Graduate Applications

I suppose I've only been leaving general thoughts as of late, and not much about what is actually going on.

I participated in this latest round of graduate applications. Here in the US we have pretty firm deadlines, so people apply at the same time. There's quite a few things to do for applications here in the US. You need three letters of recommendation, a personal statement, a CV, GRE scores, transcripts, and a writing sample that must be tailored to each school. Every schools application is different, and often they ask for a variety of other things on top of the main one's I've mentioned. For example, Stanford wanted essentially two personal statements. To compare my applications for schools in the UK only wanted two letters of recommendation, transcripts from the school I got my BA from, my CV, and my personal statement, way easier. They were also less money, if they even charged at all.

Now getting into graduate school has always been highly competitive, but I would hazard to say that it has become more so with our current economic conditions. More people are applying to graduate school, while at the same time schools are taking fewer people, both of which make for an even more cut throat environment. This year I applied for nine graduate schools total, this was my first year of applications, and I did apply for more schools than is normally recommended. Usually they say (whoever they are) to apply to between six and eight schools. Of that you would have a mix of safety and dream schools. But given again the economic climate, even safety schools can afford to be picky as the number of qualified applicants rises, and admissions to even top programs decreases.

So, where does this leave me. Well out of nine schools I was rejected by six: Stanford, Boston, Cornell, UCLA, Buffalo, and UMass Amherst. UCLA and Buffalo didn't even bother to send a response, I imagine I'll get one sooner or later in the mail. But at least I got into some schools, three to be exact, one of which I almost didn't apply to. I received acceptances from Sheffield University, University College London, and New York University. If you were wondering NYU was the program I almost didn't apply for. I see this as a choice between two schools, NYU and UCL, New York, or London. This is where things stand currently, and I have until April 15th (deadline for all US schools) to decide. It has basically come down to this simple issue:

NYU... 2 years... $57,000... MFA History or Art and Archaeology
UCL... 1 year... $25,000... MA Archaeology of the Mediterranean

While there are certainly other factors in this decision, both London and New York are very expensive cities, and of course the obvious that London requires me to move from my home country, it still always falls back to this simple issue above. So you can see which way I'm leaning.