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Hi folks,

I'm about to graduate from a liberal arts school with a 3.72 gpa. I just got admitted into Cambridge for an Mphil in Gender Studies. I'm looking at applying in the next few years to some JD/PhD joint degrees.

Does anyone have advice whether I should or should not pursue the Mphil at Cambridge? The only huge con is financial. I didn't get funding and would have to go in debt. I have 0 debt now, and am looking, after Cambridge, at about 20,000$ in loans.

Do you think it's worth it? Would it improve my chances at a T14?

Thanks!

Hi folks,

I'm about to graduate from a liberal arts school with a 3.72 gpa. I just got admitted into Cambridge for an Mphil in Gender Studies. I'm looking at applying in the next few years to some JD/PhD joint degrees w/ a focus in critical legal gender studies.

Does anyone have advice whether I should or should not pursue the Mphil at Cambridge? The only huge con is financial. I didn't get funding and would have to go in debt. I have 0 debt now, and am looking, after Cambridge, at about 20,000$ in loans.

Do you think it's worth it? Would it improve my chances at a T14?

Thanks!

It wouldn't move the needle for the vast majority of the t14. If you are gunning for Yale and pting at 17X for the lsat then that is specialized advice I can't give you.

Do you want to go to Cambridge for gender studies or to boost your chances at T14?

CR7 wrote:Do you want to go to Cambridge for gender studies or to boost your chances at T14?

Both. Ideally it would boost my chances, especially regarding funding. I'm looking into being an academic and Cambridge would be a great foundation for what would eventually be my first book. It's not essential but would be very useful in developing my academic trajectory. If it would make zero difference, i'm thinking it's not worth going into debt for.

It won't help your chances in any appreciable way. That's not saying not to do it, but LS admissions shouldn't be a factor.

The idea of doing an mphil at cambridge in order to get into a US law school is kinda hilarious to me. Law school sucks so much more and is so much easier to achieve.

Anyway. Go for it, 20k is pretty much nothing in terms of academic debt.

Didn't you get into any PhD programs? Did you not apply? Why not seek out a funded PhD?

landshoes wrote:The idea of doing an mphil at cambridge in order to get into a US law school is kinda hilarious to me. Law school sucks so much more and is so much easier to achieve.

Anyway. Go for it, 20k is pretty much nothing in terms of academic debt.

Didn't you get into any PhD programs? Did you not apply? Why not seek out a funded PhD?

LOL this was actually fairly comforting. I'm considering the JD/PhD split because I really want to do Critical Legal Studies (most of whom are law professors) but i'm afraid of fucking myself over through accruing a ton of debt. I want to do a PhD but don't feel QUITE ready with my undergrad experience and would really like to have one big project (aka the dissertation) under my belt to set me up for a PhD. Also, I think I have a much higher chance of securing full funding once I have the Mphil.

If anyone has any random advice around this I would really appreciate it! I'm super super conflicted over whether the Mphil is "worth it" or if I should wait and apply straight to fully-funded PhD/JD programs. I don't feel ready for that and would probably take time off, but love school so much and want to keep advancing myself in my academic goals.

I'm not an academic but isn't a MPhil at Cambridge one of those things academics love to do?

The 20k figure signals that you've got substantial family support for the Cambridge Mphil. For what it's worth, if someone was willing to pay for most of my degree at Oxbridge, I would do it in a second. It'll be a wonderful intellectual experience.

If you want to go to Cambridge, go to Cambridge. 20k isn't the number we try to talk people out of here.

But I would strongly reconsider that JD if you consider yourself on a path to academia, but that's a conversation for a later time.

edit: are you including CoL in that debt number?

oneofthecrits wrote:I'm looking into being an academic and Cambridge would be a great foundation for what would eventually be my first book. It's not essential but would be very useful in developing my academic trajectory.

If you are committed to being an academic, it probably would be useful, and probably will give you the experience to better position yourself to do a PhD. I don't think it will make much difference if at all in getting you admitted to a T14, but if you want to make a plausible run at academia once you're at that T14 it will help (JD programs are not the best at actually developing an academic agenda, though admittedly if you're at a T14 and reach out to profs for help with that from the start you should be fine. But the default JD program isn't really academic at all - you have to be proactive so I would say that getting non-JD grad experience would probably be helpful).

Npret wrote:I'm not an academic but isn't a MPhil at Cambridge one of those things academics love to do?

For certain subjects (I think English and History) yeah. According to my friends, you want to learn the classical way of approaching these subjects, which you can only really get from Oxbridge. Then you spend the rest of your career either following in that classical tradition, or critiquing it and figuring out a new technique of analysis.

I'm not sure about what OP wants though. If I were OP, I would like reach out to students currently studying this topic and seeing if it works.

Lol at anyone trying for a profession in "critical legal studies."

Hey, currently doing a humanities MPhil at Cambridge and applied this cycle. I'm gonna say it's probably not going to do anything for you, but feel free to PM me.

I have a masters from Oxbridge. It did nothing in my admissions cycle a few years ago. My cycle went strictly how my numbers would predict.

If you want to go to Cambridge, then go to Cambridge. Then reassess afterwards about law school.

grades?? wrote:I have a masters from Oxbridge. It did nothing in my admissions cycle a few years ago. My cycle went strictly how my numbers would predict.

If you want to go to Cambridge, then go to Cambridge. Then reassess afterwards about law school.

Gonna add one more thing: this has been my experience as well, and I went fully-funded on a non-Gates/Marshall scholly. I would also caution against additional debt if your end goal is academia. Also 3.72 is a weak GPA for top-tier PhD programs, which are much harder to get into than top-tier law schools.

Pragmatically speaking, a Masters, even from Cambridge, will do little to move your law school admissions needle. However, if $20K is the only debt you would incur (including CoL), I don't see the harm. Law School will always be there, and you may even find that you no longer want to practice law after a couple of years heading toward the academia path.

Veil of Ignorance wrote:The 20k figure signals that you've got substantial family support for the Cambridge Mphil. For what it's worth, if someone was willing to pay for most of my degree at Oxbridge, I would do it in a second. It'll be a wonderful intellectual experience.

Eh. I wouldn't glamorize this. Wonderful intellectual experience? I mean, maybe, but a lot of european masters degrees of this nature are not that rigorous, and the students--especially internationals--do not receive the same level of attention and educational quality as undergraduates and doctoral candidates.