Episode 723: MA Thoughts...

Have been thinking a little about MA applications, being a finalist and all, and I've narrowed it down to three universities each on both sides of the Atlantic: Cambridge, Durham and Warwick, and Columbia, Dartmouth and Yale. Yeah, I know. That shortlist is freakishly ambitious. I might cut Cambridge and Yale eventually, as I don't think I can come up with the 500-word proposal for my dissertation by December that Cambridge requires (because I have little idea of what I would like to do research on) and Yale only admits a few people each year who want to pursue a terminal MA rather than the PhD, so why waste the application fees? This means I'll have to take the GRE at some point in October or November. All of the places I've picked have something going for them in my book, so it's a bit tough to make a choice. The easy way out, of course, would be to apply to Warwick. I'm already there, so it should be pretty straightforward in terms of applying, plus I wouldn't have to do a dissertation if I didn't want to, which isn't an option at any of my other choices. This would be so much easier if I cared deeply enough about something really typical, like gender studies or postcolonial literature, wouldn't it?