Best Grad Programs for Music History

mamenyu
Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:16:33 +0000

Truth is, it makes a big difference where you finish your PhD in terms of getting postdocs and jobs; if you don’t get into one of the top schools, and wind up at a place like Brandeis, which is well respected, and you do well, you have a good chance to transfer to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, from which your prospects would be greatly enhanced. This may be, in part, a function of the fact that the departments accept only two or three music history students a year; it is highly competitive. And keep in mind you need good fellowships; not all the schools are equally generous. Harvard is particularly generous, though, as is Columbia – offering 5 year fellowships to their students (then the possibility of a 6th year dissertation fellowship); Chicago and Penn, by contrast, have not been so generous in the past, though funding may have improved at Chicago.
For the UK schools, funding is trickier. Take a look at the Gates Fellowship opportunities (this is Bill Gates) for Cambridge – very prestigious, but hard to get in the humanities. Also look at Mellon opportunities.