AbrasaxEos

Do it. I came out of YDS utterly unprepared, but with a great deal of drive for pursuing a PhD in Ancient Christianity (my concentrated M.A.R. was actually in Hebrew Bible). I went from having one strong recommender who was not tenured to four, 2 of whom were senior faculty. I also gained a good deal of experience teaching to a different kind of crowd. As a caveat, I was actually done with my M.A.R. when I did it, as YDS does not allow you to teach (technical) peers, so as RedDoor notes, be sure that you can handle it with your courseload. You'll need to steer a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of (a) doing poorly in your courses / ( being a crappy TA because you aren't spending the time you need to prepare. I was paid almost 10k per semester (basically the Yale doctoral stipend at the time), believe it or not, but I would not take this as typical. I actually think that this did help me dramatically in my applications, though more because: 1. I was able to TA under two big names in the field who were then able to heartily recommend me when the time came. 2. I was able to take a few extra courses in languages, as well as sit in on a few others in varied subjects of interest. I think that had I applied straight out of YDS, I likely would have gotten in nowhere (or maybe one of those places that cranks out PhDs and offers no/low funding). Instead I was litlerally only flat-out rejected from 1/6 programs that I applied to.

I don't know that too many here applied, but I can tell you that the two initial offers for BU's Ancient Christianity spots have been made.

No, probably because of your eliding "der" and the first part of "ewige" into "derew." Though compressed into a single word, that particular user's name is der ewige Student [th' eternal student/scholar].

Yes, I believe so, if not officially on the website and publications, then at least internally. It was one of the primary reasons that DRTS changed to GDRS (to distinguish what each respective division is doing), which has gone official on the website and such.

For the record, BU's ThD is going the way of the dinosaur that that degree is as well. The School of Theology is turning it into a PhD. You'll note the concurrent change for the DRTS into the GDRS (no more theology!). For the uninitiated, BU has a Religious Studies program (formerly Division of Religious and Theological Studies, now the Graduate Division for Religious Studies) which is administered via the larger university, as well as the School of Theology, which offers the typical MDiv/M* degrees as well as a set fo PhDs in varying disiciplines more closely aligned with the Christian tradition (e.g. you can't really do a "New Testament" PhD in the GDRS, only Ancient Christianity).

I think we need Perique69 to come and adjudicate this for us.

UNC-CH notifies very early. I remember in my year, my phone rang in the first week of January, my wife picked it up and told me that Bart Ehrman was on the phone.

The classic Bollandist work here would be the Acta Sanctorum. It is in 68 volumes and now has a nice searchable online version, though your institution needs a subscription to access it, and you'll need to have pretty good Latin to read it. You can get most of the volumes for free in various places online, but trying to pore through the PDFs in Latin will start to get old pretty quick. It will have just about everything though. If you want some texts that are related to the Syrian martyrs under Sapur II, you can look at Delehaye's Les versions grecques des Actes des martyrs persans sous Sapor II. I think that there was also a dissertation on these martyrs by someone at Duke completed in 2011, but I don't think it is currently published (though perhaps someone on here who goes to Duke might be kind enough to access and download it for you through their library).

New Haven is relatively inexpensive compared to Boston/NYC, but I wouldn't quite call it a "low" cost of living such as you would find down south or in the midwest. Also, whereas in NYC and Boston you can live in a number of different places depending mostly on your tolerance for longer commutes, New Haven is an incredibly compressed city. As in, you can walk a block or three west from the multi-million dollar homes on Prospect Hill and be in an area that is pretty rough. I actually pay close to what I did in New Haven in Boston at the moment, but my situation is a unique one (i.e. a commune) that I know would not work for everyone. I also enjoy Boston a lot more. I have a number of detailed posts on the New Haven board over at the City forum for those of you moving there.

A lot of programs have this on the books as an official rule - it is in some cases a holdover from the days on when not everyone got a stipend, in others it is just a method for trying to to keep people focused on their coursework, not delivering pizzas. Programs will vary in their actual enforcement - BU can be a bit strict on it, but I have a few friends who work without any real problem here and elsewhere, though they tend to do so with mostly under-the-table work, or work for which they get paid primarily in cash (i.e. waiting tables, bartending, etc.)

I will give you that - I am not saying that I think BU couldn't afford to give more - they could. They make lots of money off of their undergrads and only recently started funding all their grad students. Too many new buildings to fund. And yes, the only affordable place to live is Allston, which is indeed the worst place one could live as a graduate student who likes to sleep Thursday - Sunday evenings. I was making more of a general comment on stipends - I think that getting paid anything to study what you want is pretty cool whatever the amount. I got like 2k a year in New Haven at YDS for a stipend and that was amazing. It basically paid my car insurance and a couple trips to the grocery store. Also, Notre Dame needs to pay that otherwise no one would come, South Bend is horrible.

This is very true. BU's stipend is a bit over 20k now for AC folks, not sure about other fields. If you are single, you need a roommate in Boston - even if you go to Harvard/HDS, where the stipend is substantially more, you'd also be just making it. A note on stipends, they are made to just get you by, not be the equivalent of a full-time job. If you are lucky enough to be one of the two people who actually get paid to study what you want to in a field as unemployable and esoteric as religious studies, smile big and don't complain, even if you get a 5k stipend! However, as a note for those who have a partner of some sort coming with them, Boston is a great place where one with requisite education and experience can actually do quite well for oneself (however, a M* is all but necessary for many jobs). I am fortunate enough to have a partner who quintuples my stipend... For those coming in single, there are a number of students in BUs program who live with roomates, and seem to be doing fine without extra jobs or eating ramen every night. They don't live large, they have to budget, but then again they have nice folks like me who pick up the tab at bar nights. One hidden secret about BU AC program is that you actually get fellowship for 4 years (1,2,4,5; teaching in 3), and one could say, teach an extra course in one of the many subsidiary colleges associated with BU (BU has roughly 15k undergrads and love to keep class sizes down) and get a stipend, as well as about 8k per semester extra for teaching the course. This is really only the AC fellowship though, as all the rest require teaching most years. \ In the end, Don't go into debt, but you aren't going to be buying up stock options on your stipend, so go where you feel as though you best fit. I think I figured out that with the comparably astronomical fees at the two state schools mentioned, the stipends actually more or less equal out. Finally, the stipends are all "gross" stipends because all of them are taxed in some manner (if fellowship you have to take out estimated taxes, and if TAing they usually take them out for you).

Not applying this year, but in my own year the exact reason you outline here was a factor in my deciding against UNC-CH. When I went for the admitted student visit, no one seemed to have needed an extra job to pay the fees, but the propect of doing so vs. not for BU helped my decision slightly. I think that at the schools you have listed, with the exception of Yale perhaps, the stipend vs. cost of living factor works out pretty similarly though.

As others haven mentioned, you really have to decide what and where you want to study. Some places have great resources and profs for studying certain topics and areas, and are tremendously weak on others. Further, it will help to narrow down the kind of approaches you find most compelling and comfortable working in. Looking around a bit on here would give you a decent idea of what people perceive of as the top programs in this field. I won't pretend that places like the Ivies, Notre Dame, Duke, etc. are well-known, highly-respected programs. This is borne out by their placement (for the most part) and the degree of selectivity they can maintain. Further, they also tend to have the most robust resources in terms of libraries, faculty breadth, and funding. All of these are important. Everyone claims that "I just want a basic job doing what I enjoy," but the truth is that not everyone that claims this will actually get to do it. Some people will adjunct for 5 years, for 15 years, or for the rest of their lives, hate what they do, and wish they had never changed their major from Chemistry to Religious Studies. The program you go to and what you make of it have a lot to do with the ability or inability to do so. On the flipside, different programs might have different merits. I am under no delusions that my own program is in the "top" anything but maybe 25 programs in the US (a bit of skewed scale as there are probably about 35 total PhD-granting Religious Studies programs worth the time it takes to get a degree at). However, it is a program that was a perfect fit. I had a chance to go to a program that people probably would have considered in the top 10 or something, but after visiting I knew that I wouldn't have liked it that much. I didn't like the general methodology, I felt like my "fit" there was a bit awkward (which was odd because this often knocks one out of the running), and the requirements were enormously rigid. Most of the people in that program had placements though, all in bible belt schools, and all more or less as "bible" professors. It just wasn't for me. So, all of this is to say that you have to weigh the merits of the schools you are interested in. If you like philology, traditional historical-critical scholarship, etc. there are a number of "top" programs that will do these things very well. If you prefer theory, method, comparative work, etc. there will be some different programs that would suit you better. If you want to work on some theology and intellectual history alongside historical material, yet others will be your best choice. In the end, I think my best advice is, whatever you choose, don't pay a penny for your PhD.

Begin by thinking carefully about what it is exactly you want to study, and the languages in which your primary sources are primarily going to be in, as well as the general geographical region that you are interested in (if applicable). Then make some sort of list of the possible languages that you might need to know, it is ok if this list is long or seems really imposing. Consider which of these languages are going to be crucial to your study, which it sounds as if you have already done regarding Greek and Latin. Obviously these are going to be big ones for anyone looking to study in the area that you are. Have you done any Greek yet, or would you be starting from nothing in these next 10 months? Trying to teach yourself Greek with no prior knowledge of the language can be quite difficult, though not impossible. I just think it would take very serious commitment on your part, which can be hard to maintain while in school. If you do decide to do it I would skip starting with "New Testament Greek" and go straight for Hansen and Quinn or some other type of Attic text. They will be far more rigorous, but they will prepare you to read later, "Atticizing" authors like Eusebius far better than piddling through 1 John for 7 months will. I think that you probably need, at minimum, some kind of demonstrable intermediate-level proficiency in these two languages (i.e. a "paper trail") when applying for PhD programs. For best results? I would say advanced in one, intermediate in another, and one modern (reading-level). This isn't possible for everyone though. A short discourse on philology and the field in general, from my perspective. You need to be able to work in some primary source languages, and work well in them. However, it really depends on the kind of work you intend to do and the program in which you intend to do it. Some programs put huge emphasis on lots of languages. One thing to remember though, is that when you are going for a job, unless it is at a major research university, you will only be using your 10 languages you spent lots of time learning during your PhD program for your own research, and probably not all of them. No one at East Jesus University will take your class on Old Church Slavonic, or even Coptic. They probably won't even know if it was a language or math course that Visiting Assistant Lecturer X is offering. It will never be offered. You will however have to lecture to 275 partially interested undergrads about "Religions of the West," so if you spent your two years of PhD coursework taking classical Armenian so you could read a late recension of 4 Ezra, and then taught NT Greek for your TA/F years - it might be hard to convince a hiring committee made up of an English prof, a Sociologist, Anthropologist, and maybe one Religious Studies person who studies Central Asian shamanism that you can actually do this successfully.

As does BU's DRS, at least for Ancient Christianity and a few other subfields. I am not certain about stipends for every person, but at minimum they do fund tuition and fees for all fields now. There are special dean's fellowships, of which Ancient Christianity is a variety (it is actually a bit better), that give a pretty good stipend, health insurance, etc.

I would say that most tend not to do this, if I am understanding you correctly. It depends on the program, but a lot of PhD programs will have a Post-Bachelors and Post-Masters PhD track. For the former, you would get a M.A. of some sort in the process of getting your PhD, usually after passing your exams - but the programs typically don't accept people just for the M.A. (and you will see this borne out on a lot of admissions websites if you read the fine print). Some places might suggest you pursue a M* degree if they feel that you have a decent application, but have some deficiences that would be remedied in such a program. A few, namely U Chicago and BC (that have been mentioned that that I have also heard about) will sometimes offer acceptance into some kind of MA program, but it is rarely with the expectation that you'll simply continue on to a PhD afterwards at the same place. It might be a possibilitiy, but I think you'd likely have to apply to the PhD again the same way as everyone.

I think you may mean religion programs, not every PhD program in North America - this may be where the above poster is coming from. Why is it that you need a list like this? If you are really interested, you can go here: http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/religion/rank/basic and see a list of about 171 places that have graduate studies in religion. The first 40 or so programs are probably the major ones in the field, though you may want to look over the others, and a few more recent ones are missing entirely (UT Austin, DU/Iliff, Northwestern). Then, just go the websites and look at their financial aid/support section. Ignore the rankings there, they are outdated and trying to rank graduate programs is an exercise in futility anyhow. Most places that have full funding will at least tell you that they do, though few will have any actual amounts. Then you can post the results of your research for others to benefit from.

I think that is fine, as long as you make it clear that it is under review (most people just put it in square brackets after the article). I've seen established scholars with this on their CV. If it has made it past the 1st round of review, there is likely a fairly high chance of it being published, so it can't hurt. Adcoms know what this means, and I don't think they would consider it padding, as long as you didn't have like ten articles marked as such - then it might seem as though you just fired out a bunch of crappy papers with little hope of their actually being published so that you could include them on your CV. The only thing to watch for is if any of the people you are applying to work with are reviewers for JECS. From my own editing experience, when a "blind" reviewer becomes aware of who the author of an article is, the process for rectifying this can be quite complicated.

Not to hijack this thread right away, but if you are interested in many of those things, you ought to consider BU's DRTS (not School of Theology) program. I know it is a bit off the radar for a few reasons, but if you are seriously interested in basically any of those elements, maybe except Nag Hammadi and Oxyrhyncus, we have David Frankfurter, who may well be the best person teaching in a graduate program under whom one could study all things popular religion in Late Antiquity. Obviously biased here as I am his graduate student, but if you are looking for a thoroughly broad and non-traditional program, keep it in mind - fully funded, fellowship for 4 years, teaching for 1, pretty decent stipend, even for Boston. PM me if you want more details.

I didn't contact anyone at the schools I applied to - I knew a couple of the folks already from various YDS/SBL/AAR connections, but I didn't really do any type of formal emailing, calling, or visiting ahead of time. I applied to six, had four acceptances, one waitlist, and one rejection. I tend to think the "face with a name" advice is a bit overrated. These people get tons of emails and meetings at SBL, etc. (and now being on the "inside" of two adcoms, I can tell you that few of them say in the process "Oh yes! this student emailed me a few months back, let's take a second look" - if your application is strong, it is strong). The exception here would be if you were in some way unsure of whether the prof. was taking students, or if they still were working in the area you are interested in. Sometimes an email asking eithe rof these things can save you some money applying to a school that is probably not going to accept you, no matter how amazing your application might be.

Coming in a bit late here - but to echo Petros, at most of the places I have taken Greek, the understanding was more or less that if you felt as though you could handle the work, you could take the course. I would guess that this is a better indication than just a certain number of semesters. In some ways it is good to be able to give evidence for your marinating in the language for a certain amount of time, but from my experience there were often a number of different cases. Some people have a truly impressive number of credit hours in a language, but just don't seem to have a knack for it and still struggle through while others seem to be unbelievably good despite being totally self-taught. I had a person like this in a Greek class at YDS - a woman who basically read some of Hansen and Quinn everyday during her lunch break for four years, walked into a syntax & stylisitics course and made all of us with our impressive coursework backgrounds look like absolute amateurs. Having taken three "placement" style exams during my academic career thus far, they have typically been something like 12 -15 lines of Greek of moderate to just beyond moderate difficulty in an hour. If you want to see some examples from HDS, you can go here: http://www.hds.harvard.edu/sites/hds.harvard.edu/files/attachments/academics/registrar/language-qualifying-exams/31231/GreekLanguageExams.pdf

Probably the case, but my guess would be that an adcom would look at a non-accredited language course (especially if audited) in a similar manner to self-taught languages. This being the case, I think excepting the OPs interest in HB text criticism (looking at his other posts, I don't think that he is) that the time devoted to this course would be better spent working on a language more nearly related to his interests.

With languages, it is helpful to have some exposure to variety, but only insofar as they will actually be applicable to your research. It would seem that if your interest lies in HB, a different language would be more worthwhile to spend your time on. I would almost say that the time you would spend on Syriac would be better spent in a disciplined way teaching yourself a different language that is more applicable to your field. You might even work on learning to read unpointed Hebrew texts (if you don't already), which I think would support a HB application more than learning a dialect of Middle Aramaic. Why expend the time and effort necessary learning a new language if the only use you can think for it is that you *might* have to look at the Peshitta at some point? The likelihood of your maintaining a semester's worth of Syriac to the degree that you would need to use it profitably would also be pretty low.

The best reading advice, (though I cannot always follow it) came to me from the inimitable J.Z. Smith. It has been essential as I prepare for comps this year, as well as in the past, especially when reading difficult theoretical work: 1. Read through the entire work quickly - no highlighting, no annotating, etc. Just plow through it and get the big picture of what the author is trying to do and how she or he is trying to do it. 2. Re-read at a more regular pace, making your notes, flags, etc. as you need them. 3. Close the book and make the best outline that you can from memory. 4. Rectify your outline, paying close attention to those areas where you had a difficult time doing so from memory. Obviously, this takes some extra time that you may not have, but I have found that if I take #1 very seriously and literally just blaze my way through, not stopping to re-read or mark something, even if it seems incredibly important, that this step really doesn't take long. I strive to keep it at about 6-8 pages a minute for that step, so I can make my way through anything up to about 450 pages in an hour. For one reason or another I have to have print versions, and I handwrite everything out first prior to typing (otherwise I don't retain the material) - so nothing from me on the PDF/annotation front.