Anthropology PhD advice?

StrangeLight
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:52:11 +0000

there are other options in the new york area besides columbia, cuny, and new school too. you could apply to rutgers, upenn, cornell, etc. you don’t have to stay in the city and live at home, but you can still be reasonably close to your family if it would make everyone (including and especially you) happier.

some people do legitimately try to stay within a reasonable commuting distance for their family’s sake. when others here have said “i need to be in the DC area because my spouse does X,” no one says a word, so i think it’s a bit unfair that people are telling you to completely disregard your immediate family. that said, one day you will have to cut the apron strings, and you shouldn’t let your family lay that much of a guilt trip on you. unless they’re counting on your grad school stipend to be income to support the whole family, that’s just unfair. if you’re within a few hours by train, you can make weekend visits and go home to them in the holidays. it’ll still be an adjustment for everyone, but you can get into a good program that meets your needs without being a flight away.

that said, columbia may still be an option for you. i know that kate ramsey went there for an anthropology degree (she teaches history at the university of miami now). she studies voodoo (vodou) and politics in haiti, and i believe she does some symbolic work as well as cultural and political, so columbia has recently produced an anthro PhD that is thematically similar to your interests. she got her degree in 2002, so provided that her advisor is still around at columbia, that may be a potential match for you. although i study history myself, it’s been my experience with anthro departments that often having your methodology match with an advisor’s is as important, or even more important, than having the same regional focus. kate is a lovely person and i’m sure you could email her, outline your interests, and ask her what she thought of her experience at columbia. you can find her contact into on umiami’s history department website.

as for 3, and 4 of your post…

3) taking a year off is always a good idea provided that you maintain contact with the professors who will be writing your letters of recommendation. you want them to remember you. what you do in that year off also doesn’t really matter. anthro and history programs in particular value some semblance of real-life experience from their candidates because they believe (and i tend to agree) that getting out of the library and into the world will enhance their understanding of human nature and behaviour. even if you don’t do something in academia with your year off, it won’t hurt you (though you shouldn’t put it on your CV unless it was somehow related to anthropology or research). learning a language is always a good thing. also consider looking into field school opportunities. even though you want to do cultural/symbolic anthro, getting some experience digging around in the dirt looks good on your application.

4) finding the right school is usually done by talking to your professors at nyu and seeing who they say you should work with. when you find some professors at other schools who you may want to work with, email them and briefly ask if they’ll be taking on new grad students in 2010. some of these initial contacts lead to longer telephone or email conversations, and i had more than a few professors tell me about great programs at other schools that really fit with my interests. they’re not looking to sabotage grad students, so they’ll be honest if they think their program doesn’t have the courses to support an africanist or if a certain academic at another school would be perfect for you. some profs are grumpy and some are incredibly helpful. more often than not, professors will build your list of places to apply for you.

i definitely, definitely recommend talking to potential advisors. it helped me weed out schools i otherwise would’ve applied to and felt were perfect for me. some had no flexibility on what they’d be willing to advise, some told me that there weren’t the masters courses available in my area of interest so regardless of my app i’d probably get rejected (and did), and some told me that funding wouldn’t be available to international students (a UC school). you learn a lot talking to them.

also, look for the authors of books and articles you really like. see if those people are still around teaching somewhere and apply to those schools. i’m fortunate enough to be going to a program with three professors whose work i had read and loved during my undergrad years. only at one other school did i find three professors whose work i had already encountered and felt strongly about. at most of the schools i applied to, i was reading profs’ work as prep for my application and hadn’t actually encountered any of their stuff before.

the GRE is important but not that important. as long as your verbal score is around or above 650, your percentile will be over 90%, and that’s all admissions committees are really looking for. you should definitely prepare for the test, but i think paying for a prep course is a bit overboard. those classes tend to improve quantitative scores more than verbal ones, so unless you’re going into sciences and math, it’s not really worth the cost. get a prep book and follow their 8-week study guide to the letter and you’ll score about 50-100 points higher than you would’ve without it. as for the quant score, really, all you have to do is not embarrass yourself. certainly review the math sections when you study, but don’t focus too much on it because it doesn’t matter for anthro. where the GRE does make a big difference (beyond the 90th %ile in verbal) is in allocating university-wide fellowships. departments cough up cash and use grade and LORs to compare students, but when you’re competing across disciplines for university fellowships, they often use the GRE scores as a way to measure an anthro student against an english student or a bio student. but again… above a certain level, the GRE doesn’t matter. meet the threshold and then don’t worry about it.

same for GPA, really. overall you’ll want at least 3.5 to be considered by top programs. you’ll want 3.7 or higher for your major. yes, many people get into grad school with lower numbers, but there’s usually something else on their application that makes them stand out and merit further consideration. in general, having a high GPA is always a good thing, but don’t sweat the difference between a 3.8 and a 3.9, for example. GPA is again another threshold thing. some students get accepted with 3.4 and some get rejected with 3.9, and that usually comes down to fit.

fit is everything. if no one at cuny does african witchcraft, or no professor you contact there sounds excited about advising african witchcraft, you won’t get in. it doesn’t matter what the rest of your application looks like. if there isn’t an advisor who is willing to work on your exact project, and there aren’t a few more professors in the department who specialize in your regional/thematic interests on top of that, you won’t get in. there are two things you can do. 1) don’t apply there if the fit between your interests and their strengths as a department aren’t obvious. 2) change your interests to meet the department and advisor’s strengths. option 2 sucks, but if location is more important than what and how you study, it’s something to consider.

your statement of purpose and your writing sample will be the two single most important parts of your application. do multiple drafts of both. make sure your writing sample shows you doing primary research (book reviews and essays based on course readings don’t cut it), and if it has you using sources in other languages, that’s even better. your SOP should basically be a research proposal for a masters or doctoral thesis. you’re not bound to it and you can decide to research something else once admitted, but the schools want to see that you can articulate a coherent research project. probably my biggest mistake when i applied was not simply outlining a single project. i kept things a little more open-ended, at the behest of a few of my undergrad profs, but i think in the end it made me seem unfocused. maybe postulate two or three ideas, but have them all relate to cultural/symbolic anthropology in nigeria, for example. keep the thematic and regional focus consistent, and present no more than three possible theses (in fact, many would say to only present one, and they’re probably right).

what you should do right now is study for the GRE. plan to take it at the end of the summer (which would require you to book it now). if you can’t get a spot to take it by the end of august, take the next available appointment. if you do badly on the test, you want enough time to study some more and take it again. the GRE won’t get you into anthro programs, but it can keep you out of them. you’ll need to take the test by the beginning of november at the absolute latest in order for schools to get the scores in time to include them with your application.

start researching schools. in august, or mid september (give profs some time to get settled into the fall semester), start contacting potential advisors to see if they’ll be taking on more grad students. if they seem receptive after that point, talk a bit about your interests and their research.

you don’t have to start writing your statement of purpose now, but you should definitely think of a few things you may want to study. do some reading and come up with a few ideas.

oh, and one last thing… i think applying to 15 schools is excessive. i only applied to 9, and between the GRE, application costs, and mailing out transcripts and writing samples (by courier, since canadian mail sucks), i spent $2000 on the whole process. save yourself some money and apply to 6 or 7 places at the most.