Febronia

Likewise. And now it looks like there is a Yale interview as well?

My plan B is to become a nun! Seriously. Actually, it's my plan A, but the communities I've been in contact with have all encouraged me to finish my education first. (I would like to teach at the seminary/university level and to work on translating manuscripts after entering.) But if I don't get in, I will probably just have to conclude that God wants me to become a nun sooner rather than later...!

That's excellent news! Do you have funding as well? (I saw the post on the results board, but wasn't positive if it was you.) Funded master's programs are a thing of great beauty and relative rarity, so that would be awesome.

I just had a phone call from Notre Dame!!! I've been invited to interview for History of Christianity, February 26th-28th! VERY excited, very happy!!! Good luck to everyone else. I know how nerve-wracking this whole process can be...

To be more specific, I just discovered the department calendar on their website! (How did I miss this before?) Thursday Jan. 21: Review of PHD applications begin Thursday-Wednesday Jan 28-Feb 3: PHD Area Admissions Meetings Friday – Saturday Feb. 26-27: PHD Admissions Weekend

I've thought about this....I probably would post about it *eventually*, probably at the end of the application season, but there are several people on my friends list who are also applying to programs this semester, sometimes the same programs, and it doesn't seem very tactful to brag about good news when other people may be getting bad news or are still waiting.... I might wait until I decide where I am going to go (being optimistic and assuming multiple offers!) since that's also something that more of my facebook friends would actually care about, rather than the decision on every single application...

In previous years, it looks like they normally notified finalists in early February for interviews in late February. I imagine it's a similar timeline this year, but I don't know any official information. Good luck with your applications!

A good friend of mine also got an interview invitation from Notre Dame today. I think she said they have about 20 finalists.

I focus on Syriac studies and the other traditions of the Christian East (Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, etc.). Most of my programs are in religion/theology, but my coursework and faculty supervisors seem to be all over the place. (NELC, East Asian studies, Eastern European studies, classics, history, Byzantine studies, etc.) I confess one of my ultimate dreams would probably be this: http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/current_students/ad_hoc_degrees.php Harvard awards "ad hoc" degrees outside of any one department. In other words, you can do a doctorate in "The Various That I Like Because They're Cool"! I designed an independent major as an undergraduate, so that's just the sort of thing that I *love*. (Of course, first you have to get into Harvard, and then you have to get accepted into that program, but still...it looks awesome.)

I'm a current M.Div. student at Harvard. My understanding is that HDS meets full need, but that how much is grant aid and how much is loans depends on merit. The lowest offer I've *heard* of is 50% tuition. (There may, however, be lower offers, and only people with at least a 50% scholarship want to tell people about it!). The highest I've heard of is full tuition and fees plus a stipend of $10,000 per year. As far as I can tell, stipends are fairly unusual, but full tuition awards are reasonably common. People don't talk much about money, but that's my general sense of things... As for GPA--just looking at straight averages, yours are probably below, but I wouldn't be unduly worried about it. There are plenty of us here with uneven undergraduate records, and it's much easier to get in when there are some D's or F's mixed in with your A's than it would be if you had straight B's. As far as how Yale compares on financial aid, in my case I didn't get *nearly* as much funding from them as from Harvard, but I know other people who have gotten very generous offers from Yale, so it just seems to vary, I guess.

It's usually in early February, with finalists being notified in January, but I don't know about specific dates...

Most of the professors I know at Harvard Divinity School are personally religious, but it isn't necessarily something that they all talk a lot about. There are professors who are observant Jews (yes, including Jon Levenson), as well as Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Protestants, Buddhists, etc. I'm happy to get a bit more specific by private message, but I don't know that I'm comfortable discussing my professors' religious lives to the open internet! I don't think any of them are really closeted about it, but it feels uncomfortable to me for some reason to write too much about that... Harvard is really the only school that I can speak to, but I think it's fair to say that you can find just about all types here. Those of us who do early and medieval Christianity tend in general to be a fairly traditional bunch-- at least as far as Harvard goes! We (both students and faculty) tend to be Catholic, Anglican, or Orthodox, and while our faith commitments are not often discussed in the classroom, it's certainly not tabboo either. And I certainly feel comfortable talking about spiritual issues with the professors I am closest to, and in one-on-one conversations have often spoken of the impact of what I'm studying on my own beliefs, or how my beliefs inform the way I approach my studies. That's not something that usually comes up in the classroom in most cases (ministry studies classes being the exception). But I think it's pretty universally true that professors here, whether or not they are personally religious, genuinely care about students' spiritual lives, and are more than happy to talk about that if a student wants to. But they also aren't going to pry, or assume that it's something that is important to you or that you want to talk about, because for a lot of people it may not be. And of course, religious affiliation various by subfield. Many (not all) of the Buddhist studies folks are Buddhist, many (not all) of the Islamic studies people are Muslims, likewise with Jewish studies, etc. Things in the classroom for the most part tend to stay academic, but I'd say that certainly the majority of people (not all!) have solid faih commitments of various kinds, and that keeps things interesting. I think we have a good healthy mix of perspectives, and on the whole, I think the emphasis on pluralism gives a lot of space for people to maintain their own beliefs while still being in community with others and learning from them....

Short answer--yes. Slightly longer answer--your Latin is already in pretty good shape, and that's the most important thing. You'll want to keep that up, and add either French or German or maybe both. Would Hebrew or Syriac be such a high priority if you want to do medieval Christianity? It seems to me like if you have extra language time it might be better to focus on some of the Western European vernaculars? Now, I say that as a Syriac specialist, but since Syriac doesn't seem all that central to your research interests, that's the sort of thing that could wait until a doctorate, if you decide you want it at all. And don't forget the summers for intensive language programs also!

It's going to be cheapest (if less efficient) to do New York-New Haven and New York-Boston rather than New Haven-Boston. If you do decide to go directly between Yale and Harvard, Greyhound is probably the best bet. Bus rather than train is really your best option for New York-Boston. Bolt Bus (boltbus.com) is cheap and pretty good. They have wireless internet on board! Fares can be as low as $1, but more common is $15 one way. Also check Greyhound and Chinatown bus (chinatown-bus.com). The latter is a bit sketchy, but cheap. (About the same as Bolt). Greyhound's fares are often competitive on this route as well. Buses come into South Station, same as the train. That's on the Red Line, same as Harvard. Boston's public transport is very easy to figure out. (Unlike NY, which I confess I find a bit overwhelming.) I'm not posting times because they run so many of them every day. Pretty much you can leave at any time you want, within a couple of hours.

I've found CUA's financial aid information to be frustratingly vague myself. All of my other programs fund everyone whom they admit, and it's clear that CUA does not, but the specifics of just what kind of funding is available and how hard it is to get seem hard to come by. In googling, I found this, which may or may not be current: http://policies.cua.edu/enrollment/finaidgradfull.cfm Among other things, it says, "Doctoral Scholarships: These scholarships are full-tuition awards for students entering one of the university’s doctoral programs full time. To be considered for these awards, applicants must have strong undergraduate records and cumulative verbal and quantitative GRE scores of 1300 or above. Half Scholarships – University and Centennial Halves: These half-tuition scholarships are open to most prospective full-time graduate students with strong undergraduate records and combined verbal and quantitative GRE scores of 1200 or higher." Again, I don't know if this is still accurate, since it's dated 2005 and is rather buried on the website. But at least it's some hard numbers. I know that's probably disappointing, but even if you don't get a merit scholarship from CUA, I think you will still be a strong candidate for several of your other programs, which don't tie financial aid directly to GRE scores the way that CUA does.

I confess, I really do think that "Master of Divinity" has to be the most awesome degree title ever. It ought to come with superpowers and a cape!

I think it really depends on what your specialization is. HDS is still a great place to study a lot of things, and the funding is among the best available for master's programs. I feel that I've received an incredible education here, with some amazing professors and fellow students. That said, we definitely do some things better than others. Probably our top New Testament scholar, Francois Bovon, is retiring at the end of this semester. Beyond that, there is Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, who does feminist biblical interpretation, and Karen King, who mostly works on non-canonical texts. They're both great at what they do, but obviously that leaves a lot of potential areas of focus uncovered. Laura Nasrallah teaches some classes on Paul, as well as some very good courses on the history of early Christianity. We also had a new professor, Giovanni Bazzana, start this fall. He's teaching classes on the Gospels and on Apocalypticism this year. The other good thing about Harvard, however, is the opportunity to take classes in the other schools of the Boston Theological Institute (BC, BU, EDS, Holy Cross, Gordon Conwell, Andover Newton, etc.) which can help to fill any areas that Harvard doesn't have covered as well. I'm not sure how the MTS program would respond to someone who already had an MA in New Testament. It would be easier if you were trying to switch fields...In that sense, the ThM might be better, since that assumes you already have a master's degree, but I believe financial aid is quite limited for the ThM program.

Rather than saying "you're my top choice!", I wrote something more along the lines of "I believe that University X would be the best place for me to pursue my interests, given the unique strengths of the department in A, B, and C." It's a way of indicating, "No, really, I love you! You're the best!" without actually having to say it in so many words.

This is the first year that HDS has required GRE scores from MTS and MDiv applicants, so I don't think it's really possible to say yet. If I had to estimate, I would say anything about a 1200 would be competitive, with the verbal being more important than the math. But that's really just a vague estimate. I certainly know people here who scored lower than that. I really don't think that even HDS knows at this point what the distribution of scores will look like, since this is the first time that they've required the exam.

There weren't any prerequisites. But actually, it was the fact that I had never taken Greek that raised eyebrows more than my lack of Hebrew! I admittedly did things a bit backwards. But I knew that Syriac was what I was most interested in, and so I wanted to start right in on it without wasting any time!

I feel like I'm probably the one who should answer this, since I seem to be the resident Syriacist on the board, but since I don't actually know Hebrew, it's hard for me to really say. I was the only person in my elementary Syriac class who had never taken Hebrew before, and certainly the others had an advantage in being able to recognize the roots of words and such. But on the whole, I didn't find it to be an extraordinarily difficult language. There is much less precision to it than a language like Greek, which in general means that it's easier to learn the grammar but then you have to interpret what you've translated. I really, really love Syriac, though, and would certainly encourage anyone to take it up. It's useful for so many different disciplines, and there is still so much untranslated material that we need to get a lot more people working on it!

I got the postcard confirming that they had received my application today, mailed November 4th.

In alphabetical order, Catholic University (Semitics-Syriac Christianity), Duke (Early Christianity), Georgetown (Theology), Harvard (PhD, ThD), Notre Dame (History of Christianity), Yale (Theology). The subfield varies somewhat between schools based on where Syriac studies fits the best.

Oh no, fear not! I'm always intimidated and depressed by you people who did such solid language preparation as undergraduates! I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to focus on as an undergrad. I mean, I was a religion major, but my coursework within religion was all over the map, and since I had so much commitment anxiety about picking a subfield, I didn't want to invest the time in learning the languages yet. It's probably just as well. The languages I was the most tempted by were Akkadian and Hindi (which does show just how conflicted I was!), and neither of those would be particularly useful to me now anyway...In retrospect, I really, really wish that I had done a second major in classics, but I never even contemplated it at the time. But I guess that's one of the reasons they make master's degrees!

An M.Phil. and an M.Div. I actually didn't take any language courses at all as an undergraduate! (I don't know what I was thinking....) That's a large part of the rationale behind the two masters degrees...