ASNaC (Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic Studies)

[Ethersworn]

I am a rising sophomore undergraduate at the USouth Carolina majoring in Medieval Studies (interdisciplinary studies) and am dead set on getting into the ASNaC program at Cambridge.

Can anyone here tell me anything about the acceptance rate at this program?

I have a 4.0 GPA and am starting my first research project 1st semester sophomore year on the Prose Edda and the attitude toward the old gods.

By application time I will have the following languages:

Latin (4 years)

German (3 years)

Old English (1 year)

Norse (1 year)

Can anyone help me direct my desire to be accepted into this program?

[medielit]

With those statistics, I think you have as good a shot as anyone. That being said, without British citizenship you will struggle to get funding as funding for American students is very, very limited even at Oxbridge.

Are you talking about the Mphil or the PhD? or both?

[Ethersworn]

With those statistics, I think you have as good a shot as anyone. That being said, without British citizenship you will struggle to get funding as funding for American students is very, very limited even at Oxbridge.

Are you talking about the Mphil or the PhD? or both?

Thanks for your reply.

Hrmm, is there any solution to the citizenship problem? I guess I am talking about both, but primarily the PhD.

[medielit]

Thanks for your reply.

Hrmm, is there any solution to the citizenship problem? I guess I am talking about both, but primarily the PhD.

You can check with the department to see what scholarships are available to American students. The route around "citizenship" is permanent residency, but you can really only get that if you lived there for more than 4 years, and working full-time, not as a student. Or if your parents work there and you are in the country as a dependent.

The difficulty with American tuition is that they charge you more to begin with, and a lot of the scholarships available only cover British tuition. You also can't apply for AHRC funding.

There are a number scholarships available from American organizations however, you'll just have to look harder to find them.

[Gelpfrat the Bold]

You will probably get in to their MA programs (or whatever the equivalent is called, MLitt?), due to the fact that non-EU citizens pay substantially higher tuition fees. I don't know about your particular subfield or about Oxbridge, but generally speaking it's more difficult to be admitted into British PhD programs without a MA than it is to do so in the US. The British PhD doesn't involve coursework like the American one does, so you hit the ground running as soon as you start, for which reason it's best to have some experience at the graduate level. Considering that American BAs involve much less specialization than British equivalents, I would be surprised if Oxford or Cambridge were to admit an American student straight into their PhD programs. Of course, that's not to say it's not possible for you, but I do think it would be best for you to regard MA work as a more realistic goal.

But the other thing I wanted to mention is that it is way too early for you to be picking out specific departments and universities! It's great that you're looking into future possibilities, but sophomore year is really too early to be so dead set on one particular program at one particular university. You are only half-way through your degree, how can you be so sure your interests won't change at all? There are plenty of other universities with high-profile scholars in ASNaC studies, and as your interests continue to develop, you may well find that you would like to work with someone elsewhere, who works within a particularly interesting sub-field. I'd be concerned that you're doing yourself a disservice by deciding so early exactly what you want to do within your already-specific field, because you might be limiting yourself and preventing yourself from exploring wider and tangential interests that don't correlate exactly with what Cambridge and its particular faculty members are looking for. So my advice to you is to relax and focus on your present studies. Don't just assume that you're going to maintain that GPA (your courses will get harder as you advance!) and that you will have time to add extra things onto your CV. Just work at doing your best at what interests you, and if Cambridge turns out to actually be your ideal destination, then the interests you have pursued for your own gratification will get you there.

[Gelpfrat the Bold]

Rereading your post and noticing just now that you are a rising sophomore and therefore only 1/4 through your undergraduate experience, I restate my point even more strongly! Enjoy the intellectual experience that is still far from over for you at the University of South Carolina. Devote yourself to your research project and don't even concern yourself at all with future applications. Your education is not a race! Enjoy it (: