crazyhorse

nike, I am so sorry if I appeared to be calling you out. I was basically trying to see if I could get the public conversation to continue, because I didn't hear back from you in PM form-- I also figured that whatever you would feel comfortable telling me in public would be useful information for anyone who is considering an offer from Tufts. I have sent you a second PM and (although I understand you must be really busy!) I hope you will respond to it. And thank you for explaining about the situation at Tufts! I am sure you have helped some archaeologists to make up their minds!

I sent nikeofsamothrace a private message regarding his/her previous post about the Tufts archaeology program, but as I have not yet received a response, I feel obligated to throw something out here publicly. It does not seem quite appropriate for nike to claim that it is "disgraceful" for Tufts to run an archaeology program at present. As someone who has taken some undergrad and some grad courses in the classics dept at Tufts in the past two years, I can say that I have seen at least a few of the arch graduate students (and of the classics students as well) go on to study at top schools (I know that one got offers from Harvard and Columbia this year). I cannot say more about placement (I do know that some of the classics students have gone on to teach at the HS level instead of applying to PhD programs). I did not however get the impression that graduates of the program found it quite as "uncompetitive" as nike claims. And while I don't pretend to know anything substantive about the field of archaeology-- my interests are pretty strictly philological-- and I will moreover concede that the archaeology offerings certainly do appear to be slender at Tufts, it still seems to be an overstatement to call it "disgraceful" that the program even exists in its current state. The students who I have met in the program over the last two years (which is almost all of them) seem pretty satisfied by it (or at the very least, not utterly disgusted by what it had to offer them, as nike appears to be). That said, I would be delighted to hear from nike with specific details regarding the weaknesses of the Tufts program. S/he may have good reasons for speaking ill of it in a public forum and I am not gainsaying the possibility that she is correct-- it would simply be nice to hear those reasons.

Hello, I'm in a similar situation (choosing between Tufts and UA, with funding offers similar to those of the OP). I am interested to hear from anyone who has a sense of how these programs compare. I'm currently leaning towards Tufts, partly because I've already taken some classes there and know how the program works, but I'd be delighted to hear from anyone who has opinions on how the two are viewed by PhD programs (or anyone who could provide details about what the program at Arizona is like). I would be happy to talk to the OP about my experience at Tufts if he/she wants to send me a PM.