The MA program in Chinese is designed to offer students maximum general exposure to the long sweep of Chinese literary history while also requiring intensive study of some particular genre or period. Each of the program's faculty members specializes in one or another of these periods and has additional competence in a second period. The program is therefore truly comprehensive in scope. The program focuses especially on preparing students for PhD study and eventual careers in Sinology. Since 1991 more than fifty-five graduates of the Chinese MA program have gone on to doctoral study in Chinese literature, religion, or history at institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, Washington, Columbia, Chicago, and UCLA.