Leaderboard

Here are a few tactics that I didn't realize were fair game until very late in the process of preparing for my quals. Arrange check in meetings with members of your committee (in some programs, graduate students are allowed to flounder). Go into these meetings with the intent of listening much more than you talk. knowing how to talk about historiography, and knowing how to ask "is this going to be on the test" without actually asking "Is this going to be on the test?" Some professors will look at you like you're a wounded seal and they're white sharks. Others will offer remarks that can be easily missed because of the stress surrounding the exams These remarks can range from head scratchingly subtle to telling you the questions. Again, because of your stress level, this type of support may hit a wall, so listen carefully and reflect upon what you heard in the following days. Reach out to ABDs who rarely come to campus. The insights they share can be helpful especially since they've had time to recover from the ordeal of the exams. If you've taken classes or worked as a teaching assistant for a professor on your committee, review every exam question you've encounters. Look for themes and patterns. If a professor has put on file her midterm questions for undergraduate classes in a school library, spend time reading through those exams. Other tactics that may help. If you have the opportunity to attend job talks, go. Pay close attention to how faculty members in attendance turn up the heat on the candidate. The better the candidate does, the more fuel will be poured on the flames. If you find yourself taking more and more heat during your oral exam, it may very well be that you're doing GREAT and your examiners are raising the bar just to see how high you can jump. Start conditioning your mind and body for the experience of writing the exams as soon as possible. If you're an insomniac and night and day have switched places, start looking for ways to realign your body clock. Simulate taking an exam by sitting down and writing coherently for several hours. Figure out, practice, and tweak your pre exam ablutions and meals. Get your GI tract synchronized with the stress levels so you won't have any avoidable distractions/disturbances on the nights before and days of. Figure out what you're going to wear each day of the week of and get your outfit "just so". The last thing you need to deal with is laundry day. If you have the option to do so, consider the advantages of scheduling your exams so you can get through them as fast as possible. I had a classmate who wrote his four exams on consecutive days. I somewhat followed his lead and took them over a couple of weeks. For me, the advantage was that my windows for freaking the F out were much smaller. Make peace with the likelihood that you'll never be ready for your qualifying exams, and that you'll likely feel much less ready than you actually are. Please note that acceptance isn't the same as resignation. You will probably feel better about things if you prepare as hard as you can so that when you're waiting for the results after the oral phase that you've done the best that you can. Understand that in addition to being a form of professional development, quals are also a ritual. For some (many) academic historians, a part of the ritual is giving graduate students hard stares, smirks, and remarks about how much standards have slipped and how much harder things were back in the time when graduate students read by candlelight and had nothing for nourishment but their own tears. When you're taking your exams, expect no quarter. Qualifying exams are hard and stressful and ferocious.As a kid, I witnessed my mom try to run my dad over with a car. In college, I had a loaded gun pointed at my head. . Individually, those and other experiences were less stressful than qualifying exams. (Collectively, it's a close call.) Understand that the ordeal may get the better of you and that you may have one or more freak outs. Do what you can so that the freak outs aren't CLMs and/or occur while you're taking your quals. Understand that after you finish your exams that you are going to need time to heal. Do what you can to not schedule anything especially important or stressful in the weeks (if not months) after your exams. Keep your sense of humor at all times. The ability to laugh at your self throughout the process and after will help to counter the feelings of despair, failure, and contempt that may come. One last recommendation that dovetail's with @AP's guidance. Every work of history by a professional academic historian is going to fit into at least three historiographical contexts. The importance of those contexts is going to be in the eye of the committee member reading your exams. Some will be satisfied with the big themes. Others will want to make sure you understand the intermediate themes. And a few will want to make sure you know the details chapter and verse. It is incumbent upon a graduate student to figure out the expectations of the readers and then strive to meet and/or manage those expectations.

Just make a note of the auditing in your letter of interest, and plug Greekinto your CV. That'll count, and should suffice. You could have a reference mention it, too.

I don't think this is unfortunate, I think this is quite wise! I know that, coming straight from undergraduate, there is an sense of immediacy with respect to every part of your life. As someone who started his MA at 27 before continuing to the PhD, please believe me when I say this is not the case with grad school. This is even more true if you look at the current horrible no good very bad state of the academic job market. Something that's not precisely on topic, but which I should state at some point: were I considering doing a PhD now, I would under no circumstances do it, regardless of the quality of the program that accepted me or my enthusiasm and interests. And I am not burned out on graduate school. I love graduate school; it is the best experience of my life. There is just no hope on the job market. It is worse than it was in 2009-2011. In a decade, SLCs, which formed the overwhelming majority of job listings, will almost certainly cease to exist as a concept. R1s will persist, but academia is going to be unrecognizable. That's not a thing to dive into.

Some programs highlight their own strengths. E.g., Rutgers states, "Our department is known for its work in feminist and gender studies, as is Rutgers as a whole, and we have specialists in women’s writing in every historical period. We also offer many courses in drama and performance studies, in digital humanities, and in literary theory. One of our particular strengths is African-American literary studies, in which we have a large group of faculty and students." Another example: UC San Diego offers detailed information about the strengths of its program. Check it out: http://literature.ucsd.edu/grad/phd-admissions/index.html. Other schools don't provide any information about specific programmatic strengths. In those cases, your best bet, I think, is to check out faculty profiles and CVs. Also, bear in mind that a program's representations of its own strengths might not be comprehensive. I've heard elsewhere that Rutgers has a reputation for being strong in Victorian literature, and my own research of faculty profiles has confirmed this. Yet its program overview page says nothing about Victorian literature: https://english.rutgers.edu/academics/graduate-92.html Bottom line: some programs list specific strengths, and those lists might be useful. But don't take a program's recitation of its strengths at face value, because you might learn about other strengths by putting in some in-depth research into faculty profiles. For me, finding out about a program's strengths literally involved opening like 50 tabs at a time on my web browser (one for each faculty member), opening just as many CVs, and looking through publications, classes taught, interests, etc. It was a little tedious (OK, a lot tedious) but ultimately led me to apply to a number of programs I had not previously considered to be contenders.

But to the initial question, yes of course. If they cause you problems over the question, it's not a place you'd want to be, anyway.

Well, my strategy devolved into overusing my TA office supplies, but that's not a feasible strategy for everyone. In your case, I would recommend keeping a paper notebook/legal pad/whatever, while using the following approach (an acronym IPSO): Issue: What is the research question? Position: What is the thesis? How does it interact with other literature? Support: What are the sources used? How does the author support his/her argument? Outcome: Future avenues for research, assuming the author's argument is correct?

What @Sigaba is suggesting is that reading the author's reviews of others' works gives insight on his/her areas of expertise and how s/he read works slightly outside of his/her realm. Few reviewers ever get to review books directly related to their work because they're already part of the conversations that helped the author shape the book, which, in turn, the author thank them in their acknowledgments. As such, people mentioned in the acknowledgments aren't permitted to review the book in question. Reading the author's reviews of other books gives you a sense of how critically s/he engages with the scholarship and research and his/her capacity to be even-handed. Most scholars are fair but you get the occasional outliers who are extremely critical of others' in a negative sense and their own works will usually reflect their self-righteousness.

It depends. A master's thesis is kind of a camel - too long for an article, too short (and too early in your career) for a book. That's a lot of work for little purpose. A thesis may help you focus, which seems to be something of a constant refrain, but if you decide not to do it, I would try to have an article under review instead by the time you apply to PhD programs. This is what I did.

Wow it took forever to find this thread as I found myself wondering....what the heck happened. CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I'm happy to hear that after all of the stress, misery, and general suckiness that your hard work paid off and you are moving forward with your PhD. I sincerely hope your PhD experience is better than this one.

They fare just fine. And, as a Canadian, you took more philosophy courses in undergrad than most of your American colleagues. It's still a bit of a crapshoot, but focus on your writing sample and letter of interest, apply to good-fitting programs, and you'll be fine. Even if you don't get in this time around, there's no harm in trying again once you've got some experience with the process. Send your applications, and then bury yourself in stuff that will make you forget all about them for weeks at a time. It's when people are constantly thinking about them that they become very unhappy and stressed. What you should feel hopeless about are your job prospects at the other end. You can't really afford to hold out any hope about that, because it's crushing when you send out 100+ applications and never hear back from any of them, not even for a first-round interview. The lower your expectations on that score, the better--and hopefully, low expectations will see you cultivating possible exit strategies during the PhD.

This will get you into a graduate program. It will not get you into a top graduate program. An MA is a bad place to pick up a new language. Ah, so later and Insular history. All three are quality scholars, but have you looked at where they currently have students placed?

1) Do not by any means ask him to write a letter. He has no reason to explain anything to no one and you requesting that after rejecting his (very bad) terms will not help you. 2) do not waste your time with this experience. I am not sure why you think you need to talk to about this. You had a bad experience about funding that has nothing to do with your research or your potential. If you want to account for the time you “lost”, you can say something like “in the past application cycle I received offers from several programs. After much consideration, I committed to a programs whose funding did not follow through. This taught me that our academic endeavors sometimes depend on external factors. As far as I am concerned, I do follow through”. That’s it, own your decision and not shed any spotlight on anyone other than yourself. The SoP is about YOU.

Hi all! I thought I’d get one of these started for the next application round. It was really helpful when I was applying to MA programs a few years ago. I’m applying to PhD programs. I’m bioarch and my thesis research has been focusing on the use of photogrammetry in biodistance research. Regionally I’m looking programs that work in Central and South America. I don’t have all that many programs on my list right now as it seems everyone I’ve emailed isn’t taking students so any suggestions would be really helpful!

I think UCSD's program is quant-heavy.

I think the answer to this is sort of a combination of both! I would suggest writing one specifically tailored to a certain school to start. Find a program, determine what you specifically find appealing about it, and several possible professors you want to work with. Then, I would write an SoP for that program, including your proposal of your research, your background/experiences in that field, how working with those specific POIs will assist you, and what you might offer/bring to the program and/or what your ultimate professional goals and interests are. Once you have a draft on paper, it's easier to determine how much of your material is school specific and how much of it can be reused. I would say, however, that you shouldn't only have one paragraph or portion that deals with program fit. Program fit should inform how you write your entire SoP, as it should affect how you frame your project/interests and which previous research is most relevant, besides just naming of POIs. It would be more likely for there to be a few sentences you could reuse than for there to be a full paragraph or section that you could just copy/paste over. Does that make sense?

I recommend that you try two exercises. The first centers around a "rational" re-appraisal of the two schools. On a piece of paper (analog or digital) develop a list of criteria that fall into three categories: town, gown, and classroom. Next to the list, make five columns. Label the first two A and B. Leave aside the last three columns. Go down the column for A and assign a numerical value for each criterion. When you perform this scoring, it's important that you evaluate A on its own merits and flaws. Do not compare it to B. When your'e finished with A and B, use the third column to assign a base score that reflects a ranking of the criteria. Use the fourth column to do the math for A and the fifth column to do the math for B. If the two schools have drastically different scores, you have a good answer on which school is better for you. If the score is close, take a look at some of your scores for B. Can you find information that may help you to adjust the score? The second exercise is to reach out to your current school's student health services and see if you can arrange a limited number of low or no cost (to you) sessions with a fully trained psychologist. Start off by talking about your fears and your concerns about your choice and then let the conversation go where it needs. It is my hunch based upon your post that your ambivalence over B has less to do with the apparent advantages of A and more to do with something else. (Or you could just go to the city of A now--or in the winter--and walk around. IME, cold temperatures can help one gain new perspectives on an environment.) In the event you do decide that you want to make a change, consider the advantages of getting a master's degree at your current school. Also, try not to worry about how those around you may or may not feel about your choice. You need to live your life the way you need to life. The people who truly care about you will either understand your choice right away or figure it out later.

No, I personally would say that schools and applicants do not have the same idea of "fit." Applicants are picking based on more than academic interests, including where they want to live, the type of people they want to socialize with, the type of environment they want to work in, the type of career they want to have afterwards, how much the program can pay them... For the committees, it's purely academic, but also random as hell. Decisions aren't made on who is the "smartest" or "best," but rather who's on the committee that year, who took too many students last year, who hasn't taken students in awhile... The applicants aren't aware of these arbitrary factors, so all applicants can do is present the most accurate depiction of who they are as a student and hope that there's a need in the program for a student like them.

Admittedly, this is a gray area and I've had conflicting advice from my letter writers in this regard. One saw mentioning the specific names of faculty as being a touch too presumptuous, while another letter writer encouraged me to contact faculty while applying and mention them in my SoP. I did not contact faculty but I did mention faculty by name when I wrote my statement. When I sent these drafts to all my letter writers, I wasn't pinged for mentioning faculty by name (which I did for all applications). Ultimately, the decision to do this depends on the approach you take for your SoP and how well your rhetoric lines up with either mentioning faculty by name or not. In most SoP's I've seen for PhD programs, I've seen faculty being explicitly named (the Berkeley History PhD example that I modeled my SoP after does so to my knowledge). There are best practices for this, of course. (ie. if you mention faculty by name, try not to over-mention them, and speak about them in a way that allows for their strengths to intersect with your interests while not resorting to appealing to overt flattery). It also largely depends too depending on how many faculty you've found, how you yourself define fit, and how that faculty member can configure in the calculus that defines your fit with the program. For example, for SUNY Buffalo, that was the one case where I did both (mention specific faculty that I was most compatible with but also described their general strength with poetics). I identified at least five or six faculty there I could work due to their poetics program, but for pragmatic purposes I mentioned the two names I felt I was compatible with while remarking on the bigger picture research of the poetics program. I am really happy that what I wrote helped Good luck with your SoP and the rest of your application materials! As I've said in the past, I'm always happy to talk via DM to answer any questions anyone has about the process. Graduate school has diminished my spare time recently but I can make time for quiet moments work.

Hello there! This is a fairly common dilemma. I am unsure of what the best "etiquette" here is, but what I can tell you is that POIs are not surprised that you are interested in other professors from their university or other programs with similar research labs. From my experience, they often advise to just list both on your application - that's why programs let you list up to three POIs. That said, unless you are quite interested in being co-supervised by them, I would say just contact them separately to gauge their interest in your experience, how it matches with theirs, etc. And maybe this can evolve into a discussion of shared interests or a Skype call as someone on this thread previously mentioned. My personal opinion is that it is expected for POIs with similar research interests to be contacted by the same students. I think things get a bit odd when you express interest in wildly different areas and you don't have some justification for it (you can be perceived as unfocused). I might be wrong about this, so maybe someone else can chime in All the best!

Chime. There's nothing wrong with having two areas of interest, especially when they're pretty closely aligned, as these are. You can emphasize bioethics for programs especially strong in bioethics, and applied ethics at applied ethics programs, but there's no need to narrow it further. Instead, I think you'd be better off having a think about what each program can offer you beyond these areas of specialization, so that you can make a strong case for your fit into that program.

I am in a very similar position. I am on my second year as a lab manager in a developmental psyc lab with three graduate students and 18 undergrads. I empathize with you in terms of feeling like research is impossible with your lab manager duties. That said I have gotten on a paper, have had a first-author poster at APS, first-author poster at ISDP, and second-author posters at ISDP, FLUX, and CDS. I've also mentored two undergraduate posters. I say this not to brag but show that it can be done. I'm going to give you some tough love, so bear with me. This is a lesson I learned early in my position, and it sucked BUT, you're paid to run a lab not fill your resume. So doing your job duties has to come first and sometimes that might mean that research comes on your time off. It's not fun but I've sat at home until two in the morning making my posters after a full day of work. At the end of the day, if publications and posters are what you want then make it a professional AND personal priority! Also, I've found it extremely helpful to be upfront with your PI. Honesty is the best policy. Sit down with your PI and let him/her know that while you love running a lab, you would also love to be able to use these two years to learn and grow as a researcher while boosting your resume. Ask if you can use lab data, if there are any upcoming papers or projects you can help with, if he/she has any suggestions of conferences that might be good for you to attend. Look into serving as a mentor as well. Undergrads are usually incredibly eager for opportunities and would love to present at an undergrad research day or regional conference. However, they usually need help. If you serve as a mentor and help and undergraduate or two, you can put your name on their poster. My last tip is to get close with your grad students. Grad students are constantly working on research and they are familiar with the application process. They can be a valuable resource. Start getting along with them, asking them questions, talking through their research with them, working with them and see what opportunities come up.

I'm curious - why do you have two Fs when you withdrew from the program? Is it because you didn't withdraw properly from the program and just stopped going to class? I'd try to mitigate this on two fronts. Once, go back to the university where you tried that master's degree and I'd try to administratively get those Fs changed into Ws. I'd explain the situation to the registrar, perhaps providing some sort of evidence/proof of what happened. There's nothing wrong with withdrawing from a master's program once realizing it's not for you. And it doesn't sound like you couldn't handle the work, only that you were disinterested in completing it. If that doesn't work, or will be too slow to make a significant difference, you can write a supplemental essay explaining that the Fs were a result of you withdrawing improperly from the program. I like the bit about how the experience motivated you to go into advising in the first place, so that might support this case, too.

We'll see. My first GPA is crap...but my 2nd BA in COMD is much higher. I also have the same fears that my cGPA will basically disqualify me but I'm going to give it a shot anyway!

I don't think Ivy's really have that different standards from other R1 universities tbh. In general you want to have a minimum score of 310 to be considered; ideally with both scores at least above the 80th percentile. However, I got into an R1 with a 88th and 72nd percentile score for V & Q respectively. I think your AW wouldn't be the problem much. It really depends on the rest of your qualifications though. You're above 310 (usually the lower bound is 300 though, but above 310 is better), so in general you should make the first cut. Keep in mind that most admission committees no longer rely on GRE scores as any reasonable indicator of potential (research experience is way more important), but it's often used by the school itself as a cutoff score for funding (that's what I've heard from a couple of institutes now). If your profile is strong otherwise you probably don't have to worry.

This is excellent. Great job. I made basically the same thing for the 18 schools I applied to. Other things I included were: Writing sample requirements (or restrictions) Personal statement requirements (or restrictions) CV or resume required (distinct from the application) Basic funding package (full, partial tuition remission; full, partial, or no student fees; etc.) Acceptance rate (expressed as a percentage of applicants, and as a matter of cohort size) I realize these are not all important to everyone, but it'd be good to have some of these.

With a 4.0, tons of math classes and a 168Q GRE score, you should aim higher than the programs that you listed. Stanford/Chicago/CMU/etc are reaches for everyone and your chances probably depend somewhat on the reputation of your current university, but I don't think it would be a waste to apply. You should have a really solid chance at places like NC State, TAMU, Iowa State, etc. Generally, the best schools for probability theory are also the top few programs, like Stanford, Chicago, etc. But you should also consider UNC and Michigan State. Those departments are both known for strength in that area. As for your question, basically no one going into a PhD in statistics has published. Some people will not have any research experience at all. You're fine.

While research isn't a huge deal, I think it may benefit you more than a dual degree. Assuming your grades were good, your mathematical background is sufficient for biostatistics. I think having strong letters from people who know you personally is great. Take more coursework and keep doing well, that will help more than having a dual degree. It's good to start thinking about this early on, good on you.

I'm not 100% clear. But let me make suggestions: 1) You're right, Divinity schools in the US may not be the best avenue if you're more interested in the social/political/cultural aspects of the Lutheran church's role in the immigrant communities. But it is not to say that if you don't have a deep understanding of the Lutheran church's teachings and history, a master's in divinity or religious studies may be a great way to go. @telkanuru can speak to this more. 2) "Studies" are interdisciplinary, combining literature, language, history, politics, etc. A master's or a bachelor's in that is fine but not a PhD. You need disciplinary grounding to be taken seriously so a PhD in history will be best. 3) You will want to seek out History departments that offer faculty who do religious history or history of religion and history of immigration. You're already fluent in Swedish (it's your native tongue, after all ) and have a degree from Sweden so a faculty member is not so necessary. You have contacts at your university who you can reach out if you have specific question about Swedish related issues. Likewise, if the university which a History Department you're interested in HAS Scandinavian Studies, ALL the better! (University of Minnesota comes to mind) 4) If I understand your interests correctly, you're interested in examining the role of Lutheranism in the Swedish immigration to the United States? If so, definitely look to the Midwest for possible schools since it's where many Swedes settled in the 19th century.

If your applications are due in the winter, you'll want to ask professors about writing LORs for you as soon as possible. It's common practice to ask them about this a few months in advance. Ask for letters from people who can attest to the quality of your academic work, and can make a strong case for you to be admitted to the program(s) of your choice. People who know you and your work well should be the ones to focus on. If those people are professors in your intended field of graduate study, even better. When I was applying, once I had confirmed who would be writing my letters, I sent all of them a spreadsheet with useful info on the places I was applying to (university, program name, deadline, etc.), and supplied them with other materials as needed. Since they were doing me a favor by writing letters on my behalf, I wanted to make sure I had those sorts of things organized and taken care of early on, because I wanted the process to be as easy for them as possible.

This. Or rather, these. I should also say, good luck on learning Greek! We need more translators and more linguistically-competent philosophers. I hope that it serves you for years to come!

I am planning to apply to Grad school this year and hoping to start Sep.2020. I graduated from uft 10 years ago and went to work in the financial industry. I was always passionate about public policy but never pursued it after my graduation as i was already working for a bank. Not sure how hard it will be to get into grad school after a 10 yr gap and also i am pretty sure i wont be able to produce an academic reference. I ordered my transcript this week so lets see what my last 2 years of GPA looks like and will take it from there.

Since you are interested in becoming a professor, you might do your diligence to conduct "informational interviews" with various professors about their jobs. What is it like? What are the best parts? Worst parts? What could be improved in academia? How do they have their research funded? (Pay close attention to this one, this is definitely true if you are NOT in an Ivy or wealthy public institution like Berkeley and Michigan) What was graduate school like? (Pay close attention once again how long ago the professor received his/her PhD) How many times did it take to land an assistant professor position? Try to meet with "younger" professors as they will have a better grasp on the "new" realities of the PhD and the job market since the financial crash of 2008. Since a huge part of the job is teaching (even in a research-intensive university), you might want to look into opportunity to tutor to start developing your teaching persona. Take the time to read The Professor Is In blog. She has tags for "graduate school admissions" (or something like that)

How much storage space does this BB's server have? I will limit the list to a top (bottom) five. While applying to graduate school, I sat down with my transcript and identified the choices I made in every class I took that lowered opportunities to get a better mark in the course overall. These choices included going to see a ball game the night before a midterm, not attending lectures in a class that would have been an "easy A" had I got to the lectures because the exams were 100% lecture based. I didn't lean in while preparing my honor's thesis. The thesis itself earned a very good mark but I didn't maximize the opportunity to develop my skills or my relationships with the supervising graduate assistant and professor. I failed to grasp and to embrace the importance of debates within my discipline. My approach to course selection prioritized short term advantages over long term needs. I don't like taking timed exams (especially finals) so I consistently picked courses that didn't have any. While preparing for quals as a graduate student, I had many opportunities to gain an increased understanding of how badly I'd screwed up developing the skill of writing to beat the clock. The application for Happyland University's graduate history program requires a book review. My dismissive approach to the debates in my discipline helped contribute to my picking arguably the worst possible book to review. When I didn't get in, a mentor, who'd gone there and had contacts in the department, asked around and charitably told me that it was "politics." But the bottom line was and is, I neither worked smart enough nor hard enough to deserve serious consideration for admission. @desertwoman this is at least the third thread you've started in which you share this unfortunate experience. This is an issue that you're going to be struggling with for years to come. I recommend that you focus on the feedback you've received, especially from @lkaitlyn here. https://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/120033-has-this-happened-to-anyone-before-lor-problemrelationship-with-professor-damaged/?do=findComment&comment=1058706873 I also recommend that you figure out a way to understand that in addition to factors beyond your control, your choices played a role in the undesired outcome. The better you understand those choices, the sooner you'll be able to accept responsibility for those choices. Then, you'll be in a better position to make different choices down the line. My $0.02.

Just want to point out that while this may be true in STEM, it is untrue in the social sciences.

Bumping, but also contributing. I've been on the fence for applying for programs this year. I haven't taken the GRE yet as finances get in the way. I have also perused the PhD programs in my general area (Southern California) and cannot for the life of me find faculty directly in the Theater department who I share research interests with. One of my buddies told me that, while he was doing his PhD in Theater, he did work with faculty in other departments and that this is fairly normal thing for our field. I know the recommended practice is to choose 2-3 faculty who share your general research interests, and I can't really justify applying to programs that I have looked at where I only share interests with just one of them. That's my biggest anxiety about the process right now. I will be applying for one PhD program this year, as I did find their program interesting in that they have a nice mix of research and practice, and I did find that 2-3 faculty who I'd love to research/practice under. I am not putting all of my eggs in one basket; I'm fairly confident that my professional experience can net me a job after finishing this MA in December. Non-application stuff: Is anyone presenting at PAMLA in San Diego this year? Hope everyone is doing well!

Have you chatted with your advisor about their thoughts, keeping in mind what you would like to do in the future? Do many of the people in Villanova's MA program typically go on to pursue a PhD? What would a teaching internship give you that will strengthen your PhD applications (assuming that's still your goal)?

Hi logical_emotion, I think I might be able to clear this up a bit for you (at least in the context of practicing in Ontario). 1. Can anyone clear up the distinction between Counselling and Clinical Psychology in Canada? Psychologists are licensed at the doctoral level (PhD/PsyD) in Ontario and declare areas of competence (Clinical psychology, counselling psychology, etc.) When you complete a program at the master's level (like the M.Ed. at OISE) you are eligible to register with the CRPO and are referred to as a Registered Psychotherapist (in Ontario). So, the question becomes what is the difference between a registered psychologist and registered psychotherapist. The main difference between these two professions is that psychologists are able to communicate a diagnosis (assessment) for mental disorders where psychotherapists cannot. However, both are able to treat mental disorders/deliver psychotherapy (intervention). 2. What are the differences in terms of the people I can help/treat? In private practice, generally, you will be able to treat whoever decides to book an appointment. In general, psychologists (doctoral level) gain exposure through their training with more severe pathology than those trained at the master's level and may feel more comfortable taking on clients in this category. 3. Any differences in terms of salary and need in the market? In general, psychologists (Recommended rate in Ontario = $225/hour) will earn more than psychotherapists (I don't think the CRPO has a recommended rate - I could be wrong. generally in the range of $100-150/hour - you can look at individual website to get a better feel for this) in private practice. In terms of "need" in the market, I believe there are more registered psychotherapists in Ontario than psychologists (as a result of limited spots for doctoral training). Psychologists are usually covered by third party insurance where registered psychotherapists are less likely to be covered (however, I believe this is slowly changing). I think that "need" generally comes down to location and someone choosing you over another psychotherapist may come down to marketing. 4. Does anyone know any other programs in Counselling or Clinical Psychology in Ontario that don't require the research/thesis requirement? The two (in Ontario) that don't require a undergrad thesis (that I'm aware of) are the program at OISE and UOttawa also offers a M.Ed. degree in counselling psychology. 5. Lastly, even though it is not a requirement listed in this program on the website, will not having any research exposure harm my chances into this particular program? If you're applying to a non-research-based program like the ones listed above I don't think a lack of research experience will reduce your chances. I believe they look more for appropriate clinical experience when making their admission decisions. Hope this helps!

Read the introduction, conclusion, beginnings and ends of chapters, and, if time permits, one middle chapter in full to get a sense of narrative style. If you’re totally lost, try reading reviews. Graduate seminars exist to discuss ideas and train future historians, so make it’s more important to have an understanding of and opinion on a book’s general significance and usefulness than it is to be able to recite any particular detail. But you occasionally will get a nutcase who will cold call students about trivial details or demand in-depth knowledge of tertiary aspects of books, so ask around before you take any class. My general (though not universal) experience is that professors are so relieved that someone else is willing to state a reasonable opinion about a book that they will forgive you if you missed something, so long as you approach seminar with the spirit of honest inquiry.

You should ask students in the department, but they won't be especially reliable sources--and probably not very knowledgeable, either. Students who are at the end of their PhD and working with the faculty in question will have a better idea, but they still won't be especially reliable. What compounds the problem is that faculty themselves often don't have a clear idea of when they're retiring until they're quite close to it. If it were me, I'd start by figuring out roughly how old they are. If they're in their mid-to-late seventies or older, I'd work with the assumption that they probably won't be around to supervise me, especially if it's an American or Canadian PhD program, since those take substantially longer. I'd also ask around here, because some of us may have some kind of (unreliable!) sense of the lay of the land. If they're younger than that, then I'd apply and, once I was accepted, I'd ask current students and maybe even the person in question themselves.

I'm sure you'd get into a top 10 program if you applied to all of them. I'd also probably apply to a couple of the bigger state schools ranked 10-20 like NCSU, PSU as relatively safe options. You won't have to go lower than that. I wouldn't worry about the third letter. If you have two strong ones from people who know you well, a letter just saying you are good at math won't hurt you. If you're dead set on going to Stanford, you'll need to take the math GRE, but even schools like Chicago don't really require it, so I don't think there is any reason for you to delay applying unless you would like to take a year off for fun.

I AM SO RELIEVED

Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive and José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity are two seminal texts in recent(ish) debates in queer studies about the social and the antisocial. Mari Ruti brings these together quite thoughtfully in her recent book The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects. Hope that helps

also- Brandeis epistemology students have done really well, especially in recent years!

Biased but would highly recommend Brandeis Beri Marusic is incredible and does a lot of great work esp at the intersection of epistemology, ethics, and action. Peter Epstein is joining the department though I'm less familiar with his work Eli Hirsch, mostly known for his work in meta-ontology wrote a book recently about skepticism and advises epistemology students all the time.

I agree that a PhD in Epidemiology or Global Health might fit your interests more if you are looking for an entire program that's focused on those issues, but if you are in fact looking for that additional mathematic rigor, you can definitely find epidemiology research in Statistics programs, and certainly Biostatistics programs. Remember that many Biostatistics programs are actually housed in Schools of Public Health, so many (if not most) departments probably have at least somebody working on epidemiology. When looking through faculty at the department, look for areas statistical methodology that might be particularly useful for epidemiology like network analysis or spatial data analysis (and there are probably several others, but I'm not really an expert in this realm). In particular, Emory, with its close proximity to the Center for Disease Control, almost certainly has people working in areas of epidemiology. Even strict Statistics departments might have some professors that would meet your research interests. For example, Mark Handcock at UCLA. I remember UCLA Biostatistics also having a lot of research on HIV epidemiology, so look into that as well. UW is probably the highest ranked program for somebody interested in social statistics, but it definitely is not the only program you could consider. About choosing which type of program is better for your interests, you should note that while you can find something related to epidemiology at many places, the focus will be different. In (Bio)statistics, the emphasis will be on developing methods, and your dissertation would probably be meaningless if it wasn't focused on the mathematics of the problem at hand. In other public health programs, there is probably more room to research policy, implementation, and other non-mathematical topics. And about whether you'll be able to do global health type work coming from a statistics background, I don't think you'd have any problem. Your required coursework for the first 1-2 years will likely have less direct relevance to your research questions, but after that, you'll be able to take additional courses, pursue internships, and do research (finding collaborators in other departments as necessary) on the questions you find interesting. I myself am interested in statistics for applications in public policy, and I passed up a couple of Public Policy PhD offers specifically because I believe the more strictly mathematical training offered in a Statistics program will prepare be better for that type of work (or at least, give me a set of skills that others in the field might not have). I'm only just about to begin my program in the fall, so I'm not saying this career trajectory will definitely work, but there are definitely people out there with similar thinking as you. Best of luck!

Duke MEM '18 grad here. Just wanted to chime in- the average package of $30k is incorrect, unless Nic School included data for PhD students as well. The best scholarship you can get for MEM is the "Nicholas Scholar" award, which covers 2/3 of the tuition (~$25-30k). And yes, Duke supposedly has the best program for energy. The alumni network is fantastic, and the Clean Energy Field Trip to SF is a must- we got to meet the head of energy procurement for Google (Duke MEM grad), manager for energy storage division at Tesla (Duke MEM grad), etc etc etc. The curriculum for EE is pretty rigid, but the courses, projects, and networking opportunities provide you with all the modeling skills and connections you need. Most of my close friends from Duke (mostly international students) were hired with a starting salary of $65-70k, and got sponsored for a visa. Those that could not find a job in the US were those who struggled with English. Regardless of your technical qualifications, not being able to communicate effectively in English is detrimental for your job search in the US. However, these alumns were able to easily find jobs in their respective home countries.

Welcome to the group @patrickjnorris! Glad to hear of your scheduled interviews! The only CA school I've applied to is Irvine and UCSD. I applied to Irvine through URTA and did not get invited to interview, and, like many on here, I am waiting to hear from UCSD. Not sure if anyone knows when they usually send out interview invitations. Have you looked back through the threads from previous years? I feel like there were posts in the 2016 thread where people shared interview questions they've received. I've had one interview so far. Below are some of he questions they asked - I've paraphrased quite a bit: 1. Why are you here today? Why now and why this program? (Probably everyone will ask some form of this. Although it was all a blur, I think I regurgitated some semblance of my initial letter of interest. I made a note for myself to try to include answers that maybe were cut from my initial letter, or at least provide additional insight into who I am). 2. I don't say this to scare you, but three years is a long time, and much of it may feel redundant or 'back to the basics.' How are you prepared to handle this lengthy commitment? 3. What type of work appeals to you and why? 4. How do you define the role of the director and their relationship and responsibility to collaborators and audience alike? (This one was very fuzzy to me. In all honesty, I struggled to understand what was being asked and should have requested the question to be repeated. Alas, my nerves got the best of me. So this is the question I answered, but not sure it is what was being asked. I've included it in the list to share my terror and remind everyone it's okay to ask for a question to be repeated.) 5. What are your thoughts on diverse or colorblind casting? 6. How important is it to make considerations of how an older story resonates with an audience. I hope this info is helpful, and encourage others to share your experiences. We're all in this together!!

I just saw the e-mail that I was accepted into Villanova for the MA program! I withdrew my UGA application so that I could get started on all of the things I need to prepare for Villanova. I didn't manage to secure the funding for it since there were so many applicants, but the head of the department sent me a list of other funding opportunities through the school that I could apply to; a lot of them are due tomorrow, so I guess I know what I'm doing tonight! I'm super excited now and feel like a lot of weight has been lifted! I hope more people hear from schools they're waiting for soon!

I can tell you, more or less, how admission works at Ivies. I am now at a top 10 ivy, and got accepted to one more. My supervisor volunteered to tell me how I got accepted. And I was also told by one POI how admission works to explain why I got rejected. At Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton, there are admin committees. Committees are assembled at random and are rotational. These committees are made up of professors culled from different subfields. These are the people, if you get accepted, will remember your application with striking accuracy, and they will make small talk with you during visiting days. I am almost certain the DGS is not on the admin committee. Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia get about 400-500 applications each, of those only about 50-75 (sometimes 100) are good ones. Those get ranked by GRE, GPA, etc (such as, grants, awards). Yes GRE verbal matters. It doesn't matter for all committee members, but good students do get rejected for a low verbal score. You don't need a perfect score, but a decent score. MA gpa trumps BA gpa. LORs are very important. And Languages! My cohort, Americanists included, commands at least two languages, at least! Most have three or four under their belt. You are expected to sit for your language exam in September. But it's the SOP that makes or breaks your app. If your SOP is compelling, and fits with the general theme of the history department, your package is sent to your future supervisor (whomever you named in your SOP), and other professors in your sub-interests. You need sub-interests, which signal you can work with a few professors, not just one, who may retire or die or you just don't jive with. Committees know this. Students who have very particular singular interests, and can only work with one single professor, and no one else, tend to get rejected. Even excellent students. Your (future) supervisor and other professors (in your secondary field/s of interest) review your app, and approve or reject it. If they approve it, it goes back to the admin committee to be discussed further. At this point, it is up to the whims (and I kid you not WHIMS) of the admin committee to narrow the list of candidates further. Your supervisor and professors in your sub-fields who read your SOP and file, can exert some pressure on the admin committee to get you in. But to an extent, and usually only faculty with endowed chairs. Again, to an extent. Once you make it to the top 40 or so candidates, and you get rejected or waitlisted, know it is not a reflection of your potential, but the people on the admin committee the year you applied. If they specialize in French or British history, and you have a sub-interest or have background in those regions, you may get accepted. If you have an LOR whom the head of the admin knows because both attend same conferences, and like each other, you may get accepted. Also know, committees know students change their interests once they get in. I did, dramatically, and I know other students who did as well. That is why admin committees do not strictly choose students by their professed interests, or the presence of a POI in the department. They choose students with accolades, proven ability to do historical research, and ask critical, and probing questions. Cohorts are themed. It is rather strange but I find that each cohort has students that somehow connect with each other, not directly, but generally. So say, most have an underlying interest in global studies, or transnational history. Someone on this forum mentioned that historians are now more transnational rather than strictly regional. That is true. I notice that it is becoming more and more passé to focus on a single region. It narrows down your job prospects. Committees also choose candidates with an eye to the future. How will those students fair on the job market 6-7 years down the line, with a singular interest? If you don't get an interview, don't sweat it. Most people are not interviewed, unless specifically indicated on the relevant school website that they will be solicited for an interview! If you get an interview, cool! If you want to get into a top-history program and you are not successful in this cycle, don't settle or despair, but apply again next year (of course, if it is within your financial means to do so). Committees change from year to year. Best of Luck!

Programs could at least refund your application fee when they reject you. What a sweet deal that is for them. I guess we were dumb enough to pay it though.