Hi John,

I'm just finishing my degree with UofT and can offer a few thoughts. 

+ Staff is very kind and supportive, very nice people
+ Toronto is a great place (very welcoming and ethnically diverse)
+ Good local museums (although only Europe can compare to New York)
+ Museum Studies department is merging with the Faculty of Information
Science (FIS) next year, which will expand resources and opportunities. Will
be an exciting, but possibly stressful, time.

- Department lacks resources in house (have to go to Royal Ontario Museum
for latest books/journals)
- Quality of teaching varies depending on the teacher, some excellent - some
very dry
- Toronto can be an expensive place to live, not as bad as NY but worse than
Seattle
- Department feels very "homelike, warm, fuzzy, old fashioned, Martha
Stewart crafty" rather than "cutting edge, aggressive, innovative,
high-tech, superstar" 

+/- Because the department is small it becomes a very insular community, can
be great or awful depending on your personality

However the merge with FIS will likely change much of the above.

Tara
-----Original Message-----

Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Museum Studies MA reputations

Hello Everyone...

After doing some research on MAs in Museum Studies last winter, I came to 
the conclusion that there are no domestic programs that clearly dominate 
the field.  I applied to four different programs that I thought looked 
impressive.  I didn't expect to get accepted to all of them, but apparently 
I sold myself short.  Could anyone give me some advice on where to spend 
the next two years studying, and probably several more after that? I'm a 
Californian, born and raised, but have no clear favorite on where to go 
(and decision time is this month!!!).  Here they are:

NYU
GW
U of Toronto (with a generous fellowship)
U of Washington - Seattle

Are there any clear favorites?  Thanks for any input you might have.  I 
trully appreciate it.

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