Another one of my totally subjective threads about colleges name brands. For a second BA: UMass Amherst or Suny - Empire State? I can get the concentration I want (self designed) in both of them. The time to complete would be kind the same. But I like the Suny courses better and Umass would be around 2500 more expansive. But UMass is a national Tier 1 school. Suny-Esc is unranked. I'm guessing Umass would help me a little bit more to get into a Phd (in Film or Media Studies) in a top school after my MFA. Opinions?
I'm as happy to debate name brands as anyone else, but if you plan to pursue a PhD, I don't see why you need to earn another bachelor's degree. I would advise you to bear down and focus on making great grades in your MFA program and building relevant experience. The bachelor's degree you have got you into one graduate program, after all, there is no reason to expect that it won't be good enough for a PhD program, especially combined with an excellent MFA. In fact, I would go so far as to say that following up your MFA with a second bachelor's will not only not help your application to PhD programs, but it could end up hurting you by making you look unfocused.
Actually it's not so crazy to take another Bachelors or a MA if you have an MFA. An MFA is basically a practical, hands on, terminal degree in the arts. Mine has 63 credits, and only 12 of these are non-practical classes. A second BA would let me take a good number of theory based classes to complement my MFA (in the Film field we normally separate a "Film" degree, the practical one, and a "Film Studies", the theory/history based one. My Second BA would be in "Film Studies". But other than that, as I explained in other thread, I come from a country where your undergrad is more important than your grad degree. So a second bachelor in Film (my original one is in History) would make my MFA look more legitimate in my country (yeah, it's pretty stupid thing, but that's how things are in Brazil).
I agree with Fortunato and personally wouldn't waste another 3years of time and money on another bachelor (esp. since you want to do this one on the regular route). If you are aiming at a good PhD program I would try to get some academic papers published. Maybe you can find someone in your current degree program willing to co-write with you. This would cost you very little money, would allow you to demonstrate your ability to work on a high qualitative academic level and give you credibility by being peer review "evaluated". Of cause it takes some time to get into it (e.g. getting familiar with journal rankings in your field, maybe improve writing/structuring etc.) but in the end a perfect preparation for the academic route.
3 years? Where did you get that? I'd never be so stupid to waste 3 years for another BA Both Suny Esc and Umass Amherst UWW are not "regular route". They are totally online and I could finish at Suny in less than a year and at Umass in a year.
Just because one it's more important doesn't mean the other one it's not important too. It doesn't mean a Graduate program doesn't have value in Brazil. It does, and you need a Master's degree at least to teach in college and a Phd for a lot of different positions. BUT...if you don't have the BA in the same area of your MA or Phd in a lot of cases you won't be able to be hired in the top colleges of the country (specially the State and Federal ones), because they ask the BA in the same area. Even in the private sector people think it's weird to have a unrelated MA - I have some friends with BA in different areas and Masters in Marketing and they all had problems in getting hired because of the unrelated BA (a HR person actually told one of them to get back for a Ba in marketing or Business and them come back). One of the reasons for this is that we use the european standard for a Bachelors degree, meaning, 4 years of the same subject, so people don't think a MA of one or two years would be the equivalent (kind of stupid I know). And also the fact that our professional degrees (Medicine, Law, Engineering, etc..) are all undergrad, not Grad. So in my case a Phd in Film or Media Studies would be useful to teach both in my country or the USA. And also would give me more time to stay here in the USA and see if I can get a permanent visa.
Hi - I have an interest in MFA programs (although my interest is primarily related to creative writing). I would be interested in hearing something about your MFA program. Can you say something about your experience, how it is designed, etc? Thanks.
Hi Kizmet. My MFA is a a residential program (I'm living in San Francisco), 63 credits, RA and NASAD (that's the big art accreditation agency) accredited. Of those 63 credits, 27 are Studio Classes (practical art classes, in my case, Filmmaking classes: Directing, Cinematography, Screenwriting, etc...), 12 Graduate Studies (basically Academic/Theory/Business related classes), 6 electives and, finally 18 are Directed Studies (where you can have one-on-one classes with any teacher you pick, even outside of the school, or have an internship, or take another class). The process for the MFA is this: when you enter they evaluate your portfolio (Academy of Art has since the beginning a open doors policy): if you have a good portfolio you start with more advanced classes, otherwise you have to take some more basic ones as part of your Studio ones. After 24 to 36 credits you have to schedule a Final Review where you show them your body of work and your Thesis project. If they pass you, you take the rest of your credits, produce your thesis (in my case, a 12 minutes film) and them present a Final Review, showing the Thesis to a committee. The Academy of Art suggest 3 years to complete the program. Most people come here thinking they will finish in 1,5 or 2, but almost everyone ends up finishing in 2 to 3, as suggested. I originally came here in a different program, the MFA in Animation & VFX (that was a bigger program, 72 credits) but changed after my first semester. My department director was kind enough to let me keep taking some animation classes as part of my studio classes, so I'll finish the program with a good number of Animation credits (good for teaching after graduating). The Academy of Art offers most of their degrees online too, but I can't tell you much about that because I only took one class online (it was a theory one, not practical).
