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m-ttl, have you considered the University of Rochester's PhD program in Visual and Cultural Studies? I have a feeling that your interests would be more than welcome there. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I recommend you pursue what you're interested in and passionate about. Graduate degrees are a long haul. Dedicating the level of time and effort that is required to make academic progress around a subject which only half-suits you is more than an uphill battle; it's wasting precious time on what you could be pursing when you find the academic home that suits you. Don't stop until you find that place.

For anyone who is awaiting a Rutgers decision, I just noticed in an email exchange that they are supposed to be forthcoming either this or next week. This means it could be as late as Friday the 30th. I know most waiting for an answer would prefer Friday the 23rd, but hopefully this offers some end in sight for those waiting on a decision!

Woo, awesome! Many congratulations!!!

I was very happy to find an unofficial acceptance via email last night (technically, sometime just before 1am East Coast time this morning). Honestly, no info beyond that (funding, etc.) Happy to answer questions as soon as I am able, but just now I'm heading out the door to catch a flight to a different school to which I've been admitted... I'm not sure how internet-connected I'll be once I land. Hopefully this means everyone should be hearing something soon, too! Good luck!

THIS. It must be acknowledged that having an MA is no guarantee that you'll get into a PhD program. In fact, I've known plenty of folks who didn't get in to PhD programs that had earned their MA... and also know folks who deferred their PhD enrollment one year only to be admitted into ZERO programs the following years. You never can tell. In some ways, I feel like there should be a Grad School Roulette-themed casino in Vegas. Any investors?

Disclaimer: As this is my first application season, I'm less experienced in this regard, so please take my thoughts with the generalized requisite grain of salt. Paying for an MA en route to a PhD is not *necessarily* a bad thing. But from what I've gathered, taking the PhD when offered is the better option - IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON EVENTUALLY GETTING THE PHD ANYWAY. I allcaps this because for many people working in non-academic positions (I am thinking here of modern/contemporary curators I know, for instance, who are currently working at mid-tier museums and arts institutions after acquiring only an MA), the PhD may not be necessary to fulfill one's ultimate career objectives. The opportunity cost of not working in the field while earning a PhD is substantial. One reason why I personally am leaning towards PhD programs over MAs is because going straight to PhD could potentially save me a year or more of my time spent in school (YMMV depending on how many credits your future PhD-granting institution is willing to accept from your MA-granting institution). For myself, I'm looking at opportunity costs, but I am an older student and really don't want to waste any more time en route to my ultimate career. You may have a larger temporal cushion, so to speak. There are other great reasons for paying for your MA. It could be that you've been admitted to an MA program that affords you the opportunity for deep intellectual engagement with a particular program/POI that you would not have access to otherwise, and in this way you may be able to uniquely shape your future scholarship by taking advantage of a particular program. You may have contact with professors who, by virtue of your proximity, will give your work more careful consideration than if you'd not been in the program in the first place. You may be in a geographically challenging situation that dictates your program's place. You may have personal commitments that leave you limited to what choices you have for further education, and if the MA is what's available, that's what you'll need to take for now. You may feel a particular locale will be especially beneficial to your scholarship, but the only program that's admitting you there is an MA. There are also numerous programs which will only admit otherwise-qualified students to their MA program as a matter of course if they have not done any graduate work. It's worth asking yourself whether a particular program that you're considering will help you to achieve your ultimate career goals. While many in their field choose to earn an MA en route to a PhD program, I suspect there are plenty of folks out there who paid for their MA who later went on to receive full funding for their PhD. Again, consider what it is that you are trying to accomplish. Sometimes the dollars that MA students pour into their programs are sucked right back up into the system by the PhD students in the same department. Most accounting processes, however, are a bit more nuanced than that. Yes, PhD students *do* receive funding from the institution, and it *may be* the case that some of the MA tuition goes to help the PhD students get by. The question you need to ask yourself, however, is whether you feel like you, as a potential MA student, are getting value for the money you spend at your institution. Value for money can be defined in any number of ways, so that is a question that only you are capable of answering. DO NOT be discouraged because you've "only" been admitted to MA programs. I guarantee you that for every program to which you've been admitted, there are many more applicants who did not get in. You applied to the programs you did for a reason. Now you must decide if that squares with your career goals and if those same reasons make sense in light of the potential dollars that will go to the MA program of your choice. I hope that helps, and - TRULY - congratulations are due to you for your admit!

Hey there, I'm one of the other admits. Echoing stillnovista, PM me if you like as well. I quite like the program, but I'm not ready to commit just yet.

Congratulations, Octavia! I hear the program is outstanding, so you ought to be proud! I'm also in the older-than-average category, coming from a Southern state school whose name doesn't exactly put you at the top of the adcom pile (must give a shoutout to my UG nonetheless, as the faculty is truly wonderful). I do feel fortunate to have gone back to school as an older student, because I was much more aware of how these things might work against me when I eventually applied to grad. I felt like I could prepare and mitigate whatever shortcomings I had by working on the things that I *did* have control over, because age and institution were nonnegotiables. In a perfect world, we are all admitted to the graduate program that is the best fit... but of course, we live in the real world instead. I suppose that's why it feels especially good to take your post as evidence that sometimes - even if it's not on the timeline we'd choose for ourselves - the perfect world and the real world intersect in a really righteous way! Congrats again!

Forget what I said about the silence from Rochester...admission offered w/ 4 year full tuition fellowship & TA-ship, plus maybe something else. Apparently my admissions emails were bouncing?!? HOLY COW HOLY COW HOLY COW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First, late congratulations to Yale admit TBD! Second, I'd like to blow off a bit of steam and spend a moment to textually angst, if I might. Acceptances, rejections, and wait lists are all reported on the board's results for Rochester, but (naturally) I have yet to hear back from them. Now, sure, I know what you're thinking: How hard can it be to make a phone call or send an email, complexprocedure? The answer? Pretty darn hard! See, the not-knowing protects me from the certainty of rejection. Instead, I stew. However, this leads to being frustrated with myself about my unproductive angst! Then I tell myself that it's probably time to step back and survey what's left to wring my hands over. Aside from Rochester, there are four programs from which I've yet to receive a decision. One school offers the MA; the other three are MA to PhD programs. Considering an acceptance into any of these programs precipitates a cascade of anxiety over funding, as even contemplating going into further debt to finance a MASTERS DEGREE IN THE HUMANITIES pushes me over the hand-wringing edge. Seriously, there are hives that are just waiting under the surface of my skin to break free if I am willing to give it more than a momentary thought. But, but... what if I'm not even lucky enough to have that problem?!? Eeep! Well, it looks like I've finally made the transition from "Why worry about what you can't change?" to "So. Many. FEELINGS. !!!!11!!!!1" I'm pretty certain that this is not an improvement. There are plenty of things that I have on my plate right now to keep me busy, and in fact I should not lose any more time to concerning myself over issues that are largely out of my control (this is Logical Me stepping in, in case you didn't notice). Yet the not-knowing is robbing my focus here, even as my task list impatiently taps its foot, waiting for a whole other set of action items to be crossed off. And it's not even MARCH yet?!? Hoo boy.

I'm curious as to whether anyone else on the board has heard from Rochester. I see acceptances, rejections, and wait lists on the results survey, but I've not heard a peep. I'm pretty sure I know what the answer is because of that, but I'd like to hear the answer I don't want in a more official manner if they've already been sending off their rejections....

Oh, poo, I've got a ticket for the Duke train to Rejectsville myself. Although I'm glad to finally hear something, it doesn't make me any happier about the decision. They were at the top of my list, but standing on my tippy toes didn't seem to help. Hoping for better news in the days ahead.

Admittedly broad list, in no particular order: * Johnathan Crary (roughly everything). Lots of looking at looking. * Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. Ridiculously broad, unfashionable methodology, but oh, what a pleasure to read! * Vanessa Schwartz and Jeannene Przyblyski, The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader. Baudelaire, Benjamin, Crary, Clark, Tony Bennet, and on and on. * Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. Tiny, beautiful, and more than a little magical. * Michel Foucalt, Discipline and Punish; The Birth of the Clinic. Although I'm no Foucauldian, my fascination with where his arguments go eclipses my frustration with having to fact-check his claims. * Steven Conn, Museums and Intellectual Life 1876-1926. Haven't yet finished his Do Museums Still Need Objects but I have really liked the parts I've read. * Ivan Karp and Steven Levine, Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Great article by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. * Old childhood favorite: Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way. Likely hopelessly outdated, it's still sitting on my shelf (with its Roman companion). It might be time for a pleasantly nostalgic revisit. I should also mention that I'm enjoying pretty much everything that I'm currently reading. This includes: * Barbara Maria Stafford, Artful Science: Enlightenment Education and the Eclipse of Visual Education. This was a gift, and while I'd prefer to read some of her more current work after having collaborated with scientists, it's a fascinating read all the same. * Sarah Burns, Painting the Dark Side: Art and the Gothic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century America. Sort of embarrassed I haven't gotten around to reading this until now. * 2008 Spring/Summer issue of American Studies on Aaron Douglas. Oh, shoot - I really should end things here but I MUST note Carla Yanni's work about institutional architecture. Good stuff!

Ooh, good list of authors!

Just remembered two more that deserve special mention; while neither is art history per se, they do deal with the art world in a related manner. The first is Robert Wittman's Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures. The author worked in the FBI's art crime division (and, if you believe his tale, single-handedly and under great opposition created such a beast) and while I had high hopes for this one, it was an outright stinker. The book reads as having been written by a fifth-grader, which I could forgive if Wittman hadn't the luxury of a co-writer to mitigate his authorial weaknesses. Wittman also believes that his education at the Barnes made him superior to an uncountable host of experts who have dedicated their lives to art historical scholarship, yet his writings on art objects are as basic as to be laughable. Most irritating, however, is that the work becomes a tome about the ax that Wittman must urgently grind with the FBI. The tone of his writing, however, is so ego-soaked - a trait, incidentally, that is not likely to win you much favor in the thankless world of the FBI - that when the author clashes with his chief officer and others, I wasn't a bit surprised. Over the course of reading this book, the problem wasn't that I found the material uninteresting; it was, instead, that I did not like Wittman as a person. He seemed too self-absorbed and convinced of his own superior knowledge (and bitterly annoyed that others failed to recognize his greatness) that I had a hard time getting past that. The second godawful (fiction!) book is one which I am forced to admit I did not finish, although heaven knows I tried: Noah Charney's The Art Thief : A Novel. It features a Caravaggio theft; what could possibly go wrong? I couldn't tell you, as I found it downright unreadable. I actually had to go back to Amazon, since it's been so long out of my library (to the donation pile), I was incapable of even remembering the name! Lo and behold, 31 one-star reviews out of less than 80 total tells you all you need to know.