MA in Museum Anthropology
所属信息
基本信息
申请截止日期
-
秋季
-
常规
3月13日 -
早申请
2月13日
-
其他
申请信息
托福/GRE Code
2162推荐信要求
3
文书要求
Statement of Purpose
In selecting applicants, we place a lot of emphasis on the statement of purpose because this is where you express your intellectual imagination, and it is where you demonstrate your capacity to think practically by formulating questions. Sometimes described as a “personal statement,” the statement of purpose should nonetheless be focused on the ideas and issues that are at the center of your proposed research. Only include personal information that directly informs your research, such as preliminary fieldwork and course preparation, language study, writing, and professional ambitions.
We are interested in how you came to be interested in your proposed topic, but we do not encourage autobiographical accounts in which travel or exposure to different cultures is made to appear like an explanation. Many people travel and come from diverse backgrounds, but this does not necessarily compel them to study anthropology. The statement of purpose must address this latter issue.
In this, as in all other academic pursuits, write clearly and make your case as elegantly as possible. If you need to invoke the work of other scholars to explain your thought, or if you feel it necessary to acknowledge the ideas that have influenced you, do so, but don’t clutter your application with citations and arguments with other thinkers. The statement of purpose is about your ideas; it is not a test of your previous reading, which should be implicit. In essence, the statement of purpose must describe what you want to do and why it is so compelling, explain what you think you need to do in order to undertake this project, and provide a rationale for pursuing it at Columbia.
In the end, we are looking for evidence of truly original thought, intellectual rigor and creativity, and knowledge of a field, along with a real curiosity and a sense of questions still to be answered. We hope for sparkle, intellectual commitment without myopia, and a commitment to profoundly understanding some set of social, cultural, and political issues through fieldwork in a particular region or place. There is no formula. Nonetheless, the above remarks should provide some basic contours.
Writing Sample
We require that you submit a writing sample in addition to the statement of purpose. This should be exemplary of your best written work and indicative of the kinds of questions and sorts of analysis that you think are appropriate to pursue in a doctorate in anthropology. It does not have to be on an “anthropological topic”; it may be a piece of literary analysis, legal scholarship, journalism, or experimental writing. The point is for it to show us a quality of mind and a style of exposition. Don’t send papers that were produced for courses in which you had no particular interest but received high grades for. Additionally, please do not send papers that have comments or other marks from previous readers visible. It is fine to send excerpts from longer works or theses (published or unpublished), but in that case we advise that you include a brief (1 page) cover that describes the overall project and explains the place of the excerpted pages in it. Please be aware that material submitted, including non-written media materials, cannot be returned to you.
In selecting applicants, we place a lot of emphasis on the statement of purpose because this is where you express your intellectual imagination, and it is where you demonstrate your capacity to think practically by formulating questions. Sometimes described as a “personal statement,” the statement of purpose should nonetheless be focused on the ideas and issues that are at the center of your proposed research. Only include personal information that directly informs your research, such as preliminary fieldwork and course preparation, language study, writing, and professional ambitions.
We are interested in how you came to be interested in your proposed topic, but we do not encourage autobiographical accounts in which travel or exposure to different cultures is made to appear like an explanation. Many people travel and come from diverse backgrounds, but this does not necessarily compel them to study anthropology. The statement of purpose must address this latter issue.
In this, as in all other academic pursuits, write clearly and make your case as elegantly as possible. If you need to invoke the work of other scholars to explain your thought, or if you feel it necessary to acknowledge the ideas that have influenced you, do so, but don’t clutter your application with citations and arguments with other thinkers. The statement of purpose is about your ideas; it is not a test of your previous reading, which should be implicit. In essence, the statement of purpose must describe what you want to do and why it is so compelling, explain what you think you need to do in order to undertake this project, and provide a rationale for pursuing it at Columbia.
In the end, we are looking for evidence of truly original thought, intellectual rigor and creativity, and knowledge of a field, along with a real curiosity and a sense of questions still to be answered. We hope for sparkle, intellectual commitment without myopia, and a commitment to profoundly understanding some set of social, cultural, and political issues through fieldwork in a particular region or place. There is no formula. Nonetheless, the above remarks should provide some basic contours.
Writing Sample
We require that you submit a writing sample in addition to the statement of purpose. This should be exemplary of your best written work and indicative of the kinds of questions and sorts of analysis that you think are appropriate to pursue in a doctorate in anthropology. It does not have to be on an “anthropological topic”; it may be a piece of literary analysis, legal scholarship, journalism, or experimental writing. The point is for it to show us a quality of mind and a style of exposition. Don’t send papers that were produced for courses in which you had no particular interest but received high grades for. Additionally, please do not send papers that have comments or other marks from previous readers visible. It is fine to send excerpts from longer works or theses (published or unpublished), but in that case we advise that you include a brief (1 page) cover that describes the overall project and explains the place of the excerpted pages in it. Please be aware that material submitted, including non-written media materials, cannot be returned to you.
