natsteel

When we talked about the process over the phone, he told me that applications are directed to the department and prospective advisor who then make their recommendations for admission to the Graduate School committee. The character of "I can only hope" is far more speculative than assumptive. So, I wouldn't say I am "assuming." Then again, speculation is just as useless as making assumptions. Like I said... who knows? Point well taken, nevertheless, StrangeLight.

I hope so. About a week ago, I emailed me to say that 2 of my LOR's were missing. I was able to have one prof. email his but my other writer is in Egypt on vacation until next week. Anyway, he said to have her email him the letter "within 24 hours" of her return since the Graduate Committee was meeting in "7 to 10 days." I did have a 35-40 minute conversation with him on the phone back in November that went well. I can only hope that he's on top of the app because the department plans to recommend me to the Graduate School for admission. But, who knows?

On the (somewhat) bright side, my PA at OSU emailed me today and said that the Graduate Committee will be meeting in "7 to 10 days."

Literature lends itself to much more creative titles than history. I used a fairly standard formula in history: "Illustrative quote from sources": Boring overly-lengthy description of what paper actually is about, xxxx-xxxx. Just playing the game...

I worked on my writing sample for a year and am now revising it again, so there's no getting around that, but I have resisted the urge to go back and look over my SOP... the only thing that can come from that is regret and anxiety.

If you think you're going to need federal loans, then you'll need to file a FAFSA. Even if you think you're not going to take any loans, you're still better off taking the little amount of time it takes to file, just in case.

Congratulations barricades!!! Because of my obsessiveness, I went back through the results of previous years for the programs to which I applied and found that acceptances in those programs usually begin coming in the 2nd and 3rd weeks of February, though some have sent them out as early as the first week of February.

There was a thread on this already. I had a relatively significant addition (paper accepted for publication in a national undergraduate journal) to my CV after my applications had been submitted. I simply sent an email with the updated CV attached to the contact email for all the Admissions offices and almost all of them got back to me saying they would include the updated CV in my file.

This is exactly what I was talking about. If these kinds of things don't show up automatically, you want to do what you can to raise them up to first-page status. Basically, you want professional type links as high as possible like the publications and presentations above. But even if you don't have much in the way of professional achievements yet, you still want the most favorable things to come up like the video mentioned above. For those with very common names, however, it can very often be a moot point.

For my non-major classes, I generally take notes on a sheet of 8 1/2" x 11" plain white paper. I name the class and date the top of the paper. Then, usually that same night but sometimes a day or two later, I transcribe the notes into a program called Notebook (for Mac), though lately I have been also keeping them in a database called DevonThink in RTF format. Though now that I have a new scanner, I may just scan the handwritten notes into a PDF file and add them to the database. For my major classes, I tend not to take notes at all. In the 2 grad classes I took this semester, where each class revolved around discussion of 1 or 2 specific books, I recorded the class and then entered that into the database. I keep folders on my computer for each semester with subfolders for each class. Each class folder has individual folders for "texts/handouts," "papers/assignments," and "recordings."

She is the editor of the Jefferson Papers project at Princeton, but I'm not sure how involved she is in teaching and mentoring graduate students. Did you mention other professors like Wilentz or Rodgers, at least, in your SOP. Even still, it was Rodgers who told me that Princeton was not the place for serious early Americanists right now because of lack of faculty in the field. The place for Jefferson research is, obviously, Virginia but, even there, the early American faculty is in a bit of transition. Did you contact potential advisors at any of the other programs you listed? I was in contact with professors at 5 of the 9 departments you're applying to, so if you want more info on them, just PM me.

Your Princeton application may be a bit misplaced... I'm also in early American and when I contacted professors in the department they told me that Princeton was no place for an early Americanist seeing as how the department doesn't even have a dedicated one on the faculty. I also worried about the reputation of my undergraduate school, but all of my mentors told me that it would not play much of a factor at all. Did you or your advisor(s) make contact with prospective advisors in any of these departments?

The thing to keep in mind, bryn04, is that admissions committees are not looking for character references. They are looking for informed opinion as to your ability or potential to do graduate-level work. Two years is not all that long. Did you keep your best work from your undergraduate years? When visiting a professor to ask for a LOR, you should bring along some of the work you did for that professor as well as copies of your personal statement and CV, especially if it's been a while since the class or if the class was large.

This. I think it's important to realize that the undergraduate and graduate culture and demographics are more likely to be different at an Ivy than at a public institution. Your characterization of Ivy students and comments about Ivies being "uniformly elite" sounds more like the common Ivy undergraduate stereotype. Ivy graduate programs are not made up primarily of graduates of other Ivy institutions, though there are some of those. The most uniform things you will likely find is brilliance and self-motivation. To be honest, I'm not really sure where the OP is coming from. I'm from the same type of system as the OP... even my four-year school, to which I transferred from a similar CC, is dominated by ethnic minorities with family and work responsibilities. However, if I were to get accepted to an Ivy, I would look forward to being part of a community that is highly focused on academic pursuits. Experiencing both those ranges will make you a more versatile teacher, should that be the vocation you're pursuing. Just because you found that type of school "fulfilling" does not mean it is the only kind of campus culture you will find so. Like fuzzylogician said, you need to be more open-minded about this.

It does say "accepted over email." As I understand it, usually an email from the department or grad school is just as "official," for all intents and purposes, as a letter. So, I guess you're right, sarandipidy. "Accepted over email" does sound like something informal between the poster of that result and an individual professor.

There's certainly no reason not to go. Understandably, you have some preconceived notions about the culture of these universities and their students. Though I am also attending a large, public university for undergrad, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at how far off your ideas are. Of course, there will be people like you described, however, in my field, my mentor talked to a professor at a top Ivy who told him that they were always looking to diversify their incoming cohorts rather than always taking wealthy, 21-year old undergrads from other Ivies. I suspect that you will find much more diversity at the school you're going to visit than you expect. Bukharan is exactly right. Go and see what happens... you might end up liking the school and the people you meet there. But you'll never know if you don't at least go. Congratulations on the interview and good luck, waddle!!!

I have a similarly "informal" deal with a professor at the graduate school of my home institution, but, considering the results pages of recent years, it is likely still too early to expect any formal decisions.

I have a family (a wife and two young boys, 4 and 3) and I plan on trying to do what Eigen does. Get in to the library as early as possible in order to put in a full 8-10 hours during the week but still be home at a reasonable hour to spend some quality time with the family. It sounds good in practice, but I just hope that I'll be able to make it work in reality,

I sympathize with all of these. I wasn't able to get an external fellowship application ready in time and so I missed the deadline. It was a long shot, of course, but I deeply regret not having gotten it done. I also did passably on the part of the GRE that matters, but I constantly wonder whether I should have taken it again. Also, I started obsessing over grad school towards the end of my sophomore year. That's when I began researching programs and just the whole process in general. I didn't actually start working on application materials until the end of this summer, but having been thinking about it and preparing for it for more than a year ahead of time helped a lot. Tell me about it. If I knew I could make any money to read and write, I would have done this a lot sooner. When I was younger, those were the things I would do instead of trying to make money...

I was thinking the same thing. If true, this is most definitely an anomaly. I probably won't start checking the Results page three times an hour until at least February 1st... or, at least, that's what I keep telling myself.

As far as a specific application regret, I never felt 100% about my SOP, despite working on it from August to November and having had more than half a dozen drafts read by 2 professors. Hyacinth, in some ways the comments were helpful but they also confused things at times, for example, when getting conflicting advice. I feel like I know my SOP could be better, but it was just about the best I could do on this type of writing assignment. This and my GRE AW score are just not up-to-par with the rest of the application. So, I guess I regret not starting on it earlier. Also, I lightened my load last semester down to 15 credits to accomodate the application process. Now, I need 19 credits this semester to graduate on time. Staring ahead at possibly my heaviest workload yet, I think I regret having taken only 15 this past semester.

You science guys are lucky... where can a history major fit in the illegal drug industry?

So you could pull a news anchor and sit there in shorts and a dress shirt? Just hope that you don't need to get up for any reason... I had a informal phone conversation with a PA over Skype, but I think I'd have been far more nervous if we'd done it with video instead. Good luck on the interview, Deven!!

I know what you mean. I can be painfully (even, paralytically) shy in social situations involving people I don't know... unfortunately, it means that I am sometimes misperceived as being aloof.