of critical attention, but it is not quite so roundly condemned, in that most will at least acknowledge that it comes from a deeply reflective, studiously theorized, methodology. Furthermore, it likely does not look like a traditional comparative project, wherein something is chosen from column 'a' (historically Christianity), with a reasonable doppelganger sought for in column 'b', and a subsequent 'like/not like' list drawn up. Since you don't have a ton of religious studies experience, your soon-to-begin MDiv will hopefully be excellent preparation in this area, and will allow you to read some of this work, along with the history that @marXian mentions. If it is a reasonably reputable place as you mention, I'm fairly certain that any of your professors should be able to steer you in the right directions if you mention and interest in comparison.

@jdg The unfortunate thing is that you and everyone else would love to live in a cheap area with easy T access in Boston, so $1000 is about right for a place that is in some proximity to the T. Out of the areas that @telkanuru lists, East Boston might be your best bet, as even most of the areas near the Dorchester stops on the red line are getting up close to $1000, maybe you could find something in the $800-$900 range, but not much less. Plus, with the exception of East Boston, the areas listed would actually be the few places I'd rather not be walking home through late at night in the greater Boston area. I guess the answer to your final question is probably more or less what you note, a mix of just scraping by, some parental help if possible, and if not, student loans. I had the good fortune of a partner with an extremely well paying job, so that is the unfortunately unhelpful answer from me (and I didn't even finish my degree, having recently quit to take an equally well-paying job...)

@ErmahgerdAdulting The greater Boston area is very bikeable, if a little nerve-racking at times. As already mentioned, you need to be comfortable taking the lane with cars at times, being wary of being doored, and generally have to deal with occasionally obnoxious drivers who are being dangerous. I'd say though that in general cars are pretty courteous, that bike lanes are growing more prevalent, and that I generally don't feel as though I'm taking my life in my hands while doing so. One nice plus is that in a place like Somerville, biking can really save you time and aggravation, as it is more often than not the quickest and most convenient method for getting from place to place. Yes, do get a good lock though, and remember that it gets down to single digits here in the winter sometimes. @jdg The T will work fine for you as long as you are using the trains. Even the buses aren't terrible, but later at night you have to time them correctly or you can really be sitting there waiting for a long time between them. The trains typically come on pretty regular schedules though, even later at night. if, as you say you are going into the heart of Boston, you absolutely should not try to drive there. You might find a parking spot, but trying to figure out the times when you can, can't, kind of can, and sometimes can park somewhere, even with a meter can be very difficult to figure out, and god knows nothing would wreck my day like coming out of class at 10PM to find that my car had been towed. Plus, you'll pay way more in parking fees, fines, etc. than you would if you just get a monthly pass for the T. If you are used to driving everywhere, it takes a little adjustment I won't lie, you have to work on someone else's schedule, you don't usually get front door service, there are occasionally strange, annoying humans sharing your space, etc. However, I'm confident that this would pale in comparison to trying to drive downtown and park a few times a week. As a minor note for @mmmarimba, I don't know when you last went to JP, and maybe this is just comparatively in relation to SF, but while it is on the Orange Line, it definitely is not cheap. It used to be, but it has kind of become young professional central and is actually just as pricey as anywhere (unless you are just about on the Roxbury line).

@Heather1011Heating bill is a little tough to average - do you keep your apartment hot or cold, or somewhere in the middle? Also, it will depend some on what kind of heat you have, how decent your windows are, and how efficient the heater is, and how large a space you are heating. However, not wanting to be totally annoying, let's assume you like to keep your place at a somewhat reasonable 68 degrees, have gas heat, good (not great windows), a furnace that was cleaned and updated in the last five years, and that you split your heat with 2 others in a moderately-sized apartment (~1400 ft2). Were these things being the case, I would predict your share of the heat might be in the vicinity of $200-250 total, so maybe $75 each? Perhaps you can though that this isn't terribly exact. My apartment is ridiculously well insulated, has brand new windows, a brand new furnace, gas heat, and low ceilings and despite it being quite large, the heat for last February (when it was extremely cold), was about $175. So, the moral of the story is that you ought to either find an apartment with heat included, or look carefully at all the accouterments. I have friends who had to ride huge credit card balances all winter because their apartment had a horrible, wheezing oil furnace, windows that might have been just as effective were they simply screens, such that they had to crank the heat at all times to just keep it habitable. Unfortunately, since most people move in at the end of the summer you don't figure these wonderful features out until you go to get that place warmed up on the first cold day of November. @BlackBear50 Craigslist is generally fine - that is where I've had the most luck finding apartments. Do note however that very few real estate brokers need your business in Boston, especially if you are seeking 1BR in a mutli-unit house for the cheapest rent possible. It takes a decent bit of emailing and heckling, but you'll eventually find someone who is willing to show you a few places. Also, be ready to grab a place the day you see it if you like it. There is no 'let me take a day to think it over' - if you liked it, someone else probably did too, and will have already slapped down the requisite first, last, security, and realtor's fee on it.

@marXian Don't get me wrong, not that you were getting me wrong necessarily, but I don't want to come off as suggesting that the Humanities are useless or worthless. I don't think this this the case. What I'm talking about is a getting a terminal degree in the humanities, which I would argue represents exactly the kind of collapse of vocation and utility that you are talking about. It is a commodity, and you become an extension of that commodity. It is the story that everyone has been talking about on GradCafe, and in the Chronicle, and everywhere else. You get utterly dissolved and recast into the mold of your degree - you become an 'expert' in a 'field' and gain some kind of capital, both symbolic and economic (ha-ha) from it. I'm not a philosopher, and Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse were some time ago for me, but a terminal degree in the Humanities sounds exactly like what they are talking about. So, I think it is one thing to regard the abstract concept of 'critical thinking,' reading about Livonian werewolves, and being sure you understand the difference between Foucault's archaeology and his genealogy as inherently worthwhile. I still won't agree to them having worth that inheres, because I think that's really a theological argument, and I rightly pass as an atheist. However, I am glad to give you that argument, as I think it makes sense in a certain way, and I generally find the Frankfurt school convincing, if a bit Freudian for my taste. What I think needs some consideration is exactly what you identify above, the collapse of vocation and utility that I think is inevitable within a PhD. You don't need to get into the PhD game to study the humanities, or read good books, or to learn to think critically. By engaging in a terminal degree, one where you are (hopefully) being paid something, one where your "work" is exactly the reified commodity that you note as a problematic element. I think the degree is designed to get you to shift your thinking about your vocation as I'm Odysseus-tied-to-the-mast-safely-listening-to-the-siren-call-while-his-men-row-with-their-ears-plugged-to-his-frenetic-cries into commodities of various sorts, be they actual things, like monographs or peer-reviewed articles, or something abstract, like "an original contribution to the field." My posts aren't designed to denigrate the humanities, just the notion that doing your PhD somehow gets you around the utilitarian calculus of homo oeconomicus simply because you are doing what you are passionate about, or feel called to do. As Žižek so wonderfully puts it, we're all already eating from the trash can all the time.

@rising_star told me to come on over from the Religion boards to say a bit from perspective of someone who just about finished a PhD and then decided to straight up quit. Just about finished as in halfway through my dissertation. I'm not going to chastise anyone here, or make vague admonishments about "you don't know what it's like" or "wait until you get where I am!" because I don't think they are helpful. I also don't think any of you would really listen to more of this, as you all seem to be well-knowledgeable about the grim, meathook realities of academia and everything that it involves, and don't need another white guy hanging around wagging fingers. All that I would say is that it is ok to do something else. You can quit your PhD at any point in the process. Don't sit around being miserable, developing avoidance problems of various sorts while you make excuses based on the finest of all fallacies, that of the sunk cost. It has already been said here, but you can be passionate about something and find it fulfilling and not have to do it as a job. I don't regret my time moving towards a PhD, it gave me some nice getting paid a rela time reading and writing and thinking about interesting problems, and taught me plenty. I don't blame my advisors, or my program, nor did I feel exploited by them. I made the choices that I did, including to go to graduate school in the first place, and I take my excessively idealistic self to task for those. What I will say is that I think you should look at the PhD as leading to a job. If you don't, how the hell will anyone take you seriously enough to actually give you one when the time comes to apply? Don't make excuses about the inherent worth of your program, or your path of study. It isn't inherently worthy of anything, it is shit until you take it and put it through the alembic to spin gold. I think this is where I do look strongly at my five years in a graduate program and have some regrets. I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself and others that I didn't care if I got a job when I was done, or that the study of religion (insert your field here) was just so interesting and diverting that studying it was reward enough. Go read through my earlier posts and you'll see me doing it left and right. I don't know if this is convincing, it just want to be a voice that says you can just do a job that you generally enjoy. I'm not passionate about what I now do during the week for work, I like it, I like my co-workers, I'm good at what I do, and I get paid a lot more money than I probably could have expected to make as an academic outside of a tenured prof at a top-tier institution. I read Derrida, Butler, and every book I own on Late Antiquity during my ample free time, I go to SBL/AAR if I want to, and I guess I could probably even give a paper if I so desired (which i don't, because I also think these are mostly for people who need CV lines, and I have no need for such). It isn't all about money, or about pure pragmatics, but I just think we ought to be sure we're not calling skubala Shinola. You can flame me out of here or question my motives if you would like, and as has already been done. Who knows, maybe I'm a PhD applying for jobs a full month or so after most of them have already been offered and I'm trying to thin the herds. I suppose if you really don't believe me, I can send you a redacted copy of my withdrawal form or something. Anyhow, I'm glad to talk more or PM, etc. so please do reach out.

I think what I am talking about is the notion of your job being something that you have be "passionate" or "fulfilled" by. I'm not going to pull punches here, I'm knocking it. I think it is a stupid way to make a decision about what you are going to do, and usually ends up being a quixotic pursuit. I bring it up because it is in many ways the sine qua non given for pursuing something like doctoral studies. It becomes an easy way to willfully disregard the grim, meathook realities of employment, academia, and what these actually involve. For instance, go and scan this and any other forum here for statements to the effect of "I know the job market sucks/I know that my chances for getting a job are really low/I know how shitty academic life, even in the tenure track often is...BUT...I'm just so passionate about this field/I would be unfulfilled by just working a 'regular' job/I love what I do so much." My issue with this narrative is that it makes it seems like your options are to either go through the process of getting a PhD (kind of hard), getting a TT job (really hard), and then being fulfilled/passionate/etc. about it (how the hell do you quantify, or even qualify this calculus?), ~or~ doing some proletarian, workaday 'job' where you have to go in from 9-5, have to do budgets, have to manage people, etc. What I'm arguing is that I have passions and things that fulfill me - yes, everyone does, but I don't need to do them for my job to have a good life, and I think I could make a convincing argument that many people who mistake their passions for what they need to be employed at might recognize the same thing. This is to say that I don't think that doing a PhD for the sake of doing it, or because you are passionate about the subject is a good enough reason to engage yourself in the process. It is part of it, but if you aren't doing it to get some kind of employment at the end, I think there should be a careful look at why you are actually putting yourself through this process. I say this with such conviction because I didn't examine these motives very carefully going into my program, I made a lot of excuses for myself that were built on notions of the 'inherent worth' of what I was doing. One doesn't necessarily need to have academic, or tenure track employment in mind when doing a PhD, but if you don't why do one? You can read every book you read in a PhD by yourself. You all have M.* degrees, you know how to find every book on the subject you are interested in! You can listen to podcasts, go to lectures, and even go to SBL/AAR if you want - I did this year, and it was a lot of fun, because I (1) didn't have to network with anyone unless I wanted to (2) had plenty of money to attend, eat out, and enjoy Atlanta (3) could go to a panel on post-structuralism without having worry whether it was going to somehow advance my dissertation or other research. I don't know if this is convincing, it just want to be a voice that says you can just do a job that you generally enjoy. I'm not passionate about what i do during the week for work, I like it, I like my co-workers, I'm good at what I do, and I get paid a lot more money than I probably could have expected to make as an academic outside of a tenured prof at a top-tier institution. I read Derrida, Butler, and every book I own on Late Antiquity during my ample free time, I go to SBL/AAR if I want to, and I guess I could probably even give a paper if I so desired (which i don't, because I also think these are mostly for people who need CV lines, and I have no need for such). It isn't all about money, or about pure pragmatics, but I just think we ought to be sure we're not calling skubala Shinola.

@dramos2016, you may be in a slightly better position than some here, in that you will have the academic admin experience that you've cultivated thus far to back you up. What I mean is that if you spend five or so years doing a PhD, and have great difficulty finding a job, you could probably combine your existing experience (it would be a bit old by then - but unlike tech or something, doing a budget or managing doesn't change drastically in a few years) with the "inside" track you developed via a PhD to find a pretty good alt-ac job. In the interest of full disclosure - I almost finished a PhD, which I started for all the reasons that have been outlined here (almost finished, as in half a dissertation), including that hazy notion of 'fulfillment,' and experienced many of the same things as @doobiebrothers first outlined here. I just quit though. I had a lot of cultivated skills that I leveraged to find a new job pretty quickly, and I realized that much of the talk of passion and fulfillment that I bought into and appropriated for my own reasoning was a pretty clever way of masking the operation of robust sunk-cost fallacy that was going on. I don't actually regret my time in a PhD program, it was fun and interesting. What I regret is more who I became as part of the process, and the clever excuses I employed for myself and to others as part of the process. So, I don't blame my program, or my advisors, or that reified thing we call 'academia' because I don't thing blame is really what anyone needs. What I advocate is something far more positive, which is just the courage on the part of anyone considering this route to be ok with saying no to the whole narrative at any point in the process.

For all the questioning of essentialism, inherent worthiness (i.e. sacrality), and claims of authenticity on the part of their objects of study the reasons for doing a PhD remain curiously sacrosanct among those in the academic study of religion.

Go further here - is the only thing you are able to do? If so, you've probably committed enough to it, but if not, go do whatever else you are able to do. Imagination and prognostication are perfectly good skills to have if you want to be a fortune teller, but not a future academic. I don't say this to be brutal or insensitive, but rather to push the envelope on the common maxim that "if you can imagine/see yourself doing something else, do that." I think that its excessive subjectivity has worked too much mischief and produced too many PhDs. So, if the former is indeed true, a third round it is, because what else are you going to do? This is another sticking point for me - the job market in either of these fields, and in general is nowhere close to the academic job market, and further the humanities job market level of difficulty. People who complain about law/medicine jobs might be having a hard time getting the job they want, but if it is a job they need, and they are a reasonably qualified candidate, they'll likely work something out. For instance, do a search of law firms, medical offices, and hospitals in a city of your choice on google maps. Count them up - certainly they aren't all hiring, but some probably are, and say that number is even pretty low, like 5% of them are hiring a couple of people, and you might have 50-60 jobs in a medium-sized city. Now search for institutions of higher education, narrow it to ones that are not Capella/U of Phoenix, cut out CCs (not because they are not worthwhile, but because you don't really need a PhD to teach at them), and then look into the ones that have a religion department, and unless it is a large research university, you might have 2 profs in that department, and neither is close to retirement or considering leaving. Further, if either of them are, the college is probably going to just fold the full-time position and hire an adjunct or two to cover the courses, because they only have 13 students enroll in them each semester anyhow. So, there is probably a really good chance that for the same medium city there may be exactly 0 jobs. Maybe 1 visiting lecturer, and that is probably like winning $10,000 from a scratch-off ticket odds, and if there is one regular old full-time, tenure track job in religion, that is more like winning the actual lottery odds (however, this position might be for Asian religions, or American religious history, or sociology of religion - none of which you might be able to teach). So, while people will keep getting sick, and keep needing doctors; and keep buying houses, slipping on puddles of water in the grocery store, and trying to set up LLCs and needing lawyers - the sad truth is that no one really needs a religion professor (you may claim otherwise in an abstract sense, but I don't think you can make a utilitarian argument in the same manner). Also, there are thousands of different jobs that a person with a B* and M* could do, and probably do well, and do anywhere! If you take a year to learn RoR or Python, guess what - you can pick where you would like to live, get paid a lot more than even a mid-career academic, and have a trajectory that could in a year or two and with some certification have you doing pretty handsomely for yourself. Then you can buy all Harrassowitz editions of the North Semitic languages of the Levant that you want and read them in your spare time, which you'll probably have a lot of. I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from pursuing their vocation here, but rather suggest that the web of possibility spreads itself much wider and stronger than its gossamer strands might otherwise indicate.

I think it should be built in to the Mac keyboards that you can select - up at the top of the screen where you see that little American flag, you should be able to select "ABC/US Extended" keyboard. In the drop-down menu, you should also be able to show the "keyboard viewer," which if you press the option key, should show all the transliteration symbols you need. I use it mostly for Middle Egyptian, but I think the symbols are mostly the same š, ẖ, ḥ, ā, etc. This way it also puts it in via unicode, which should be portable and won't require installing other fonts.

If you've lived in Newark and knew how to take reasonable precaution there, that part of Dorchester will be fine. Overall, the greater Boston area tends to be remarkably safe.

If you have $180k to spend, and you want to spend it on a DPhil from Oxford, I think that it is totally your choice. That money would likely be a better investment, from a purely economic perspective, elsewhere (like real estate, or maybe some conservative stocks where it could hang around for the three years that it might take you to get a DPhil), but if you have the spending bread to invest, the choice it really yours. Now, if this is your entire savings, I might reconsider, and take one of the options outlined above, but if say this is 180k out of a couple of million that you are sitting on (or maybe even as low as a half million or something), why not? Have fun in Oxford, learn a bunch, write a dissertation and see where it takes you. Most of the other posters are, I think cautioning against taking out this kind of money in loans, which at least in the US, the government will allow you to do, and which many (mostly white, Evangelical males) have been wont to do as of late. This would be a very poor investment, quite risky, and truly only for the raging masochists that Perique69 mentions. Even if you do get a job, it is likely not going to pay enough for you to possibly pay that loan off in your lifetime.

For boats in the water, you can also check out Charles River Canoe & Kayak, they rent kayaks out at a number of points along the river, and have fairly reaosnable rates - they will do charges in 1/10 of an hour increments, so if you bring it back 5 minutes after 2 hours, you don't have to pay for an extra hour.. If you were going to be doing it all the time it could, as with Brooklyn Boulders get a bit pricey, but for a jaunt on the Charles from time to time it is nice.

I don't think you should have too much trouble. A bit further west from there and things are less decent, but going back and forth shouldn't be too much trouble, though if you were doing it late at night, I might consider not carrying large sums of cash, or other valuables on you. With this said, New Haven is an odd city, it is very compressed, and muggings, car thefts, etc. happen anywhere and everywhere, as well as at any time of day. When I was at Yale I had friends who were mugged at 1AM and 1PM, on secluded side streets and on main drags. My car was broken into three times in four years, even though there was really nothing of value in there. This shouldn't be cause for constant alarm or worry, just vigilance, some common sense, and a general attitude of "even if it does happen, I will probably be alive and ok, if a bit rattled." If you are walking home later at night, try to find a friend or two in your general area to walk with. Yale even has a nightime ride/walk escort that I think you should be able to use if you were really worried. Don't stumble home half in the bag with $500 in your wallet, your laptop in your backpack, and your iPhone 6 held out in front of you. Don't leave a gps, or gps mount obviously visible in your car, or a bag/backpack that might look like it possibly contains other valuables sitting on the seat (i.e. camera case, briefcase, etc.). This is just basic city stuff, not New Haven-specific though.

Watertown might be an option. I live here and if you could find somewhere that was close to the 70 bus (71 goes from Harvard to Watertown Square), it would take you within a short walk of Brandeis. Watertown is definitely a bit sleepier than a 'city' neighborhood, but it has plenty of walkable shops, restaurants, etc. It is somewhere between city & suburb. Rents are fairly pricey here, though certainly less than Cambridge/Somerville, and you do, as telkanuru notes, usually get a parking spot (in fact you'll need one if you have a car because no on-street parking is allowed overnight in the Winter) in addition to more space for what you'll pay. In that you have a child, the schools area also pretty good, and they do a neighborhood school system. If you are interested in more info, PM me and I can tell you more about Watertown.

Brighton to Brandeis will be a pain in the neck via public transit (probably over an hour each way to go about 5 miles). Driving wouldn't be too bad, probably about 15-20 minutes, but if you want to get rid of your car, Brandeis isn't the most accessible campus in the greater Boston area, it is really in Waltham, which is a town west of Boston proper. Waltham isn't the most desirable of places to live, which can work out in your favor in that less expensive rents can be had there, but then again, some parts aren't that great. You might look into the area around Moody St. in Waltham, as it has a lot of the amenities you mention. I think there might be a sub-forum on here for Waltham, so you might look there as well to see what folks are doing.

It probably depends, but on the other side of the argument, I sometimes wonder how many of the "I am adjuncting and living on food stamps" stories stem from going into a lot of debt for a humanities degree. If you have other marketable skills that you could translate into a different line of work when you (and I, and 90% of the people on this forum and elsewhere) don't get anything resembiing an academic job after taking out a small mortgage for education, then sure, why not give it a go. Also, if this 100k were the only debt you'd incur from your education up until this point, then I guess you wouldn't be in too much worse shape than lots of other people with Bachelor's degrees. In the end, I, nor any other poster here has any real bearing on whether you are going to go ahead with this. I would, however, at least ask about job outcomes in your specific area from FSU. In my own program, we frankly don't have any for my area, so I can't really talk here - but in that I have zero debt right now, and will not incur any from my program, I figure getting to work the equivalent of a part-time job with health insurance, doing more or less what I am interested in for five years isn't that big of a waste if I end up doing nothing with it.

I think this is all good advice, with the caveat regarding the 'hanging out where profs eat lunch' suggestion that you do so without seeming slightly creepy, like you are following them around scoping out their favorite lunch spots. In that you are attending a divinity school, the refectory can be a nice place to have chance run-ins with your profs (if they deign to eat there from time to time). Always balance eagerness with not coming off as a stalker. The most important thing for a good letter of recommendation is to have your recommenders see your work in a variety of settings. You obviously need to take classes with them, and need to participate in those classes in a meaningful way, not just as a slathering graduate hopeful who wants to show off. I think a good candidate for PhD work has a 'feel for the game' when it comes to this balance. If you feel as though you don't know what to talk to a prof about during office hours or how to engage meaningfully and pointedly in a classroom setting, you should also bet that your prof notices this. There unfortunately isn't a procedure for successfully carrying this out. Like learning to cook, ride a bike, or play piano, you have to try things out and see what comes most comfortably to you. You'll hit some wrong notes, burn some expensive steaks, and come off as a idiot a few times, but you'll come to point where you ask yourself: Do I burn the steaks more often than not? Do Chopin's nocturnes still come out sounding like a bad, late 90s art piece for piano despite my practicing them for a year? You get the idea. This goes also to the question on another thread. Some people just don't have any business applying to PhD programs, despite things like good grades, high GRE scores, and knowing fourteen languages. They have a pair of Air Jordans, and have read every book on the technique and methods of basketball, but they can't make a layup. How's that for a bunch of mixed, confusing metaphors?

I would at least email Phil Haberkern on this. I have done a decent bit of work with him while at BU, and while he is really more of an historian (and a hell of a good teacher to boot), I think he'd be willing to help you out. He is a really nice guy, and as you note the narrowness of the field on Hus, I think he'd be excited to hear of anyone else interested in him, whatever your particular angle. Furthermore, in that he did a postdoc at Princeton, where he was refined further by the purifying fire that is Anthony Grafton, he'll probably have plenty of sources for you to work with. He also knows Czech and has some kind of access to a number of untranslated letters, etc. from Hus that would be that ever-wonderfully obscure reference you can drop into a footnote as if you just *happened* to be perusing the catalog of the Národní knihovna České republiky one day and saw it.

I don't think so - you make it sound a bit parochial, but no more so than I would expect from a Southern Baptist or Pentecostal who did the same. I'm also not 100% sure I quite catch mdiv's drift in the post above, despite its having been edited. I don't think your statements suck or are boring either, though they are probably a bit more self-referential than I'd go for with regard to the type of degrees you are applying for. A few of the places (most notably St. Vladimir's) *might* be interested in this aspect of your application, but overall I'd tone down the "can't come home for Thanksgiving/crying mother/disappointed family" end of things. I think you could talk some about how your conversion to Greek Orthodoxy has been an important influence on your desire to study theology without bringing all of this extra stuff in. I know that this has been an important aspect of your decision, so you don't necessarily need to leave it out, but just use your conversion (in truncated form - i.e. "I recently converted to Greek Orthodoxy") to tell a story about how you then moved towards readings, thinkers, or ideas that really motivate your desire to learn more about the subject, and then how each school would allow you to do this. So briefly, I don't think you trash Mormonism in the letters, but I actually don't think you need to bring it up at all.

I've mentioned this in other places here, but it bears repeating. GRE scores are like the invitation that allows you to move past the bouncers into the party, which then probably goes into your pocket and doesn't show up again once in. For MA programs you probably don't need to worry, but for a PhD, you might consider a retake if you think that you could pull your percentile above 95. The role of the GRE probably fluctuates with different programs, but a lot will use it to create a kind of 'shelf' to clear out the excess of applications received. As nice as it would be to read through one hundred purpose statements to be sure there wasn't a diamond in the rough who only managed a 155 on verbal, I don't think this is how it usually works. It sucks because some people are amazing writers and despicable test-takers, but it seems to be the way that the cards are falling now. As shawn mentions, there are exceptions which do seem to indicate that in some cases a good-not-great score does get read and even makes it into a program, and these are encouraging. However, I can tell you that way back in the olden days of the old scoring system, I was told to shoot for 700 or above so as not to get turned away at the door (so to speak), which I think was 96th percentile. I think shawn's advice is pretty decent though, if you legitimately think that you could improve your score by a couple of points, and have the financial means to take it again, go for it. If you do not, or are unsure, and the prospect of blowing however many hundred dollars the GRE costs these days is not something that you are willing or able to do, just apply and see how things come out.

Briefly on BU: BU has a School of Theology, which is like a traditional divinity school, offering MDivs as well as a MTS (and a smattering of others like MSM, STM, DMin and now PhDs instead of ThDs). I tend to think that your stated interests would fit better at the School of Theology in that you seem mostly interested in Christian philosophy and thought (your invocation of Plantinga, Hicks, and the New Testament push me in this direction, but please correct me if I am wrong). The other side of BU's religion program is the GDRS, which is not connected with the School of Theology, but rather with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This is the religious studies department, and mostly offers PhDs in five separate tracks. They have recently started a small standalone M.A. in religion, but admission into it is slim as I think they want to place most of their focus on the PhD. There are people studying things like Ancient Christianity (not really "New Testament" though), religious thought/philosophy, etc. but the GDRS tends to be wider in scope, and probably less focused on the specific areas that you mention. Further, I tend to think that the focus of your interests on the Christian tradition might make you a poor fit (not saying this as a negative, just as an observation apropos to above comments). Both programs do share faculty though, and you could take courses in either, so they aren't hermetically sealed from one another.

MarXian's point is important here. Your research interests shouldn't stop at a specific book of the HB, or even a period of interest. You have this element, and it is probably the most important for your statement, and it is great that you have identified strong faculty who share this particular interest. However, you should also consider the method by which you plan on studying this period, or these texts. Do you envision doing mostly philological work, or does the ANE context interest you as well? Archaeology, epigraphy, comparative linguistics, critical theory, etc.? You can use these methodological interests to work other faculty in to your statement in a organic way. Whereas the faculty in 2nd Temple may not be in your topical wheelhouse, might s/he be helpful as someone who support your work from a methodological angle, for example, by sharpening your comparative linguistic abilities between the material in the period your are most interested in and his own surely connected period? These are just conceptualizations to help you think through what you might write, not rules.