fossilchick

I'm a current PhD student who went through two rounds of applications (one for MA, one for PhD), so this is just my opinion, but I don't believe "safety schools" really exist in PhD applications. Sure, there are schools you might be more likely to get into -- for instance, W&M is a very small program that sometimes has admitted just 1 new PhD student a year, so the odds can seem more frightening as compared to a school that admits 70 students for a cohort of 40-50 each year. I would really urge you to look at the fit of the program and the trajectory of its graduates, and not just rankings, name recognition, your stats versus their published stats, or impressions about the school. In my two cycles I was twice surprised at gaining admission to schools I thought were "reach" because one professor on the committee really went to bat for my project, and in being rejected from schools that statistically speaking I could have counted on admission (the so-called "safety"). As for how many schools to apply to, I would advise applying to all the schools which 1. you think you're a good fit with, 2. have the resources and faculty expertise to support your program of study, 3. you can afford to apply to, and 4. you would actually be excited to attend if you were admitted.

I'm with annieca. The big "red flag" to me is that you feel at School A you may be pigeon-holed into being the "cultural studies" person among students whose interests closely resemble the professors' policy research agendas. You say that you'd be on your own to find professors to work with; to me, it seems like a problem if your interests really differ from theirs and there isn't a structure in place to ensure that you have a supportive adviser. Maybe you would get there and be pleasantly surprised, but like annieca says, prestige only gets you so far if your professors aren't interested in your work and write very general, cursory letters of recommendation for PhD programs. From your post, I don't see a lot of downside to School B. You say the school is well-connected with museums, which would help you, and is collegial. The weaknesses seem to be that it isn't as prestigious as School A and they don't have a 100% placement of their students into Ivy League PhD program. But does School B have successful placement in general? And, more to the point, how is the placement of both schools for students whose interests resemble yours? Finally, I think it's worth just saying, it is OK to turn down a more prestigious program if another program is a better fit and puts you on a better trajectory. Rankings aren't always the best indicator of that.

Just to help quell the panic about GPAs, I'll throw in my (hopefully uplifting) story from my MA: in the same semester that I had to have emergency surgery, I was saddled with a class with the Professor from Satan-land. Said prof promised me a medical extension, which had been approved by the dean, and then turned around and gave me a B- with no chance to make up any of the work. I could have appealed the B- (basically a D on the graduate grading scale) but it would have taken months. Of course it drove my GPA down in a hurry and in my last semester of graded coursework before just thesis credits there was no opportunity to improve the overall GPA. I ran panicked to my adviser, who promptly told me I was worried for nothing. In the application process you will hear and think a lot about the elusive "fit", To deduce that, admissions committees are looking at the whole package. There's a reason they ask for so much supporting material, not just a grade report. If your GPA is low and your GRE scores are in the toilet and you have a weak writing sample and no great letters, you're probably in trouble. But my low(er) GPA was compensated by other outstanding materials. If you're talented and realistic, one bad grade and a 3.8 will not derail you. Good luck, all!

I agree with most of the advice here, especially becoming very familiar with the reality of graduate school and doing your homework first. (Full disclosure: I study American history, no ethnic, gender, or sexuality component. Send me good thoughts and wishes.) I would add that you should try to speak to a number of graduate students at varying stages of their program, if possible. The advice you get from people in the application cycle is different than the advice you get from someone in coursework, or someone dissertating, or someone about to go on the market. Fortunately there are a bunch of people like me still hanging around the fora and I'm happy to talk about the long view of graduate school now that I'm closer to the end than the start, but I think that when making a decision that will immediately impact your next 5-7 years and then set you on a career track (or not), the more live people you can talk to, the better. Also: contact the professors you're interested in working with, and ask them directly if they are taking on new students before you spend the money to apply. My adviser got overburdened, decided not to take students for the next two years, and still the applications poured in. Those people just didn't have a chance and it was so avoidable.

Yay, History Time! Congratulations! I never attended Welcome Weekend at UConn, but I did go at a few other places. They all varied a bit but usually had an itinerary like: presentation from the Grad Director, campus tour, chance to meet with your prospective advisers or other professors, some grad student social event, maybe a chance to sit on on a class or some other campus event, and some time to explore the area. I'm happy to chat further if you'd like, but my best advice is 1. dress for the weather, and 2. enjoy it! It tends to be a fun time with a lot of excited people.

I'm a little confused about why you say dropping the poli sci graduate class didn't affect you academically. The way I read this, you applied for a graduate program at your alma mater, got in, and then dropped out within several weeks of beginning the program. Please correct me if I don't have that right. The reason this matters is that if you're relying on your political science professors to write you letters of recommendation, you could be impacted by having dropped out of their program. When I applied to MA programs, they asked for 10 undergraduate courses in history or an allied humanities field. A lot of the answer to whether your academic preparation will hurt or help you depends on what type of history you want to study. If you want to study, say, the history of election procedure, I think a political science background won't raise any red flags and might actually help. If all of a sudden you're applying to work on medieval gender history, 3 history classes probably won't be enough. You don't really say why you want to study history at the graduate level beyond currently teaching a government class, or why your alma mater is the best fit. In order to write any kind of statement of purpose, you will need a strong reason for wanting to pursue history; in your case, you want your reasoning to be air-tight so it explains why you've pursued but turned away from other fields. My advice is also to talk to current graduate students in history at your alma mater, and the graduate director to see if you're a good candidate for the program. And if you're really interested in teaching, you might want to look to see if you can get a full-time position at a school that offers some tuition reimbursement for graduate study.

This is the experience in my current program as well. They are reducing the number of admits to the PhD program for the incoming cohort. As a result, a lot of very high-quality candidates are being offered admission to the MA instead. Not sure where that leaves the MA applicants...

I definitely think it's OK to ask. However, you should be prepared to get a variety of different answers based on who you talk to. The DGS may or may not have a long memory when it comes to placement. The department may highlight a few of their graduates in particularly good positions. Certain advisers may have stellar placement rates and others have no one in TT jobs, leading to a middling average on placement for the department as a whole (but obviously, the department average doesn't reflect student experience). Some former students may be working outside academia because that is their career plan and others may be working outside academia because they can't secure an academic position; metrics wouldn't show the nuance in that distinction. If you can't get a handle on overall placement, you can get around it by asking pointed questions that should give you some indication. Ask the DGS or POI how many students have finished in the last 5 years, and what they are doing. Does the department offer professional development opportunities? Do students go on the market when they are ABD? How do students support themselves while they are on the job market? Does the department ever hire instructors or lecturers from the ranks of its graduate students? If you're not already in touch with some graduate students, ask to be put in touch. If possible, talk to students at different stages of the program. A student who is ABD or near defending should have some intel on very current placement of finished students. Then you just have to triangulate the answers you get. In general, Sio68, I agree with you that an individual with good networks, a strong dissertation, articles, teaching evals, etc. can find success even if their department doesn't have a 100% placement rate. That said, it doesn't mean you shouldn't investigate, or be blind to any red flags.

Some questions you should ask yourself before you approach the PI: -How dependent will you be on department members for letters of recommendation? -Is there a significant financial benefit to leaving mid-semester? Will you be leaving someone in the lurch by quitting immediately? -Is there a career benefit to taking cumulative exams? Assuming all things equal, I think quitting mid-semester is probably not the best option for preserving your relationships with the faculty, especially if you're working in a lab or are a TA. Unless there is a pressing reason that requires you to leave immediately, I would plan on finishing the semester. You also need to investigate your university's policies regarding leaves and withdrawal, not just the department's. I've heard and seen firsthand some horror stories of people leaving mid-semester and owing substantial amounts of money in fees and other costs because the universities had policies in place to keep people from abandoning work during the term. If you school has a centralized graduate school or graduate office, a visit there might be in order. The Chronicle of Higher Ed has some good threads on this very topic, that I recommend you take a look at. There's lots of good advice on approaching the PI and formulating a non-academic plan to present as part of the reason you're leaving. Good luck.

Wow, these requirements really vary by program quite dramatically. My MA program required a language exam and at the time you signed up, you had to provide a written paragraph about why that language was relevant to your project. (We were Americanists. For some people, their language was a stretch.) 2 hours, 3-5 pages of academic text, with a dictionary. My PhD program allowed students to take the exam in any language they wanted, but if you didn't pass the language exam you were required to take a full year of intermediate or advanced language classes, which the tuition waiver didn't cover since the courses were outside the department. So there was a strong incentive for the program not to admit students who weren't ready to take, and pass, the exam.

I second rising_star on asking about the fees. Investigate this on the Graduate School's website. Ask the DGS and/or graduate students in the department, if you're put in touch with them, about other expenses students incur at the university. At my PhD institution, students on TAship or RAship (virtually all of the PhD students, for their first 4 years) have a tuition waiver that includes health insurance and some of the mandatory fees, but health insurance is mandatory, so once students are off-stipend they are required to purchase the plan at a cost of upwards of $2500 for one person. But at least they can plan for that eventuality. I have colleagues at schools where the fees look low, but they are hit with a charge if they want to use the gym, go to the Health Center, get a library card, have a mailbox at school, etc., and they are being nickled and dimed. Along the lines of summer funding, what, if any, resources does the department or Graduate School have for conference or research travel? Are there financial awards or prizes that students compete for? Are there dissertation-finishing fellowships that are controlled by the department or the university? Does the University have any affiliations that tend to get their students awards? (For instance, a historical society that has an award just for a doctoral student from that university working in the collections.) If a school has a weaker funding offer but funds their students through summers and/or dissertations, it might look like less money up front but pay out more overall. Believe me, you will want that when you are a year from finishing!

I've definitely heard of students following their advisers, especially in the sciences, but I've not heard of an instance in the humanities where a student who was 1-2 years from finishing the dissertation, totally done with coursework from their original program and through exams with a whole dissertation committee declared, made a move and received a degree from the new institution. Does this happen?

Hi all, I'm hoping you can shed some light onto a situation that I'm sure happens, but I've never seen or experienced until now. There is a fairly well-substantiated rumor that my adviser will be leaving the university for another academic job. I am a PhD candidate in the humanities, past exams with my prospectus defended, but with 1-2 years left of research and writing. My adviser has the most graduate students of any professor in the program, but most aren't advanced to candidacy yet. All in all, my experience at this university has been very poor. My adviser is really the saving grace of the whole endeavor, and I chose this program specifically because of her. I worked for her as a TA and have a fellowship for next year, so I'm no longer financially dependent on the program for my funding. Do advanced students ever follow their advisers? There is no possible substitute adviser in the department. Two other profs work in my area, but one is on intermittent medical leave for ongoing health problems and the other is a new, totally overwhelmed professor who is unlikely to survive 3-year-review. The university is on a hiring freeze so they'll bring in a lecturer first, not a new TT. I also have no real desire to keep an affiliation with the university once the prof holding up their program leaves, but I know I might be stuck there since I don't want to start over. I have no idea what happens to students who are fairly advanced in their program but not going to finish before the adviser leaves. Adviser is currently abroad and out of contact, so I'm interested in what's happened to others so I know what I might hear from her when she returns in a few weeks.