dr. t

My current helper is a little app called Sleep for Android. It monitors your sleep cycle and wakes you up when you're not in REM, among other features. In addition to that, an hour of good intense exercise and a nightcap of proper whisky.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -Aristotle Which is to say: everyone has bad days. It's what you do with the rest of the time that matters.

I use Diigo for my online note taking (it's significantly better than evernote for academic purposes). It will work on embedded PDFs IIRC. I'm still a bit old-fashioned when it comes to note taking, so I'll usually do PDFs and books in my regular notebooks.

And really, if you're going to critique my reading skills, learn to spell "purpose".

I keep forgetting that people come to the internet for validation and not for opinion. That's my fault.

I don't really mean to keep coming back at you, but I from what you've given here it still seems to me that you're laboring under the fundamental misapprehension that the graduate application process is a lot like the undergraduate one. Your original request to "simply state your chances at each school" is so divested from the reality of the graduate application process as to be pretty funny. Honestly, I never looked at a ranking chart when I applied. I read books, found the professors I wanted to work with, and applied to their schools. This could again be a difference of area, which others on this forum could talk to, but the number of schools nation-wide I found with departments that interested me is about the number you've found in California. That doesn't seem to be right. I would read more, research more, figure out some of these differences, build your CV, get a little real world experience, and come back at this next fall. YMMV.

Eeeh. I mean it's certainly not my field, but it seems like you could get a whole lot more specific before going too far. Are the schools you listed actually strong in the field you want to study? My initial impression was that they were simply chosen based on geography, which is not wise. Might it be possible to wait a few years until life resolves itself and apply with a broader geographic scope then?

As much as I think the fencing club bit is awesome, this isn't about extracurricular activities. This is not at all like your undergraduate application. It's about what you want to study. Uh... what do you want to study?

It would be a pretty interesting navel-gazing experiment to make a little database of which schools consider history a social science and when they started doing so. At Harvard it is also a social science. IIRC, this pattern holds for most (all?) T1s. A further question: is the question of humanities v. social science inextricably bound up in the quant/qual debates (and their fallout) of the 1970s and beyond? Is this a useful way to look at the distinction, or does it blind us to more productive discussions we might be having?

I'm not sure I understand your question. If you're asking if you will need to develop strong French language abilities to study the French Revolution, the answer is yes, and the fact that you had to ask is troubling. If you're asking if you need them to apply, then the answer would depend on the specific program and the overall strength of your application, but more is better.

I don't think we disagree with our answers so much as on what the OP is asking. I think (s)he needs to be more specific than they are, and I understood "thesis" - possibly incorrectly - in the context of a senior project rather than as a diss.

Yes, you should probably have one. If this is something you actually want to do, I would take some time off and go see the world. Apply in a few years.

I will neither confirm nor deny that I regularly wait until the day a recall is due to turn it into one of the satellite libraries which ensures maximum processing time. BorrowDirect is faster than recalling anyway! My school has several large annual faculty/grad student book sales, which are useful places to search.

A bit late, but I'd just add that one of my professors is fond of pointing out that the true purpose of grad school is to get a job when you leave graduate school. That usually means teaching skills.

There is also scattered, occasional, and highly contested nonresidential parking in the area.

Aww, you make me blush! I'll save this for my next round of PHD apps because God knows I'll need it then I'll run the general thought by some Celtic friends and see what they say. Based on what I know generally about programs which require lots of languages, linguistic skill can be a pretty big deciding factor early on. I'm sure they list somewhere what the Celtic dept specifically looks for, and I am fairly confident in saying that they will get enough qualified candidates with those skills that not having them would be Not A Good Sign. That said, I'm a strong proponent of making an attempt at something you want, no matter the reach. What you try shouldn't depend on whether or not you think you will succeed, but rather what you want to do (note: do not apply this principle to things like jumping over a crevasse). Heck, I was told by one current PhD student that he app'd to something like 10 schools and got into 2, one of which was Harvard. The one caveat I would give is to have a firm idea of what you would want to do with the program.

What do you want to know?

I don't disagree with much that you say, and obviously given the necessity of commuting from Haverhill, the T is the best option, both in terms of cost and duration of travel. However, the implication (or outright statement?) that the Commuter rail (which is a part of the T) is rarely delayed or late is, in my experience of 28 years living in this fine city, a claim that has absolutely no basis in anything which could be vaguely construed as reality. For example, just last month, when temperatures hit the 90s, train service on many commuter rail tracks was restricted to ~20mph resulting in multi-hour delays on all lines. Because it was hot. Not even unseasonably hot. Just hot. In my experience, about 25% of commuter rail trains are at least 10-15 min late, and that at least once a month you will experience delays in excess of an hour. My brother-in-law, who lives and commutes from Beverly daily to a job at Copley, confirms this experience. On top of this, the green line is the worst of all possible T lines, and the E line is the most neglected and least frequent of the green line trains. I understand individual circumstances and preferences are unique, but I would rather live with the rats in a dumpster in Allston than make that commute.

I would note HDS offers the same through its Summer Language Program, which is free. George_lit, I was in a very similar situation to you a year ago. My numbers were about the same, and I am also from a non-traditional Ivy program. While I don't know the specifics of your field - I'm a high medievalist - I do have a couple friends who study medieval reception of Hebrew texts and things like that. Feel free to PM me with any questions, and the ones I can't answer I'll forward on!

I would term this highly unusual. In other news, this exists: http://howfuckedisthet.com/

My abstract was accepted, so yep!

Haverhill is quite a trek! The T is probably your best bet.

Since most Div schools have a separate admissions process

Or anything by Peter Brown that you don't have already. If you get his bio of Augustine, get the second edition, fyi.

I mean unless you're posting them online no one is going to tackle you on your way out of the library. That said, I mainly use it for rare, fragile, and/or reference books which are hard to obtain. Or anything from Brepols because they charge the most absurd prices I've ever encountered. My general rule for purchases is if a full text is required for two classes that I've taken, it gets bought. Or if I really like it. Or if I've had one beer more than I should and am on Amazon.