dispositif

Anyone else applying to Divinity at Chicago this application season? If so, how's your application coming along? Also to others not applying but have in the past, any word on funding? Everyone knows tuition is impossibly high and that funding is not very hopeful, but if you have or anyone who has received funding, have any idea on why they might have been awarded it? I'd be grateful for any info you might have. As for me, I'm an A.M. applicant with a background in Religious Studies.

Anyone else here applying to HistCon this season? If so, where else are you applying? My work (Crit Theory & Education) is interdisciplinary, so I have U. Minnesota's CSDS, but also Edu programs at Berkeley (Rhet, I decided, was too competitive, and they only applications to one program per season), Illinois Urbana-Champaigne, and Vanderbilt. Politics @ Surrey in the UK, too, depending on how American admissions pan out. Given the program's history, I won't be surprised if HistCon offers more than a couple of admissions this year, though their site claims the department to be viable.

It depends on who your LoR writers are. I'm assuming they're former professors of yours with whom you've taken one or more courses with where you've illustrated your capacity for carrying out work on the graduate level? Personally, my letter writers were professors who worked in the department I majored in, and I had worked in the departmental office while in undergrad, so they knew me quite well. I'd left after graduation to teach English abroad for a year while I was defining my interests in grad work, so I just popped by the department to say hello and tell them that I was applying and if they'd consider writing a favorable rec. If I had instead contacted them via email or phone and wanted to follow-up, I might just pay them a visit and pursue a little small talk and then pop in some questions that I'd encountered while in the process of applying. It's well into the admissions season now (at least in America), so you've likely been writing (if not, preparing to write) your statements of purpose, so you could sincerely ask for their input on helping to illustrate your interests in the statements, or ask them pertinent questions about persons of interest at the programs you're applying to, funding issues, etc. I certainly wouldn't suggest that you feign interest just to allow yourself to foil out the strength of your candidacy for grad work, but if you do have pertinent questions, it might be good to just ask to meet with them (or pop in, depending on how well you know them) to discuss them. Good luck!

I'm bumping this thread to see if anyone else has any information; however, my concern is that I consider myself to be an at least somewhat competitive applicant, having graduated summa cum laude with additional honors and paper presentations at the undergraduate level. I'm applying to programs that are asking this question, but I fear that answering that I don't have to be offered financial aid in order to enroll with decrease my chances for being funded, in part or whole. Like many others, I don't by any means have the money lying around for financing school and would be forced into loans if not offered funding, and my degree is in the Humanities, so regardless of placement, I'll not be "rolling in it" any time soon. I'd be grateful for any additional input.