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about 3000 spots at every departement of harvard grad school
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<p>If you just use your common sense, you should realize that that's shooting a bit high, don't you think? After all, the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences alone has about 30-35 departments (depending on whether you call the Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences a single department or a bunch of separate departments). So let's say 30 departments. 30 * 3000=90,000 graduate students alone. And that's not even counting the huge professional schools like Harvard Business School, Harvard Law, Harvard Medical, the Kennedy School, the Graduate School of Education, the Dental School, the Design School, the Public Health School, the Divinity School, etc. And of course it doesn't include any Harvard undergraduates. According to your numbers, you would have 90,000 graduate students just in FAS. </p>
<p>Yet Harvard has only about 20,000 TOTAL students. That includes all the professional school students, all the undergraduates, and all the various academic graduate students.</p>
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Let's say i want to go to the arts and sciences gard school at Harvard. How many spots are there every year at this location?
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<p>That's not really a relevant question with a relevant answer. It's not like the graduate school as a whole decides how many total students to have. Rather, each department decides how many students to take, depending on how much money they have, what they plan to do, etc. You apply to a specific program in a specific department, and the department decides whether to admit you or not. So just because the Department of Mathematics may have available spaces, that doesn't help you if you apply to the History program. </p>
<p>Furthermore, each department varies greatly in size. Some departments are huge and have lots of available spaces each year (but also have lots of people applying every year). Some departments are relatively small and therefore have few spaces every year (but also fewer people applying in the first place). For example, the Department of Sanskrit is tiny compared to the Department of Economics. It would then stand to reason that there would be more available spaces for graduate studetns in Economics than in Sanskrit. But of course, there aren't a whole lot of people trying to get into graduate programs in Sanskrit anyway. </p>
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most school's have stopped offering MA's
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<p>I think what you mean to say is that most prestigious research-oriented schools have stopped offering terminal MA's. The vast majority of graduate programs still offer MA's, simply because the vast majority of graduate programs are no-name programs. </p>
<p>Even at Harvard, most departments will offer an MA (actually, at Harvard, it's called an AM, not a MA). They just don't run terminal AM programs. They will award an AM as an 'interim' degree to the PhD, or, more often, as a consolation prize to those who couldn't make it to the PhD. </p>
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although the Kennedy School of Gov't offers some
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<p>I don't think so. The Kennedy School offers MPP and MPA degrees, but no AM degrees. It is true that you can obtain a joint/concurrent degree with Kennedy and FAS and thus obtain a MPP/AM or a MPA/AM, but the AM portion will be administered by FAS, not by Kennedy. </p>
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You're not supposed to just get a Masters and leave.
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But you do get your masters there, am I right?
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<p>As said above, it depends on the department. There are indeed some departments in Harvard FAS that will happily admit you for and award you a terminal master's. For example, the Statistics Department admits terminal master's degree students. The Computer Science department admits terminal master's degree students. The engineering programs (yes, Harvard has engineering) admits terminal master's degree students. Heck, some FAS departments run only terminal AM programs, and don't run any PhD programs. For example, the Regional Studies programs only award AM degrees. There is no such thing as a Harvard PhD in Regional Studies. </p>
<p>Look, if you could tell us which departments you are interested in, then we could give you a better answer. But the fact is, Harvard has many different departments in many different fields, and the rules are different for each one. So unless you narrow things down, it's hard for us to help you.</p>