dr. t

Some advice for your summers: Take at least 2-3 weeks (I would suggest the entire month of August) where you do no academic work whatsoever. No writing, no journals, no books. Travel, catch up on that novel you've been wanting to read, or binge on some Netflix. I know you're excited to get started and organized and are ready to go into it at a million miles an hour, but this is a marathon, and this summer is the last chance you'll have for that kind of vacation - forever, maybe. Enjoy it, and show up relaxed.

As Richard Feynman once (supposedly) said, it's only the things nobody knows anything about that people (in mixed disciplinary company) can discuss. Particle physics makes bad small talk because some people do know something about it. So, weather? Politics? International finance?

But anything to do with MOOCs feels hilariously dated. So 2013!

I understand the concern, but it would be very strange if it was at all noted.

While I think this is generally good advice, I think it's possible you misread what was said - angesradieux was concerned about obtaining funding, not applying for it, as far as I could see. A pretty valid concern!

Yeah, that's a state school for ya. Not worth it, IMO.

Do you have a sense of what the offer from Michigan might be? How does it compare to what you have in front of you? Being able to visit other programs is pretty small potatoes - there are lots of different ways to do this!

Nah, just remind yourself that going to Yale involves spending 5 years in New Haven.

The MA won't count for much on the other end. Brown offers MAs in other fields to its PHD candidates, and the overall advice regarding them is that they're not worth the time. So, from what you said, Cornell is the clear choice.

What do you want to do as a career? History departments tend to hire people with PhDs in history.

Absolute ranking doesn't matter that much, but you'd be turning down a first-tier school for a second-tier school. I wouldn't do it without a very compelling reason. People fetishize fit, but as long as you can assemble a competent committee, there isn't much difference between "good" and "great".

The AmHist job market right now is particularly brutal - recent data shows overproduction of PhDs by a ratio of 3 or 4 for every TT job posting. In fact, the vast majority of overproduction of history PhDs is in the form of Americanists, as European historians are somewhere between a 3:2 and a 2:1 deficit, while Asian historians pretty much have parity (or are even under-producing). Regardless of this professor's willingness to fight for you, which is certainly an admirable quality, or the similarity of your interests, which can be a mixed bag at best, you would be wise to question whether or not this school's offer package is one which will enable you to succeed in finding a job. If not, I would strongly suggest you not take it, regardless of the response from the second school. Stating your offer to either school should not diminish how they view you. Why would it? You got into their program, which I assume they perceive as better, so it's natural that you would also be sought by programs they consider worse. And why on earth wouldn't you want to use anything as leverage? This is the last time you're able to bargain from a position of relative strength for a long time.

What themes do you keep coming back to? What sort of questions interest you? Your period and geographic focus can and will change, but curating questions over answers will help you stay on a coherent course. However, remember that certain subjects extract a mental burden. I gave up on Holocaust history in my undergraduate and turned to medieval Europe because I didn't feel like being sad for the rest of my life.

Don't UK funding decisions come out later in the year?

Either they didn't or it went right into the spam folder, just FYI.

Alas that deans and other admincritters do indeed seem to care.

Adorable! Don't take half measures, though; be sure to hit up Mike McCormick and Drew Faust at Harvard, too. I'm sure they'll be interested. It takes an interesting set of mental gymnastics to try to anonymously doxx someone for online bullying. Hopefully you didn't sprain anything.

Have you talked to school 2 and told them exactly this? If you have and their answer remains the same, I'd accept school 2's offer on the 15th, but withdraw if you hear back positively from school 1. It's generally considered gauche to pull out of an offer you've accepted, but if they won't work with you at all on this, I'm not sure what choice you have.

Statistically speaking, this is just plain incorrect. And optimism in defiance of all reality is very easily confused with stupidity.

Or you could, I don't know, do something with your BA? Of course you'll get a job. 4-5 jobs at different universities, even, which will net you a whopping $25k a year (if you're lucky). But jobs! Hooray! No health insurance or sick leave, though, so don't get the flu! For the reasons listed above, plus the fact that elitism is a factor with which you have to contend on the job market, landing a TT position with a PHD from a non-elite university is very, very unlikely. Because breathless hyperbole isn't a particularly insightful way to understand a more complex argument? I never said don't go to grad school. I said don't go to graduate schools that manipulate your love of your subject to the benefit of their bottom line. I said only go to a school that will set you up for success. I am absolutely shocked that this is at all controversial.

I don't know why everyone think this needs to be picked up based on social cues. If you are in a situation where you will have repeated interactions with a person, put on your adult pants and ask them how they'd like to be addressed.

I love the term "elitist" being thrown around as a pejorative in academia. As if entering graduate school in the humanities was within the realm of possibility for anyone who wasn't already among the global elite. It's even more useless when deployed against the sort of structural argument I have made here. If I had said you shouldn't go to graduate school at a non-Ivy because if you're not smart enough to get into an Ivy, you won't get a job, then one could indeed level a charge of "elitism" against me. Of course, that's exactly not what I said. Those who graduate from Ivies will get jobs over you despite the fact that you are smarter or a better historian precisely because they have structural advantages you do not. These structural advantages are by no means justified on meritocratic grounds. They still exist. You still have to deal with them. Pretending like they don't, like you don't, or that five years of relative happiness is worth fifty years of poverty, is shortsighted. Actually, let's not mince words: it's stupid and immature. But you're entitled to your own stupidity. Trying to convince others to follow you down that path, though, which is precisely what you're doing when you offer your "opinion" in this public forum, is morally reprehensible. Two years ago, I was given a choice between Brown and OSU. OSU's offer was a 4 year TA-ship which required me to be IOR after my second semester at half the annual funding as Brown's. If Brown hadn't made me an offer, I would have gone to OSU. I liked the professor there so much, I almost did anyway. That would have been a stupid decision.

Spoiler alert: only one of these is possible.

Unless my reading comprehension is very much failing me, OP has had several years to get past it.

No. It stopped being just your opinion (as if that were to ever make anything immune from criticism) when you offered it as information which another should use to guide their decision-making. Sure you do. How long have you been paying off those loans for? Have you lived for five years, paycheck to paycheck, stocking grocery store shelves with that loan bill eating half your salary? Because I have. Have you put off starting a family because paying $1100 every month in loans simply makes that impossible? I have. You have, as I said, not yet experienced the consequences of your decisions. Yes. That's exactly my point.