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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