dr. t

It is not obvious. Reading your initial question and responses, that was precisely what it looked like you wanted to do. You want to approach a specific time period and region, which we usually call a subfield, through the methodology of intellectual history. For example, I study the long 12th century in France through the lens of intellectual exchange and social interactions. In other words, I take two primary methodological approaches to my subfield. As mvl said, some departments have a greater number of professors who adopt a specific methodological approach to the questions they ask. Sometimes a department will have a strong interest in intellectual history in one subfield, but in gender or economic history in another. To get recommendations from this forum, you need to specify the subfield(s) that interest you.

I might steal this for a signature

Not in any departments I know of. Do you have a subfield of interest?

You misunderstand. I'm not saying you don't need a PhD to teach at university, I'm saying that if your primary motivation is to teach, you neither need nor want a PhD. A PhD program is centered around professional training in research. Its goal is to train you as a researcher. Even in the most forward thinking programs, teaching is at best secondary to this goal. And even at the schools most focused on teaching, you will be expected to produce publishable research. A love of teaching is well and good---even necessary, in this job market---but as the sole (or even primary) motivation for pursuing a PhD? No. Nor, if you were to persevere, would you find the freedom you imagine to teach what you want. This is not a difference of opinion. This is the way it is.

You do not get a PhD to teach. If that's your end goal, go get the MA. I think the idea that only the very top offer full funding packages is misleading. Every program I can think of in the top-20 of my field offers a livable stipend for at least five years, and most in the top-50 offer the same. If you can't get one of these, don't go. Also, many programs that do offer funding prohibit you from working outside of the university as a precondition of that funding.

There are no circumstances under which I would recommend taking an unfunded PhD program. Even if you were independently wealthy, a PhD is a job. Why would you work for someone who does not respect you enough to pay you enough to survive?

This is considered a methodological approach to historical questions, rather than a subfield.

Hmmm, ok. I think I can apply some of this - other bits maybe not, as I am (of course) holding back some details. Thanks, all!

Novick is better for some subdisciplines (Americanists, modernists) than he is for others. Well, in my actual first year as a graduate student, I was assigned Herbert Butterfield and David Hackett Fisher. I liked both of them, for the record

I assume this is a question with an answer that's obvious to all of my lab-based colleagues, but as a poor historian, I'm stumped. I have day-to-day management responsibilities for a large project, which mainly involves wrangling the undergraduates who do the majority of our gruntwork. The work is usually hands-off, function at your own pace, so my job's pretty easy. If students have technical questions, I answer them or bump them up the chain, but they're usually self-sufficient. We just got a new student, and he's proving a bit of a handful. He says he wants to go on to graduate work, but he can't even accomplish relatively simple tasks without a lot of handholding. If, for example, I say, "look this up in book XYZ", the question comes back, "how do I find XYZ". Well, you look it up in the library catalog, of course. I've tried some gentle approaches ("Well, what do you need to know to solve this problem") and had several in-person meetings, but there's no real change. Do you all have any strategies to cut the umbilical without coming off as a raging asshole? Is the answer different if you're talking to a freshman or a senior?

Also, at the end of one, you get an MA, and at the end of the other, they give you a PhD.

Because it was super hot when our advisers were finishing their PhDs, so it's what they turned to immediately when they needed to fill that hole? He brings up some interesting thoughts, but I am not, generally speaking, a fan.

I got married the June before I started my MA. We had lived together for 3 years before marrying. The MA was 2 years and local, so we didn't have to move and my wife could keep her really nice job. I turned down a 1-year MA program on the other side of the country because I didn't believe the distance was doable, and I believe that was the right decision now, almost three years later. Since we moved to my PhD institution, my wife spends 3 hours a day commuting. It's a workable situation, but we've now done this long enough that we know how to handle the inevitable problems. I would not recommend it to newlyweds.

Relevant link: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense Specifically:

That is not the way either of the funding packages offered to me would shake out. The fellowship years cover both and exist to facilitate travel and archival research, but you need to teach and be in residence for the TA years. Similarly, one of my friends in Harvard history dept. spent what should have been her TA year abroad, and to do so she had to suspend her candidacy. Are we talking Harvard? If so, I can be more specific.

Frequently these sorts of exchange programs are for those who have advanced to candidacy, i.e. passed quals. I assume that's the case here, too. Classwork is only one part of the equation. Your funding package, including tuition remission and healthcare, will presumably be contingent on you teaching or TAing for a significant portion of your program. This must, of course, be done at Y.

Do you have a study showing that 20C US deviate substantially from the figures published by the AHA? Because "50% TT after 10 years," while a rather depressing statistic, is not the same as "highly unlikely to ever land a TT job".

You should be able to figure out the tenure rate at the school with only a little digging. How far are they along in the process?

If plural of "anecdote" is not "data," the singular sure as hell isn't either. I wouldn't worry about the AA if you got a BA elsewhere later. And a decent MA will cover a mediocre BA institution.

You already found the engineering forum; not sure why you think the history forum would be helpful.

Humanities grading scale: A: Acceptable B: Bad C: Catastrophic

Yeah, the higher grade funding packages from state schools are very much based on numbers. One of the reasons I didn't end up going to OSU is that my cumulative undergraduate GPA (3.06) disqualified me from university-wide fellowship funding, and I was only offered a smaller TA funding package.

You should first check with the school. In some places untenured profs can't be primary advisers. Also, are we talking about NTT or just TT in the tenure process?

I mean, yeah, of course, you don't see many PhDs who got their degrees at CCs. At that point, I don't think we're talking about prestige any more though.