Postgraduate admissions; shifting from English Literature to Anthropology

[Wolfman1234]

Hello,
I completed my graduation in English literature but want get my masters in Cultural (Ethnography) or Sociocultural Anthropology (mainly from Columbia University). but i am not quite sure whether I will allowed to apply for it. Can someone tell me if this is possible; to shift from the humanities to the social sciences. Please its urgent.
Thank you in advance.

[International95]

You can, but I’m guessing you’ll have a pay quite a bit for a master’s degree. Top/funded MA/PhD programs are not going to take someone with no experience in the social sciences.

[juillet]

I want to get a graduate degree that is unrelated to my undergrad degree.

There’s a reason they call it graduate school. For academic programs at least (programs in a discipline - like English literature, philosophy, physics, computer science, math, etc.) as well as some professional programs (like engineering and nursing), the expectation is that you have a foundational base of disciplinary knowledge that you learned in college that you will build upon in grad school. The way things will be taught in your graduate classes will assume that you have a basic shared knowledge of the theories and research/scholarly techniques of your field. For this reason, most academic MA and PhD programs expect a major or the equivalent of the major in the field.

Is it possible for people with a BA in an unrelated field to get an MA in a different one? Well, sure, but with a few caveats. First of all, you have to do the work to get up to speed in the discipline. That usually involves taking some coursework, sometimes as a non-degree or post-baccalaureate student. How much you have to take will vary - 5-7 courses is usually a bare minimum, with the equivalent of a major (10-15 classes) being the ideal. It’s not just any 10-15 classes, either; you need to build some breadth and depth in the field. Some programs will have prerequisites posted on their website. If not, you should probably model the classes you take upon a major in the field, perhaps scaled down a few classes.

Do also note that prerequisites are often minimum standards. For example, a competitive economics PhD program might say that you only need three semesters of calculus and linear algebra to be admitted, but the most competitive students may have also take differential equations, real analysis, and advanced econometrics before admission. Or a program may say that they sometimes admit students with a major in a different field, but they have a specific definition of that (e.g., an MA program in physics may take a math major but not an English major; a comparative literature program might take a classics major but not a biology major). Or “sometimes” could mean “once every five years, if they are also Einstein/Chomsky/Hawking/Bandura/[insert other disciplinary genius here].”

It’s possible but you will likely have to take some classes in anthropology first. Do you have any coursework in anthro at all?

[International95]

Interesting cash-cow program from a big-name school:

https://mapss.uchicago.edu/

[juillet]

^Good find. Keep in mind, OP, that cash-cow doesn’t have to mean low quality - it just means that the program is a revenue generator for the university. It also means that the chances of getting nonrepayable funding are low. But these programs can be both really high quality and lead to good postgraduate outcomes.