History of Art MA/PhD 2008

[stylefaxee]

yes -- I am also afraid of sounding condescending (which you don't, DuchessRavenwave! not at all!) but I wanted to put in my two cents on the topic of rejections.

it is sad to say that much of this process is horribly political and partisan. One committee might be fawning over your chosen dissertation topic and other might immedately cast it into the bin because it doesn't fit with their modus operandi. Or if one of your recommenders happens to be unpopular with an influential professor, that might immediately disqualify you. Please don't take it personally. There is so much competition in this whole process and with so many strong applicants committees really have to nitpick the most seemingly inconsequential things in order to weed people out. I'm so sorry it turned out like this for you.

[emusinfrance]

lxs, I am really sorry to hear that.

re: NYU IFA, I think it's plainly bassackwards that they can't provide their grad students with funding, especially given that NYU has one of the highest tuitions in the country and a gazillion undergrads. Something is clearly wrong administratively. Not that I could have gotten into IFA, but it turned me off that they have a funding caveat on their website. Anyway, forgive me if you have done this already, but did you try calling Financial Aid to see if there are any remission workarounds? It is such a coup that you got in. Some schools seem to have odd little arrangements here and there.

re: disciplinary stoginess, art historians in higher education must be among the quirkiest.

A question for everyone--are you all intending to teach? How do you think the "plans" part of your SOP affected your admission, if at all?

[DuchessRavenwave]

Thanks for that lxs. I am always afraid of sounding like an academic/intellectual snot. Though I guess this would be the kind of forum where I'd be less likely to get in trouble for that, right? 8)

I would say that the problem with IFA and funding has more to do with the general profile of many of the students they accept, ie, a significant portion of them come from the Upper East Side to get a Ph.D so they can be a buyer/executive for Christie's or Sotheby's. So they don't need funding because they can easily afford to pay their tuition. Not guaranteeing funding to everyone they accept keeps a lot of people away from applying (like me). I met a woman (defended a year ago) who had gone to the IFA for a year, ran up $50K in debt for lack of funding, got told there was not going to every be funding for her even in year two, and she applied to transfer back to her undergrad institution and got in with a full ride.

Now, not that I'm saying wanting to work for one of the auction houses is a bad thing, it's not. I think it could be pretty neat. But it does give the IFA a (deserved???) reputation for being a "finishing school" for socialites.

Per the "what do you want to do with degree thing" in SOP - I put that I would be interested in teaching and researching/publishing. So whether I did want to end up teaching or not, I know that didn't hurt me. I was serious about wanting to publish, though. 100%

[the17thscream]

Hey guys,

I'm new to the board and have recently received news of acceptances to NYU-IFA, UIowa, and Bryn Mawr. I'm still waiting on Harvard, UPenn, UChicago, and BU.

Like Ana, I also got into NYU-IFA with absolutely no offers of funding beyond a miniscule summer fellowship, and my dealings with the director of graduate studies there have been somewhat...off. I emailed them with questions as to how students with similar packages manage, and all they said is that I should visit (I'm currently an undergrad at Columbia, so I can easily visit, but they don't seem to know that and assumed I had never been to NYC.). Personally, I'm torn because it is such a top rated program and the best I have gotten into thus far, rank-wise, but I absolutely don't want to commit financial suicide with their non-guaranteed funding game, and my dealings with the administration as a prospective student have been less than favorable.

Bryn Mawr, which offered me a full ride but no stipends of RA/TA ships, gave me the contact information of a current student studying under one of the professors I'd like to work with (there are two that are doing exactly what I am into at Bryn Mawr). However I worry that I might be handicapping myself professionally by going from Columbia to someplace that is less of a name.

As for UIowa, they offered me a $16,000 TAship but no tuition assistance with the request that I tell them about any funding offers I get from other schools, so they might willing to negotiate, but Bryn Mawr is giving me more money and seems to be a better fit for me anyway.

If anyone could give me any advice on the situation, I'd really appreciate it...

[mew27]

just to add to what stylefaxee said...

it's amazing and very aggravating how shady the whole admission process can be. there's a lot of under-the-table stuff going on that i was completely unaware of. my advisor called me in one day recently because he 'had something very important to talk about.' apparently what happened is that a professor from school X had called him over the weekend and expressed great interest in my application. he really wanted to work with me, but so did professor so-and-so at school Y. so what happens? between the 3 of them - the two professors and my advisor - they work out a "deal" as to which one i'll get into. both schools can't accept me because it lowers their chances that i'll go to either one of them, but if i only get into one, i'll probably go there (god knows we can't ruin their matriculation rates). so i ask my advisor whether i get any say in the matter/get to decide which school i want more, and he tells me no. the "deal" has already been worked out, and i'm not supposed to know anything about it. he just wanted to tell me so i wouldn't feel bad when i get rejected from school Y. i thought this was unbelievably shady - here they are treating applicants like freakin' business deals.

so anyway, i shouldn't be ranting, but hopefully it makes some of you guys feel better knowing that there's a LOT of fishy crap going on here. everything is so political...

[lxs]

mew, that's crazy! it sounds like some sort of mob deal or something. did you at least end up getting into the school you preferred out of the arrangement?

duchess - thanks for the message! for what it's worth, my MA thesis was fairly on a fairly unorthodox topic and so that may lend some credibility to your theory as well. your topic sounds really interesting! i'm so glad to hear you got into UCLA. it's really crazy - and frustrating! - how prepared you can be and still not have anything come of it

[mew27]

no! i didn't get the school i preferred out of it. not that the other is a bad school at all (both ivies), but still! totally frustrating...

i was telling another professor about the situation and she said that the same thing happened when she was first out on the job market 20 years ago. she said all the new england schools were making phone calls left and right to get who they wanted. she had absolutely no agency in the matter... definitely sucks more, though, when it's your career and you don't get to decide where you end up!

academia blows!

[emusinfrance]

So is the elephant in the room... that your advisor got something out of it?

[emusinfrance]

mew27, sorry, you don't actually have to answer that. It just had the old cogs turnin'.

You DID, though, get into some terrific schools as I recall, deal or no deal. And it is a compliment that they actually competed for you?

Perhaps if any of us end up teaching, we can resolve to be kinder and more ethical.

[Renaissance08]

Hi the17thscream,

Congratulations on your acceptances! Sounds like you have some great options. Just so you know, from what I've heard (I'm not the last word by any means, but thought it might help), Bryn Mawr has an *excellent* reputation, especially for graduate art history. When I decided to apply for programs in this field, people consistently mentioned Bryn Mawr as being one of the top programs. "Rankings" for phds are not the same, of course, as for undergrad, and even if people outside of the field don't know Bryn Mawr, anyone in the field will--I've seen a number of faculty at top schools with art history degrees from Bryn Mawr.

Also, I think the most important factor in terms of determining which school you choose should be the people you'll be working with and how good they are for you. It will mean a lot for you to have people who are really excited about your work and really supportive of it (and with more attention and support, it could mean better networking for career positions down the road). The phd is not going to be easy, and you'll be investing 6+ years of your life, so you better feel like the people you're working with are not only approachable and interesting, but also excited about you.

Also, the money makes a big difference. Living in New York is sooo expensive (I'm from NY, living here now while working in an art gallery with a minimal salary which is still more than most fellowships and it's hard! I also did my undergrad at NYU, though not in art history)--and if your plans are for academia, it might be difficult to pay back hefty student loans.

I'm currently grappling with not having heard from NYU yet (so prospects aren't good, especially for funding), but I did get into the program at Rutgers, with full tuition + stipend, an offer NYU almost certainly won't match. I feel similarly--I worry a little bit about Rutgers' reputation and what it will mean for my career, but my potential adviser there does *exactly* what I want to do (probably why I was a top choice for them), and she's definitely the best personality I've run into. The program is much smaller than the IFA, which is really appealing, and another thing to think about--I think it makes for a less competitive, of course more intimate environment, where you can have more attention from advisers, faculty, staff, other students--which is great for academic development, and maybe even for future opportunities (career or otherwise).

Anyway, sorry for the hugely long post, I'd love to hear others' thoughts as well....

[lxs]

does anyone have any thoughts for or against the theory that ivy grad schools prefer ivy undergrads? i have no idea whether this actually is the case, but it seems to have happened a few times on this forum. i did not do my undergrad at an ivy and will definitely be looking more seriously at non-ivy phd programs the next time around...

[the17thscream]

Hey lxs,

As an undergrad at an ivy school, I thought you should know that I applied to 5 ivies, and have gotten rejections from 3 (still waiting on two, but I'm not holding my breath). Honestly, I think that people who are coming from the top of their non-ivy schools have a much better chance of getting into ivies, even better than those (like me) who are coming from ivy undergraduate schools. The majority of the grad students I'm taking classes with at columbia are coming from non-ivies, and several of them got their MAs from non ivy schools in addition to doing the non-ivy undergrad thing. Though in the end, it's all a crap shoot that doesn't reflect upon your merits at all, but rather upon the perceived compatibility of your interests and the professors who happen to have open spaces for students.

What I will say, as someone who has observed a lot of the grad program at columbia, is that big ivy league programs are super competitive, even after you are in, and the professors, while ridiculously intelligent and well published/accomplished, aren't necessarily the best teachers or advisors. All of the professors I have felt close to at columbia have been postdoctoral fellows who are only here for a couple of years and who are actually interested in teaching. The other professors here, while generally very nice, just seem to have too much on their plates with publishing/competing for tenure, and the result is not great for their grad students.

[lxs]

hey 17thscream,

thanks for posting that...very interesting, and not what i expected to hear. yet another attempt at finding logic in the admissions process disproved. for what it's worth, i also applied to bryn mawr and it seemed like a great program. it also sounded like they accepted basically no one, since they are so small, so congrats! what are your research interests/who did you apply to work with there?

[smellie]

I always wondered why the heck the schools wanted to know what others schools I applied to. Boo.

On the note on NYU-IFA, I'm in the similar boat as a lot of people here. I applied for MA and haven't heard anything yet, so it's likely that there wouldn't be much funding even if I get in. I am currently accepted to McGill, Montreal, and waiting on UNC -Chapel Hill (which states that they won't fund international students), Columbia (which also states that they don't fund MA students), and NYU. So my choice would either being in Canada, for going to a good school in the States with $60K debt at the end of the program.

So I'm not sure if I should just try next year again for Ph.D or MA with fundings, or stick to McGill and apply for Ph.D in the US afterwards (I have some personal reasons to move to the States eventually). McGill's program does not rank quite the same as many good US schools, but they just hired two professors in my period (though they're pretty young scholars themselves), has good library collection on my subject, offering me funding, and the living is cheaper. The only thing that's holding me back is whether it's going to tie me to Canada permanently, putting in disadvantage when applying for Ph.D in the States later. :S

decisions, decisions.

[the17thscream]

Hi lxs,

I'm a German art type, primarily 19th and 20th century, though I also do a lot of work with 18th century aesthetic theory as well as postwar critical theory. Of primary interest to me is the influence of German aesthetic philosophy and art historical practice upon German art and cultural ways of seeing (I'm much more of a theory/art historical historiography person). At Bryn Mawr, I'm very interested in working with Christine Hertel (who shares my interest in the intersections between German visual and literary culture as well as in recurring theories of German art criticism and aesthetics throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries) and Lisa Salzman (whose publications regarding postwar German art, particularly those concerning Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, have been major resources in my previous research positing Richter

[emusinfrance]

Adding to what the17thscream said about the school prestige factor, the ability to get to know your professors affects LORs as well.

[smellie]

So what do the schools prefer,

1) Very well-known prof. who doesn't know the student very well

2) not-really-heard-of prof. who knows every details of the student's work.

I sometimes dream of the days when I'll find my way into the admission committee as a prof., and find out about all the dirty secrets of this process!!

[lxs]

wow, 17thscream! our interests are really close. i don't think i've met anyone else in my time in academia who has also been interested in 19th century German art. so did you work with Cordula Grewe at Columbia? I applied to work with Hertel also. I was hoping to write on the revival of tropes and images from the Northern Renaissance (femme fatale, the woodcut, so on so forth) in the work of Klinger and other symbolists. unfortunately that idea hasn't gone over so well i wrote my MA thesis on the Neue Sachlichkeit. I'd be very interested to hear where else you applied/who else you applied to work with for my applications next year. I had a heck of a time finding people who were willing to work on German art and many of the programs I did apply to were a pretty awkward fit.

[hack]

Ana -- I got an offer from NYU with the same terms and summarily dismissed it. From what I hear, NYU uses these admissions terms to weed people out, and I'm not going somewhere where I will feel insecure about my stature and longevity in the program.

[halifax]

i sat looking over the last three pages trying to sum up something brilliant, but i have to say it's futile. there are simply too many variables at work...

best advice: find that one. let's be honest everyone...a lot of these schools were filler! i'd say at least two of mine were.

[hack]

i sat looking over the last three pages trying to sum up something brilliant, but i have to say it's futile. there are simply too many variables at work...

best advice: find that one. let's be honest everyone...a lot of these schools were filler! i'd say at least two of mine were.

You know what? You are absolutely right. I was debating posting my outstanding credentials stacked up against my string of rejections and ultimately, it doesn't matter that I'm peeved that I wasn't accepted to places I felt I should have been, because I ultimately got into the best match program for me. That's all that's necessary! Yours is a healthy attitude.

[the17thscream]

lxs,

Wow, our interests are ridiculously close! Your thesis proposal sounds really fascinating (I adore Klinger and symbolism, and the northern renaissance has so many tropes revived in the 19th century particularly in terms of nationalism, which is a main interest of mine).

Cordula Grewe is my thesis advisor, and I've taken several classes with her. She is an amazing and dynamic professor, though advising-wise, she is often too busy to meet with me for more than about 10 minutes a couple of times a semester. The great thing about Cordula is that she truly loves her field, and you can really see the fire in her eyes when she talks about the Nazarenes. Unfortunately, as nice as she is, she isn't much on active guidance, though her comments (when she gets around to them) are always very insightful. Also, as an undergrad I always felt like I was competing with the 4 or 5 grad students that also make bids for her attention, and in the end, she is much more concerned with her own work, as is appropriate for a professor at a huge research university like Columbia.

If you want to PM me, I'd be happy to discuss the other places I applied--it's certainly really difficult to find appropriate professors in a field such as ours...I found a few that I really adore, but for many it was a rather awkward fit, like you said. Cordula recommended Hertel to me, actually.

[mew27]

17thscream: i'm surprised to hear that about the grads at columbia. i just got back a little while ago from a visit to princeton, and i think there were only about 3 prospectives who didn't come from ivy undergrads. i found it a little odd, but i guess not too surprising..

emus: snarky comments aside, there wasn't anything in it for my advisor - he was just proud to have one of "his" students succeed

[hack]

While I'm on a posting spree here, Does anyone know where chicken Dan ended up? I have heard some wonderful things about Chicago for contemporary Chinese recently and I was wondering if he will end up there.

[arthistorian]

mew27's anecdote is very interesting. i didn't know they still did that these days. it sounds so... 50s! now i'm wondering if the same thing happened to me...