dr. t
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Posts posted by dr. t
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On 1/30/2024 at 6:58 PM, historianmusicologist118 said:
Do schools release results by spurts/alphabetical order?
Generally no. If the school you're hoping for has released some results and you haven't heard, that's almost certainly bad news.
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For all things related to applying to graduate school in history in the fall of 2023.
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On 3/10/2023 at 2:03 PM, KinOfKafka said:
but their funding package is insanely good (40K) so I don't expect that)
Look at the median 1BR rent in Boston before you get too excited.
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19 hours ago, PhDApplicant23 said:
But like can you compare History to other humanities disciplines, it feels like a lot of whining for one of the two better funded departments, this and English.
I wrote this: https://www.historians.org/ahajobsreport2022
Let me know if you have questions.
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19 hours ago, notebook said:
No worries lol i wouldve responded earlier but i received a week long ban for sexual content
?You got silenced for trying to troll the troll. If you want to post your AO3 stories here, enjoy I guess.
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Funding is the most important criteria; you can't write a dissertation if you can't get to your archive. If you think school 2 is ok in that regard, there's your answer.
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14 hours ago, waitingforresults said:
all of those tips and communications didn't really help you with your admissions, did they?
You don't know that, actually. They might have taken a mediocre application to a good one, but it's not about the quality of your applications, it's about the quality of the application relative to others. And a professor doesn't know what other applications they're getting. But it is useful information to know that a professor is enthusiastic and communicative.
Anyway, my signature line seems applicable here. Congrats on your acceptances; don't let them go to your head. Getting through grad school is pretty difficult if your entire cohort won't talk to you.
14 hours ago, waitingforresults said:communicating with POIs has no positive or negative impact on your chances
This will vary wildly based on the specific department and person.
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Cleaned up this thread a bit. We are aware of the trolling problem and are doing the best we can with the tools we have. Please report posts but do not engage; troll feeding will result in a 1 week silence.
- feralgrad, treaux, Leeannitha and 1 other
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15 hours ago, idkwhattoput said:
does this include history of science?
Separate department.
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19 hours ago, delirious said:
There's a second harvard unofficial acceptance on the results board...are you sure about this?
19 hours ago, ATAH said:Maybe both profs lied to me ?
Files come in, profs look over those in their specialties, and then send them on to the overall committee, who makes the final selections. A professor can sometimes know if a file they've forwarded is going to make it through or not, e.g. if the three Americanists in the dept. all decide that Jane Smith is their number one pick for that year. That's likely what these acceptances are.
- nightiey, cosmic_chariot, kimedieval and 1 other
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On 1/18/2023 at 3:32 PM, kimedieval said:
Question for more experienced people/anyone in a program currently: The History program I applied for had to cancel a medieval history class this semester because they didn't have enough medievalists to support it... Does that bode well for me as a medievalist? (The Medieval Studies program, which is my dream, doesn't have a lot of history subfield people, either)
ND is one of the few schools wealthy enough to have a medieval studies center, but there aren't generally that many medievalists in any specific subdiscipline at any one school. It's not something that should worry you about ND, but it is something that should worry you when it comes to the state of academic employment. If you can tolerate South Bend for 7 years, though, you're probably pretty immune to suffering.
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18 hours ago, earlycalifornia said:
does this mean that AHA can’t unionize?
As I understand it, the existing finances and infrastructure of the organization could not legally be used to establish a trade union, no.
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On 9/30/2022 at 2:06 AM, zzzmegzzz said:
In reality people from schools outside the top 10 in their field or sub field or even outside their discipline get jobs.
I take a very hard line on this confusion of possibility and probability, and not only because I've done the numbers—though the numbers do suck generally.
Can people from non-elite programs get a TT job? Sure. Are they likely to? No. Are they anywhere near as likely to as non-elite programs to get a TT job? No. From the Where Historians Work Dataset, on which I have done independent analysis, between 2004 and 2017, the top-10 schools when scored by placements are:
- Cornell (70% of PhDs found TT jobs)
- Princeton (68%)
- Harvard (66%)
- MIT (64%)
- NYU (61%)
- UMich (61%)
- Johns Hopkins (60%)
- Yale (60%)
- Columbia (58%)
- Stanford (58%)
Note that the WHW data is a full survey of all PhDs earned in that period.
These 10 schools account for 38% of all TT jobs found in that period, despite the schools constituting only 6% of all PhD-awarding institutions. Only around 30 programs (18%) find jobs for more than half of their graduates. And as the total number of available jobs dwindle, this disparity is only getting worse. Only 14 schools (9%) have placed more than 50% of their graduates after 2009. Fewer jobs mean those at the bottom, not the top, struggle to find jobs first. And on a related note, of the 10 programs worst hit by the reduction in job availability, 7 are state schools (Arkansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Arizona, West Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi).
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On 9/6/2022 at 4:49 PM, psstein said:
I would argue that history is already dying via isolation in the academy (or largely has died).
Nah, it's not like... classics, which has deliberately and obstinately written itself into irrelevancy.
I think what you're actually seeing is the death of tenure, outside of R1s at least.
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29 minutes ago, WhaleshipEssex said:
And if the analogy holds, we'll get neither.
The moral arc of the universe is long and bends towards Joe Biden.
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1 hour ago, AfricanusCrowther said:
The incessant doom and gloom is unhelpful, but IMHO universities could make alt ac careers viable by, for one thing, actually hiring their PhDs (as this essay points out). At my program alternative career programming is handled entirely by the students, which doesn't help.
This is a thing I struggle with, particularly being on the staff of an organization that's in a position to advocate but not to dictate. I can list off so many things that would fix academia, if only everyone would just magically agree to do them. At work we get tons of these. "You should mandate that..." (we have no enforcement power). "You shouldn't accredit..." (we don't accredit). "You should unionize..." (we're a 501c with a charter from congress).
This is the Bernie Bro approach to academic policy, and the reality of the situation calls for a Liz Warren to actually get shit done.
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22 hours ago, psstein said:
I'm fairly hostile to much of the "alt-ac" shift, because I think it's largely a series of comforting lies faculty and admins tell themselves to justify having graduate students, especially in programs with poor placement records.
I am also hostile to badly-implemented policies.
But what's the solution to the problem posed by the Graph of Doom, i.e. PhDs are overproduced vs. the prevalence of academic jobs? Ban programs outside the top-20 from having PhD programs? That's both antidemocratic and insufferably elitist. It would really be the death-through-isolation of history within the academy. Create more academic jobs? Sure, are you paying?
Without a solution - or even a possible solution - what's the point of emphasizing the data?
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2 hours ago, AfricanusCrowther said:
Thanks for this helpful if disturbing report. Is there any plan to produce an updated version of this chart?
Ah, the "Graph of Doom (tm)". No, for a lot of reasons, chief among which is that it is built on the assumed truth that the only thing one can do with a PhD in history is become a professor.
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On 8/12/2022 at 9:48 AM, Bana81 said:
Is it at all possible to pursue a PhD in History remotely from a good University in North America or Europe ?
No.
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2025 Application Thread
in History
Posted
For those applying to graduate programs in history in the fall of 2024.