MA or apply to PhD next application cycle

[Atoraya88]

I really would appreciate any help with my dilemma: 

 

I've recently applied into several MA programs in Middle Eastern Studies for the Fall 2014. My goal is PhD, but I need training in Ottoman and Modern Turkish before getting into a program.

 

And now that I have been seriously crunching the numbers, the cost to relocate, coupled with essentially receive zero funding from the programs I applied to has me seriously considering taking 2014-2015 off to take courses in Turkish, and apply into PhD programs for the Fall 2015. I really would like to take some Middle Eastern Studies courses locally as non-degree seeking student, however, they are really pricey and I am not sure if it is worth spending the money to do so.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[ldoone]

Hi!

 

I'm in an incredibly similar position - applying for NELC PhDs this year, but although my French and Arabic are fluent/excellent, I also speak Spanish and I will have some basic Hebrew by the time I start, I'm pretty sure I'm going to suffer in the admissions process due to my lack of languages. I'm from the UK - did my undergrad in French/Arabic - and so I have also applied to UK Masters (SOAS, Edinburgh) because they're much much cheaper than US ones. There's little funding, but I can probably stand the cost using savings if I live at home/don't eat for a year, and it's a great time to learn a language as part of the course. Plus, for some places (including, according to Muhsin al-Musawi, Columbia) not having a Masters can be a way of cutting you out of the app process, so it can be important. However, I'm spending this year working as a researcher at a museum and I'm also told that that kind of academic/research experience can in some respects be considered at least equal to or even more useful than a Masters. We'll see! 

 

However, I'm assuming you're from the US, so things are trickier. Taking time to learn a language would be a good alternative to a Masters if you really can't take the cost (it's worth looking at UK Masters at Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and SOAS though - they have great ME Studies depts and I think it's still cheaper than the US, even for internationals), but could you do it in a research institution in the US or preferably in Turkey? Or otherwise combine it with some sort of research experience/relevant work experience? That kind of thing would help a lot more than just having a language course, especially if you don't intend to do an MA at all...

 

Don't know how useful that is, sorry! 

Edited February 17, 2014 by fuzzylogician
edited for privacy at poster's request. --fuzzy

[Atoraya88]

Hi! Thanks for the info.

 

I've already connected with faculty at U of Chicago and both were really interested in my topic. Chicago is the only school that I would consider attending, even if I had to take a loan to pay some of the costs of tuition. I have family in Chicago so it wouldn't be an issue in terms of cost of living. As for the other schools I applied to, there really is no way I want any additional debt just for an MA.

 

I would like to ultimately culminate my MA into a PhD at Chicago just because of the potential advisors that I would have.

 

Last, would you recommend I just take language courses, or should I also consider trying to take History or Middle Eastern Studies courses between now and the next application cycle? I've already been accepted to a couple of academic conferences to present papers and participate on panels. The big problem is not having at least an intermediate level in Turkish.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Atoraya88

[czesc]

I'm not incredibly familiar with Middle East historians' criteria in particular for admits but I would be surprised, ldoone, if your current language load was really too low for acceptance, unless you planned to focus specifically on, say, Ottoman history from the outset, in which case it would be crazy to apply without Turkish. Most of the people in my program (and others I know doing even transregional PhDs) didn't start out master linguists and everyone seems to enter with maybe one really good foreign language, knowing they will need to work on others. I would imagine good Arabic plus a European language or two would be sufficient for Middle East, with the promise that you could pick up other Middle Eastern languages during the program itself. That said, I'd be interested to know if you've heard differently.

 

As for MAs - it is becoming increasingly popular only to accept students who have them. Everyone in my cohort already has a graduate degree of some kind. But I don't see evidence that not having one is preclusive at the majority of institutions; although everyone who accepted an offer to my school has one, not everyone who was accepted did, and the cohort above us has students who were admitted with mere BAs; if you look at the most recently admitted cohort at Princeton you can see that this is the case there as well. 

[ldoone]

Czesc - my issue is that I'll be working on C19 Arabic literary and intellectual culture, so late Ottoman, and whilst the texts are mainly Arabic I will eventually need Turkish and Persian. I'll have time to learn them on the course, but apparently it's better to start with them. And yeah I think you're right about the Masters. I can't say I approve: there's so little funding for MAs that it must cut huge numbers of people out of the running based on wealth, which is like, not cool. I'm mostly looking forward to the MA I hope to do in the UK but sometimes it just seems like a really expensive hoop to jump through...especially cos PhDs have 3 years of MA-style coursework attached in the States anyway!

 

Atoraya88 I'm not really sure what you're asking. Do you mean 'trying to take middle east studies courses' outside of an MA? Is that possible? Is it expensive? Where would you be taking them? Also - out of interest - what was your undergrad/do you have a background in ME studies?

[Ottomania]

Once again, in the same position as OP. I need training in Turkish and Ottoman Turkish hence I applied for an MA. I would have considered prior training but the non-existence of Turkish language learning facilities where I live (Lahore, Pakistan) and the lack of opportunities for a year abroad in Turkey meant that I would be entering my MA at Chicago with native ability in Urdu and some basic ability in Persian, but little else. 

 

I have also been offered a half-tuition scholarship which they will extend to full provided I maintain a 3.5 above. I do not know how manageable that is. I do not want to get to Chicago and find out that a 3.5 in the CMES programme is a purely theoretical grade level (like decent grades are at Utoronto where they deliberately do grade deflation).

 

But OP, I think you should wait it out for a year if no scholarship has been offered.