Historylover

I feel for you. I would hate to have to write another SOP, but I didn't know that you could appeal application decisions.

To all Northwestern applicants who have not heard anything one way or the other. Is it just me or does it seem the view decision link will never appear? I keep checking and checking, but it's never there. I know with about a quarter of the total of acceptances posted on grad cafe, the odds of getting in are increasingly becoming slim, but it is still possible to be waitlisted. I just wish I knew either way. Any other feelings on this?

The Great Republic: A History of the American People Vol 1 fourth edition ISBN 0-669-20986-4. It was one of my texts for studying US Survey I. At the end of every chapter, it has recommended readings for further research. Hope it helps.

Well there's a whole other forum devoted to that topic that you could check out. It sucks being rejected everywhere and you seem to have a good grip on what you need to do. There are scholarship programs/grants for intensive language study and not to mention as noted on the languages discussion you could google the forgein service institute for free language training stuff or check to see if your local library has the rossetta stone program for patrons. With all these online courses, there may be a chance to study language at an affordable price. Good luck to you!

Some public libraries have free access for its patrons to the Rossetta Stone. So I would check with your local public library before buying it.

If the two Northwestern people do respond, would you be willing to indicate your field?

I would think that they would be highly interested in a foreign applicant studying American history. I think that you probably have an interesting and differing perspective than other domestic applicants, which they might see as adding to the historiography of your particular subfield. I wish you the best of luck. Which subfields in American history are you interested?

Any thoughts on those of us interested in American history? I have a bit of a language background with intermediate spanish, and I have an excellent experience in statistics. I just hope that my program doesn't hold my not having mastered a language yet against me as I have little to no use for it in my research.

I'll agree money probably plays a big part in it, but the more prestigious schools don't really need the money-so what's the point of not disclosing the cutoffs. I read somewhere that Harvard's endownment is so large that it could run over 100 years w/o charging tution. Would a school like that really need the extra cash from a hundreds perhaps thousands of applications? Wouldn't it save schools like that personnel (which =$$$) not to mention all the space those applications, transcripts, LORs take until they could be scanned in the system or sent to the department.

I'm currently in a psych masters program, and they assigned me to an advisor, who is on a year-long sabbatical for my first year of studies. I had to register for fall semester over the phone, and he didn't even tell me anything about the program or advise on how I should plan my semesters. He only told if I really want to get into a PhD program to be a prof, I just had to pull up my GRE scores. Then for spring semester registration, I had to beg the department secretary to get a hold of him so I could register. He wanted to see how I planned to do all my courses up until I graduated when we never even discussed which track I should pursue given my widespread interests, which I tried to ask him when I registered for fall classes.

I think if the committee knows of your potential interest in statistics, it could help that is provided that there is not some unofficial cutoff. In addition, it would probably do a great deal of good if you have expressed an interest in quanitative history, and they have some faculty in American history that shares this interest with you.

First, I think you may have missed the whole point of my post. I honestly don't think faculty get extra or a part of the application fee. I went to an undergraduate institution and worked for two different departments not counting the academic dean. In fact, I respect the constraints of faculty members time as I have had to see it from behind the scenes and try to do much grading and other duties as possible to help reduce their work load. At most I know that many faculty serve on even more than one committee (from my experience it's anywhere from 3+).I was suggesting that they should let applicants know the cut-offs, so both applicants AND professors don't have to waste time and money on an application that will never be read completely. $75 is a lot of money to pay for something that someone will just say oh they got a 590 and not a 600--so they were close but not good enough to read the rest of it. In addition, applicants put in a serious amount of time and effort to have someone look at their applicant not to mention the professors at our schools that have to take time out from their grading and work to write LORs or go online and fill out forms for us. I understand your perspective, and yes, it's a balance of pros and cons with each. I believe that if we pay that much money, some kind of reasonable arrangement should be made to read the entire applicantion. May be reducing the course load of professors on the committee or more members on the committee. I am sorry as it has been a year since I took the GREs, I did forget the scale was in 10s and not increments of one-I was trying to make the point that cutoffs can be ridiculous.

While that is true to a certain extent,I keep thinking of those expensive application fees. I mean if you paid $75+ for your application only to have it be cut for some petty criteria like you received 599V instead of a 600V is ridiculous and a waste of everyones' time and money. You deserve to have someone read over your whole application. If graduate programs wish to be that way, I wish they would instead put right on their website, "we do not consider applicants with scores and gpa less than. . . . unless a professor in the program or program director agrees to review the application otherwise." It saves them time, it saves us time and money.

I'm going stir crazy!!!! My top choice historically from the archives on this site doesn't send out acceptances or rejections until the first few days in March. Seriously, I don't know what to do with myself at this point. There are only so many things to do in this neck of the woods.

If it makes anyone feel better, the GREs only have a .2 correlation of predicting success in grad school, which is a very weak positive correlation. A perfect correlation is a 1 for non-math people. I would personally rather pay an extra whatever to take a measure devised by my choice schools as knowledge that I should have before entering the program than pay $150 for a test that doesn't really show anything and is an arbitrary cut used by most grad schools to weed out applicants. I don't disagree about the need for a standard measure to take into account what an A means in school 1 vs school 2, but I do disagree with how the GREs are used currently and what it actually measures.

Thanks, I'm starting to feel better. As I said the waiting is killing me.

Trust me that was the first thing I did.

I'm sure you guys know that there is the whole field of quanitative history. Math isn't sooo bad. I agree though history is and will always be a humanity.

hey everyone, I question/opinion for any one. I applied to Northwestern's History program. Apparently, they emailed me saying that they never received one of my letters of reccomendation and were missing a second copy of my graduate transcript, which believe me they were sent out. Do you think that it means that they may looking at my application closely or it was a really nice secretary making sure that everything was in order? I know that it's kinda subjective, but I wondering if anyone had any thoughts. The wait on a decision is killing me, and I fear that I'm falling into the trap of readig too much into it. I guess that the good news is that they didn't completely disregard my application though.