ἠφανισμένος

UVa?  LOL.  I said very top, most competitive programs.  I even named the schools one-by-one yet you continue to use OTHER schools as your justification.  Mind-boggling!  I wish you'd take your own advice about playing fast and loose with language.  
 
If an undergraduate took "my advice" about scoring at the 98th percentile, it would be based on their total misreading of what I actually said. Re-read my posts.  I already said between 90 to 97 is the sweet spot.  As far as scoring too high (i.e., 100%), full professors at Emory, Yale and Harvard told me that they routinely reject applicants with perfect test scores because of a "rigidity" concern.  Having engaged in conversation with you, I clearly see their point.  Still don't believe me though? Who cares? But go ahead and tell me about your "friend" at Idaho State, who was accepted to their Ph.D. in Geology with perfect GRE scores.       
 
You haven't once held me accountable for anything.  You're the most selective reader I've ever encountered.  Your vision is more myopic than a Bob Jones University graduate.     
 
P.S. Sorry for the delayed response.  I was hunting turtles all day yesterday.  Had a late night, too.  

It's also what the professor's office hours are for.

It's also what the professor's office hours are for.

Since you're asking this, I'm guessing you haven't lived in the south.  Keep in mind that Nashville is a city and Vanderbilt is a major research university.  It's mainstream academia -- nothing to worry about, whatever your worries might be.

Since you're asking this, I'm guessing you haven't lived in the south.  Keep in mind that Nashville is a city and Vanderbilt is a major research university.  It's mainstream academia -- nothing to worry about, whatever your worries might be.

Since you're asking this, I'm guessing you haven't lived in the south.  Keep in mind that Nashville is a city and Vanderbilt is a major research university.  It's mainstream academia -- nothing to worry about, whatever your worries might be.

Since you're asking this, I'm guessing you haven't lived in the south.  Keep in mind that Nashville is a city and Vanderbilt is a major research university.  It's mainstream academia -- nothing to worry about, whatever your worries might be.

I just used birthday money to buy a German grammar.
 
There is no justice.

The best reading advice, (though I cannot always follow it) came to me from the inimitable J.Z. Smith.  It has been essential as I prepare for comps this year, as well as in the past, especially when reading difficult theoretical work:
 
1. Read through the entire work quickly - no highlighting, no annotating, etc. Just plow through it and get the big picture of what the author is trying to do and how she or he is trying to do it.
2. Re-read at a more regular pace, making your notes, flags, etc. as you need them.
3. Close the book and make the best outline that you can from memory.
4. Rectify your outline, paying close attention to those areas where you had a difficult time doing so from memory.
 
Obviously, this takes some extra time that you may not have, but I have found that if I take #1 very seriously and literally just blaze my way through, not stopping to re-read or mark something, even if it seems incredibly important, that this step really doesn't take long.  I strive to keep it at about 6-8 pages a minute for that step, so I can make my way through anything up to about 450 pages in an hour.  For one reason or another I have to have print versions, and I handwrite everything out first prior to typing (otherwise I don't retain the material) - so nothing from me on the PDF/annotation front. 

Highlighters don't cut it anymore. For all of my PDF-reading, I use Mendeley and keep a running outline of the most important points of an article/argument. I highlight/underline in books, use flags, and write all over the margins. Then, in the blank space usually left on the last page of a chapter, I summarize. 
 
I also skim and make copious use of book reviews, typically reading two or three for a book I really need to know well.

Question: how do you read?

I'm having to read and absorb a lot of pages of new material and things are starting to blur together. I need a better system for processing the sheer volume of stuff that's being tossed at me these days.

In my previous degrees, I would just sit down with the materials and a highlighter and go through it all. At the end, I'd be done. Easy.

Now, I need to retain more AND cover a higher volume

Should I be rereading stuff once I finish my first thorough pass through the material? Taking notes? Rereading and taking notes?

What am I not doing?

I would ask the others in my program but, apart from the guy who admits to not reading half of the material, they're all in the same situation that I am. My old methods worked for MDiv-type courses, but they aren't working for the more advanced classes. Any tips, o wise ones?

I'm on the admissions committee at a middling PhD program, and I can say quite definitively that we don't take extracurriculars into account when weighing applications. In the three years I've been on the committee, I don't think an applicant's extracurriculars have even come up in our discussions, much less affected an admissions decision. My second PhD student is getting ready to defend in a few months, and I have four or five more in the pipeline--and now that I have some experience working with doctoral candidates, a "mechanical studious graduate student" is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in an applicant. So obviously, it varies.
 
LeventeL, I'm very sorry to hear about your mom. Having gone through the same thing when I was a grad student, I know how difficult it can be. Please consider the possibility of taking a year between undergrad and grad school. It was one of the smartest things I've done, and set me up for a lot more success professionally than if I'd tried to go directly from undergrad. Grad school will still be there in a year's time.

I disagree with a many of telkanuru's points. First and foremost, rank and geography has some importance when picking a university. You wouldn't want to attend an institution if you're going to be miserable, nor would you waste time and money on a lower echelon ranked school.

Second, I've heard, from quite a few creditable people that, E.Cs give some weight to your application. Obviously it will not determine a decision between an acceptance and rejection, but it gives more points to the applicant. Furthermore I know for a fact (since I talked to the admission director at UCD about this) that holding a leadership position, participating in a sport, or merely involving oneself in a club, or community organization is favored by professors. Also, guess who's part of the admission committee? The professor whom you're seeking to work with. Obviously professors dont only want a mechanical studious grad student. Therefore concluding that ECs hold some weight.

I would also like to add that I am well aware that meaningful letters of rec are more helpful than a simple letter from a prestigious prof; however I didn't see the point in explaining this, when I was merely trying to keep this thread relatively short. I know both professors very well and I'm more than positive their letters will be highly beneficial and I won't say anymore on this topic. Nevertheless, when deciding whom to contact for a letter of rec, it is important to ask someone who is somewhat well known in their field, otherwise the admission committee will treat it as an atypical letter from a nobody - hence why I mentioned their achievements.

In response to hdunlop, no one, besides the admission committee, understands fully what holds weight and what doesn't in applications. You can ask, but obviously they will not highlight all the key aspects; however I possess an anecdote from the director of the committee atUCD, whom specifically stated "they're not looking for close boxed applicants." This obviously makes sense. As a graduating undergrad, and grad school applicant, you do not know what you want to study, specifically. You can have a general broad idea, but if you decided to study, say Zoot Suit Riot in La primarily, you'll miss the bigger picture and most likely, you'll close mind yourself to ONLY focus on such a historical event. Conversely, when you've been a grad student for X amount of years, you can decide how specific you want to be when you decide to write your dissertation or for a journal.

I would also like to mention to telkanuru, that your posts have been nothing but condescending. You've neither gave advice, nor critiqued my applications. My decision to remain in CA is not detrimental to my future achievements as a historian, nor finding employment afterward. Moreover, I know quite a few grad students whom decided to remain in CA during their graduate yrs and there is absolutely nothing wrong with such a decision. Furthermore, if you are in fact a grad student and not some wannabe who gets a kick from pretending to be one, you do a fairly poor job of reading a threads propose and reflecting on what it's asking. Similarly to the propose of this website, in academia, individuals with more experience/education should assist people below them, rather than .. Find it to be pretty funny.

Sent by iPad.

I don't really mean to keep coming back at you, but I from what you've given here it still seems to me that you're laboring under the fundamental misapprehension that the graduate application process is a lot like the undergraduate one. Your original request to "simply state your chances at each school" is so divested from the reality of the graduate application process as to be pretty funny.
 
Honestly, I never looked at a ranking chart when I applied. I read books, found the professors I wanted to work with, and applied to their schools. This could again be a difference of area, which others on this forum could talk to, but the number of schools nation-wide I found with departments that interested me is about the number you've found in California. That doesn't seem to be right.
 
I would read more, research more, figure out some of these differences, build your CV, get a little real world experience, and come back at this next fall. YMMV. 

I can't post the ariticle because the link I have to it is through my student subcription, but if you can access it, check out "The statement of purpose in graduate program applications: Genre structure and disciplinary variation" Samraj & Monk, 2008. They bring up a very interesting point - that the success of specific content strategies in personal statements is a "semi-occluded" genre (i.e. there is little to no numerical data, and most of it is confidential). It is worth a read if only for the testimonies of AdCom members, since these serve as a good reminder of your audience.
 
I worked at the Writer's Workshop at my undergraduate institution, and we saw a LOT of personal statements. After going through the experience of reading many of them in many different fields, here is my advice:
 
1. You do not need a "hook" like you may have been taught in middle school. No quotations, no "I loved to read since childhood."
2. The only exception to the "no personal stories" rule is if you have a specific instance of something that got you interested in your field of concentration (i.e. after reading X piece of theory, I began to think about Y, which lead to the topic of my undergrad thesis etc.)
3. If you mention someting on your CV, your personal statement must answer a question that is not evident just by reading the CV. Your CV gives the AdCom a laundry list of your experience, publications, relevant course work etc, but it requires the AdCom to interpret why a particular experience is important. For example, your CV says "taught Writing 101," your personal statement should say "Writing 101 prepared me to balance teaching with my graduate studies by..."
4. The hardest part: finding a balance between being too specific and too broad. Use your research experience and interests as examples of the work you can do, not as the only topic you love and want to research, or are capable of researching.
5. Answer directly the question that is on their minds: are you a good fit for this program? You can talk about how special you are until you are blue in the face, but the sad reality is that this process is a crapshoot and what one AdCom member finds relevant and interesting may not impress the next. But program fit is the question they are trying to answer. If you can answer that effectively enough to convince them and you have the writing sample and letters of rec to back up your claims, you may have just earned yourself an acceptance.

If you want to study Semitic using the methodologies of linguistics, you should consider applying to general linguistics programs. You don't need there to be someone who works on Semitic, in particular; you want someone with expertise in the areas that interest you (what are they, by the way) who can support you in pointing out relevant literature, facts about other languages, etc. Maybe you need to have to have a collaboration with someone from the Language/Lit program or wherever Semitic scholars are found. But the thing about general linguistics programs is that you are not very likely to find people who work exclusively on language X, because that's just not how we perceive our field--we work on questions of interest that may require us to look at a particular language or language family, but not many professors restrict themselves to just one language (though there are those too, especially people who work on under-studied languages where you need to go into the field to collect data and there are not many speakers around). For its number of speakers, Hebrew is actually very well represented in linguistics as an object of study, because there are quite a few Jewish/Israeli linguists who (at least occasionally) write about it. So, it's quite normal for a student in a particular program to be the only person working on a particular language, and the faculty don't need to be experts in it to be great advisors. They provide the technical knowledge and expertise, and you're the expert on the details of your language. Of course, this would lead to a specific kind of education that I'm betting is very different than what you've done in your past; it's something to learn more about. Maybe you'll end up trying to do the collaboration in the opposite direction - apply to a program that's more along the lines of what you've done in the past and find an interested professor who is willing to work with you in a linguistics program, assuming the school you go to has one. 

If you really want to incorporate Chinese, I'd start looking at economic history in general and the Indian Ocean trade routes specifically. Good intro description here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6XtBLDmPA0 . 
 
Things to read (taken from the syllabus of a course I just finished which was essentially Generals prep):
 
-Pirenne, Henri. Mohammed and Charlemagne. New York: Norton, 1939. -Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God; a Study of Monastic Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 1961. -Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. NDP 39. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964. -Classen, Peter. Kaiserreskript und Königsurkunde: diplomatische Studien zum Problem der Kontinuität zwischen Altertum und Mittelalter. Vyzantina keimena kai meletai 15. Thessalonikē: Kentron Vyzantinōn Ereunōn, 1977. -Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324. Ed. rev. et corr. Paris: Gallimard, 1982. -Powell, James M., ed. Medieval Studies: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1992. -Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig. The King’s Two Bodies: a Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton Paperbacks. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1997. -Brown, Peter Robert Lamont. Augustine of Hippo: a Biography. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. (Second edition is important here) -McCormick, Michael. Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce A.D. 300-900. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. -Philippart, Guy, and Michel Trigalet. “‘L’hagiographie Latine Du XIesiècle Dans La Longue Durée: Données Statistiques Sur La Production Littéraire et Sur L’édition Médiévale.” In Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Medieval Latin Studies, Cambridge, September 9-12, 1998, edited by Michael W. Herren, Christopher James McDonough, and Ross Gilbert Arthur, 281–301. Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 5. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. -Davis, Jennifer R., Michael McCormick, Angeliki E. Laiou, Jan M. Ziolkowski, and Herbert L. Kessler, eds. The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval -Studies. Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub. Co, 2008. -Brown, Warren, Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Adam J. Kosto, eds. Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. -Clanchy, M. T. From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066-1307. 3rd ed. Chichester, West Sussex ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. -Kienzle, Beverly Mayne. Cistercians, Heresy, and Crusade in Occitania, 1145-1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard. Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press/Boydell Press, 2001. -Kieckhefer, Richard. Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. -Tellenbach, Gerd. Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest. Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching 27. Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press in association with the Medieval Academy of America, 1991. -Head, Thomas, ed. Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology. New York ; London: Routledge, 2001. -Vauchez, André. Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.   I have a larger list if you want 
 
One thing I would mention that is not immediately apparent to many, but may become obvious from this list, is that language skill is the most important aspect of medieval study. Regardless of program, you will need a solid grasp on Latin, French, and German. If you want to specialize elsewhere, you will need to add specific languages to the list. You've been warned 

I support bluecheese's suggestion, for what it is worth. There aren't that many film studies programs in the country at which I feel I'd have a really excellent fit (and, importantly, that are powerful enough to be a viable springboard to the kind of career I am aiming for). Yet, I applied to 13 programs this year, up from last year's 8. Now, of course my SOP and essay last year were quite bad, so that certainly didn't help my chances. This time, I've had a much better round, and one of the waitlist programs is one I did not apply to last year. 
 
I think it's a good idea to maximize spread and apply as widely as possible, while ensuring a reasonably good--if not amazing--fit. Ultimately, the adcom judges fit, not us. I'm not sure I'm a good fit at all, at one of my waitlist programs, but apparently they beg to differ!

Some thoughts of my own here:
 
Instead of trying to answer all of those questions one by one, I will throw out my thoughts on this in paragraph form.  I think the ideal advisor is someone who is the goldilocks type, right in the middle.  Not too old, not too young.  Too old and you may find yourself with a retiring advisor in your third year.  Most programs make some concessions and try to help you out on this, and typically if a prof. plans on retiring in the next year or two, they will stop taking students to prevent this from happening.  Even so, it does happen, so keep it in mind.  Too young and as you go to look for jobs you may be met mostly by blank stares when you tell them who your advisor was.  Further, without tenure, you may once again be left advisorless at the next tenure review.  This is far more common and something to really keep in mind - be sure to have at least one other senior faculty member who you could work with were this to happen.
 
You also need to meet your advisor in person and talk with them.  Feeling this out is super important, as a person may look literally perfect for you on paper/CV, but when you go to talk to them you may find that they are super awkward, intimidating, offstandish, have an annoying laugh, etc.  These may seem like odd intrapersonal elements, but you have to spend some serious time with this person, so it could be a tough few years if you show up and find that sitting in your advisor's office is something you dread.  I am a super laid-back person, which is not to say that I don't work my butt off, but I don't really allow that to seep into my personality, so I knew that if I had someone who was a bit high-strung or just high-energy that I would both be annoyed with them as well as feel like I was not nearly enthusiastic enough about the topic I was studying.  So, part of my choice was between two advisors, one embody the former, and one the latter.  It is also good to have someone who is going to be tough on you.  To be fully honest, you've probably gone through undergrad, and grad school with stellar grades and a good bit of backslapping from profs who want to encourage you in your pursuits.  Your PhD should be a time when someone tells you that your work isn't that great, that your theory isn't original, that your paper was kind of mediocre.  They should obviously also encourage you from time to time as well, but when you put your first book out and you excitedly turn to the first review only to find that the reviewer has in final evaluation decided that your book would have been better off having never been written, you don't want that to be the first time someone has ever excoriated your work.  You'll be totally deflated!
 
Additionally, be real sure of exactly how many people your advisor is advising, which is to say not just PhD students.  Some profs are appointed in divinity schools, undergraduate colleges, etc. and have folks from all of those.  Having to schedule out half-hour meetings every two months gets a bit old when you are having a crisis of confidence (which you will) and need someone to talk you down from leaving the program for a vehicle-sharing start-up.  Being able to meet with my advisor more or less whenever I wanted to, and just going to talk once a week made a huge difference in my first two years.  It wasn't even just to talk through some major problem every time, sometimes I just went to talk about good books I had just read, a new approach to some age-old problem, or just to shoot the breeze.  I think this was a really important part of developing a real, human relationship with my advisor.  If you advisor has 13 other PhD students, 45 Master's students and is the departmental coordinator or something, you may find it hard to meet, even if you are promised a good deal of focus as a prized PhD student.  The truth is that people only have so many hours in a week! I don't know if there is a magic number of 'too many students' here, but I always figure not more than 1 per year, so 4-5.
 
You want some aligned research interests, but I assume that this is a bit of a pedantic observation.  You should go for someone whose approach and methodology you generally respect, jive with, and understand.  Be sure to read through some of their publications.  People approach topics in very different ways.  Just because I am in an Ancient Christianity program doesn't mean that every person in the field would be a great advisor, even if they have perfectly aligned interests.  There are some approaches, i.e. heavy philology, historical-critical, etc. that I just find either boring, outdated, or a little bit of both.  There were a few programs with profs who seemed perfect on an 'interest-only' level, but once I read through their stuff, I totally ruled them out.  It also helps to have someone who is fairly well-known in the field, as well as more generally.  In this hellish job market, as you go to apply to your dream job at East Jesus University in Montana, it would be helpful if the scholar of Buddhism who heads the religious studies department has at least heard your advisor's name.  Now this isn't always possible, especially in the famously insular fields of theology and biblical studies, but consider it.
 
I'd say it would be good to shoot your POI an email.  Don't be an annoyance, especially in a first email.  A prof does not need to hear your entire life story, or your wonderful achievements.  Just mention your basic interests, ask them if they are taking new students, and if their current work lines up with what you have in mind.  If they seem interested in your background/etc. then you can send it along.  I'd also pass along a piece of advice I got from a professor at a certain Ivy League school with regard to visiting prior to being admitted - "No one was ever helped by a campus visit prior to being admitted, but they have been hurt by it," meaning that you'll probably be nervous, excited, and wanting to make a really impression if you do this but you might end up being remembered as that person who was slathering all over him or herself trying to impress.  So, I usually say to wait until you are admitted to visit unless you have a really compelling reason to do so.  An exception might be SBL, but remember that a thousand people have the same idea so your impression might not be all that special.  A better approach on my part was to go crash their school's reception if you are able, and talk to them there more informally (or if this seems too forward maybe after a session or something).
 
I am really happy about how it worked out.  As I mentioned I have great access to my advisor, have developed a great relationship with him, and have really enjoyed my time here.  I have found a number of other people to be mentors/other readers as well, but those were actually mostly people I found after I got here. In that I still haven't met someone who doesn't know my advisor and vice versa, I am also confident that things will bode as well as one can hope when looking for a job in a few years.
 
Hope this helps! 

Not sure if anybody's seen this but it had me in stitches! These are really, really true!
 
http://memegenerator.net/Scumbag-Analytic-Philosopher/images/popular
 

My sense is that it would be somewhat presumptuous for a graduate student to approach a professor about guest lecturing.  I think it would depend on how well you know the professor and how far advanced you are in your program, though.

I think the major problem here, and in Western philosophical and religious thought generally, is the desire for certainty. The story begins with Descartes and his battle to overcome radical skepticism, and reaches new heights with Kant's philosophy. They want absolute assurance that what they know and believe is true, in an absolute, indubitable sense. This lead to Descartes's cogito and Kant's transcendental philosophy, both of which were primarily epistemological and metaphysical projects. In their own ways, both Descartes and Kant wanted to provide room for faith in a world dominated by scientific knowledge. In other words, they want to reconcile religion and science. It's important to note that both assume that science sets the standard. If we fast forward a little in history, we see fundamentalists, who sought certainty as well, making arguments from scripture that basically take for granted that science sets the terms of the debate, so we see them making arguments about how parts of scripture don't conflict with scientific knowledge and making scientific claims about scripture.

The problem with all this is that it presupposes that we need absolute certainty to combat radical skepticism and that science provides such certainty. We see this fear of skepticism and resort to scientism everywhere today: People assume that scientific studies settle arguments, the humanities are trying to model themselves on the sciences in order to have purchase in the public square and legitimate their place in a capitalist system that squeezes out non-utilitarian values, etc. But is that the right way of thinking about our standards for knowledge and conduct? I doubt it. Once you accept this way of thinking, you're left with no recourse but to look for inerrant foundations either in the bible, as some Protestants do, or in tradition, as some Catholics do.

As people of faith, we need to question these moves and the assumptions underwriting them regarding skepticism, foundationalism, and scientific knowledge. Theological liberals and theological conservatives, rather than questioning the rules of the game, have joined right in. Liberals assume scientific knowledge is basically the most accurate picture of reality and try to reinterpret theology in light of those claims, which ends up leaving very little room for theology and traditional doctrines. Conservatives also assume scientific knowledge is basically right, but, rather than jettisoning theology, they attempt to argue for traditional theological beliefs in the idiom of modern science and foundationalist epistemology. Postliberals have tried to get beyond these constraints by using Wittgenstein. Others have tried to turn back the clock as if the Enlightenment had never happened. At this point in my studies, I don't have a definitive answer, and I'm not sure I will ever have one or if one is even desirable. But there are other options out there besides conservative biblicism with its doctrines of inerrancy and inspiration and liberal secularism with its abandonment of religious faith in favor of scientific faith.

The absurd over-analysis of a basic term that will never leave our study's vernacular is representative of the downfall of academia. If we are going to sit around and argue semantics, rather than contributing important research or aiding in conservation and protective efforts for the monuments we have in this world, then we deserve to be the butt of every joke directed towards us.
 
I loathe this sort of discourse when it has no obvious end goal. It's so unproductive. 

There's probably a reason why you're sitting on a pile of rejections.

In your shoes, I'd accept Cambridge hands-down.  It's a funded offer at a university with a world-wide reputation for excellence.  Certainly there are some things that CUNY could offer (teaching experience, coursework, academic networking within the US), but my sense is that a Cambridge degree will open more doors, and you won't be bogged down with an overload of TA responsibilities (which CUNY has a reputation for) as you focus on your research.
 
As others have said, you can do a post-doc in the US if you want to get acquainted with our system.
 
Edited to add: If you're going to back out on CUNY, it would be good to let them know as soon as possible so they can fill your space with a wait-lister.  Usually it's considered bad form to turn down an offer you've already accepted... but if you give them a chance to put another person in the spot before April 15, hopefully it won't be as much of a problem.