<p>I am a senior applying to graduate school in the fall. It has been very easy to select which schools to apply to, since only ten universities offer my program. The problem is, the departments to which I will be applying (Chicago, Penn, Yale, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and either Brown or Michigan) are highly selective. </p>
<p>Since so few universities offer the program, I lack safety programs. Is this unusual? I feel like I'm going "these six or bust," which is rather unsettling. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I don't know about your field, but in mine, there are a dozen or so terminal MA programs that all serve as "feeders" to the top PhD programs.</p>
<p>In my field, PhD applicants normally apply to a couple of these as well. Since these MA programs fully fund their students, they are often excellent options for PhD applicants who do not gain admission to doctoral programs right away, or who are not awarded funding by the doctoral programs to which they applied.</p>
<p>Every1 should apply to a few schools they feel certain they'll get into. </p>
<p>But NEVER apply to a feeder school you wouldn't seriously want to go to anyways.</p>
<p>Talk to your professors and graduate student friends -- they'll have a better idea about how qualified you are, whether you'd be a good match, etc. </p>
<p>I had two safeties, three good matches, and two reaches when I applied. But I eventually felt that if I got rejected from all but the safety schools, I wouldn't go to them anyway.</p>
<p>Just apply them all and see what the outcomes are. Also do apply to a couple of favorite MA programs that you can be happy hanging out for two years before trying again. You may be in for a surprise as you go through the process, hear back from schools, and work on your senior project only to find out that perhaps you're not ready for PhD level as you thought. I certainly wasn't the only one as I later found out from several other people who got rejected from PhD who thought the same thing- once they did their senior research project and read up literature in their field, they said, "Shoot, I'm just going to do my MA first! I'm not ready! I don't know this stuff!"</p>
<p>I'm also in a limited field where I have, perhaps, 8-10 choices of schools to apply to for PhD. Generally, they kick applicants who don't have MAs to MA programs and re-consider them when they re-apply for PhD. Definitely talk to your professors to see what's necessary for archeaology and whether you have enough background for PhD work.</p>
<p>essential amino acids are those that cannot be synthesized by the human body and must be supplemented in our diet</p>
<p>If you are interested in Archaeology (as your moniker and list of schools suggest) a LOT will depend on your preparation and LORs. The 2007/2008 application season was tremendously competitive in Classics and Classical Archaeology. Even lesser known programs had the freedom to select from many extremely well qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Based on my rejection letters (I struck out 100%) many programs were able to make their cuts entirely based on preparation - no one I know (including myself) got into a PhD program with less than 2 years of Greek AND one of the modern languages. (The modern language was/is the big hole in my app.) </p>
<p>So as Prof. X suggests, take a good look at MA programs as well as schools that may not offer your EXACT interest but come close or have professors doing research in your area even though the department doesn't have a full-fledged program. </p>
<p>Another possibility, particularly if you have identifiable weaknesses, is to apply to some of the post-bac programs. Here at Penn, the post-bac program is specifically oriented toward Greek and Latin, but you're free to take anything else if you can make a case for it being "related". So someone interested in Egyptian archaeology for example could take Old Egyptian with Prof. Silverman this fall, work up some research projects with the museum collections, and so forth.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>If it is important to you that you be accepted to grad school after this round of applications, then you need safeties.</p>
<p>If you want to either go to one of these programs, or not be in grad school, after these round of applications, then you don't need safeties.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input, all. :)</p>
<p>I am not at all as well versed in PhD application as Professor X or others are but it seems to me that PhD admissions are random enough that it is worth applying to several programs, even those you may think you have a poor shot at, and seeing what happens. PhD admission isnt like law school where you can determine with mathematical precision what schools you will get into based on raw data alone.</p>