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Incitatus

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Decaf

Decaf (2/10)

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  1. I find it funny that anyone who tries to read Theory would find the original poster's messages difficult to read. 1. Someone pointed out that there were 3 grammar mistakes--any 1 of which would keep the applicant out of a PhD program. Well, I imagine everyone on this forum puts more time into their statements of purpose than they do on posts, right? 2. Language. Your English is excellent, probably a 4 if you use State Department standards. Certainly better than most comparativists speak the primary language they work in. Since Turkish isn't even Indo-European, this is even more impressive. 3. Grades. As someone mentioned, American grades are inflated. A 3.0 from your school is probably very good. 4. If you're interested in Turkish and German literature, why don't you do the MA in Turkey and then apply to US Near Eastern departments or German departments and work with both literatures? Most national lit. departments will welcome comparative work, and you'll have a much better chance of getting a job when you get out.
  2. If you've gotten into respectable departmental programs, I just don't see what advantage you would gain from going to Chicago for the MAPH. If both of the programs are offering you similar deals, a small program with a head that's pushing for your success sounds pretty good. And it's not as if anyone ever looks askance at NYU. It certainly sounds better than the MAPH program.
  3. Athena, I posted the original message (under a different name because I can never login here). I just wanted to thank you for responding. I'll definitely check out those programs but to be honest I don't know if I'll ever have the time to do a PhD--I have a family and a good job. Ah, if only I'd been smarter about these things when I was young and single. Are you doing a grad degree in Classics?
  4. The impression I've gotten about Chicago's MAPH program is that it's a second-rate degree from a first-rate school. I'm sure the program is strong and you can do interesting things there, but I wouldn't like that being a kind of lesser grad student to the ones who were admitted into the departmental PhD programs. Also, when I was in grad school I could detect some snobbery as far as who was funded and who wasn't. I got the impression that a student who gets a PhD (or MA) funded by a prestigious fellowship even if it's from a less prestigious school would look more impressive than someone who shelled out f their own money to get one from a school as good as UChicago. Talking to profs one of the things they always recommended was to go where the money was. There are MA programs that are funded--even at Ivy League schools like Dartmouth (terminal comp-lit MA)--that I imagine will do just as much to get you in the door to a good PhD program. Being the darling of an MA program at Tulane or Vanderbilt or UVM or SIU or FSU or Washington University in St. Louis would probably come in handier than being one of the people who went through the MAPH to raise money to give the PhD students that Chicago really wanted. And that paragraph in the email is tasteless.
  5. Your scores and gpa seem great, but my guess is that the problem was that you didn't have enough Greek. I would assume most schools want at least a 4:3 spread between languages. A student with only 2 years of Greek probably wouldn't be ready to take grad level Greek classes. On their website UVA does encourage strong applicants with less prep in one language. Just my guess. I imagine if you get your Greek up, you'd get in anywhere. Also, would your interests be more suited to comp. lit programs?
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