Program Overview
The Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) is a one-year program of graduate studies leading to the A.M. degree. MAPSS offers a wide variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary opportunities for advancing academic or career goals, while allowing flexibility unusual among graduate programs. MAPSS makes the resources of a great university available for student-centered and highly individualized programs of graduate study. Each student works closely with the director and an assigned preceptor on all aspects of the program, from designing a customized curriculum, to defining the area of scholarly research, to writing the thesis. MAPSS provides every student with a vibrant and collaborative intellectual community and core-course training in social science theory. Students meet a social sciences methods requirement and choose seven additional courses from the full range of regular doctoral and graduate professional offerings of the departments and committees of the Division of Social Sciences and of the other divisions and professional schools of the University.
The program is well suited for those who wish either to take advantage of the resources of several disciplines to study a problem or area of interest, or to strengthen their training and achievement in a single discipline. Some MAPSS students acquire skills and knowledge for careers that make use of the social sciences; others prepare for further graduate work or professional training. The program provides students with an opportunity to explore fields in the social sciences in which they may have limited background before making a major professional or educational commitment.
MAPSS offers sophisticated counseling and application support to students who have vocations for doctoral or professional school study. MAPSS graduates have received and presently pursue doctorates in all of the University of Chicago's social science departments and committees, as well as Ph.D., J.D., and M.D. degrees in the various professional schools. They are likewise welcomed into advanced study at other major research institutions in the U.S. and abroad.
Graduates of the program also enter or return to a wide range of careers for which the MA is increasingly the entry-level degree. Such careers include community organizing, contract research, business consulting, teaching, counseling, publishing, health care, government service, public affairs, non-profit administration, arts and museum curation. A national network of MAPSS alumni, in concert with the University's office of Career Advising and Planning Services, enthusiastically assists current students in identifying career possibilities and securing challenging positions.
"The MAPSS experience is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill academic variety. It's an extremely tense program that combines an interdisciplinary approach to the study of social sciences with the freedom and flexibility to pick and choose courses geared to particular likes and dislikes. What the MAPSS program offers is that awesome ability to be armed with crucial, almost mind-numbing theories and methodologies that actually applies in the real world.
I came into the MAPSS program with no expectations other than the
sincere willingness to learn. Slowly but surely, however, I began
asking myself hard questions about my research and then eventually
found myself knee-deep in studies that looked at psychosocial and
environmental constraints to at-risk youths in America and abroad. 