dr. t

Learning how to keep talking in a slightly louder voice is a pretty useful skill to acquire, actually.

Wait, do you think asking questions isn't a way of suggesting changes to a proposal? (See what I did there?)

It would be interesting to see such numbers broken down by school ranking. Also, useful!

The meritocratic argument GST makes isn't wrong, but it also isn't the full story. I know plenty of people from top-tier programs with excellent CVs who are struggling on the market. Those who do find offers are finding them at (low to mid-tier) SLCs or similar. But there's also quite a bit of luck and other unquantifiable stuff that messes any neat system. Individual merit might be compared to your GRE scores: you need to have a certain level to even get in the door, but once over the threshold other factors take over. It's also very much worth noting that even within the top tier of programs, attitudes towards "professionalization" still vary widely. I chose my program in part because it had a strong, structured approach to preparing students for the market. Many others still expect their students to acquire such skills through osmosis.

1) No. 2) Only if it needs it.

Exactly. I'm talking a much more basic winnowing, e.g. "The professors here are only kind of in my area", "the major reason I'm choosing this school is because I like the city", "I really just want 'Harvard' on my diploma", "I will need to travel for my diss, and there isn't much internal funding beyond the stipend", etc. Look, I get that the CHE is the doom and gloom forum, and here we're fresh-faced, positive, and optimistic. But if you're applying for graduate school, you hopefully have some skills in critical analysis. Don't forget to use them on yourself.

Of course your program isn't an absolute determiner of where you'll end up. No one will make that claim, and it would be foolish to defend it. And yet I keep seeing it set up to be knocked down on this forum. So yeah, maybe it will all work out if you go to that program ranked outside the top ~20. The statistics are pretty brutal, so it probably won't, though. Those statistics---and not a desperate hope---are what should inform one's decision. If a person's end goal is to do a PhD as you suggest, I would strongly disagree with your assessment of that person as "informed". Saying you don't care how the cards fall and that you just want to get the PhD is a fantastic way to avoid dealing with the scope and probable consequences of the decision to attend. Lying to yourself is the easiest kind of lie there is; this is not an eyes-open approach. FWIW, I applied to 7 programs (6+MA) my first cycle and 6 the second. If I had considered my options more carefully, I would have only applied to 4 the second time around and saved $180.

Do you want to go into ministry? If not, why the MDiv?

I won't say medieval economic history is passé, but it's not the sexy thing right now. Also, Early Medievalists are dwindling in number as time goes on, so that doesn't help. If you're brave, you might try poking at UK schools. KNP - I misspoke, what he actually got was the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award (which is $1.5m instead of $650k) for Origins. And yeah, he's pretty modest and self-effacing... for a Harvard professor

If you can't claim any sort of ability at the time of application, I would leave it off.

Yeah, he's moved towards environmental history recently (and SCIENCE! - see "maps" in my sig), but I think he'd still happily advise a student going the economic route if he or she had really interesting ideas. Based on what you gave as your interests, neither Freedman nor Winroth seemed particularly good fits, and all of the Yalies that do Early Medieval tend to stick to Insular stuff. FWIW, Conant will be on sabbatical next year and thus may not have as active a participation in the selection process as he might otherwise, but on the other hand he doesn't really have any graduate students (being only recently tenured), so the Council of Doom might push some his way.

This is kind of the opposite sentiment of what I was suggesting. I think you would be better off if you cut schools you thought were safe (well, safer, there's no such thing as a safety school here). In other words, whether you think you'll get in should not be a factor in deciding where (or to how many) you apply. My advice is to only aim high and be OK with missing.

I mean, you kind of missed Harvard with Mike McCormick. Origins of the European Economy, MacArthur Genius, and all that. Less obvious is Jonathan Conant at Brown. Who are you thinking of working with at Yale?

This is the key. Our last place, we tried to stop the previous tenant's mail and it didn't happen. In our current apt., we have a very nice mailwoman. We talked to her when she came to deliver, and we haven't gotten anything not addressed to us since.

So the advice I received (and the advice I'll give) is a bit... different. This may be due to a difference of fields, but I don't know why that would be the case. Do not apply broadly, i.e. to more than ~5-6 programs. Be very honest with yourself about which of the programs you want to apply to are actually good fits, and which you want to go to for other reasons. I personally should probably not have applied to UChicago last cycle, but the campus is just so pretty. If there are more than 5-6 programs in which you are a really good fit, whittle down your list by looking at ranking and placement rates. Never consider a program that does not offer a full funding package for five years. It may seem like getting into a program is the most important thing right now. After all, why would you be doing this if you didn't desperately want it? But unless you're independently wealthy, that's not your goal. Your goal is to get a PhD and a job on the other end. Plan your applications with that in mind. There are worse things in life than not getting in, and as any good student of literature should know, the drive to fulfill a goal regardless of cost or method does not usually result in a happy ending.

Your GREs are pretty low. The MDiv tends to have a pretty favorable acceptance rate, though, so you may be fine. Your GREs are low enough that they will probably hurt you for PhD apps.

It was usually a selection option on the application form.

Well, what *have* you been assigned?

No, they're fine.

If you're at all in doubt about the appropriateness of 'joking' language, remove it. Broadly speaking, your SOP has three parts: where you are, how you got there, where you're going. You should only reference literature that moves this narrative forward. Don't add stuff that serves no other purpose than to make you look clever. FWIW, the only explicit references to secondary lit in my SOP came in the final paragraph, in the form of "I want to study history at X because of professors Y and Z. Professor Y's History of Underwater Basket Weaving" and Professor Z's article "Underwater Baskets: Their Purpose and Function" were both formative to the development of my work on the history of the basket under water. Furthermore, the department at X has many professors who have written on various types of weaving that go on, both under and above the water, and the variety of perspectives they offer will be useful to my future work."

Sarcasm and levity are difficult to convey in text. I hope.

All of the application forms I filled out asked me for my languages. This is how I list my languages on my CV

Professors usually advise people to take time off in between undergraduate and graduate studies so that students can mature, get some real-world experience, and figure out what they really want to do. If you're planning on applying to twelve programs, I suspect your professors are most concerned about the latter, i.e. that you're more interested in the idea of going to grad school than you are in the actual subject you want to research. Remember, the purpose of graduate school is to get a job, and so where you get in is way more important than whether or not you do. Deferrals to PhD programs are not usually granted barring exceptional circumstances.

Don't. It might make you feel better, but you gain nothing by it, and it may cost you.