dr. t

Yeah I would say that this sort of statement is going to concern an admissions committee much more than your language skills.

It's not just $2000 when you compare cost of living in New Haven vs. Cambridge! But I had been told the Harvard package was up to $35,000... strange. If you do ask, just be diplomatic. You have some concerns about living in such an expensive real estate market and Yale's offer would seem to create less stress on a personal level, and is there any way for Harvard to assist with this?

I second this.

OK so there has been some nonsense and someone merged 3 threads into one. I've tried to pull them apart to the best of my ability, but I'm sure I've left some posts behind in this thread. If you see one, please report it using the report function and tag me in the comments. I'll move it to where it belongs.

OK so there has been some nonsense and someone merged 3 threads into one. I've tried to pull them apart to the best of my ability, so if I've left one of your posts behind here Please flag it using the report feature and tag me in the report, and I will port it back over.

It's merged and stickied at the top of the forum EDIT... Huh. It's been merged somehow?

I can't speak for physics, but there are no programs in History that have spring admissions and are worth attending.

There's an existing thread pinned on the same subject; I merged the two and changed the title - does that work?

If you want to do a 1 year MA without a gap year after, you're asking your new MA profs to write for you after they've know you for maybe 6 weeks. If you want to come out of a 1 year MA with a stronger application, plan on applying the following year.

Have you tried just sorting yourself into Ravenclaw over and over again on Pottermore?

If it's a semester or two no one will care.

MA programs usually release in late March.

I'm going to be a bit more brutal than the others: it's not going to be enough. Language ability is the foundation upon which a historian is built. Any program worth attending is going to be flooded with fully-fluent applicants who have experience living and working in francophone countries, and probably a secondary ability in at least German, Spanish, Italian, or a creole. This is a handicap you will almost certainly not overcome without a substantial block of dedicated effort. With only a year - heck with three years - of French, any program that accepts you is doing so primarily to exploit you for cheap labor. If you still want to do this, I would, at minimum, take a year off in addition to looking for a 2 year MA, either for coursework or, more preferably, a Fulbright or other experience in a francophone country. And what about early modern France?

And this is why you unionize.

If you want to be competitive for the level of program to which you have applied this time around (Columbia/Harvard/NYU/Rutgers/Michigan), language needs to be your primary focus. As you're already fluent in Italian, I wouldn't spend too much time with French - just enough to read articles, which you should be able to acquire in a semester course. You do need to spend a lot of time bringing your Latin up to snuff - the University of Toronto posts Latin exams online, and I would say at minimum being able to pass the MA one is a good bar. I would also spend some time on German, which any good program will want to see. Not all masters programs will give you the course flexibility to spend so much time on languages. Do the legwork to see which would be better for you to acquire these skills.

Would your eventual M/EM PhD application define a project related to the Italian peninsula?

What are your language skills currently like, and are both programs the same duration?

The two most important questions are: 1) What options are available to fund research travel? 2) What sorts of funding are available for my sixth and seventh years? ANY hesitation on the part of faculty in response to these questions - if they don't know, if they say such monies aren't necessary, if they defer you to grad students - is to be taken not so much as a red flag but rather a full on May Day parade. Much harder to negotiate are the questions you can't just ask but still need answered: How supported do the graduate students feel in both academics and teaching? Do faculty treat them like members of the department or as if they were their paterfamilias? Are departmental politics collegial or a knife fight? Do graduate students get dragged into them?

This is a fairly concise one sentence summary of what needs to change before you apply again.

"Academia is really just two people emailing each other "Sorry for the delayed response..." until one of them retires." - Some Internet Wit

I don't smoke, but I'd say about 80% of the grad students in my department are open about their cannabis use, and maybe 20% of professors? As in they're not going to come up to you and be like DUDE I LOVE WEED but don't treat it any differently than, say, heading to the bar for a beer. But I'm at a pretty crunchy school; Harvard, as you might expect, seemed to have more of a stick up its ass. Or the people at Harvard were afraid that the stick was there and were more cagey as a result? Unclear.

If you really pay attention, you'll find that the "life of the mind" is mostly responding to emails.

Just generally, tell the DGS this is it's a problem. They'll usually be able to help.

As I said, I'm not much for grand theory. You can "know" what history is all you want - what I say it is, what Wikipedia says it is, what Trouillot says it is. But the only purpose in "acquiring more perplexity" is to actually do history; theory without praxis is just wasted breath. Similarly, in asking questions you must also try to give answers. What does does it mean to you to say you're "doing" history?

You have a lot of questions, which is good, but you need to be a bit more aware of what you're asking from others. Case in point, a good introduction to postcolonial theory should be something you can find with your research skills; if and when you're a graduate student, your adviser will rightly expect you to do this legwork for yourself. That's not to say I can't or don't want to answer you, but I really can't just type out the theory section of my dissertation here. What are your answers to some of the questions you've posed?