Program recommendations & likelihood?

[anthromex]

Hey everyone, I'm new here, but I've been lurking for a long time. Hope to become a member of this great community of folks.

I'd like to reach out on your opinions of good grad programs for me, and my likelihood of acceptance. I'm a non-traditional student in that I'm a little late to the game. Here's a little about myself: 

- I'm 34. Does this hurt my chances of admission to a PhD program, or further down the road, hurt job prospects in academia? 

- I attended a moderately-ranked flagship public university, where I studied anthropology and LATAM studies (double major). My GPA was 3.6. I was involved in some undergraduate research and was published while in undergrad. I didn't do much as far as extracurriculars. 

- After graduating, I was involved in a number of startups in the technology industry. It ended up being not for me, and nothing I worked on was a success outside of life experience. I've written a book about this time in my 20's and it'll be published next year by a major publisher. 

- At about 30, I realized I wanted to work toward understanding human culture more than anything else. Despite my hiatus, there is no doubt I want to be in anthropology (sociocultural) and in academia, which fits my personality and skills perfectly. Obviously I would like to end up at a major research university. 

- I have been living in Mexico for most of the laat six years, and as a result have just finished a book about violence, conflict, drugs, and prostitution in an incredibly dangerous area where I lived for a year and a half and was most certainly given access that no outsider has been given previously. Along with the book, I've compiled a photobook. Both are pending publication and will be published prior to my grad school application. I'm also working on a documentary on police corruption in the same region (using spy drones and ridealongs with cops). Next, I'm trekking through the Sonoran Desert with unauthorized migrants and heading down to live with Zapatistas for a bit. 

- I'm the founder and director of two charity organizations in Mexico, one helping recently deported persons and the other sex workers with drug addictions. 

- I'm the founder and editor of two anthropology-related blogs, one related to Mexico. 

- [Edit] Forgot to add that I'm working with a long-term material culture project in Mexico with a professor at a top department. I've also done field schools in Chiapis and Oaxaca, a summer class at UNAM, and I speak fluent Spanish and Portugese, and can converse in a couple Maya languagss.

In conclusion: I'd like to attend a "highly ranked" anthropology program but tend to dislike ratings and remember the fact that the NRC rankings are very old. Here are some schools on my short list right now: Arizona, Berkeley, Chicago, Harvard, New Mexico, Michigan, UCLA, UT Austin.

What do you think? Opinions? Likelihood of acceptance? Any other programs I should be looking at, Duke, Wisconsin? My current school interests are based on a mixture of rankings, faculty, and personal interest in attending.

Should I (or do I need to) go for an MA program first? If so, I am interested in LATAM studies at UT Austin. 

Thanks in advance for your help! 

Edited July 31, 2016 by anthromex

[sierra918]

Your credentials look really good overall, but you haven't said exactly what you're interested in (regional/methodological focus), though it seems you want to do archaeology (correct me if I'm wrong). So, it's hard to recommend specific programs.

Your age makes no difference. Grad department admissions don't see it, so unless you tell them, they'll never know. I'm turning 31 soon, and I'm starting a Ph.D program in 3 weeks.

[knp]

It doesn't sound like you need a master's degree in terms of your background, but yeah, what are you interested in? It's possible your interests are broad/in flux enough that you might benefit from one, but in terms of your experience with things related to the field, no, you don't need one.

I have no idea about eventual job prospects, but at one of the anthropology program accepted student weekends I attended, all the professors kept moaning that they hadn't accepted enough students over 30 this year, because apparently their methods course is always more interesting when there's a quorum of students with more life experience than I've got.

[anthromex]

Thanks for your replies, really appreciated. 

More interested in sociocultural anthropology than archaeology. Much more interested, actually. I'm interested in becoming knowledgeable in it, and it may be helpful insofar as my interest in Mesoamerica, but even then that's a minor interest. 

I feel like my interests are pretty narrowed down at this point. My regional focus would be Mexico especially the Borderlands, and a little more generally Latin America as a whole, especially Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua. 

I want to focus on migration as well as violence and conflict, and in a lesser way on human rights and folklore. Very interested in political rebellion across Latam. Could be interested in political economy stuff from an anthropological perspective. 

Am I right to be considering programs with excellent Latam departments in addition to anthropology, or does this really matter? 

[knp]

36 minutes ago, anthromex said:

I feel like my interests are pretty narrowed down at this point. My regional focus would be Mexico especially the Borderlands, and a little more generally Latin America as a whole, especially Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua. 

I want to focus on migration as well as violence and conflict, and in a lesser way on human rights and folklore. Very interested in political rebellion across Latam. Could be interested in political economy stuff from an anthropological perspective.  

Hm, that still sounds kind of broad to me. I mean, of course you're not being as specific as you could be here, but "Latin America" is a huge topic of course. As for "migration," I'd encourage you to get to the point where the short form of your "my subject-matter interest" thing is either "x perspectives on migration (in region)" or "the intersection of migration and other topic (in region)." Luckily, you have a lot of months to do some reading and narrowing, if you're not there already and it just didn't come out in that post. It's definitely very variable by scholar, but for the access issue, I've found that anthropology is a bit better than my previous discipline about having recent papers available to read on academia.edu.

Personally, I didn't bother even a little bit with considering which universities had good Regional Studies departments, but I study a somewhat offbeat corner of my region, so having a bang-up Relevant Continental Studies department is no guarantee that anybody in the department has ever spared a single thought for the countries I focus on. My subregion is well represented in my anthropology department, but I don't actually know whether the Continental Studies department at my future university is much good, or if there even is one. (I think there is?) Obviously it's a bonus for you if there is a great Latin American studies department, and something to consider if/when you're choosing which university to attend, but I would definitely not cross off anything at this stage just because they don't have a Latam department* or they have one with a more Brazilian or Caribbean focus or something.

*Although I don't actually know how common Latin American studies departments are...perhaps they're so common that not having one is a sign of unique disrespect from the university for that segment of area studies, in which case maybe it's worth crossing such universities off? That's not my general impression, but I'm no expert. Also, I've found that a really excellent "fit" in anthropology is not common enough that you can go crossing off universities to apply to really easily. That's not the case for every discipline: my impression is that in English, e.g., there might be twenty universities that offer a really great fit for any given research profile, in which case, yeah, you need some way of reducing your application workload. But for us it might be common to find like 8, which I would argue is a good number and not one you need to find reasons to reduce.