Hons, Dons, and one smoking MA Oxon

Grad school is sort of funny. When you go to graduate school you don't go to the "big name," rather you go to the place that has the individual(s) with whom you'd like to study. How do you find that individual(s)? 1. READ As you progress in your BA academic career, when you read books/articles for class or for essays, if one catches your fancy, start reading more of that person's work. Get familiar with it and the critiques of it (for different perspectives). Go to the professors / grad students in your department and ask for recommended reading lists. Find out what the reading list is for the 1st year courses for grad students in your department. Read those works. Maybe one of those will strike your fancy as well. 2. RESEARCH Become a research assistant for your favorite grad student, then your favorite professor. This serves a number of purposes: 1, you see if this sort of lifestyle is really of interest to you and 2, you'll get exposed to more reading, and 3, you'll get people who will write you letters of recommendation. (Because another funny part of applying to grad school is that it isn't all grades, GRE scores, and SOP... it is A LOT about your professor(s) telling other professors that they know that they are vouching for you. For all I know Oxford doesn't even have a great Art History department or it might not have the sort of Art History scholarship that you're going to be keen on. According to http://survey.nagps.org/rank.php?sortMethod=-1&basic=Get+Basic+Rankings&w0=0&w1=0&w2=0&w3=0&w4=0&w5=0&w6=0&w7=0&w8=0&deptSet=1&deptType=111, which is a reputational survey, it isn't even on the list of top programs. It isn't on http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/art-history/rank either. Here's http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/gradprof/grad/gradart.html from UPenn on getting into Art History grad programs.

If you can write something (book review, essay, etc.) and get published in a peer-reviewed journal, that would look nice on the application.

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I know people who Have been accepted to competitive programs in Britain and the US from Canadian universities - they got there on marks and on good undergraduate theses, in other words, their academic preparation alone. No extracurriculars were counted, or even asked about; they had no trips abroad, and didn't do anything during their undergraduate careers other than study hard (and work part-time jobs to get money, of course). They did talk to professors - they developed good relationships with their instructors by visiting their office hours, talking to them about the subject, etc (for fun, not for any alterior motive), and that helped with a lot references. They were also good contributors to seminars, and that meant that they weren't just good students, but memorable ones. For most humanities graduate programs, it's all about the marks - you will need an Aish average (doesn't have to be 4.0, but should be high 3, like 3.7 or 3.8 or so). Extracurriculars don't matter - you aren't applying for medicine or education where they care if you like people or not. You are talking about an academic-oriented program, and everyone knows that humanities academics are misanthropes who hate people and would rather stay in the far corner of some cold dusty library than actually talk to people.* Extracurricular activities are just a distraction - you will impress them by people as good as you can be at exactly what you are studying. Experience in curatorship might be useful, especially if you are looking at a more practice-oriented program. But I know that in History for instance, doing public history outreach for kids or something like that would mean nothing to getting into graduate school when compared to writing good History essays. NOTE: in the sciences, research/lab experience is important to getting into graduate school. This is not true for humanities, since we don't have labs. Writing an excellent undergraduate thesis is a good thing for getting into a competitive program; publications are great, but extremely rare, and definitely not necessary (maybe for some of the super competitive scholarships, but not simply for admittance. But you may have a bigger concern - despite the fact that you are British citizen, if you have not been resident in Britain, you will be required to pay overseas fees. Scholarships and funding for students from Canada is more competitive than getting into British graduate programs, even at Oxbridge. And unlike American universities, most British universities will provide little to no help getting this funding if you are not a scientist - that was my friend's experience with both Oxford and Cambridge (accepted to both, funded by neither). If you are serious about attending any British university, start researching funding opportunities at the beginning of your third year -- applications will be due a year or so before the actually period the funding is for. If you can, apply for a SSHRC - that is the best funding a Canadian can get in the humanities, and it's better funding the earlier you apply (you can get up to 4 years, but only if you apply before your first year of graduate school). If you don't get a SSHRC, you can reapply every year. *yes, I am a humanities graduate student, how could you tell?

I have a Cambridge MA degree (which cost me only £20) having read History of Art for Part II as an undergraduate. Of my peers, for those who did masters, they either went to the Courtauld or to the Warburg Institute depending on what in particular they wished to study. (Both have considerably more academic snob value than Oxbridge.) Others went straight into PhDs where choice of institution was always dictated by where the right supervisor was based (Courtauld, UEA, Birkbeck, Warburg, Sussex, Cambridge). I've never met anyone with an Oxford History of Art MSt. I know you're studying classical art at the moment but is this your area of interest in the long term? (Are you looking to work in the Louvre / British Museum?) You need to be clear what kind of museum career you want. If you're planning to emulate Saint Neil, Nick Serota, Charles Saumarez Smith etc, get a PhD with the right supervisor. If you want to make a name for yourself curating contemporary shows, I'd do the Goldsmiths curating MA. Goldsmiths does not have the academic cachet, but you'll be studying alongside Fine Arts students some of whom will be the next generation of YBAs. Same goes for doing something at the University of the Arts (Camberwell, St Martins etc). If you want a job at the Tate or the ICA, get into the London Consortium MRes/PhD programme (run jointly by Birkbeck, Tate, ICA, Architectural Association). Extracuricular activities are only important if you're planning to do a curating MA where you should be interning at a museum / trying to stage some shows. For all other degrees, academic excellence and original research are all you need. Oh, and History of Art students are not nerds, swots perhaps but not nerds. (I suspect I am truly the sole exception to the rule.)

I'm an MA student at Harvard doing Middle Eastern studies - an unrelated field, but a similar situation, I think. I went to McGill, took some time off to be a journalist in the Middle East, decided that Oxford was the place I clearly needed to be, went to visit, had an excellent interview, sent in my application, and waited. I didn't get in. I had only applied to one grad school, and, Max Fischer-like, I had put down Oxford as my only choice and as my safety. Not such a good choice. I whiled away a painful year teaching ESL in Vancouver and dreaming in Arabic. It took me a full year to decide that I was applying to grad school because I was actually dedicated and interested enough in a particular subject to pay $50,000 a year doing it (MA's aren't funded) and dedicating the time it takes to be in grad school. When I applied again, I cast my net a little wider, worked really fucking hard on the letter of intent, sent in the applications, and then forgot all about them. I got accepted to Harvard two months later, completely out of the blue. If there's any advice tied to all of this, it's this: it sucks to put all your hopes on one school, because you're probably not going to get in. I mean that - the odds just aren't in your favor. For the top schools, all you can do are make low probabilities a little higher, but if you're really and truly serious about this, you'll be serious enough to assess your career and networking probabilities at schools from a number of tiers, and spread out your risk. Now, I haven't asked, but I think I got into Harvard for these reasons, which are broad enough that they might apply to your situation: 1) I've published papers. Granted, they've been published in undergraduate journals, and granted, not all all of them are in my particular discipline, but those journals were peer-reviewed, and I consider those papers good enough to show off my ability to write and to analyze. 2) I've done work relating to my discipline. I have a portfolio of news articles, and I also have direct experience in the region. 3) My background fit with the cohort they were trying to build. In my case, that meant religion and national affiliation, but in your case that might mean intellectual school, particular kind of art interest, etc. My best advice to you when you apply, wherever you apply, is to find out as much as you can about the department and its faculty, research their interests, and then sell yourself by showing how you have the exact same interests they do. What a surprise, you're just like them! They're bound to let you in. Well, maybe. I think that's what worked for me, but your mileage may vary. Remember, this whole process is largely about luck anyway. (Oh, and when you get to grad school, work hard on your papers, and try to avoid extensive commenting on MeFi as you procrastinate.)

OK, so this (i.e. my question) is kind of retarded, but are you sure you want to go the classical art route? I'm guessing the loads and loads and loads of people are going to be focusing on this area. If your goal is simply to have a curatorial role at a museum, it might be better to focus on a still well represented but less common area. I don't know enough about Art History to hazard a guess. Of the two, I am guessing more people do classical Greece than Roman Britain, but you might do even better by focusing on another historical period that takes your fancy. Why force yourself to be overwhelmingly brilliant when you can just be really clever?

I'm not sure how much they weigh the essay portion of your app, or if they even have an essay requirement, but in preparing for your draft, I'd start out listing 10 reasons that you'll be successful in life. How you define success is up to you. Keep these personality traits alive in the theme of your essay. Universities want to invest in someone who is going to be a "winner," a mover and shaker. While you might not be at that stage right now, you have to think that you have that potential despite an Oxford degree. Those who believe that a prestigious degree will make them set for life and manifest all of their dreams lack the personality traits that will make them successful. For example, you mentioned that the networking opportunities are endless at Oxford. While that may be true, there is nothing that prevents you from networking w/ established businessmen, artists, curators, etc. where you live. I'm sure that you've heard all of this before, it just hasn't hit home yet b/c you are still young. I'm not trying to lecture you, rather give you insight as to what investors are looking for, b/c afterall their student body is an investment. You have to ask yourself, "Why would anyone invest in me?" b/c once you graduate from Oxford, you'll have to answer that same question. Why would a museum pick you over another Oxford grad, all things being equal? In the end, it comes down to those personality traits that will make you successful.

I know very little about Oxbridge (never interested me), and I know only a bit about the museum world (I work for one of the major funders for the sector - and we don't really do the art side of things), but I'm just coming to add again that you should be absolutely sure that Oxbridge is the right place to go to do the work you want to do... not just for the name. It really does depend on what you want to do and where you want to work in the future, but the museums sector in the UK is changing, and broadening, and opening up, and becoming more and more accessible to people who haven't taken a 'traditional' route. Oxbridge isn't necessarily the only way in anymore. You might want to try and look at the backgrounds of people who are doing work you want to do and see how they got there (look at the younger people, I'm sure at the British Museum there are still plenty of people over a 'certain age' who got there because of which college they went to). Also pretty much all museums and galleries over here have volunteering programmes, if you can afford to live unpaid in the UK for a summer or two, I would go for it.