natsteel
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Posts posted by natsteel
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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...
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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.
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most of the weeding is done based on the SOP, the writing sample, your LORs (especially if they've actually heard of your LOR writers), your fit with the program, and whether your potential advisor is interested in you or not. maybe, with all those other factors, they throw your GRE score in there too, but i'd be shocked if it is ever a deciding factor between two candidates when there is less than a 100-point spread between them. sure, all other things being equal, the kid with 720V will probably get in over 520V, and why not? he jumped higher.
Exactly what my mentor told me the other day...
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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!!!
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If she calls you "gentle and modest" you might want to exude self-confidence in other parts of your application, specifically the SoP. You don't want the ad-comm thinking you're too shy, insecure or lacking in self-confidence.
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Just to echo what others have been saying: About two months ago I went to go see one of my LOR writers about something. Then randomly, he informs me that he was at some sort of event that past weekend, and a professor that I'm applying to work with was there. He straight up told me that they talked about me (and even gave me a hint of a juicy detail!). So yes, individual professors will talk to other professors, especially if they know each other (this is a guarantee in my field).
I've had that very same thing happen with two of my mentor/referees and I am in a Humanities field.
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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??
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Wow, glad I didn't apply to Columbia then. It's a good thing you contacted him. Sounds like they might need some new professors in the 18th-19th centuries soon. Did you name him as your primary advisor in your personal statement?
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
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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.
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Foner does early American? I thought he specialized in 19th C.?
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Oh dude, I forgot about the Stanford application fee. By far the most expensive one (my next most expensive one is $100, and the rest are <$80).
Oh yeah, MIT and the course list... Similarly, Caltech wants a list of all relevant upper-div courses... with textbooks... and instructors.... and topics covered. Okay, so I don't need to list ALL my classes ever, but dang! I'm also not a fan of the MIT app's look. Very... stark.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Last year in a research seminar a professor told us that "if you're not dreaming of your paper yet, you're obviously not working hard enough." I think the same applies for grad school applications.
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).
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Yes, that part of the application is such an annoying extra, especially because no other schools seem to demand a similar piece of writing.
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.
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Thanks for the heads-up! That is quite the funding package they offer!
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.
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I think it's definitely worth contacting the department(s) you're considering. You can found out important information that way.
You could learn that some professors you want to work with will be retiring/going on sabbatical/switching universities, that they may not be accepting applicants in your track since they enrolled too many the year before, etc.
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.
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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...
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Thanks for the advice everyone! When I'm meeting new people and I'm nervous, I tend to either clam up and only reply with really short answers, and I've been told that makes me seem cold and rude.
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.
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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...
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We are most certainly in competition against each other
Though, I don't really deal much with religion, at least not on its own terms. I expect to focus on colonial political culture and intellectual history. I know the trend in the field has been to focus on the early republic, but my interests lie in the pre-revolutionary period, say 1720-1776, and I am focused primarily on colonial New York City, but also other urban areas. What aspects or areas are you most interested in, Emerson? Also, have you been in contact with many of the professors. McConville told me he can only take 1 student per year because of funding issues and W&M's PhD admissions, as I'm sure you have seen, will also be limited this year. Who would you expect to work with if you were accepted to Harvard? I wish you the very best of luck...
Sorry for the double post. Either way, I'm not surprised we're applying to the same schools as the number of top departments in early American history have dwindled in recent years and the field itself is in a significant period of transition.
The future of history
in History
Posted
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...