AbrasaxEos

To echo everyone here - you will be a competitive applicant. Emphasize your current language preparation and aptitude and your willingness to absolutely dive in head first with ancient Hebrew. This would really be your only weak point, although I think YDS offers a summer intensive in Biblical Hebrew that you can take prior to your first semester, which you would probably need to do (it does cost extra and even if you have good funding for the program, usually comes out of your own pocket), especially if you do the two year M.A.R. You'd likely want to be taking the advanced Hebrew courses of some type by your second year, and to have gained the ability to read unpointed texts, as well as Aramaic if at all possible for a competitive PhD application in Second Temple studies. The nice thing for you is that you already have your other languages pretty much squared away! One thing to note about the Oxford program is that funding is usually fairly poor for U.S. applicants.

Many of the big programs (YDS, HDS, Duke, etc.) will be pretty well-funded, though it is somewhat unlikely that it would be full funding. In my own case, I ended up paying no tuition while at YDS, and was lucky enough to have a spouse that could provide the income necessary to pay living expenses, but I think the norm is more like 50-75% funding for M* programs. There is the well-known program at Notre Dame which fully funds Master's students, but it is intensely competitive for obvious reasons - note that the concentrated M.A.R. at YDS is also very competitive, especially in the HB/ST/NT concentrations, you'll need some pretty decent language preparation to be seriously considered. So, without knowing what your background is, I would say that the most likely amount of funding you can expect from the larger programs is in the 50-75% of tuition range. For this reason, one should pay attention to the area that the school is in - living in Cambridge or Boston is far more expensive than Durham! There is another poster on here who has done two masters in this area that could probably chime in with more specificity on some strong Second Temple Programs.

I'd second these suggestions, with the only caveat that you need to be sure that you are able to maintain the level of discussion and work required for the course, as you likely do not want to be remembered as the master's student who got in over his or her head in the doctoral seminar! I did a number of doctoral seminars when I was doing my M.A. at Yale and it was, as Kuriakos notes, a good decision (mostly because they were Hebrew Bible seminars and it helped me to realize that I wasn't actually that interested in that area of study). The most important area to discern here is the language preparation necessary, as at YDS there were in a number of instances in which a M* student or two jumped into a doctoral seminar (say one in the DSS), where the abilitiy to read unpointed texts was a necessity. The students couldn't really hack it and it ended up being an annoying experience for those of us who could, as they would sti there and butcher their way through the translation, wasting a lot of time. The prof. (a well-known DSS scholar at YDS who you may be familiar with) eventually just stopped calling on them. Kind of embarassing.

One question that I would ask here is whether your undergraduate record is uniformly up and down, or whether you have a kind of upward swing to it (i.e. did you have a rough freshman-sophomore year, with a bit of a pickup as you progressed)? If this is the case, your transcript might help you out with a bit of explanation - I had a friend who really screwed off his first two years and as a result, had a low overall gpa. However, he picked things up in his junior and senior years and had a really good record to show for it. He was able to get into Yale and Princeton with what I think was a pretty similar gpa. If you have an up and down record where there isn't a demonstrable improvement, this is not to say that you don't have a chance, but it may take some more explaining as others have noted.

Yes, for an MDiv program that should be fine, as long as you have one or two from actual profs. A number of MDiv programs also ask for recommendations from pastors or other non-PhD bearing persons, so especially for those that want 4 or 5 letters, I am sure that one from an ABD won't be a problem.

I still think that being a scholar (or an aspiring one) isn't about engaging in the solipsistic production of CV additions for the sake of putting them there or making it look better because you have quantitatively more presentations. I think it is about making contributions to the greater understanding of your field. Yes, an adcom or potential employer is likely not going to know that the piece of junk you churned out and gave a clever title during your M* or PhD so that you could pad a short presentations section was better left unwritten - but why play the game of needless scholarly production? I am not advocating some kind of "pure way" in which every decision is wholly and solely for the betterment of your field, I think that most would recognize an element of the selfish egoist behind every presentation, and of course, having worthwhile additions to your CV is important - though I think reiterating Body Politics' comment puts it more succintly than I have here.

SBL does ask you to submit an entire draft of your paper if you have not previously presented, I am not sure on AAR. It also usually depends on the conference, most I find don't ask for the whole thing, especially for a grad conference, as the organizers usually know they won't get enough submissions to actually put it on if they do. If it for the sole reason of boosting your CV why do it? It seems a lot like scholarly autoeroticism, a lot of fun perhaps, but not benefitting anyone other than yourself. The other reasons mentioned are worthwhile - name recognition, meeting new people, and it being a part of existing research you are doing.

Conferences, especially those such as graduate ones are great places to go and present your research and recent thinking on a given topic to others who can hopefully give you some feedback, both positive and critical. This to me is the real purpose of a conference, along with meeting folks in your field and such. This is why you should want to participate - not because it will give you some nice additions to a CV, or because someone told you that a paper you wrote was really good (again, unless you are looking to turn it into something bigger and more focused). Papers of either of these sorts are usually boring, uninspired, and not worth the effort. So, conferences are great places to present an initial idea that you may be hoping to turn into something bigger, like a article, or perhaps thesis or doctoral research. If your idea for a paper falls outside of those criteria, why would you expend the effort and time to write something up and present it? This is not to say that every paper I have presented has turned into some great article. In fact a number of papers I simply scrapped or drastically altered due to some really helpful criticisms at a conference. Likewise, I have also been able to enter into a number of great working relationships with other PhD students or scholars because they happened to have a really interesting idea that was presented well at a conference. In terms of the who, it really depends. I would say that it tends towards doctoral students, but I have also seen plenty of papers by those in their M* programs (although these do tend to be CV padders). To reiterate, I think a conference is perfectly legitimate and worth the effort of putting together a proposal and writing a paper if you truly and honestly have something that bears presentation in this context. It can be something you explored in a paper for a course, but you should rewrite it for a conference audience and oral delivery. Simply reading a paper which was written to be read as opposed to heard is typically hard to follow, has lots of gaps that are filled by footnotes (which you are obviously not going to read aloud) and is also too long and in depth for a 15 minute presentation. You can usually recognize these papers by the frequent answer that is given in response to questions about these gaps: "Oh, I have a much longer version of this in which I go into much greater detail on that..." Start short and without a "longer version" that you have to refer to so that when you do get a difficult question that you hadn't really through about you can just say, "you know, that is a great point, and something I hadn't considered, what do you think its implications might be for my argument?" I think one needs to be circumspect about conferences at the M* level. I did none, my M* degree was a time during which I focused on gaining the necessary tools to begin PhD work, learning how to write well, and trying out a bunch of different approaches and methods to see which I jived the best with. I have done more now that I am in my PhD program, but usually not more than 1 per year. I would rather do 1 really well-written, well-thought-out presentation than a bunch of crappy ones. Plus, profs in adcoms know what a graduate conference is, and may be impressed by your desire to work hard in getting a paper together, but unless you have a line that traces from your paper at the conference to an actual publication or other forum for those presented ideas, are probably not going to consider your contribution terribly ground-breaking.

That area is very nice, and right near the local elementary school. You shouldn't have any problems there. As you may deduce from the forum here and elsewhere, New Haven is an odd city, with wide gaps in income disparity blended with small ones in physical proximity so use common sense at night and such, but with all the families and kids in that area I would be surprised if you had any issues. As an added plus the Yale Transit Orange bus goes right down Canner Street on that stretch, so you may well have front-door service!

I am in the Societas Magica and IACS (Coptic Studies). I don't know of any subject lists, though there well may be. There are also ones such as NAPS (Patristics) and APA (Philological Association), of which I have many friends who are a part, but don't hold much interest for me.

I am a member of SBL and AAR, as well as two area-specific societies. The benefits of membership in these kinds of organizations depend on how you use or leverage your membership. The area specific ones are obviously smaller, and depending on how active they are, can be helpful in connecting you with older or more experienced scholars, especially as a M* student. With the bigger ones, membership gives you access to the meetings (though you can go as a non-member, the price is pretty steep vs. a student member), as well as the job boards if/when you arrive at that stage of the game. They are actually helpful to look at even as someone early in a M* or PhD, as they give you an idea of what kinds of places are hiring and what they are looking for (as well as depress you as you realize that there are 26 jobs posted...). Being a member of SBL/AAR also allows you to do a paper at the annual/regional conferences. Depending on your interests, it is probably worthwhile to do either SBL or AAR at this point (you could do both if you have interests that span them and think you might want to do a paper at both, but if you just want to attend sessions for both at the annual meeting, you can do that without being a member of both), and to keep an eye out for any other specific ones that fit your interests. Some are by invitation so you'd have to wait or find a prof who was willing to extend that to you, but others just require a short application or explanation of your interest.

I don't necessarily see why not, except for the fact that from the Classics and History end, be sure to see what they are looking for with regard to preparation, whether they have faculty who could advise you in that area, and what approach they would take on the subject. For Christianity in Late Antiquity, it would depend on when and where you meant, but I would guess that a lot of Classics programs might not be looking for that type of focus in a student (not that they wouldn't take your application fee), but they would also probably be looking for someone with lots of preparation in classical Greek and Latin, and would most likely focus on those languages in your doctoral work. History programs tend also to view the study of Christianity in this period as mostly suited to Divinity Schools or Religious Studies departments, so again you may have a bit of difficulty finding someone to work with that is within a History department. I have had a large number of friends from various big name divinity schools who have applied to history departments, and only one that I know of got into Ohio State's, and this was because there is a large degree of crossover between Religious Studies and History there. So, the question might better be posed back to you - are there potential advisors and foci within these programs that would be suited for what you want to study? I know that you have mentioned elsewhere on the board that you are limited geographically, and so applying to multiple programs in this way might seem a perfect way to ensure your being able to pursue PhD work, but balance this with not wasting money on applications to departments where you'd either be a awkward or non-existent fit. Also, don't apply to history and suggest that you could have someone from another department advise you! In the end, if you are the most amazing student who has multiple degrees, perfect GPA, excellent GRE scores, etc. but don't fit anywhere in the department, you aren't going to be accepted.

Visiting is a fraught question indeed - but maybe it does depend on the place. Here are a few more of my thoughts on it. First, I think one reason that the prof I spoke to discouraged it was because of the false hope it gave people. Of course the faculty members you meet are probably going to be nice to you and talk with you, especially if your interests line up. The department might give you a nice tour of the area and have some current students talk with you as well. The issue I see here is that they are going to do the same for the 25 other people who come and visit during the fall, but they are only going to admit one of you! So, you come away from the visit excited and aglow from the awesome conversation you had with Prof. X (not of X-men fame) and then when you don't get in you sit there and fume and think over what went wrong because your visit just seemed so super positive that you can't imagine what happened. Second, as I mentioned, a lot of people visit. Not so many that you will get totally lost in a sea of random faces and names, but enough that you are probably not going to make such an amazing impression in one afternoon that your POI is going to immediately remember you (or if you do, it wil probably be the wrong kind of impression). A lot of adcoms are doing interviews in one form or another (Notre Dame, Emory, Yale, etc.) anyhow, so why not save yourself some money, put it towards your applications, and use the amazing invention of email to make initial contact. SBL is a better route I think because most people are going to be in the same place at the same time, and it feels a little less formal than a campus visit - you are at SBL to network as well as enjoy some good papers, so you can easily just attend a session with a paper by a POI, etc. and strike up a conversation with them afterwards. It isn't totally off-limits to email and ask if they'll be there, but I know from this past year that my own advisor was a bit haggard by day two with all the "we should grab a coffee" requests that he agreed to. Some profs even have a policy of not meeting with anyone at SBL for this reason. So, this is why I think it is a better move to keep your eyes peeled, attend sessions strategically, and crash a reception or two. Anecdote is not evidence, but it is all you have to go on during this process, so I will offer that during my application season, now almost three long years ago, no one of my cohort visited a school and we had an impressive sweep of Yale, UNC-CH, Emory, Fordham, Princeton, BC, BU, and U Chicago (this is for NT/Ancient Christianity).

Some thoughts of my own here: Instead of trying to answer all of those questions one by one, I will throw out my thoughts on this in paragraph form. I think the ideal advisor is someone who is the goldilocks type, right in the middle. Not too old, not too young. Too old and you may find yourself with a retiring advisor in your third year. Most programs make some concessions and try to help you out on this, and typically if a prof. plans on retiring in the next year or two, they will stop taking students to prevent this from happening. Even so, it does happen, so keep it in mind. Too young and as you go to look for jobs you may be met mostly by blank stares when you tell them who your advisor was. Further, without tenure, you may once again be left advisorless at the next tenure review. This is far more common and something to really keep in mind - be sure to have at least one other senior faculty member who you could work with were this to happen. You also need to meet your advisor in person and talk with them. Feeling this out is super important, as a person may look literally perfect for you on paper/CV, but when you go to talk to them you may find that they are super awkward, intimidating, offstandish, have an annoying laugh, etc. These may seem like odd intrapersonal elements, but you have to spend some serious time with this person, so it could be a tough few years if you show up and find that sitting in your advisor's office is something you dread. I am a super laid-back person, which is not to say that I don't work my butt off, but I don't really allow that to seep into my personality, so I knew that if I had someone who was a bit high-strung or just high-energy that I would both be annoyed with them as well as feel like I was not nearly enthusiastic enough about the topic I was studying. So, part of my choice was between two advisors, one embody the former, and one the latter. It is also good to have someone who is going to be tough on you. To be fully honest, you've probably gone through undergrad, and grad school with stellar grades and a good bit of backslapping from profs who want to encourage you in your pursuits. Your PhD should be a time when someone tells you that your work isn't that great, that your theory isn't original, that your paper was kind of mediocre. They should obviously also encourage you from time to time as well, but when you put your first book out and you excitedly turn to the first review only to find that the reviewer has in final evaluation decided that your book would have been better off having never been written, you don't want that to be the first time someone has ever excoriated your work. You'll be totally deflated! Additionally, be real sure of exactly how many people your advisor is advising, which is to say not just PhD students. Some profs are appointed in divinity schools, undergraduate colleges, etc. and have folks from all of those. Having to schedule out half-hour meetings every two months gets a bit old when you are having a crisis of confidence (which you will) and need someone to talk you down from leaving the program for a vehicle-sharing start-up. Being able to meet with my advisor more or less whenever I wanted to, and just going to talk once a week made a huge difference in my first two years. It wasn't even just to talk through some major problem every time, sometimes I just went to talk about good books I had just read, a new approach to some age-old problem, or just to shoot the breeze. I think this was a really important part of developing a real, human relationship with my advisor. If you advisor has 13 other PhD students, 45 Master's students and is the departmental coordinator or something, you may find it hard to meet, even if you are promised a good deal of focus as a prized PhD student. The truth is that people only have so many hours in a week! I don't know if there is a magic number of 'too many students' here, but I always figure not more than 1 per year, so 4-5. You want some aligned research interests, but I assume that this is a bit of a pedantic observation. You should go for someone whose approach and methodology you generally respect, jive with, and understand. Be sure to read through some of their publications. People approach topics in very different ways. Just because I am in an Ancient Christianity program doesn't mean that every person in the field would be a great advisor, even if they have perfectly aligned interests. There are some approaches, i.e. heavy philology, historical-critical, etc. that I just find either boring, outdated, or a little bit of both. There were a few programs with profs who seemed perfect on an 'interest-only' level, but once I read through their stuff, I totally ruled them out. It also helps to have someone who is fairly well-known in the field, as well as more generally. In this hellish job market, as you go to apply to your dream job at East Jesus University in Montana, it would be helpful if the scholar of Buddhism who heads the religious studies department has at least heard your advisor's name. Now this isn't always possible, especially in the famously insular fields of theology and biblical studies, but consider it. I'd say it would be good to shoot your POI an email. Don't be an annoyance, especially in a first email. A prof does not need to hear your entire life story, or your wonderful achievements. Just mention your basic interests, ask them if they are taking new students, and if their current work lines up with what you have in mind. If they seem interested in your background/etc. then you can send it along. I'd also pass along a piece of advice I got from a professor at a certain Ivy League school with regard to visiting prior to being admitted - "No one was ever helped by a campus visit prior to being admitted, but they have been hurt by it," meaning that you'll probably be nervous, excited, and wanting to make a really impression if you do this but you might end up being remembered as that person who was slathering all over him or herself trying to impress. So, I usually say to wait until you are admitted to visit unless you have a really compelling reason to do so. An exception might be SBL, but remember that a thousand people have the same idea so your impression might not be all that special. A better approach on my part was to go crash their school's reception if you are able, and talk to them there more informally (or if this seems too forward maybe after a session or something). I am really happy about how it worked out. As I mentioned I have great access to my advisor, have developed a great relationship with him, and have really enjoyed my time here. I have found a number of other people to be mentors/other readers as well, but those were actually mostly people I found after I got here. In that I still haven't met someone who doesn't know my advisor and vice versa, I am also confident that things will bode as well as one can hope when looking for a job in a few years. Hope this helps!

I would echo many of these things, though to some extent you have to ask yourself what kind of job you'll be looking for when you finish. The way that many departments train their graduates inevitably limit the possibilities for employment afterwards. For example in my own case, I highly doubt that I would be considered too strongly for a denominational college/divinity school looking for a "bible" professor. I don't have an MDiv, would not be able to sign onto a serious statement of faith or whatnot in good conscience, and don't have any church affilitation other than a lodge of which I am a part. However, having done two degrees in Hebrew Bible, one in NT, and now one in Ancient Christianity which has included substantial coursework that falls outside that strict area (eastern religions, theory of religion, medieval religious culture, anthropology of religion), I think I am going to come out eminently qualified to teach in a religious studies department. So, I think in the end you can't be an expert or be qualified in everything. You only have so much time to do courses and you are only given so many opportunities to TA. If you know everything about the book of Jeremiah and preaching on such, but nothing about Sikh practices you are probably going to be a better candidate for divinity schools or denominational colleges. From a number of friends who were on the market this year, things are very competitive, so it pays to have wide experience, but that experience can only be so wide and hiring committees understand that. On the flip side, you should think more about what your desired outcome is prior to starting up so that you can maximize your time in graduate school in that direction. We can say "I would take a job anywhere that would take me!," but we also have to recognize that lots of places wouldn't take us. And anyhow, I think I would do something else before teaching at a place like my undergrad - I just don't think I could deal with it.

I have not done any of these things, but have a number of friends who have, and by far the largest issue that people run into seems to be funding. A lot of the scholls give little or no funding to American students, and as such the programs end up being very expensive. The programs themselves are very good and generally well-respected, though the shorter 3-year model that most work on sometimes is looked upon less favorably by US institutions in terms of hiring in terms of TAing and other duties that the 5-year model in the US affords. This is not absolute though, as I know a number of schools of a more evangelical bent go for the foreign PhDs. This is mostly hearsay and secondhand reporting on my end, so if someone on here has more direct experience they could speak to it better.

I think that the answer to this question depends to some extent on your undergaduate experience as well. Some folks had an extremely rigorous undergraduate institution, and as such may find that the workload in a graduate program feels like a step up in difficulty, but an incremental one whereas some others may find it to be a really substantial jump that takes some time to adjust to. Another area that sometimes takes a bit of adjustment is grading - with the ridiculous level of grade inflation that comes along with the politics of the undergraduate education, a lot of students who go on to graduate school of any sort show up with a very high GPA that they fully expect to maintain through their graduate education. Such is not impossible, but expectations will be higher in a graduate program, and during my time as a TA at a particular divinity school that is not HDS I was often surprised at how many people seemed to think that they deserved an A on every assignment/course by virtue of their being at an elite divinity school! So, manage your expectations here and don't be too hard on yourself if your grades take a small dip in your first semester. Finally, on reading. You will almost certainly be assigned more reading than you can realistically complete in a week unless you read extremely quickly, or don't plan on retaining anything you read. Half of graduate school is learning how you learn - i.e. realize that the goal for the 350 pages of reading you get for one class is not just to say that you were able to read the words printed on those 350 pages, but that you were able to understand what is going on for that particular week. You will find the rate at which you are able to read most efficiently and still remember what you read as time goes along, but it takes a little getting used to. Again, don't beat yourself up because you were unable to complete every single page of your reading, you have to get into the rhythm of the thing. Remember one other thing, at a competitive divinity school there will be lots of grandstanding and boasting of great ability, and this might make you feel bad about yourself (e.g. "Oh yeah, I finished all the reading last Thursday and had some extra time to peek ahead for this week - plus I just finished my first draft of the research paper on Saturday! I am so glad that I am this far ahead in the second week of the semester!"). My advice is to ignore it the best you can. Half of these people are lying anyway. Focus on yourself and what you hope to get out of these two years, which will go by really fast. If you spend a lot of time worrying about how well you are keeping up relative to others, you'll waste your time and in that they are probably lying you won't really know anyhow. My years at divinity school were really good, and helped me to develop a lot of the skills and practices that have served me extremely well as I move into my third year of a PhD.

This question depends on what you will be able to afford - with both of you in school, what would you be able to afford in rent each month? Brookline and JP are nice, but the former is really expensive, and the latter is getting there (depending on where you are). Brighton is going to be slightly more affordable than these two, but may be less convenient in terms of getting to school (mostly for you at NEU). As a couple, you probably don't want to live with roomates and so you'll need some kind of 1BR. I think you could find a small 1BR in JP nearby Mission Hill in the 1300-1500 range - this will be pretty small, and won't have a lot of charm. It will probably be something like a galley kitchen, a living room, bedroom, and small bath. If you are looking for something a bit larger and nicer, it will run you closer to 1500-1700. I think these rents would hold similarly for Brighton as well. Brookline would be more. One thing to remember that is nice is that BU has a shuttle that picks up right near the Mass Ave. Stop on the Orange Line, which runs from there to the main campus in a few stops. I was doing the Orange Line to Back Bay and then switching to Copley, which is a major pain in the neck. The Green Line is the very worst that Boston has to offer, and the B-line, which is what runs along the BU campus is the worst of the worst. It is slow, has way too many stops, and seems to be perpetually overcrowded. 10 minutes is a generous estimate, and is true only if everything is running perfectly, which it almost never is. It typically takes me 15-25 mintes from Copley, which is a bit obscene when you realize how short a distance it is. The BU Shuttle saved my sanity!

One extra thing here is that language practice should always be keyed towards your interests and intents as a scholar. That is, I am not really that interested in philology or textual criticism. I am a material/popular culture, theory-heavy interpretive model kind of guy, so I pick works and such that I know will be worthwhile and important to be acquainted with, as well as those which might give me an interesting idea for a conference paper or article. Reading and practice should always be done with some goal beyond just 'doing it' because you have to or feel pressure to know how to parse every verb ever. If you happen to be lucky enough to get a job at a small liberal arts college in central Iowa you can be pretty sure that they are not going to want you to teach Akkadian or Coptic, because no one will take it. You'll obviously need some languages to remain able to interact and publish, but when you put out your impressive CV with thirteen research languages on it to East Jesus College in Missouri, there will be other parts that will garner far more focus. On the parsing thing, I'd say to gear it towards your interests and needs. If you are planning on being out in the field, looking at new inscriptions or something you probably need to get really good at not needing Bibleworks to help you parse difficult verbs. If, however you plan on sitting in your office surrounded by editio princeps and other books, Bibleworks or something as a bit of an assistant is probably fine, as long as you can be guarded about relying on it too heavily. N.B. - if you are hoping and planning on doing something like manuscript editing or textual criticism, or if, like I think La Sarar is above, doing something heavily focused in NELC, you should probably listen more to them than me, because I study a much later period with more varia to interact with when doing that interpretive work.

I find this to be difficult, but have gotten into a rhythm in which I basically commit to reading about 1 page out of something 1 day a week, with an end goal in mind. So, since I am trying to keep up Coptic, Hebrew, Greek, and Slavonic, I've picked one longer work in each to work through in however long it might take me. I am doing the Books of Ieou, 3 Enoch, the vita of Symeon the Younger, and portions of the shorter recension of 2 Enoch right now. Some take me forever (2 Enoch), whereas being stronger in Coptic and Hebrew, those tend to take a bit shorter. Eventually I find that certain ones, especially now that I've been at Hebrew for about 8 years, start to require a bit less practice to keep up and become more like reading for fun. Hope this helps out a bit and feel free to PM if you have any other questions about this process.

I think that this is a big question that is getting tossed around now, especially with the number of Religion programs dwindling or getting absorbed into other departments. Along with this discussion comes that of the role of Humanities in higher education, which is a difficult one, as you will no shortage of humanities professors who can write a fine paean about how important they are (a paean that I agree with), but the truth being that most students see these courses as 'requirements' for more important degrees in economics, business, and the 'hard sciences' which will land them a job and plenty of money after graduation. For the absolutely massive student body at my own institution, precious few choose religion majors. For, as jdm mentions, what the hell do you do with a BA in religion (or frankly, even a M*)? Parents laying down 40k a year to send their kids to college are becoming less and less interested in the intrinsic reasons for the worth of the Humanities, mostly because they probably don't want their kids moving back in with them after they graduate. Hell, my parents probably wouldn't have stood for me doing a BA in Religion except for the fact that I got a full-ride and they didn't have to pay a penny of it. So, what does this mean for the study of religion on the PhD level? I don't really know. It seems that the number of programs churning out M* degrees in Religion has grown a great deal in the last 20 years, which means that getting one M* degree doesn't matter much, even if it is from Yale or Harvard. It isn't all that hard to get into either of those programs. However, look at the faculty at these places - one or two profs for each field, who stay in their positions for 50 years! We absolutely need bright people to pursue the study of religion, because positions will inevitably open, and do each year. However, we probably need less of them. Maybe this means a little more discouragement at both the BA and M* level, especially for those who aren't so bright as to be offered full or near full funding. This bring me to the matter of money. I say with the PhD at this point, pursue your dream, work hard, cross your fingers or sacrifice to the goat-god or whatever you do for a job at the end, but for god's sake don't go into debt. I would really say at any level, but especially at the PhD. If you have to pay for your degree, your program is probably not well-respected enough to put you ahead of the 125 other people who are going to be applying to the same job you are (or they don't think highly enough of you as a student). Trying to pay off 50 or 60k, let alone more working at the 'bucks or Walmart isn't going to happen in your lifetime. As jdharrison also notes - diversify! Using the fact that you have a BA in Religion and a M* in Religion as an excuse for needlessly plowing forward into a PhD is silly. You can pick up other skills. You can get certified to use an X-Ray or CAT scan in 15 months and get a pretty good job out of it. You can learn how to cut fish, or cook, or shoot and edit videos with no extra training. I know it is heresy to not spend your summers as a PhD student learning some obscure language, or locking yourself inside reading, but I have taken to learning a new, marketable skill every summer since undergrad. This is partly to see what I enjoy (i.e. not cooking), as well as to expand my skill set. I have actually gotten really good at shooting and editing videos, and have made more than my entire stipend doing this for real estate companies in the past two summers. This is getting long, so I will wrap up. I absolutely want to be a scholar of Late Antiquity, and to do this as a professor in some capacity. However, if it doesn't happen, I haven't gone into any debt, and I have other thigns to fall back on (even with two degrees in Religion). If I end up finishing in three years, can't find a job, and end up opening a butcher shop or something, I'll spend my weekends writing about magic gems and be sure to bring my advisor some strip steaks at SBL every year.

Having done the MARc at YDS in Hebrew Bible, I can echo what jdm says for the most part. Though, I had never met John Collins prior to applying (I did email), and I only had Hebrew really. I could read unpointed texts, but I actually didn't have a single other language coming in. I know that the program has gotten a bit more competitive since I was there, but I think I was 1 of 2 from something like 30ish applicants from what JC told me. It does depend on whether the profs think you'd be a good fit for the program, though I do think that it is not just one single person - I mentioned a few people on the faculty that went outside the HB classification that I know showed that I was interested in the larger picture that YDS offered. So, I would email a few people with whom you are interested in working. Don't be an obnoxious person who starts the email with "Hello Prof. X, I have taken ten years of Hebrew, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Greek, and Middle Egyptian, and have worked in the Ashmolean collection as an assistant curator while taking a full course load in ancient culture, during which I have maintained a 4.0 gpa..." They don't care about that right now. Just mention your interests, ask about their interest in your interest and how the MARc program might benefit your future study, etc. They'll see your preparation when you apply. Finally, know that the MARc is competitive because it is impressive when you go to apply for PhDs. I did a Hebrew Bible MARc and was applying for Ancient Christianity programs, and it hardly seemed to matter. Folks know that the MARc puts you through the paces with language and coursework. Obviously one's PhD applications include more than simply a previous degree, but I came from a no-name UG, studied an unrelated area and somehow managed to get into 4 of 6 programs (with one waitlist and one rejection) in Ancient Christianity. I think the MARc had something to do with it.

A few suggestions here: 1. On French, see if the institution granting your ThM offers something like a French proficiency exam - some places like HDS, etc. will do this. If you can take the exam and pass it, then you may well be able to have transcript evidence that you passed the exam and would be judged proficient in French. If this isn't a possibility, you can probably note that your High School was French immersion - if they have some doubt about this, they can always check on it, but my guess would be that they'd take your word on it. Also, what kind of internship? If you can also demonstrate that your internship required a substantial bit of French speaking and reading, you should be fine. Anyhow, at most PhD programs, even if you do show up saying that you are amazing at French and German, they will likely have you do a proficiency exam to be sure (unless you have a ton of transcript evidence that you are more than prepared on this front). 2. The Greek and Latin question is a bit more vexing - I take it that you have neither? Have you done anything even introductory in either language? If not, the time period you are interested in will put you into a bit of a bind in that the Greek of Late Antiquity/Byzantium, while not Demosthenes, is more challenging than that of the New Testament. So, whereas a lot of programs have "NT Greek" courses, they may not have a classical (Attic) component. So, I think jdm has a good suggestion above, you need to decide what kind of literature you will most need/want to use and start right away on that language. I might even suggest you consider holding off on applying this fall, as even if you do Latin over the summer you'll have no transcript Greek to speak of (and anything you did would be only 1 semester of introduction) - you'll probably end up wasting a couple hundred dollars applying to programs that you likely will be hard-pressed to get into. Self-taught languages are also a bit suspect, especially Attic Greek - it is a difficult language and you really need someone to guide you through it. Now, I am normally someone who suggests that people chill a bit on the obsession with languages in that unless you plan to be a philologist (good luck finding a job), the assumption that one can 'access' the textual meaning by knowing the original language is a prime reason as to why the study of Christianity in particular seems to be in a perpetual 45 year distance from anything like modern historiography or hermeneutics. However, you do need some ability in them. You probably don't need a ton of languages, but Latin and Greek, at least at the intermediate level will be indispensible for a degree in this period. I study a similar period, and am in my second year of a PhD. I do Egypt/Balkans and domestic religion though, so I may not be of great help in Historical Theology (I actually confess that I don't really know what that is - I've heard of it, but I tend towards the anthropoology and sociology departments wherever I have been during my degrees, so I probably missed plenty of conversations with thelogians about this).

On a separate note, for the move into Boston, one of the biggest pains tends to be the up-front costs of getting an apt. That is, there is a good chance you'll need 3 months of rent up front unless you find an apt. that is by owner. Most realtors around here charge a month or half month "realtor fee." So if you add this to a first + security that most places want, even for that rare $1500 1 BR you could be looking at shelling out $4500 just to move in! So, if you are considering Boston, start saving now. Multiple cats will probably pose the same limitations as a dog, as a lot of places tend to limit things to a single pet. Also, Boston is such a wildly different place than NYC - I grew up in Brooklyn and was blown away by how small Boston was comparatively. Such is also the reason for those rents!

Are you asking about DRTS or the School of Theology? And which program? They typically send out on the late side - I think the poster above is likely talking about the School of Theology (not sure if it is a M* or ThD though). If it in Ancient Christianity, the decision has not been made yet. PM me if you need or want more specifics ( I am a current PhD student in DRTS)