dr. t

I'd say go with the one which lets you fill in the weak spots of your app best. It sounds like that's probably the history degree?

It's far from a universal. My MA program also does not require a thesis.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind. Recommended highly.

New Haven is pretty much New York. I mean, Connecticut really isn't a state so much as it is something one has to endure as one travels between NYC and Boston.

New York?

The full list is in this thread, but 24th (USN/NRC 12/8)

History. The study looked at history, business, and computer science in turn, and found the same trend in all three.

Yes, these are the results from the study I mentioned. Note that "pi" is network centrality and thus "# u" represents "true" ranking based on placements.

This study was posted in another thread: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 It basically says that institutional prestige is an absurdly large factor in hiring decisions, and that if you're not in a top 20 program, your chances of employment drop catastrophically. For history, those 20 (determined my network centrality) are, in order: Harvard University; Yale University; UC Berkeley; Princeton University; Stanford University; University of Chicago; Columbia University; Brandeis University; Johns Hopkins University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Michigan; UCLA; Northwestern University; Cornell University; Brown University; UC Davis; University of Rochester; New York University; UC San Diego There may be some play in the numbers based on subfield, but it doesn't look like much

For those interested in English history, HLS has begun to digitize its fairly impressive collection of Manor Rolls. http://etseq.law.harvard.edu/2015/03/early-english-manor-rolls-go-online/

I agree. It also leaves you with a much better writing sample.

As a point of reference, I often create maps for a full professor, and I am paid for the task. My name is still on all those maps, a point on which the professor himself insisted.

No kidding. I quote from the rental form: "Our custom regalia is made by Oak Hall Industries, which manufactures everything in Salem, Virginia, USA. We are often asked to compare our custom regalia to a competitor’s product, which is made overseas. There are substantial differences in the grade of fabric used - when compared to regalia made overseas, our custom gowns have superior fabric draping, much more generous fluting, and a softer, rich grade of velvet."

It's costing me $80 to rent my gown and hood for my MA.

Yes, but it's more true for some things!

This is an area in which your adviser should be way more of a help than an online forum.

Romanian: the only Romance language I can't muddle through *shakes fist*.

The general warning I received about two years ago is that one year MA programs don't actually give you enough time to strengthen your language skills if that's an area you really need to firm up. But a fully-funded MA sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I would actually wait until after your MA is finished to apply again, and plan to use that extra year for language study too.

I've been consistently told to not bother with such programs. My Latin really doesn't need it (humblebrag), but the best Latin immersion is simply reading lots of text in any case. Plus, for the price of something like Middlebury's famous German immersion program, you can literally go to Germany and take German courses there for a full summer.

I'm just happy I'm not a Byzantinist. I can currently read English, Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Old English. If I were to do Byzantine history, I would have to add Greek, Koine Greek, Arabic, Classical Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Old Church Slavonic, and maybe Hebrew. There's a reason why most Byz. history degrees take 8-11 years!

... 8. And I should really pick up Greek and Arabic.

Oh, that's great! It was good to meet both of you! Are you both headed there? I was very sad to turn the offer down.

Just like "Americanist" is a synonym for "didn't want to do foreign language study"

I think our cohort proved that pretty definitively

I have now officially turned down OSU and given up my waitlist spot at UoT. Brown, here I come!