Graduate Studies

If you are considering graduate work in Near Eastern Studies, this site should tell you most of what you need to know about the possibilities for such study at Princeton.

Princeton has considerable attractions to offer you. It has a large and well-known faculty, an unusually good library, five-year funding, and a pleasant small-town environment. These are not, however, the factors that should weigh most heavily with you if and when you come to choose between Princeton and the handful of other American universities offering comparable programs.

If you have been an undergraduate at an American institution, you have probably been exposed to a large and frequently changing cast of faculty. Graduate life is different: graduate students spend most of their years of study working closely with two or three faculty at most. Choosing them is more important than choosing the institution they happen to belong to.

For prospective graduate students the faculty profiles are the most important feature of this Web site and may be found under the People tab on the menu at left. You should read them all, since taken together they tell you a great deal about the character and resources of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton. It is for this reason that we have included not just core faculty in the Near Eastern Studies Department, but also part-time faculty, emeriti, and faculty in other departments. You should, however, pay special attention to the profiles of the Department's core faculty. If there are two or three faculty members whose interests and approaches mesh with yours, apply for admission to the Department.

To help you explore the interests of relevant faculty, we have included a section entitled "representative publications" in the profile of each full-time member of the Department. If you want to know us better, the first thing that you can do is to read some of what we have written.

To apply, you should begin with the Graduate School Admissions Web page at http://www.princeton.edu/gradschool/admission/ ; instructions about the electronic application process (http://www.princeton.edu/gradschool/admission/applicants/applying/application/ ) and other information about admissions may be found there. Simply follow the instructions. We will read the materials you submit with care. Among other things, we shall be looking for evidence that you have already directed some time and effort to Near Eastern Studies at the undergraduate level. We also need to see that you have demonstrated the linguistic ability needed to acquire a Near Eastern Language.

As part of the admission process, we invite all short-listed applicants to visit Princeton for a weekend in late February, for interviews with faculty, seminars in which the applicants give brief presentations on some research topic of interest to them, and meetings with current graduate students. The visit affords an opportunity for better acquaintance, and may therefore be to the candidate's advantage. It is not, however, a necessary condition of admission. We offer partial reimbursement of travel expenses, and provide some meals and accommodation with current graduate students.