Nightmare MA experience -- chances at a PhD spot?

[RegniRegis]

Hi everyone,

 

I wanted to get your opinion on my situation, so that I can be realistic about my changes at acceptance.

 

I graduated in May with an MA in medieval history from an okay school in Texas.  It was not a great experience, and it ended up taking me four years to finish the degree.  I know what you're thinking -- jeez, that's a pretty long time for an MA -- and I totally agree, which is why I'm worried.

 

I spent the first 2.5 years in a very difficult advisor/student relationship.  Essentially, my advisor told me how stupid I was on a daily basis, with the goal of "thickening my skin".  Ok.  Fine.  I will say that I learned an extraordinary amount from this professor, and all of my research was based on Latin primary sources still in their original written manuscript form.  This amounted to between 100-150 documents that I ended up transcribing and translating for my thesis, and I ended up publishing an article on my findings.  

 

I am certain that I would have completed my MA at the end of that third year, however at the beginning of the spring semester, my father suffered a catastrophic illness, lingered for six months, and then passed away that summer.  I managed to keep up with my teaching and my class work, but I was also spending alot of time overseeing my dad's care (I went to school in the same city where he was hospitalized).  I really wasn't able to focus on my thesis at all during this point, and, taking the advice of some other professors, I made the decision fairly early on that I would need at least another semester to complete the thesis.  Meanwhile, my then-advisor sent me an email the day after my father's passing that detailed how he felt that I would never complete a thesis, let alone a dissertation, and that I should just give up.  I sought the advice of several other professors, some medievalists, some not -- all of whom were aghast -- and all of whom advised me to change my advising situation as soon as I could.

 

I changed my advisor as soon as I was able, but the unfortunate side effect was that as my new advisor was on sabbatical for the fall semester, leaving me unable to defend until the spring.  Ultimately, my thesis was 300 pages, based entirely on primary sources that had not been referenced previously by other historians in the field. I passed my thesis defense with distinction, and graduated this past May.

 

My new advisor, thesis committee, and department chair have all encouraged me to apply to doctoral programs, but I am deeply concerned that my experiences in my MA program will be enough to keep me out of any program at all.

 

Some stats, just for the purposes of fleshing out my credentials (such as they are):

 

GRE: 168V/154Q/5.5A

GPA: 3.96 (MA) 3.64 (BA)

Publications: 1

 

What are your thoughts?  I feel like the best thing to do is be totally transparent about this, but i also really don't want to badmouth my former professor.  I liked him very much as a person, and I don't feel it would be right.  I also don't want to be thought of as a troublemaker.

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Thank you,

[biisis]

While I can't really speak to your chances in getting into a PhD program, I can offer a few suggestions, based on how you presented yourself above, that might serve you well in how you present yourself when you apply.

 

Firstly, I'd leave out any mention of the unprofessional conduct of your former adviser in applications and in interviews. It's quite the tale (and man! sorry your had to go through all that!) but it's the sort of association that can stain an applicant. Folks aren't going to have the time or inclination to hear about personal conflicts in detail when reviewing your materials, and you run the risk of coming off as a 'difficult' advisee, even though this might be wholly false. 

 

Instead, I'd explain (very briefly) that your progress was delayed by personal events in your life (the illness and death of your father, managing his estate, etc.). Definitely bring up the rigor of your thesis' primary sources and the scale of the project, but maybe not in reference to how long it took you to complete your degree. These are things for which you should be rightly proud, but admissions committees are also evaluating candidates on the basis of how likely they are to finish their PhD (and, increasingly importantly, finish on time). Using the nature of your project as an explanation for your delayed completion may suggest a lack of pragmatism on your part. I imagine that this might be a bit of a red flag for the committee. I think it's best to mention it in a wholly different part of your admissions essay.

 

Best of luck! I don't think your chances are ruined by any means- I hope you give it a shot.

[Eigen]

The thing that I think would be the most important is getting your letter writers (ideally, new advisor and committee) to comment on your long MA time, and address factors outside of your control (personal issues, advising issues, change of advisor, etc.). 

 

I'm, granted, not in your field, but I don't think my department's admission committee would be too put off by a long MA, given extenuating personal circumstances. I think they'd be more interested in the breadth of the scholarship during that period. It's not like you spent 4 years, and then had a very weak and unpublishable thesis. 

[dr. t]

How long was your MA supposed to be? If it was a 3 year program, I don't think it's much of a problem. If it was a 2 year program, it might be more problematic.

[RegniRegis]

Hi all,

 

Thank you for your replies.  Telkanuru -- it was a 2 year program, hypothetically.  Based on what I ended up hearing from my new advisor, though, people have apparently languished in an MA under the former advisor for over six years.  There were many more issues than I actually mentioned, and at this point, my understanding from the graduate director and department chair is that he likely won't be getting any more students because of it.

 

That said, none of this is stuff that I want to air to a grad committee.  I have four letter writers, three from my graduate program, and one that was my outside thesis committee member, and they will all write strong letters, likely with explanations of the situation.  I just wonder how much it will matter, in the long run.

 

At this point I really regret not switching the second things started to get weird, but I was determined that I was going to change my advisor's mind and force him to acknowledge that I was good.

 

Tilting at windmills.

[poliscar]

I think you should be fine, provided that you (and your letter writers) deal with the aforementioned issues appropriately, as the posters above me have suggested. 

One thing that I am curious about is the length of your thesis; at 300 pages, it is longer than some dissertations. On one hand it's quite impressive, particularly considering the circumstances. Some committees might see it as proof of your ability to complete a dissertation. On the other hand, it seems somewhat excessive, and might suggest that you had trouble delimiting your argument. I know of some MA programs in which 150 pages is an absolute limit for theses, so I'm wondering why/how yours ended up being 300. Is that typical in your program, or was it something to do with your advising debacle? 

[mcb27]

I'd like to point out that there are some past posters on this forum who took very circuitous routes as students, and made decisions along the way that were egregious, and were their's to own up to, and they eventually found themselves in an Ivy League PhD program. So don't think that a nontraditional, bumpy route rules you out of anything, especially considering none of your problems were your fault. 

 

As others have stated, let your letter writers address the rogue adviser. That shouldn't be much of an issue, especially if multiple writers address the situation. The episode with your father, feel free to address or not. I'm sure that episode in your life was a learning experience in and of itself, and framing those life experiences as times of maturation is not unheard of in good SOPs. Your academic record is strong on its own, and focusing just on it would totally be understandable. Nontraditional routes aren't always a negative in the eyes of graduate committees, though.

 

Good luck!

Edited September 19, 2014 by mcb27

[ProfLorax]

I honestly believe that applicants overthink what adcomms will prioritize or even notice. I know I was guilty of this too! For an adcomm to realize you took four years, the committee has to really look at that dates on the transcript (when their priority is the grades) or really look at the dates listed under education history. And even then, they would have to know that your MA program was intended to be a two-year program. For that to happen, someone on the committee would have to be interested enough to go online and look up the curriculum for your MA program. Remember: the committee members have 200-600 applications to review! I highly doubt that they scrutinize our applications as much as we think they do. 

 

I also think that taking a long time to complete an MA isn't a red flag. In my MA program, many of the students couldn't afford to go full-time, so they worked full-time and pursued the program part-time. Or they had kids right before or during the program. Or they had a family crisis, like the OP. There are so many legitimate reasons to take extend one's time in an MA program. Plus, while time-to-degree is a big deal in humanities PhD programs, most academics understand that MA programs are just different--they are more casual about time, and often, less of a full-time commitment (by necessity, since funding is rare and often students have to work outside during MA coursework). 

 

Which brings me to my final point: when ad comm members read through applications, the question steering the reading is, "does this applicant have the potential to become an amazing scholar?" Their priority is to find the best candidates--not to trip up candidates by analyzing the small details in an application. Write an excellent SoP and writing sample. Make your case for attending that program. Whether or not you get in has everything to do to what you can offer as a history scholar, and that will be apparent in your materials.

 

Also, your old advisor sucks. I'm really sorry you had to go through that.

[TMP]

One of our former posters from several years back did three years to do his MA.  Part of that was that his committee encouraged him to really research and write his thesis, which topped at about 230 pages.  He also had a new baby during his writing time.  Things come up.

 

And he got into Yale but turned it down for a school that fit his overall life plans better.

 

I finished my MA program a bit early because of finances and did the research/writing in under a year (including summer research).  It was enough for my adviser to recommend me for PhD program- because I was that driven to finish (though my thesis was roughly 70 pages, a bit over the program's limit).  The fact that you did your research and writing of your MA thesis itself is a feat.  I'd probably have to doubt what the heck I was doing if I had to do the work that you did for only a MA.

 

Pages don't matter in MA theses- just the quality of research and its potential for further intellectual development.  It's like that story of a philosophy professor who gave a final exam with the prompt, "Why?"  and both students, a football player who responded "Why not?" and another student who went into deep analysis and filled the blue book, got an A.

 

Professors are adept at writing and reading between the lines.  Let them take care of that business.  You worry about you applying as a future colleague/grad student of the programs you're applying to.  Look forward, not back.

[dr. t]

The idea of someone taking 6 years for an MA hurts my head. You gotta out this guy somehow while keeping your ass covered - it's too insane. Prospective students need to know what they're in for.

 

Something else for clarification: the extra two years in your program were purely devoted to thesis work? That doesn't seem particularly problematic to me. If you had issues with credits and GPA, that may be a different story. Your Latin and paleography skills are a huge asset though - I would play that up as much as possible. 

[RegniRegis]

Hello all,

 

The program requires around 100 pages for the thesis, and most people there tend to hit 95-115.  My thesis was 150 pages of essay, with a 150 page appendix of the documents I had translated. My adviser would not allow me to summarize them, they had to be translated verbatim from the Latin.  Once I got over to my new adviser and showed her what I had done, she told me that it was not normal for people to have to do that for an MA.  The sad part was that I didn't even include all of the documents I had done.  So that was fun.

 

Yes, the extra two years were pretty much purely thesis -- I took a class a semester, and the rest of it was research and translation, then writing and revision for the last six months or so.  I also ended up having to work full-time during the last year, because I was helping my mom stay afloat financially.

 

 The sad part about the 6-year MA?  It wasn't just one person, it was several.  He only graduated 3 phd students in a 35 year career - a statistic I wish I had known going in.

[dr. t]

Yes, the extra two years were pretty much purely thesis -- I took a class a semester, and the rest of it was research and translation, then writing and revision for the last six months or so.  I also ended up having to work full-time during the last year, because I was helping my mom stay afloat financially.

 

 The sad part about the 6-year MA?  It wasn't just one person, it was several.  He only graduated 3 phd students in a 35 year career - a statistic I wish I had known going in.

 

I think you're fine. Good luck, and maybe see you in my cohort!