Profile Evaluation for Masters in Archaeology/Anthropology

[s3raph1m]

Undergrad Institution: Goucher College (I don't pay a lot of attention to the rankings but #105 in national liberal arts colleges and on the Princeton Review's Best 380 Colleges list for several years in a row. It's a small private liberal arts college in Maryland.)

Major: History

Minors: Historic Preservation/Book Studies

GPA in Major: 4.0/4.0

Overall GPA: 3.42/4.0

Internship experience: 240 hour archaeology internship with a local government organization, 113 hour historic preservation internship with a Main Street program

I still have 3 semesters left of my undergrad, so I still have some time to raise my overall GPA (I'll be applying for fall of 2017). I also recently got confirmation that I'll be doing an internship this winter with a large natural history museum in a major metropolitan area and next summer I am doing an archaeology field school (I'll also probably do another internship with one of the local archaeology organizations in my city). I haven't taken the GRE yet, but I plan on doing that soon. How competitive am I for these programs if I raise my overall GPA and score decently on the GRE?

Rice University (MA in Archaeological Field Techniques and Laboratory Analysis)

Cornell University (MA in Archaeology)

Brandeis University (MA in Anthropology)

University of Arizona (MA in Applied Archaeology)

Boston University (MA in Archaeology)

Stanford (MA in Anthropology - archaeology track)

Yale University (MA in Anthropology)

Texas A&M (MS in Maritime Archaeology and Conservation)

I know these are all small programs at small schools (except for A&M, Boston University, and University of Arizona), so I know they're all very difficult to get into. The A&M seems random, but the program looks very interesting so I'm planning on throwing my application out there. I'm only really applying to Masters so I can get more archaeology experience and so I can try out grad school before committing to a PhD program. I don't want to apply to a PhD program at this time. 

[knp]

Oh, Texas A&M is one of the best schools on the planet for getting an education in maritime archaeology, no? I don't know how selective it is, or how long the list of other maritime archaeology schools is, but even I've heard it's really good. (And given my normal interests that's saying something.)

[s3raph1m]

I think so. According to several websites I've looked at, it's number one. I also live in Austin, so it's not too far from me which is pretty appealing. I'm actually planning on taking some diving lessons this semester and participating in an underwater archaeology field school (it requires a diving certification) to make sure this is something I'm interested in.

Note that there aren't very many schools that offer it in the first place though.

Edited August 28, 2015 by s3raph1m

[Bschaefer]

Hello all again, 

Texas A&M for Maritime Arch is the best in the country, I would assume it's pretty competitive, but then again I don't know how popular it is and that's just me being ignorant about that area of specialization. Although I do have to say that it is an up and coming field and will be very interesting. I think if you're going to apply to BU, apply for the PhD since they are all funded and then stop after the MA. And again, I think you would be a competitive applicant, you just need to figure out what school will offer you more in the long run.

[s3raph1m]

^ If I decide that I actually want to do a PhD later, does it look negative for a potential applicant to have been a PhD student that quit after the MA? I'm not sure how any of that works. 

Thanks for the reply.

[bioarch_fan]

I would personally say if you don't want to go for your PhD yet then to just apply to MA programs.  If you decide that you want to go the PhD route later and the school offers a PhD program, then you can apply to that program.  I think it would look bad that you originally applied for a PhD but quit after a MA and then you want to try again.

[Bschaefer]

^ If I decide that I actually want to do a PhD later, does it look negative for a potential applicant to have been a PhD student that quit after the MA? I'm not sure how any of that works. 

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, it would, but in terms of money then I don't think it would be as harsh. What I meant by that is that you shouldn't pay for education, the uni or another entity should pay. That is why you should look at programs that have some sort of aid or grant that can help you.

[bioarch_fan]

Yes, it would, but in terms of money then I don't think it would be as harsh. What I meant by that is that you shouldn't pay for education, the uni or another entity should pay. That is why you should look at programs that have some sort of aid or grant that can help you.

I agree with this statement, but also would like to say that some MA/MS programs do have funding for their students.  It may not be as much as PhD funding, but it's a decent amount.  I've found a couple programs that don't have much funding because they don't have out of state tuition, so it's cheaper there anyways.  So when talking to professors, ask about the funding situation at the specific school.

[s3raph1m]

Thanks. I will keep all of this in mind, especially the funding situation. Most of the schools I am looking into offer some form of funding for MA students and I will pay close attention to funding packages if I receive several acceptances. I'm also going to be thinking about fellowships, paid internships, student employment, etc. in the local area. I'm trying to look at this holistically.  I want to get related work experience while I am completing my MA (maybe with a local CRM firm or a museum). We'll see what happens! I have 2 semesters left of my undergrad after this semester and plan on talking to my school's career development office about the process of applying to grad school soon (also want to see if I can receive a second fellowship to do another internship at a large museum).

I do have another question. I'm not sure if I want to get my PhD. I'm basically going to wait and see how I feel after I get my MA. I might end up trying to work for the National Park Service or a state park doing archaeology (this is really common where I'm at in central Texas), maybe a CRM firm, or a museum for awhile after my MA. How do archaeology organizations view the MA? Are they all viewed fairly similarly, no matter what you specialized in? To clarify, would the MS in maritime archaeology and conservation from Texas A&M be viewed the same as the MA in applied archaeology from ASU or the MA in archaeological field techniques and laboratory analysis from Rice? Sorry if that sounds a little confusing. I'm sure you understand what I mean though. You would get field excavation experience with all of them, even though the programs differ a lot (even with the maritime archaeology one). 

I'm really attracted to Rice University's MA because it includes a field school in Africa and lots of coursework on African pre-history and osteology in your studies. However, the MS in maritime archaeology also looks really interesting. The conservation aspect of it looks really cool. The syllabi for each course is listed on the A&M website for the program and there are several courses on how to conserve archaeological artifacts in the lab (they also offer internships at the conservation research laboratory). I'm torn. I also want to pay attention to funding packages after I apply and hopefully receive more than one acceptance, so who knows where I'll end up. 

Edited September 19, 2015 by s3raph1m

[bioarch_fan]

What I would say is to do something that you will be interested in doing for the rest of your life.  If you're extremely interested in maritime archaeology, then do the TAMU program.  I looked into doing my Masters there but decided against it since they don't have as big of a bioarchaeology program.  They center on maritime archaeology.  If that's something you're interested in you could also look into University of West Florida.  They have a big maritime program as well.  And they have a field school in the Gulf every summer I believe.  I'm slightly interested in maritime as well, but mostly as it pertains to skeletal material and how ship wrecks and osteology can tell us about the individuals on board.

Something else you should think about though, is if you're wanting to do CRM that is not maritime and is strictly terrestrial, then maybe doing a program that was applied archaeology or something would be good.  But you said that you've done field schools before, so that might not be as important.  All you need to do is prove that you have excavation experience.  I have a friend that specialized in bioarchaeology and she works at a CRM firm as an archaeologist because she did a field school at our undergrad school.  Some CRM firms do have a maritime component to them too.  It all depends on where they're at exactly.

But when it comes to archaeology/anthropology organizations, I think that they would be viewed the same.  If you're doing a Masters program that requires a thesis, or has a thesis option, you will be able to be RPA certified.  That's a major thing if you want to do CRM or do fieldwork in the future.  But in the end, you need to figure out what exactly you want to do with the rest of your life.  Do you want to do bioarchaeology, archaeology, cultural, etc.?  If you want to do archaeology do you want to do maritime, terrestrial, etc. in America, Europe, South America, etc.?  There's a lot of things to think about when making this decision.  I have been thinking about it for almost 2 years when I started my grad school search.  The only person that can truly answer your questions is yourself though.  If you want to do bioarchaeology, which I want to think you mentioned before, then you should really go to a program that has a bioarchaeologist on staff and do your specializing in that.  Some programs have the option to where you can combine historical archaeology and bioarchaeology together.  That's probably what I'll be doing since I love both.

If you have more specific questions you can PM me anytime and I can try and help as much as I can.  Like I said, I've been doing the grad school search for years now and my undergrad program doesn't have the best advising for future graduate students.  So doing this on my own has opened my eyes that maybe some programs don't have that much help either.

[s3raph1m]

Thanks for the response, bioarch_fan. This is going to be a very difficult decision for me. I'm interested in so many different things and I'm having a ton of trouble narrowing down my interests. To be honest, it all looks amazing! You're right in that I have an interest in bioarchaeology. I would like to have some experience in the bioarch, osteology, and zoo archaeology aspect of archaeology, alongside more field archaeology experience. My region of interest is a bit more broad (tribal peoples of the Americas, whether that be North America or pre-Columbian era Mesoamerica).  I do have somewhat of an interest in historical archaeology (I've taken some courses in hist. arch. and I did an internship over the summer where I primarily worked in hist. arch.). However, I'm mostly just interested in the indigenous people of the Americas when it comes to hist. arch.

I know I want to work in North America. I do not plan on relocating. I also have no interest in doing cultural anthropology. Maritime is really cool, but most of the cities I would like to live in are nowhere near the ocean, so that's probably not the best idea. I also have a little bit of an interest in the conservation of artifacts, but not as much as the other things I have mentioned. 

There is no professor at my school that focuses on archaeology, so no one has really been able to help me with my grad school search here (they don't know what's good or what schools I should apply to). The career development office will sit down with me and help me go through my lists, but overall I'm mostly on my own with this search.

Edited September 20, 2015 by s3raph1m

[bioarch_fan]

Yeah I understand exactly where you're coming from.  Since you don't really want to relocate, that does limit the school choices drastically though.  Especially if you're wanting specific things out of a program.  If you ultimately want to do anything bioarchaeology or zooarchaeology related, then you should definitely find programs that have professors dealing in those as your POI.  You can add other professors to be on your committee in other areas that you're interested in working for a thesis.  That's what I plan on doing with mine at least.  I'll have my major professor as my thesis advisor and then other faculty members, either in the department or outside the department that have expertise either in my region or in my topical areas.  So when looking at programs, find schools that have every possible thing you might want to do.  Look around the university in history departments, classics departments, art history departments, etc. and see if there are professors in those departments that can possibly help out with a thesis.

If you don't have cities you want to live in around the ocean then I would honestly nix the maritime programs unless you are more willing to move to those areas in the future.  But there's something else you should think of.  Maritime doesn't always mean around an ocean.  It could be a river, i.e. the Mississippi, or a lake, i.e. any of The Great Lakes.  You also wouldn't necessarily HAVE to live around a body of water like this to do maritime archaeology.  I think you'd just have to travel more to do your research or field schools.  But obviously being around a body of water for maritime might be more beneficial than not.

On the topic of not having much help at your current university, I would say talk to scholars at museums or if your university has archaeologists in the history department or a classics department then talk to them.  They can still give you a great deal of information.  If your department can't help much, they can also give you ideas of who you could talk to that could help more.  Talk to your advisor and see what they say.  If they say they can't help too much since its not their specialty then you should ask if they recommend doing something else to get help.

[s3raph1m]

Oh, I don't mind relocating for school. I just don't want to relocate in terms of where I live now after I finish school. I like Austin too much to leave and there are lots of jobs in archaeology in the area (I'm several hours away from the ocean though, so I should probably nix maritime). As for school, the sky is the limit in terms of location. I just need to narrow down my choices for schools. 

One of the issues I've faced thus far is that a lot of schools do not offer terminal masters in anthropology and I'm not sure I want to get a PhD, so I don't really want to apply to programs that don't offer just the MA or MS. I'm much more seriously considering the William and Mary program at this point. I've been looking at the course list and they offer graduate courses in biological anthropology, bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, human skeletal biology, material culture, conservation of artifacts, and North American prehistory in the anthropology department. That's pretty much everything I'm interested in. The degree is in historical archaeology, which is not my main interest, but it looks really good otherwise!

I'm going to speak with my historic preservation advisor on Tuesday. She teaches the historical archaeology course within the department and may have some information for me. Thanks for the info! You've been really helpful.

[bioarch_fan]

William & Mary is a great program.  I looked into it but decided against it because it is in historical archaeology and I really want to focus mostly on bioarch.  So I decided to look elsewhere.  But the department seems amazing.  And it's close to where my mom lives, that's what I originally looked at it.  But I also want to be away from family and experience life away from everything and everyone I know for a while.

There are numerous MA/MS only programs.  I have a list of 6 and that's not even half of the programs.  Look at Brandeis University, they have a MA and PhD program and it is a great program from what I heard.  Maybe look at a couple programs in the UNC system as well.  I know that the UNC system has a couple MA/MS programs too.

[s3raph1m]

Do you know  of any MA/MS only programs that focus on bioarchaeology? I haven't found any thus far.

What do you think of Rice University's anthropology programs? In terms of the MA in Archaeological Field Techniques and Laboratory Analysis. Does Rice have a good program overall?

https://anthropology.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/Graduate/ANTH Grad Handbook 032714.pdf

Edited September 21, 2015 by s3raph1m

[bioarch_fan]

I actually know PLENTY of MA/MS bioarchaeology programs.  Since that's my specialty I have gone through every single university in the US looking at their programs.  So I've become better acquainted with the schools.  Lol.

I'm applying to 6 MA/MS programs that have bioarchaeologists on staff, a couple of which the programs are tailored to bioarchaeology.  University of Central Florida has an amazing program with 5 bioarchaeologists/forensic anthropologists (only 1 forensic anthropologist) on staff.  That's definitely one of the most bioarchaeologists I've ever seen on staff at a university.  I'm applying there this round and it's one of the top choices on my list.

University of Indianapolis has a MS program that specializes in bioarchaeology.  I'm not sure how good it is, but I know that it's decent from what I've read.  Plus they don't have out of state tuition.

University of Alaska-Anchorage has a MA program.  Their bioarchaeologist studied under Dr. Debra Martin (an extremely big name in the field) from UNLV (one of the best and largest programs in the US).

North Carolina State (as well as a couple universities in the UNC system) has a MA program and it's pretty amazing.  One of the professors on staff is D-ABFA certified (that's being board certified in forensic anthropology) so that means she is extremely experienced in skeletal materials.

Florid State University is starting their grad program again next year (accepting applications this year).  It originally closed down because of funding from the state, but it is finally opening back up.  They have two bioarchaeologists on staff, but I'm afraid to apply there since it's sort of a new program.

I could keep going on and on about the programs I know of, but it'll take me forever.  If you want a more detailed list of all of the programs, I can send it to you via PM.

Sadly I don't know much about the Rice University program at all.  I can ask around and see what professors can tell me though.

[s3raph1m]

 Haha. It's probably very obvious that I am new to the grad school search. From what I gather, I should probably stop looking at primarily small private colleges or I'm going to get nowhere very fast.

I would very much appreciate a detailed list if it's not too much trouble. Just out of curiosity: how are graduate classes in archaeology generally structured? I'm looking for something very hands-on within a seminar type environment. I was told graduate courses are all structured like seminars. My upper level seminar courses at my undergrad institution are supposedly structured like graduate courses (or so I'm told), but I assume the structure of courses differ from institution to institution so I'm not entirely sure if this is a good representation of what a graduate course actually feels like. 

Edited September 21, 2015 by s3raph1m

[birchleaf]

Hey!

Just as a note on the Cornell MA - It's actually an interdisciplinary degree in the CIAMS (Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies) program, so it's not strictly MA. There's possibilities to work with faculty in a number of different disciplines, and to have a number of different course experiences. Though I think that last bit is true of any archaeology MA / PhD program.

For me, all of my courses are 15 people or less. One of my courses has three people in it with hands-on archival work and a possibility of an installation at the museum from the term project. Another is discussion based with students from various levels and various departments, discusses current theoretical work in the field. Another is a seminar of rotating faculty giving advice about the state of the field and professional topics (grants, fieldwork, etc). So there's really no straightforward answer for you! If you're curious, I would definitely recommend getting in touch with POIs at the schools you've listed and see if you can either arrange a visit (if it's convenient), or just email a graduate student (which are normally listed on program websites) and ask them! We're all crazy busy at this point but I'd sure you'd get your answer.

[farflung]

I'm in a 4-field Anthro PhD program with a strong group of archaeologists. We're not a huge department, and yes, all graduate classes are seminars -- small courses, very little lecturing, and you will be called upon to engage in discussion and even teach your peers about weekly readings. From what I've heard from arch folks, grad seminars tend to be heavily theoretical, and there is very little technical training in any particular techniques. Perhaps the theoretical focus is unique to PhD programs though? Some students take technical courses outside of the department or even outside of the university, but they're also in the field every summer learning the "hands-on" stuff they'll need to do dissertation work. 

 Haha. It's probably very obvious that I am new to the grad school search. From what I gather, I should probably stop looking at primarily small private colleges or I'm going to get nowhere very fast.

I would very much appreciate a detailed list if it's not too much trouble. Just out of curiosity: how are graduate classes in archaeology generally structured? I'm looking for something very hands-on within a seminar type environment. I was told graduate courses are all structured like seminars. My upper level seminar courses at my undergrad institution are supposedly structured like graduate courses (or so I'm told), but I assume the structure of courses differ from institution to institution so I'm not entirely sure if this is a good representation of what a graduate course actually feels like.