dr. t

I don't have much time for grand narratives and theory here - I don't find them particularly productive. For me, I follow Kathleen Davis' argument from Periodization and Sovereignty which understands "history" as a polemical claim which intends the creation of radical temporal disjuncture for discrete, local, and political ends. Hence, the most difficult periodization to break, conceptually, remains that which exists between what is "modernity" and what is not. She herself is interested in the origins of the "medieval" in 17th-c English jurisprudence, but the seeds of Davis' argument are particularly well-laid in the bed of postcolonial theory as was in colonial encounter that the modern/premodern divide was truly weaponized. In one of my favorite passages ever, Timothy Mitchell maintains that "Before the development of twentieth-century economics and jurisprudence, which offered ways to be silent about the genealogy of what claims to be universal, [historicization] was the only way, outside theology, to explain the general character of law. Law could claim to be universal, and thus nonarbitrary, only be appearing as the expression of civilization. The growth of civilization represented the spread of the principle of human reason, which overcame the limits of habit, prejudice, caprice, and ignorance. The faculty of reason gave men the power to step outside these local constraints, it was thought, and thus acquire a universal vision and understanding. European colonialism, understood as the contemporary expression of the spread of civilization and reason, established the abstract forms of law, in relation to which particular histories of the right of property could be written. Such histories occurred as the local expression or realization of this universal abstraction" (Rule of Experts, 53). It is an arresting thought to consider the fact that the very choice to study something as history is to perpetuate colonial power structures. And it is similarly troubling to realize that what is "history" is locally contingent to any claim to be doing it.

Actually, you'll find I'm saying that they won't, and that such an attitude will have a negative impact on their application. Begging the question. Don't think it's good advice to tell them to get PhDs either. And reduction to the absurd. Because reasons? Is that what I want to be paid for? I don't think it is. And I thought I was a pessimist.

I don't know any school that announces subfields separately. We medievalists are few enough that there will be reporting holes.

That's not the only resource there is to compete over. I don't know about you, but my school has plenty of competitive internal funding opportunities, for example. But I would also simply ask you how you would feel to work with someone with Kiskadee's attitude in your cohort. I would find it incredibly grating. If you want to postpone dementia, do some suduko. I don't think it's a good idea for either hypothetical person to do a PhD.

I mean it in the nicest sort of way when I say that, for your own mental health, you need to learn to let this go. Job searches don't even let you know half the time.

There is direct evidence to the contrary within this very thread, if you read up. That's not to say you do, but it's a question you're going to have to answer on an application, and I don't think it's unfair. FWIW Brown has been perfectly happy to take many PhD students over 40 into its cohorts.

Brown sent out officials. Sorry.

I don't agree, I think. Don't apply to a program that doesn't interest you just because it has good funding, but only apply to schools that can adequately support your research. Also I confirmed earlier today that all Brown acceptances have indeed gone out. It was very early this year. If you haven't heard, I'm sorry. Consider me severely chastised for trying to think I had a grasp on the situation from France ?

When I got in in 2015, the better funding packages were sent out around now, but I found out (with a lesser funding package) in the 2/3rd week of February, and even then that was early because I broke and emailed my POI to ask what was going on.

No, sorry! Just that I know that at least the graduate students in charge of visiting students have been told, not that the school has sent anything out.

They do send them out all at once, but I did some checking and it turns out that the committee actually got its act in gear and at least we know who the admits are (IDK about letters, but the usual practice here is not to have POIs email early), which is about a week earlier than usual. I am very surprised!

I know I just said the opposite thing, but I would be VERY surprised if Brown announced to anyone this early.

Not quite. Berkeley is a state school, so it has two different sources of funding: departmental and university. The best candidates are given the departmental funds (which are usually more - in the case of Berkeley $10,000 more per year), and this only requires the approval of the department. This accounts for the first wave of Berkeley acceptances (not sure if these are usually informal contacts) which almost always appear on the results page during the last week of January. The remaining candidates are forwarded on to the graduate school for approval and funding, which creates a second wave in mid-February, followed by rejections and wait-lists. A lot of people over the years have made noise about trolling on the results page. While it's possible, it's not a frequent occurrence, and concern here usually just indicates that the person in question is worried that someone got an acceptance to a school which the wish to attend and they have not.

No, no school really does this. People just report them over multiple days. If you see a couple reports and you haven't heard anything, consider it good time to practice that realistic self-evaluation mentioned above and a rejection.

Yeah, what @psstein said - it's just an easy shorthand for HYP + Berkeley, Chicago, the combination of which have awarded PhDs to something like half of US history profs. Wisconsin and Michigan aren't really in that upper tier - they're more the top-20 mentioned above, along with Brown and Cornell. We tend to split applicant pools.

Sure! For me the big three are: Productivity: how many publications does the average new TT professor in your field have? Can you produce that many on top of your dissertation? What's your timeframe? (I'm doing well here IMO - I hope to go on the market with 4 publications) Grants: are you winning competitive external grants? These are a major sign that people outside your university think your work is valuable, and money begets money. (I'm getting my ass kicked here and it's a big source of stress) Relevance: is your project interesting outside of your subfield? Does it talk to contemporary trends in the academy? In short, will members of a diverse hiring committee think it's cool? (This hangs a lot on how well my dissertation does what I want. People are intrigued but want to see solid proof.) No, lots of dumb people get into good programs and excel there (Ben Carson is an example often in the news). And lots of smart people come from disadvantaged backgrounds of one kind or other and don't look as "smart" in the application process because of it - I'd say about 1/3 of the people I know in top PhD programs have a professor already in their extended family. I've been publicly mocked during my (Ivy) MA program for having to work in a grocery store to pay for college. But that's how search committees think. And if you undertake that critical self-examination I mentioned, you must ask yourself why, if you are as smart and as motivated as you think you are, you didn't get into [good program here]. You may have a very good answer to this question, but always remember that the easiest person to fool here is yourself. This is absolutely true. I've seen people roll out with no publications and then act shocked when they don't pick up one of the 4 (!) TT jobs in their subfield that year. But it's unwise to focus on individual behavior over general trends. Humans tend to latch on to any and every exceptional case they find that gives them hope. I've also seen several Ivy PhDs have their absolute pick, even in the worst job market ever. Case in point. I think we all have seen a candidate with an excellent CV absolutely tank a job talk. But my interpretation of this is story is different: that guy who flopped the talk not only got an Ivy-league postdoc, they also got a campus invitation despite their inability to clutch it out. And why do you think that is? Never mind the number of times I've seen an Ivy PhD give a worse job talk (but not disastrous) than a candidate from a lower-ranked school and get the job offer anyway. (FTR the worst job talk I've ever seen was a professor trying to jump ship from @TMP's department ? )

This point gets glossed over too often because stupid people take it for elitism: there is a massive difference between someone who attended UKansas and one who attended Princeton, namely that one went to Princeton and the other didn't. Given the frankly insane differences in the resources - monetary, temporal, and otherwise - that each would have at their disposal, the UKansas student would have to be an order of magnitude smarter and more motivated to produce a CV (and a dissertation) equal to the Princeton student's. And of course if they were, why would the be at UKansas and not at least at one of those top-20 programs @psstein mentioned? And if you think that search committees at every level don't think this way, I have a little bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell. A lot of lower-tier PhD programs try to convince nervous prospective students that it's ok - their graduates do really well at other lower-tier schools, schools where those top-20 don't want to be and which would be nervous about taking anyway since they might jump ship fast. That might have been true 30 (or even 10) years ago, but we're in a market where Harvard grads think themselves darned lucky to get a job at Bridgewater State University, and search committees know it. And even if we leave all that aside, what those lower-tier schools are actually saying is that other schools hire their students because their students are perceived as aggressively mediocre (and unlikely to find a job at a better institution). That's their sales pitch. As you approach graduate school, exercise critical self evaluation. If you go, what are you going to do differently to stand out from the crowd at the other end?

1) Their TAs are unionized 2) Their TAs don't have contractual teaching obligations IIRC

Did you apply to work with Conant, Kosto, McCormick, and Reimitz, or with Remensnyder, Smail, and Jordan? As others have said, I don't think anyone's going to care overmuch that your projects change (that's what projects do), but you may have had easier prospects one way or the other, as some of these professors have adjusted the kinds of students they accept with the job market in mind, etc. PM me if you have any questions!

Eh, not all places interview, and the results reporting doesn't distinguish between a formal process and a PI calling a person up to chat - some like to do this. What it means is that the person in question is interesting to a PI at that school. Nothing more, nothing less.

I actually do think there's a great deal of merit in weighting this sort of award in the admissions process - the ability to bring in external grants is the sine qua non of academic success, and money begets money. The fellowship is (and should be) a substantial booster to your admissions chances.

You have other things to worry about. If the school thinks there's a problem, they'll contact you. Admissions committees understand that tenure does funny things to human perceptions of time.

If you can't make a piece of writing work in a certain structure, change the structure.

I don't know what else to say that I haven't said before, but to repeat: I failed out of undergraduate twice (cumulative GPA from my first 2 years: 0.86). I'm now in my fourth year at an Ivy. There may indeed be some political nonsense that means you don't get in this year, or just an unlucky handful of wunderkinds in your precise subject area, but it won't be your stats keeping you out.

Personally, I found that the drunker you could make your January, the better.