playingivory

Like others have said, I think you made the best choice for yourself. I think everything about this process involves a leap of faith to some extent...here's hoping your experience at Cambridge is wonderful. Congrats!

Leave it to my fellow Wolverine to take the words out of my mouth I agree, actually, with both SweetCheese AND pudewen to an extent though. There are ultimately advantages and disadvantages to any program regardless of the location. I think ANY program, be it for the student want to study history, or architecture, or even jazz guitar...we must make decisions that will ultimately, hopefully, allow us to best achieve our goals- where to apply and where to attend all go along with that, and when you consider the uniqueness of each program, we all should in some way be afforded that opportunity. That being said, heulwen, if you think you're interested in teaching in Europe, I think the debate here over job prospects with regard to both of your university options shifts entirely. To me, Cambridge seems like the program that would be set you up for that particular goal. Beyond that, I'm sure you're able to give fairly accurate weighting to other factors through your own knowledge and insight from others. To add to the two comments above mine about the US/non-US PhDs, I have two acquaintences who are assistant professors at a satellite Michigan campus. One is an Tudorist (Elizabethan diplomacy) from Oxford and the other is an Asianist (eastern Russia / western China) from Harvard. The one from Oxford had teaching experience, though I believe for her, it was optional (I admittely could be wrong about that, but I'm positive she taught). If that's the case, perhaps a good question to ask going into a non-US PhD program is if that IS an option for you and you can do what you need to. (Really, Princeton doesn't have a teaching requirement - optional, I believe - and they're arguably one of the most well-regarded history PhDs in the country.) They both found fairly immediate success with job placement and have tenure track positions at a respectable institution. I do know that the one coming from Harvard has an easier time teaching survey courses overall; the one from Oxford has to do a bit more research teaching the survey courses. Perhaps that speaks more to pudewen's point, but perhaps it's also coincidental. An interesting comparison though, given the discussion, looking at two young historians with fairly similar backgrounds at the best universities in the UK and the US (essentially, anyway, not trying to suggest any type of ranking....just looking at how they're perceived). Interesting discussion!

Please don't take away the "I can do aaaaanythinggggggggg"! Those are my sentiments exactly. Actually, that's my mantra right now. haha

I agree with the rest about the experience being extremely helpful for understanding grad work (and for me, it also helped me really develop the research bug, and I now have a generally good idea at how to approach my potential project when I write my SOP)... however, if you have a strong enough writing sample, I don't necessarily think you HAVE to do one. TMP has a good suggestion for an independent study (I've done two myself and you can really make the experience what you need it to be, especially given the right adviser). --------------- ^ that line marks my end of one discussion and launch into a new one, given a question I've been asking some younger professors in my department. For my writing sample, I am assuming I will use my senior thesis. My problem lies with how to cut it down, and I'm assuming some of you with an M.A. thesis might have some insight (mine is not quite as long as a Masters dissertation but certainly longer than a typical undergrad thesis). My thesis is right around 70 pages: do I send only a chapter (ca. 15 pages) with an abstract?; do I rewrite into a very condensed paper?; do I do something different depending upon varying page requirements? Your thoughts on this would be helpful

I LOVE the neighbourhood Columbia is in. I don't think Morningside Heights is bad at all, and they're a heartbeat from being in the Upper West Side, my fav NYC neighbourhood. In all fairness, I've never wandered more than 7 or 8 blocks north of the campus by foot though, so perhaps its more sketchy up there? As for here or anywhere anywhere else, though, I'm from Detroit, so really, not many "bad neighbourhoods" freak me out. You mostly just have to pay attention.

University of Spoiled Children. L-O-L. I've never heard that before. I've actually never been to the USC campus - my aunt told me the campus is in a shady area, is that true (she's also a former Bruin, so she may be a bit biased? haha) Also- can we make sticky threads in this forum? If so, I move to keep this thread at the top of the list indefinitely- that spreadsheet will be invaluable for quite some time, especially as it continuously gets updated. Just my thoughts!

Thanks for stating this! Does anyone know- for UCLA, is the listed financial package based on the new endowment they just received? I was told that because of a very large sum of money they were given they're now going to be able to offer very different financial packages (for history PhDs), so I'm curious if that is starting Fall 2013 or Fall 2014.

Ahh... so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I'm saying! Yay humanism!

Well, I was apparently way early (my first visit was January), and everyone was quite receptive to me. I didn't take a "timeline" into consideration mostly because 1) I didn't know there was an appropriate time and 2) I wanted to meet with people in person, and with my insane schedule (school full time, work a regular job, teach music and acting, coach theatre kids to get into college and usually am directing a play), I went when the chance presented itself. So my answer for you is- contact people when you feel you're ready to begin a dialogue. If you don't hear anything back, try them again at the end of summer or just into the fall term. As another thought, I did have several POIs ask me why I was starting so early, and I told them I tend to be an over-planner, so I wanted to have all my "ducks in a row," if you will. The response every single time to that was: you're lucky you're so ahead of the game, most people scramble at the last minute. How true that is, I don't know, and I certainly don't attribute that statement with waiting to contact POIs until October, but I figure it was worth noting.

Thank you all VERY much for your thoughtful responses! I suppose I'll email the person at Princeton I'm interested in and see if she is able to take on grad students or if she could refer me to someone else and sit on my committee (though as far as I can tell from the website, there's not really many others in the department that are that closely linked to my interests). The POI that I met with at Columbia mentioned that Princeton is tending to tenure their assistants...whether that has any bearing on the situation or not. I'm less concerned about choosing an older POI because I'm hoping that they would continue to be up front with me about retirement (that's really awful, Phdoobie...). Most of folks I'm looking to work with aren't anywhere near retirement- the only one slightly older, but still probably not near retiring, was my guy at Columbia, who was the most dear, lovely person I've ever met, and after he took 2 or 3 hours for our scheduled 1/2 hr meeting and offered to help me edit my SoP, I feel fairly confident that he's not going anywhere. Good advice from TMP though on checking recent publications, I hadn't thought of that. sweetcheese: fellow Wolverine, woohoo! How interesting that you're going into musicology, I actually considered doing that (that and performance studies or dramaturgy... I am an arts person for sure - I teach music and acting - and had been very torn on what to do, but ultimately, I've decided history is my best choice)! I will likely be sending you (and remenis - thanks for all that info!) a PM at some point in the future! Also to clarify my comment about the UK system, I mean that as being exclusive to the UK system. I don't expect at all to get into a school just because someone wants to work with me. The contacts I've made thus far as more out of my being neurotic about wanting to know as much as I can about potential advisers and programs as I can. I simply meant that, at least for her at Oxford, the UK seems to be a bit different and I wondered if anyone else had had that experience over there. Thanks very much again!

I'm going to completely derail this thread for a second to share a dream I had last night that absolutely no one will fully appreciate but you all: I had a dream that I was interviewing with a POI, and he told me that my being accepted relied solely on completing a translation. He handed me something like a Cosmo but in Latin and asked me to translate the front cover. I completely blanked and he got mad at me for not knowing the word "accessory." I kept trying to tell him that I promised I really did know how to translate Latin!! He proceeded to look up at me and say "thank you, that is all" a la Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. My subconscious must clearly be trying to work something out.

Debated whether to start this as a new thread or not, but I figure there could be ways to branch this discussion out further, so here goes: So, it goes without saying that at any program you apply to, you need a viable POI with whom you could work. There are several schools that I've found someone I'm interested in studying with who are Assistant Professors (one in particular that I'm VERY interested in - at Princeton, so maybe New England Nat could weigh in a bit further here...). I'm concerned that if I were to be accepted, I'd get partially through my studies and my adviser wouldn't get tenured (or some other scenario) and leave. This was also a concern with older professors, but the ones I contacted were pretty up front that they were planning retirement and referred me to other POIs at their school or elsewhere...and their transparency was appreciated. Also- my undergrad thesis adviser is a recent graduate from Oxford. She mentioned that in the UK, you find a POI and if you get them to agree to work with you, you essentially get into that school, granted you meet their requirements. (At least, that's apparently how it worked for her?) This boggles my mind a bit. Anyone encountered these situations? How did you handle it? Thoughts?

1) See my photo. Call me crazy but I think ole Hal is freakin awesome. 2) Thomas More- the more I learn about him, the more interesting I find him, particularly his views on education. 3) Shakespeare (are we seeing a trend?...and yes, early modern England is my specialisation). Cause he's Shakespeare. 4) Peter the Great. The dude was awesome. He dabbled in dentistry, built ships himself, threw wild parties where they drank all day and still woke up earlier than everyone else to go back to work - how could he NOT be fascinating? 5) Oscar Wilde. How brilliant but how tragic the latter part of his life was.

Check this threat out for some of those answers

A large part of what I'm interested in is informed by the English Reformation. There are a couple of advisers I'm interested in working with who have appointments in the school/dept of theology in addition to history, so if I were lucky enough to get in to one of those schools, I would likely take more of a religious history route.

I would think that you'd be able to produce something substantial for your sample in seven months. Attempting to go through this as an undergrad, I would hope so anyway! You could spend some carefully making revisions and polishing to your completed paper since you've got the time while working on your current project, and once you're finished in June decide what you feel most confident with. MY question about a writing sample lies with how to choose the best selection if I plan to use my senior thesis, which will be about 75 pages when I'm done next month. Another viable option may present itself, but that's what I assume I will use. I am mostly musing to myself here but any thoughts or suggestions are welcomed also.

Wow, thank you for that list, Katzenmusik! Very helpful!

Taco- That was incredibly enlightening, thank you for posting!!! I would be very interested to see one of those put together for History.

Here's another question for you all: any ideas on how an American could obtain external funding to get their MA overseas?

No worries. It makes perfect sense to me why you'd have connected them...the attitude was very UM.

TMP: you were referring to my post? It actually wasn't about Michigan- although that's where I go currently. I also re-read my last post. Yuck! Sorry folks, I wrote it really quickly as I was going into a rehearsal and clearly didn't proofread at all. Hope you all followed my jumbled brain.

He didn't say entirely and I wasn't willing to push that one. He noted that most students aren't able to secure tenure track positions until their disseration is finalised, so sometimes it takes an extra 1-3 years so post-doc work is becoming more common, and that upon reviewing the dissertations of students coming from the smaller institutions they weren't producing high enough caliber work to merit a TT position at his university. Also that students coming from lesser known institutions that he interviewed he was not impressed with either. I asked what he felt set students at his institution gained to make them more lucrative in the job market and his answer was simply that they train students for TT positions and their students find work. It didn't seem worthwhile to press it further, mostly because I'm not sure how true I believe that to be and certainly I feel it is not the hard and fast rule. After thinking more about it, the only other observation I have on his comment would be that this particular school places emphasis on creating well-rounded students: they require two sub-fields in history and one outside of history in order to progress toward candidacy. Perhaps that has something to do with it, or maybe I'm totally off-base. A person could drive themself crazy over analysing it all

German annieca, kotov, Kelkel, Ganymede18, grlu0701, hbeels (veeeeeery rusty), Orient, ticklemepink, viggosloof28, Tiglath-Pileser III, Reki, playingivory (reading) Spanish annieca, crazedandinfused, Ganymede18, grlu0701 (kind of), CageFree, StrangeLight, pudewen (very rusty and basically useless to my work), ticklemepink (reading), fortiesgirl, viggosloof28, Andean Pat, apotheosis, playingivory French theregalrenegade, Ganymede18, CageFree (reading, can speak a bit), StrangeLight, Safferz (Franglais), hbeels, sandyvanb, fortiesgirl, Tiglath-Pileser III, Andean Pat, apotheosis, quilledink, spinach, playingivory Hebrew uhohlemonster, crazedandinfused (ktzat), ticklemepink, Tiglath-Pileser III, Qaus-gabri, quilledink (a bit rusty) Hindi spinach Italian fortiesgirl (reading, can speak a bit), Andean Pat (I understand it, swering), spinach, playingivory (reading) Indonesian spinach Latin Kelkel, Ganymede18, husky4ever, playingivory Greek Ganymede18 (New Testament), , Tiglath-Pileser III, Qaus-gabri (Hellenistic) Russian ticklemepink (really, really basic), ReallyNiceGuy Polish runaway Romanian kotov Japanese kyjin, pudewen (sort of, it's in process), Tiglath-Pileser III Portuguese CageFree (reading), StrangeLight (reading, swearing), fortiesgirl (reading, some comprehension), Andean Pat (reading) Hungarian StrangeLight (swearing only) Somali Safferz Arabic Safferz (reading), Orient (MSA) Chinese pudewen (modern and classical), apotheosis Turkish orient (modern an ottoman) Persian Orient (reading) Yiddish ticklemepink Norwegian viggosloof28 (can also read Swedish and Danish) Akkadian Tiglath-Pileser III, Qaus-gabri Egyptian Tiglath-Pileser III Coptic Qaus-gabri (Sahidic) Aramaic Qaus-gabri Ugaritic Qaus-gabri

This totally cracked me up. Just sayin'. I don't really want to get into whether or not rankings are valid or the splitting hairs of it all, as I would only be regurgitating what you fine folks have already said. But, as food for thought, I met with a professor last week (chair of one of those top 10 schools) who told me that the biggest problem grads of the lesser known programs have is that they have not obtained the training to continue to do research specifically in academia. He said the candidates that he has seen have all been highly intelligent, respectable students who he couldn't do anything with because the skillset was not there. Not saying I agree, definitely not saying it's my opinion, not even saying I have the first clue whether it's true or not. But there it is anyhow.

And another! I'm early modern England: the English Reformation, queenship and the reign of the Tudors. Advantages: no shortage of college kids willing to to take a class on the subect. Thank you, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, for getting every 20 year old interested in good old Henry VIII! Very rich in sources. Disadvantages: not as many opportunities in the US, most universities are cutting back in this field as folks retire. Difficult to interpret as there were so many things evolving, yet it was treason to even think against them. Interesting to read what excites you all! And as I read the perhaps ONE advantage we all list versus the laundry list of disadvantages, I think to myself- we're all out of our minds!