Hello people,
Could you help me a bit if you have any experience of studying anthropology at SOAS, Sussex and/or Cambridge?
I applied for taught master's degrees of anthropology of development at Sussex, Soas and Cambridge (Mphil in Social Anthropology for Cambridge). I got offers from Sussex and Soas, and hopefully will get one from Cambridge as well.
However, I'm totally at a loss which of those 3 schools to choose. Each has its own strength: Sussex strongest in the specific field (anthropology of development), Soas strongest in knowledge of area studies (my specialty will be Southeast/East Asia), whereas Cambridge strongest in theoretical tradition.
Which school to choose has to coordinate with my career plan, of course; I'm much interested in practical development work, which gives a good reason to choose Sussex, but at the same time I'm also strongly motivated for theoretical pursuit, which pushes me to go for Cambridge. As a middle way, I'm being tempted to choose Soas, but I'm not confident enough to make such an easy decision.
After all, I want to give the first priority to how relevant a school's academic standing and faculty competence are to my academic interest. My academic interests are interrelated fields of development, post-colonialism, urbanisation/urbanism, social transformation, and globalisation.
As I live in Tokyo, I can't get to have much info about each of those 3 schools, especially in terms of academic atmosphere that each school's faculty holds. Could someone who has had actual experiences please share with me your insight?
Many thanks in advance.
Takanari