dr. t

Entirely false.

I got into MAPSS last year. I turned it down because I had a better financial offer from my current MA program, and because I didn't really want to have to figure out the gap year business, or the moving to Chicago and leaving my wife for a year business. The MAPSS program is significantly better than the MAPH program - the latter seems to be the real cash cow - and Chicago does seem to pull a good number of PhD students from MAPSS. The program itself looked really exciting and interesting to me, but I would mark a couple caveats: It's only worth it if they've given you a decent (say, 1/2 off) tuition offer. $45k Tuition + living expenses is frankly ridiculous. The size of this offer also reflects the relative regard with which your application was held, and thus your future prospects. If you're in a language-heavy discipline, it's not the best option. You will be discouraged from taking the language courses you need. Make sure the professor you'd like is not going to be on sabbatical the one year you're there I'd definitely say go to the admitted student day before you decide - it was a lot of fun and had me second-guessing my decision on my current program, even with all the caveats above.

This is much better! That is because it is worlds different. It shows you know some of the ways things are, that you've bothered to do your own research, and that you have specific questions that need to be addressed. This should have been your original post!

Ok, this is going to sound very harsh but: If you can't figure this out on your own, grad school isn't for you.

FYI, Harvard thinks History is a Social Science. I can also say that 100% of Harvard history grads in medieval europe in the past ~10 years are employed, minus two who did not enter the job market for their own reasons.

"The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated." -Oscar Wilde I default to tweed or tweedy-looking things.

I know, this cycle hasn't finished yet, but I mentioned it in the other thread, so I'd just as well do it. My current list (PhD, History, High Medieval Europe & Monasticism): Brown, UChicago, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Columbia, Princeton, BC Contemplating: Penn State, Northwestern, UToronto, Notre Dame

My last cycle ended me in a MA program (MTS, to be precise) with substantial funding, so that's why I'm gearing back up.

So who wants to start the 2015 thread

You know, I've been out of the real world for a little while now, but I do remember that when I was a "professional" and I "forgot to turn something in" I would "get fired."

If my recollection of the timetable is accurate, formal approval by administration happened yesterday.

What an ass. I've seen this sort of thing a couple times, and it usually seems to occur with a female TA and a male student. Is that the case here?

I see you have mastered the art of dramatic understatement.

So the most shocking thing to me in this thread is that some people applied to over 10 schools. How the heck are there that many schools with departments which are even vaguely a good fit?

.... me? Why?

Cute.

Ok, if you're undertaking a historiographical analysis, then yes, what would usually be considered "secondary" literature is, in this case, primary, but I would confirm that with the person doing the grading. Were I you, since you said you're having problems with the program, I would have a sit down talk with your professor or your adviser which would basically say what you've just said here: My undergraduate work has left some substantial gaps that this course has revealed, can you help me?

It's also entirely defined by the framing of the question.

No offense to you, but it doesn't sound like your BA prepped you very well here. Is it at least an MA program?

That's probably actually better - you still need the language work, but you don't need to actually jump right in to a diss. The one warning I've received about British academia recently (or, Oxford) is that academics there seem to be aggressively quiet on the subject of the job market. Maybe worrying about a job is something that shows how lower class you are? In the States, if you express interest in a PhD, it is almost universally expected that you will receive the response "Don't do this. Here's how you do this." Definitely find someone in the history dept before going forward.

The best advice I've received is to give yourself a moderate workload - a book or 3-4 journal articles a week on items of historical interest - for ca. 6 months. If you manage to keep it up, the subject still interests you, and it's not a relief to be done, then maybe a PhD program is for you. Your given location is London. Would you be thinking of doing your PhD in the UK, the US, or elsewhere? It makes a substantial difference in terms of how prepared you need to be to start.

Your roommate was super offensive, and a pretty cold reaction is completely justified and expected.

It's weird how that works, isn't it?

Typical in the STEM fields, verboten in the humanities, somewhere between in the social sciences.