When Megan Peck '06 applied last February for the Art History Foreign Study Program in Florence, Italy, she had visions of spending her sophomore spring in some of Medieval Europe's most gorgeous cathedrals.
She had just taken her first college-level art history course, Art History 2, and had tentatively made the decision to pursue art history as her major. So, as the application deadline approached, the decision as to which FSP she would apply was rather straight-forward, and she applied to only one.
"The Art History FSP was the only one that really interested me, and I thought I had a pretty good chance of getting in," Peck said.
However, when decisions were sent out in March, Peck discovered that her dreams of Michelangelo and gelato would not be realized so easily. She had been ranked 10th on the waitlist. There are 16 spots on the FSP, and the waitlist numbered at least 20.
Around campus the art history program is known to be one of the more popular programs, and, combined with the fact that it is offered just one term each year, it may be one of the most difficult programs to get into. Some students said that they had heard that approximately 80 students apply for the 16 places available each year.
The Off-Campus Programs office, however, was unable to substantiate this claim because they do not keep track of application numbers or acceptance rates, according to Director of Off-Campus Programs John Tansey.
"It's just not something we really look at or compare," Tansey said.
Lenore Grenoble, dean of off-campus programs in the Dean of the Faculty office, said, though, that she does look at the numbers. The College does try to add or expand programs to accommodate "sustained higher demand" for a certain program, according to Grenoble, but those requests usually have to come from the department itself.
"Before we could add we would have to make sure that we have the resources to allocate to a new program," Grenoble said. "We would want to make sure we could send another faculty member and that there is sufficient demand to warrant it."
So why, then, has there not been a movement to increase the frequency or size of Art History FSP offerings given its perceived popularity?
Without the application numbers in front of them, neither Tansey nor Grenoble were willing to comment on the demand students report for the art history program, and consequently could not say whether another program was needed in the department, though Grenoble did say that no such request has come from the department.
"After applying, I heard it was one of hardest FSPs to get into," Peck said. "When you visit as a prospective student, the College makes it seem like everyone gets to go abroad to basically wherever they want. There is no discussion about how competitive some of the programs are, or how you could be rejected from a program you want to go on."
According to students, however, the art history program is not the only excessively competitive study abroad program offered by the College. Many students also said that the Keble College exchange program, which sends students to Oxford University in England for a term, is routinely very difficult to get into because of its small size.
"It's just kind of ridiculous to not be able to go on the study abroad program offered by your major department," Peck said. "And I can't go next year, so this was my only shot."
