ThisGreatFolly

Feel free to DM me about Emory – I may be able to give some insight.

This is a great question to ask current graduate students either over a visit or email. They can (usually) give you a good idea of neighborhoods/complexes you can afford on your stipend and if anyone in the department is subletting/looking for a roommate/knows of openings at their place.

Everyone has you covered on what to wear, so here are some tips on what to ask. Time with current grad students is huge – conversations with grad students helped me immensely in making my decision. It's a great opportunity to hear how a department really works. I'd ask about the quality of the course offerings, the department culture, how well the stipend stretches in the area, what non-stipend supports look like including travel funds, professional development funds, etc. I believe you are also an Americanist, correct? If you are talking to other Americanists ask how well the university supports American based archives trips. I've found that sometimes people can write off American trips as being cheap (and they are compared to international research!), but I still have to hole up somewhere for weeks/months at a time and that costs money. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk more!

Yes, this also applies to PhD students in the Religion department. All Laney Grad School programs will see their stipends set to the 31k base (http://www.graduateschool.emory.edu/degree-programs/index.html).

Fellows at Cal's IES are secondary positions that require permanent status at the scholar's home institution. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that Senior Fellows are teaching/advising at their home institutions. I would reach out to Sheffer via email to see if she's currently taking on students at Stanford.

If working with high students is something you are considering, also make sure you have a plan for acquiring the necessary experience to make yourself qualified/competitive for those jobs. It's a bit easier if you can get licensed, but I know of people in my program and others that wanted to go into high school teaching and realized at the end of their studies that they didn't have the necessary experience working with high school aged students. While programs are making strides in terms of professionalization, a history PhD program primarily prepares and trains you for traditional university teaching work. There are ways to supplement and push back on this, but you have to really plan that out from the beginning of your program.

I would be careful of how you present this kind of work. Having "hobby topics" is fine, but describing those as silly, unrefined, or not serious could rub people the wrong way. Important work has been done in US History and American Studies departments re: baseball, urbanity, race, and class. The scholars who do that work take it seriously and for good reason.

It varies. I think last year I got the acceptance from my first school in January and had my last acceptance in the beginning of March.

I would also add that you should try to get as realistic as possible of a look at what stipends might be. I doubt that most non-coastal institutions would have a stipend anywhere close to $30k and more likely will be in the low $20k range. Obviously funding varies between institutions, but when I was looking nothing outside of major metro areas (Boston, LA, NYC) or Ivies came close to $30k without additional fellowships.

In addition to what has been said regarding before, another reason a school may limit the amount of hours you can work on campus has to do with benefit eligibility and union status. At my institution all grad students in our program are considered employees of the university and paid through university payroll, regardless of whether we TA/RA. We are capped at 15 hours maximum of work in other university positions both because the department wants us to focus on our primary job of being a grad student, and, I suspect, because anything more than that would trigger the university to consider us as a full-time employee.

In addition to experience, AmeriCorps has some pretty decent benefits between the education award, education award matches at certain universities, and application fee waivers at grad schools (I applied to a dozen programs and only paid for 3 applications). It's a trade-off though - your living stipend is very, very low and it can be grueling. I've done VISTA twice, including this year during my gap year while I applied to programs. I'm glad I did it and am proud of my service, but I'm not sure how much it helped my applications, other than making them cheaper. However, national service can be helpful when being considered for certain fellowships/scholarships. Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions about the program.

Me too - I'm trying to spend as much time in the Rocky Mountains as I can before heading to new scenery. Other than that, I'm filling some gaps in my reading, messing around with GIS, and generally tidying up my personal digital archives before I leave.

Emory!

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EXCELLENT! Super happy and excited for you!