Need Help Deciding...

[melancholyway]

OK, I applied to 7 schools and was rejected by 3 and accepted by 4 for American Studies. Two of those offers were for MA programs. I am trying to decide between NYU's Masters in Humanities and Social Thought or GWU's American Studies Masters. GWU has faculty that I am very interested in working with, but NYU is NYU. Also, I am wondering if it may be wise to go into debt. The previous year I received PhD offers with funding, but were unable to accept. Might it be wiser to wait until next year and reapply hoping for funding? Any ideas? I am very anxious to begin graduate study and as of now I do not have any certain job prospects.

Thank you for reading!

[fuzzylogician]

Are both programs unfunded? The question to ask yourself is which program will give you better chances of being accepted to PhD programs that you are interested in. Since you've already successfully applied to PhD programs before, I assume that you have at least some idea of what schools you'd like to apply to. Try to find out where their current grads came from - did they have a masters at all, what universities did they attend for their undergrad/masters? If most grad students did not come with a masters degree, and since your qualifications have already gotten you into PhD programs before, you might look into less expensive ways of staying competitive (like internships or working as an RA somewhere), and reapply next without doing a masters. For what it's worth, unless NYU is much more prestigious than GWU, I'd be wary of going into debt to attend it. The only good thing you had to say about it is that it's in NYC, but don't forget that the cost of living in NYC is much higher than it would be at GWU. If GWU has faculty that you'd be more interested in working with, then it's likely to be the place where you'd do better work - and that's what's important when you apply to PhD programs.

[2400]

While you didn't receive funding from GW, if you are able to get a job working for the university, they have excellent tuition benefits. I have friends who worked at GW in administrative positions and used the tuition benefits -- they graduated with no debt! Just something to look into...

[teaganc]

The NYU MA is not a specialized degree (and I don't want to get into the whole, it's a cash cow argument). If you plan on reapplying to American Studies PhD programs, I would enter the American Studies MA, because you may be able to get LORs from people in your field, publish papers in your field, and take classes which may transfer to your eventual PhD program.