natsteel

1. Moving where I got in - I have just applied this season but I expect this to be the hardest part by far. I always hate moving, have never made a long-distance move before, and I will be doing it with my family of four on the most shoestring of budgets. I can't even imagine how I'm going to go about finding us a place to live hundreds of miles away, especially because I won't be able to go there beforehand and will likely have to rent sight unseen for the first lease. 2. Waiting for replies - Obviously, my deadlines are past so the waiting has only just begun. Yet, I expect the waiting to get more and more painful once the holidays are over. By the end of January, I imagine I'll be a nervous wreck. 3. Preparing to apply - It took a lot of effort but I don't think it was "difficult." My apps were submitted on Nov. 5. I did a lot of reading on department and school websites and fora for a year at least before it was time to actually apply. Though, the GRE was a real hassle. I only took it once despite getting an unexpectedly low AW score... I went back and forth about taking it again but, in the end, I have a family to support and just couldn't afford to blow another $160 just to get an extra point on the AW section. 4. Deciding where to go - I don't think I am gonna have much trouble deciding. My personal ranking of the schools I applied to is pretty firm. I'm perhaps if I got into #1 and #2 I might have a bit of a decision, but doubt that will be an issue. 5. Sending in the applications - The most difficult part of this was accepting the fees for GRE score reports and transcripts.

1) In my field of early American history, Atlantic history has been a distinct subfield since the 1970s and only continues to grow. Anyone in my field's marketability increases greatly if they can teach Atlantic World courses. 2) I also agree with history_phd, the digital age is a boon for historians. In my field during the 60s and 70s, grad students writing dissertations would spend weeks driving around New England spending their days in the dusty basements of small town halls and their nights sleeping in their hatchback. I just recently did an honors research essay which involved extensive use of colonial newspapers and official correspondence and I was able to do 95% of it online with the help of Readex and Google Books. I don't really see quantitative history becoming a dominant force in the field again any time soon. 3) In my field, there have been some successful and well-received "emotional histories" done recently. I'm still not too sure how I feel the sub-field in general, but, so far, I think when it's done well, it can be very interesting. As for presentism, I personally am not a big fan, but it does seem to have a wider acceptance, at least in some fields and sub-fields, than ever before. 4) Military history, in its old-school guise, is through. What will remain, however, is social/military history, issues of recruitment and the like...

I had a similar situation... I had a paper of mine selected for publication (in a national undergraduate journal) after I had already submitted my applications. I simply emailed the admissions contact at each school with an updated CV attached and most got back to me quickly saying they would update my CV in the system. So, definitely email he admissions contacts at your schools and let them know...

Definitely check each school's admissions site because some of my schools (but not many) requested that grades from the fall semester be sent once in... However, I think they only wanted unofficial transcripts for those.

Exactly what my mentor told me the other day...

I don't want to threadcrap but I agree with Emerson... it seems utterly ridiculous that 4 years of hard work can be offset, especially regarding funding, by a random 4-hour test. The thing that really bugs me about the GRE is the monopoly that ETS holds. In an ideal world, there would be 3 or 4 different companies offering graduate school entrance tests all accorded the same weight by the schools. But that, sadly, is merely a pipe dream. The thing I found strange about the entire application process is the utter mysteriousness of so many its aspects from vague application instructions to the seemingly dozens of unwritten rules (regarding contacting professors and the like) that applicants are expected to uncover themselves. That, I suspect, is why The Grad Cafe has proven so useful to so many of us. And that is especially down to those who have already gone through the process successfully but return to the forum to help the inevitably clueless newbies. Best of luck to all those applying!!!

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/10/letters

I've had that very same thing happen with two of my mentor/referees and I am in a Humanities field.

I love the app pages that say "Just because a document shows as not having been received does not mean it was not received." I mean... seriously??

Yeah... actually Foner used to teach at CCNY and came to give a talk about his new book so I got to meet him afterwards in the department and we traded a few emails after that. In my SOP, I kind of named both him and Haefeli who will only be going up for tenure next year. The situation there makes it not one of my top choices but I'm from NYC

I am applying to Northwestern but the person I would work with is retiring in a few years and their new hire is a freshly-minted PhD. So it is obviously not an ideal situation for me, but I put the app in anyway. FWIW, I have a friend who started at NW in history this year and he loves it.

He is primarily 19th century but has written a bit on 18th century (Tom Paine). Columbia hasn't had a tenured early Americanist in a LONG time and so he has overseen those dissertations. In fact, he has overseen dissertations in the 20th century, as well. Though he told me that he's retiring in 4 years and that the younger guy, Haefeli, should be getting tenure next year and that early Americanists would obviously work with him from then on.

I am focused on the political culture and intellectual history of the U.S. colonial and revolutionary periods. My junior honors paper focused on colonial New York City (my mentor is a PP-winning historian of New York City) and I will be doing another honors paper next semester on colonial New York City again.

I think ticklemepink is right in that posting your GPA and GRE scores doesn't really say much about anyone's real chances. Nevertheless, in the spirit of the thread, here are my "stats": Field: Political culture and intellectual history of early America (colonial and revolutionary periods). Applying: Harvard (Armitage) Yale (Freeman) Penn (St. George) UVA (Onuf/Edelson) Ohio State (Brooke) Columbia (Foner/Haefeli) College of William & Mary (Hoffman/Grasso) Boston University (McConville) Rutgers (Clemens, Lewis, Delbourgo) Northwestern (Breen/???) CUNY Graduate Center (Berkin/Robertson) GPA: 3.92 Maj: 4.0 GRE: 660 Verbal 560 Quantitative 4.0 AW Writing sample: Accepted for publication in the Fall 2010 issue of The Columbia Undergraduate Journal of History.

robot, the amount of money available to you in federal loans is not determined by your tuition but by your COA (cost of attendance). COA is a figure set by the school which includes tuition, fees, school-related expenses (books, etc...), AND living expenses. If your stipend is small, it is likely you will be able to keep most, if not all, of the federal loan. Though I am not sure if they will count the tuition in your COA since it is being waived. That is something you should speak about to someone in your Financial Aid office before the winter break.

Talk about expensive application fees... the CUNY Graduate Center's fee is $125 with no possibility for a fee waiver. That's more expensive than any other school I'm applying to and is my last resort. If I didn't already know I'll get in, I would've skipped it.

If we're killing time... I use a MacBook Pro: Office for Mac 2011 - waiting for them to give Outlook the social connector. Also waiting to be able to sync my iPod calendar with Outlook (amazing that wasn't ready at launch). Papers - like iTunes for PDFs with full spotlight search capabilities. Fantastic! DevonThink - This program will save my life in a few years' time. I import all the notes I take while reading books, and tons more. Evernote - Syncs all my notes (text, voice, video, or picture) with my iPod. EndNote, Sente - I have both but still can't decide on one and ditch the other. Scrivener - great for organizing long papers. Notebook - Literally, a virtual notebook. xAct - for audio conversion VisualHub - for video conversion. OED - complete Oxford English Dictionary for Mac Anki - flashcard app Onyx - for OSX maintenance Stuffit - for compressed files VLC - media player uTorrent Not all of my software, but the main stuff... Open to alternatives to any of these if someone has any suggestions.

I'm done as well. Submitted 8 applications on November 5th and my top two choices just this past weekend. Now I play the waiting game... The next 2 1/2 months are gonna be absolute torture and probably mentally and emotionally exhausting just from the stress and anticipation.

I don't think I've had any sleeping dreams about it, yet, but I do daydream about it constantly. And I mean CONSTANTLY!! I'm not expecting everything to be roses once I get into grad school as I've seen too many horror stories on here and at the CHE forums. However, I've known this was what I wanted to do since before I even started my first classes as an undergraduate freshman and for it to be so close now is both exciting and unnerving. Having taken two grad classes this semester, I've gotten a little taste of the kind of workload and work that will be demanded, and it is intimidating (but the good kind of intimidating).

I don't really see how much a difference that document will make. It's just another hoop to jump through. Either way, I finished it. It said a "2-page" review but I don't know how you can really engage with a book's arguments (especially one which is supposed to have been a major influence) in 500 words or less. I actually did 2 single-spaced pages when everything else I have done for all my apps has used standard double-spacing. I figure if they want to read it they can, and if they don't, they won't. I don't know if anyone else is applying to William & Mary, but there application was also a bit unusual. The History Department has its own "supplemental package" which asks a bunch of questions requiring short essay-type answers of mostly stuff you would include in your SOP anyway. But it also asks you to rank the kind of assistantships you would prefer, i.e., research, teaching, archival, and then write an extra essay explaining your choices. Also, there was no online option and the whole package had to be mailed to the Department.

Great heads-up, dark knight. It's really quite an incredible turnaround considering their funding package was almost half that. 25k for 6 years!?!? In Virginia!?!? I'd have to say that is the best funding package I've yet seen. I applied to UVA but was not considering it a top choice, but I think that has now changed.

I'm in History, but I say, "I'm considering applying to your program and wanted to inquire whether you are currently accepting new students." This gives you a reason for contacting and a reason for them to contact you back. It is also crucial information since my list of schools changed significantly after finding out some of my potential advisors were retiring or going on leave.

I'm all done except for my top 2 schools, mostly because the professor at one gave me different instructions for the SOP than were on the website and the second has a small, extra piece of writing required, which I am procrastinating writing it up. Otherwise, I have 8 out of 10 completely submitted with all LORs received. Thankfully, I haven't had to deal with any LOR drama like some on here. Now, I just have to figure out how to stop thinking about it for the next couple of months, which will likely be impossible since I've been thinking about for 2 years before now. I expect that mentally I'll be a walking train wreck come January. Anyway, best of luck to all of you...

You are not the only one with this problem. I have the exact same problem, which has kept me from participating in a graduate seminar I'm taking as an undergrad right now. Of course, it isn't helped that it's a class on women's history (in my chronological field) and so the class is 13 women, me, and 1 other guy. On top of that, they are a cohort. When you also add that I am an undergrad and some of them are already teaching, I am an outsider3. I have also been wary of doing phone interviews or making visits to nearby campuses to which I am applying but my mentors are really trying stress the importance of putting a face to your application especially at the top schools. So, while I don't have any advice, I can sympathize and think that if we want to give ourselves the best chance of getting into these programs, we just have to suck it up and do it.

I've been dealing with a similar issue. I've had invites to visit and sit in on seminars from almost all the professors I've contacted. However, I'm a father of two young boys and financial as well as time restraints make it near impossible for me to travel from NYC to, say, Virginia or Boston for a pre-admission visit. However, almost all of them also offered to talk over the phone in case I couldn't make it to their campuses. Nevertheless, my mentors made it clear that while visiting will not get you in automatically, it can help enormously and that I should do everything I can to try to get to at least the closer schools. Obviously, I want to give myself the best chance possible especially since many of the schools are top programs. Now, I just have to figure out how to pull it off...