Wicked_Problem

I am sorry that the experience you had contacting your POI at CUNY was negative, but it was informative, as I thought it might be. I believe that you are making the right decision, and I am very pleased that you have decided to post your experiences in this thread for the benefit of others. That is awesome! I will definitely check in regularly to follow this. GOOD LUCK!

I am sorry that the experience you had contacting your POI at CUNY was negative, but it was informative, as I thought it might be. I believe that you are making the right decision, and I am very pleased that you have decided to post your experiences in this thread for the benefit of others. That is awesome! I will definitely check in regularly to follow this. GOOD LUCK!

Im finally back. Had to step away and catch up with the some work. Hope everyone had a successful cycle. Best of luck to all!

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.

hoboken sucks.  its expensive and full of really obnoxious drunk people at all hours of the day.  as is downtown jersey city.  however, golden monkey is absolutely right about jersey city heights.  theres literally an elevator down the side of the cliff that you can take from hancock avenue that puts you right in hoboken at the light rail, and is the coolest/ most convenient thing ever.  rent in the heights is much cheaper and its pretty safe (especially on the other side of central ave, further from the elevator, where there is almost no crime).  you could definitely find a nice 1 br for about a grand, or for a little more get a 2 br with a roommate.  i grew up in the heights and its pretty well-connected to the city as well.  you can take an "immie" to port authority for $3 or take said immie to journal square and hop on the path.  definitely just search the north jersey craigslist and check it out.

I think jimmy_01 is right, if its before April 15th one can change his mind by writing a letter to the university.
 
Here is a link: http://www.cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGS_Resolution.pdf

I'd like to counter this a bit, because pudewen, though bringing up many of the major fears of doing a UK PhD, also generalized a lot. First, saying that a UK PhD has no knowledge base past their dissertation is horribly wrong; the system is set up differently, and students in that system cover those things long before they enter a PhD. At least from what I've seen, UK masters programs are incredibly intensive, covering all of that before the student even reaches a PhD. That doesn't even consider the kind of work they do during their undergraduate years, which seems to have a bit of a different focus. You could say that's too short of a time, but there are also people that think the way the US system is set up isn't perfect, either. Both have their benefits, but focusing on the negative doesn't do anyone any good here.
 
Further, many UK PhDs seem to be offering teaching; it may not be required, but it is now an option so that students can be competitive in a different job market. Though it may be slightly uncommon for students with a UK PhD to get an American job, I think it needs to be recognized that it is possible, and that the people that do are entirely qualified. I think, as a previous poster mentioned, there is something to be said for the kind of independence that a UK PhD forces you to have; a kind of independence that a committee may see as the person's ability to come up with things on their own without having their hand held. If a committee is looking at an American candidate that doesn't seem independent at all and will need guidance through every step of the first five years of their job, and a British candidate that has fresh ideas on how to teach a course and the independence to do these things on their own, well... I'm not going to say who they'll pick, but I know who I would. That's also a generalization, but I think we need to consider how the other side views this process.
 
What I mean by all of this is that I hope each and every one of us chooses a path that we want, not one that is standard or makes the most sense. Our original poster doesn't seem to share the desire many have to obtain a job in the US market, so perhaps Cambridge is better. I think we also need to consider what we're all looking for from this experience, and let the job be the goal, but not the absolute first reason for pursuing PhDs. Choosing a program that is the best fit and will provide you with the resources you need to do that kind of work you're passionate about it should be the focus, not necessarily how a program is perceived over the other. If we lose sight of that, I don't think it matters what the name of the institution is or how it ranks; I don't think anyone will succeed if things are picked solely on how others perceive them.
 
This all being said, I chose a British program over funded PhDs in America because I thought the experience I would gain there and the opportunities that I realized I would have were more what I was looking for out of the experience; if you choose the right program for you, I think you can create the kind of career you want.

The reason a UK PhD is often considered a disadvantage on the US job market is because it's a qualitatively different degree than a US PhD. There's a reason the former takes 3 years, and the latter takes at least 5, but usually more like 6 or 7. Coursework and general exams are part of this, because they mean you will be able to teach more broadly - especially if you don't work on the US (or maybe Western Europe), not many US universities want to hire you if you're only expert enough to teach in your major field. If they're going to hire you to be their only East Asianist, you have to be able to teach courses on Japan as well as China, on the modern period as well as the early modern, etc, regardless of what you actually work on. Same applies if you work on Latin America, or the Middle East, or South Asia, or Eastern Europe. Someone with a UK degree who did nothing but show up and start writing a thesis is unlikely to be as qualified for this as an American PhD who passed general exams in four fields and has a somewhat broader base. This may be less true for jobs at top schools with large history departments, but we can't exactly count on getting jobs at a UCLA or a Columbia, and even they will want the ability to teach survey courses, which a UK PhD has done nothing to prove they have the requisite knowledge base to do (even if they in fact have it).
Similarly, UK PhDs have no teaching experience, which is a major problem in the extremely competitive US job market. Why hire someone whose first day at the front of a classroom will be when they show up at your department in September to teach 4 courses (sadly, a not uncommon teaching load), when you can get someone who already has a fair amount of teaching experience? It's not like there's a shortage of candidates with strong research backgrounds.
 
Think about it this way - you say that you're not sure you're ready to jump straight into writing your dissertation (I don't blame you, I certainly wasn't when I started my PhD - I think it's really hard to be ready if you haven't at least done an MA already). Who will be more prepared to jump into a faculty job - you in 3 years having written a dissertation and done almost nothing else, or you in 6-7 years with substantial coursework, teaching experience, several years of experience giving conference presentations (I imagine you'll have a lot less time for that in the very rushed UK PhD), and a dissertation that you had more time to plan and think about (and modify what your plan for as you gained a better sense of what directions the field was going in)? That's the same question a search committee is going to be asking when they consider hiring a UK PhD or a US one.
 
That all said, Cambridge is obviously more famous and better ranked than CUNY, and that does matter. Oxford and Cambridge are probably the only UK schools that can give you decent job prospects in the US. So I wouldn't definitely say that CUNY would be a better choice for someone looking for a job in the US (which I know you say you aren't anyway), but there are certainly reasons that it might be, especially when you start looking at jobs at places other than the largest, most famous research universities (which are likely to put a higher premium on the name on your degree).

I face a similar choice, but in a different discipline than History. The safe choice (Ph.D. in my professional field) versus working with a world renowned scholar in a field that, though completely applicable, is new to me. The parallel I am making is CUNY (safe) vs. Cambridge. At Cambridge you would be pursuing your studies independently (a good model for the rest of your life as a scholar) and would have less "hand holding." These are positives, not negatives. Perhaps you should go out on a limb, and lay your cards on the table, and ask your CUNY adviser what he or she would advise you to do. You hold all the cards right now, so this could be very informative. Others might think differently, and I hope they chime in, but what your CUNY adviser says could tell you as much about CUNY and him or her as it would about the value of the offer from Cambridge. If you end up going to CUNY, your adviser would know that you made that choice. The consequences of that could be nothing but positive. If you go to Cambridge, your CUNY adviser would know that you are a straight shooter -- you won't necessarily be burning any bridges with him or her -- and you might even laying the groundwork for a future with that institution...

Agreed that you want to write in your voice; don't be too stuffy, or, relatedly, as a former professor advised me, "Don't make it sound like you have everything all figured out." Be yourself: which is someone with a lot of training ahead of them. But I don't think personal stories are necessary; that you are personally there behind your research questions and proposals is. They want you to be a good researcher and historian above all else. I just feel personal stories might sometimes feel too forced, but if you have a really good one -- go for it. For me, I mentioned why I went back to school for history, because I felt I had to explain this, & also thought it'd work doubly to show how personally committed I was. The rest was my experience doing research -- but really that was just a bridge to ask questions and present what I wanted to do in my next phase of research (which was somewhat of a departure, but not totally, from my former work). So I'm there, asking those questions -- but it's the questions that really matter the most.

The experience is very, very helpful.  You learn what it takes to write an original 30+ page research paper based on primary sources, not secondary.
 
Your writing sample needs to be just that- a demonstration of your capabilities as a future historian to be able to collect, interpret, and analyze various sources and reconstruct historical accounts with a methodological approach.  If you have a seminar paper like that, then great!  Use it!  
 
If you don't want to take honors courses to be able to qualify for a thesis-writing course, ask a trusted prof for an independent study/research course.  I'm sure s/he will be delighted at the opportunity to teach the historian's craft in a serious, intimate manner.

I have done a Masters in EE and now my PhD in BME. I can tell you it is absolutely what you make of it. If you want to take your time, pay more money, and cruise there is nothing wrong with that and it is very doable. Some people just work/study all day and have 0 life. I prefer something in the middle. But all will work.
 
For my Masters I knew I wanted to get into a top notch PhD program so I wanted to be a superstar. I probably put in 70-80 hrs/week to get through all my coursework quickly. However, I was well balanced and had a good amount of free time and screw around time sprinkled in. That way I was able to spend 1 year full time working on my MS thesis which ended up being about 200 pages long. However, I am getting multiple publications out of it and it was key to getting me into some great PhD choices.
 
Anyways, now that I am finishing my 1st year of my PhD I can say that I probably average around 80-90 hours of "work" a week. I use the word work lightly because to me it is more like play. I love my research, love my projects, love my advisor, love my labmates, love my school. I work lots of hours and very hard, but I am not stressed at all. I don't really have deadlines and my adviser doesn't care how many hours I put in. He works in a completely different building so I could take weeks off at a time if I wanted and nobody would really care. But I honestly wake up everyday excited to get into work and I leave every night sad that I have to catch the last bus home. I would rather work 80 hrs/week doing something I am passionate about and find both fun and rewarding than work 40 hrs/week doing something I hated. You know that old saying, "do what you love and never work a day in your life"? That is how I seriously feel.

Congratulations! Now get over here and cure cancer!

Hey guys, got my second fully funded acceptance (but neither are in History.) All results are in.

Hi This is my first post.
 
Just applied to John Jay and GWU for the masters progam. So the waiting game begins. 

Hey guys, got my second fully funded acceptance (but neither are in History.) All results are in.

Hey guys, got my second fully funded acceptance (but neither are in History.) All results are in.

Hey guys, got my second fully funded acceptance (but neither are in History.) All results are in.

Primary sources. Either collect your own data and analyze it or go directly to original documents and analyze those. Policy formulation can, and usually is, based on secondary sources (other people's studies.) But don't take it from me... talk to professors in that program and compare the work products of both the policy paper and the thesis by finding them in the library. The good news is that you have time to conduct original research if you get on it now. By the way, it's not the title of the work that matters to those evaluating your writing sample, it is the nature and quality of the work that they care about.

Unfortunately, yes, personalities matter.  You just don't know until you actually start working with the person.  That's why it's important to have at least one or two other faculty member who can step in when things go really, really, really, really wrong between you and your (chosen) adviser.  
 
This is very tough for small fields because that adviser is often your only one in the department whom you can turn to for nearly everything (more than you think).  I recently told a prospective when s/he asked about the chances of my adviser leaving, "If she leaves, I expect her to take me along with her.  I say this because there is NOBODY else in my department who is my subfield."  She reasoned that there are other respectable professors whom she could turn to if that happens and chose to accept the offer.
 
That written, I can recommend "small field" people to be in touch with POIs who they're interested in to get a quick sense of their personality and style during the application process.  So, try not to simply focus on how shiny their bios are to help you determine whether or not you should apply there.  Even if the page seems lackluster, just drop an e-mail and see what happens.  Some profs just don't care to brag.  My adviser doesn't and I have to advocate on her behalf of her fabulousness.
 
PhD training is difficult enough as it is that you do ideally want to have a good adviser and connections with stars within your department and outside of it within and outside of your university.

Wait! We're expected to marry our profs? Good to know. At least mine is relatively young and nerdhandsome. I'll start packing my trousseau.

I think you also need to understand that some of this is personality that you wouldn't be able to figure out until you work with someone.  I have one adviser rather than another because the second one intimidates me to inaction despite that not being his/her intension. 

I used to drive from San Diego to Long Beach (and back!) on Fridays, and it was a total NIGHTMARE.  Fridays, I think, are the worst days for commutes through San Diego and Orange counties.  It usually took 3 to 3 1/2 hours each way.  The 5 is horrific, and so are all of the other freeways once you get into L.A. County.  I second the above poster's recommendation.  I never took the Amtrak, but I know others who have, and it sounds so much better.  I used to get migraines from the pure frustration of inching along the freeway at a snail's pace for three hours straight.  Not fun! 

Good to see another early Americanist. 
 
Take a look at this recent thread: 
A lot of the same points apply to your situation. It's pretty much impossible for us to say what your chances are. Too many variables. It's impossible to gauge the quality of your research from this position. But there's no reason you couldn't get into a strong MA and then Ph.D. program, if you work at putting together a solid application package. Like I said in the other thread, focusing on research over something like extracurriculars will help you in the long run.
 
Nothing wrong with going to a small, obscure liberal arts school. I doubt that would hurt your chances much, if at all. Many students in top programs once went to pretty anonymous undergraduate institutions. I would also say that the prestige of your potential MA institution is less important than several other factors - namely, the potential for funding, and having a strong advisor. 
 
Also, for early American history, languages are often not hugely important (unless your research really demands it). Since you have some time, it might be worth considering whether you could enroll in a language class to show you have at least some proficiency in a foreign language. 

Well, there's no admissions test for foreign languages... At my current (Ph.D.) university, there's an expectation that your language will be taken care of by the third semester, whether by taking language classes or by passing an exam at some point.
 
It's okay for you to not know how things work -- there's a pretty steep learning curve on a lot of this stuff. In graduate history applications, you will identify a potential advisor. This person will ideally have similar research interests to yours (this is usually referred to as "fit"). At the very least, he or she will need to be in your field. So while it's common to switch advisors once you're in a program, you select one during the application process who you could work with.
 
So once you've identified your research interests (which I understand may not be fully formed at this point) you should go back through the secondary sources you used and identify which scholars whose work you find useful are still teaching at graduate degree-granting institutions. Alternatively, you can do what I also did, which is to comb through the faculty pages of practically every scholar in your field. I applied to work with my current advisor in part because her faculty website said that she was working on a forthcoming book project similar to my own work. After you've identified several scholars who might be interested in working with you, you can begin to build a list of schools to apply to. Unfortunately, in this process, we have to apply to places based on where potential advisors are, not based on where we'd like to live, or the strength of the program. You haven't got a chance of getting into a graduate program if there's no (tenured) faculty member there who can support your research.
 
Best of luck.
 
PS- feel free to PM me about early American history more specifically, or particular historians who might be interested in your research.