Admission Chances?

[SumEsseFuiFuturus]

I'm in my fifth and final year pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Classics and in English with a History minor. By May, I will have had four years of Latin, three of Greek, three of French, and one of Italian, as well as six courses in translation, three Greek history classes, and a Roman history class (Two of the History classes are at the graduate level). My research interests mainly revolve around Latin poetry, Gender in the Ancient World (especially masculinity studies), Greek Epic, and Mythology. I've presented research for the last four years, and will again this year, I anticipate a relatively good GRE score (at least based on practice tests and good performance on the ACT), and I have outstanding co-curricular experience, in the form of having served on two separate national boards for classics organizations for a total of three terms, as well as state and local activity. Classics is really my thing; I enjoy it a lot, and I'd love to get into a PhD program.

There seems to be one problem. My GPA is not bad, and certainly my major GPA is fairly good (3.5), but I had a rough first few years (I started out my first semester with mononucleosis, a break-up, my grandmother's death, and then an emotionally-abusive relationship), and I'll end up graduating with a 3.0 overall. That was compounded by the fact that my university requires ~40-50 hours of work in the Liberal Studies Program, and certain courses in that program have put an undue strain on my overall average. Is this going to be a huge obstacle for me? I'd like to think that programs look at candidates holistically, and some in the APA Guide say that they don't have a minimum (overall) GPA or don't consider it to be a factor (Though, I imagine that it is a factor everywhere, at least to a degree...).

To help you get a better idea of what I've been looking at, here's a list of my potential schools (Yes, I know that there's no such thing as a 'safety school', but my adviser had me break it down like this, anyway.):

Reach:

Columbia University in New York City

University of Chicago

University of Texas - Austin

University of California - Los Angeles

Target:

University of Arizona

University of California - Santa Barbara

University of Iowa

University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign

University of Kansas

Boston College

Safety

University of Missouri

University of Arkansas

Are those realistic choices? Does anyone have experience getting in with only an average overall GPA?

Edited September 12, 2011 by SumEsseFuiFuturus

[LateAntique]

I've never sat on an admissions committee, so feel free to disregard this. I've been told that having a nice 'narrative' is what admissions committees like. In other words, if first semester your grades were awful, but by your senior year you're taking advanced courses and acing them, this shows that you grew as a student and can be a good indicator that you will end up a good student in graduate programs. I did poorly in the beginning of my undergraduate career (mostly due to working full time), but managed to make all A's in my latter years, boosting my GPA and showing a positive trajectory.

[Myshkin]

That looks like a broad range of schools, which is good. Also, it's very good that you have some terminal MA programs in there. The first time I applied, I only got into an MA program. It worked out perfectly. The two years for the MA program was everything I needed to be a competitive Ph.D. program applicant.

Be sure for the Ph.D. programs that you are a good match for the faculty, not just for their interests but for their methodologies. Read some of their recent publications if you have the time. I applied to a number of schools where I thought I had common interests with the department's faculty (shared authors, shared genres, etc.). What I didn't have at most of the places was a shared methodology. I only discovered this when I struck up a conversation with a faculty member who gave a departmental talk, whom I originally thought of working with. After listening to his talk and talking to him (and after reading a recent WIP paper by him), I realized that our methodological perspectives are very different.

However, I now realize that the schools that accepted me were a match in this regard. I realize now that I and the person whom I'm primarily interested in working with have more overlap than I had ever thought possible. I've also learned that other faculty in the department think in similar ways. Of course, I don't know if it was possible to discover this prior to starting as a student, but if you can figure some of this out in advance, you'll be in a much better position.

Edited November 18, 2011 by Myshkin

[non humilis mulier]

Myshkin -- how do you tell what the methodology is? Honestly, it's not a term I'm familiar with in regards to Classics.

Edited December 18, 2011 by ashasimone2488

[Pius Aeneas]

This is probably a bit late, but for what it's worth, when I sat down with the newly retired Head of the Classics department at my university to discuss graduate school choices, he flat-out told me that I shouldn't apply at Urbana-Champaign's program because it has declined in quality for a variety of reasons (retirements, professor departures and the like). I didn't push the issue for more specifics because I hadn't planned on applying there anyway (I'm more interested in the archaeological side of things). Just some inside info.