Grad School, Part II

Today I took an entrance exam for a master’s program of Ottoman History at a school here in Istanbul for the second time. In the next few months I’ll be applying to four other schools — three in Istanbul, one in Ankara. If everything goes well then I’ll be starting a master’s program this fall.

Turkey’s grad school acceptance system is waaaaaaay more laid back than America’s, sometimes too laid back. For example, the hard deadline for grad school applications in America is in December. Here, most schools still take applications into July and some schools accept them all the way to September. I pity the poor schlub who would try to apply to a Turkish school from America; if you were accepted to a school you wouldn’t know it until one week before classes start. My friend Dan applied to a Turkish school to finish out his undergraduate education and he actually came here not knowing if he was accepted. It turned out he was, which was an apt reward for a leap of faith on his part. But he was also a Marine, meaning that nothing short of fighting a baracuda with safety scissors would be intimidating.