natsteel

I have a similar approach which I got from a history professor on CHE. I generally gather a couple of reviews, particularly if there is an RAH or any other long review. I start by reading the introduction and conclusion or epilogue. Then I read my way through by reading the first (or first two) and last (or last two) paragraphs of each chapter. After that, I read the reviews and then I go back through and pick what seems the most important chapter to read completely. Sometimes, I will actually read the first (or the first and last) sentences of each paragraph. For regular, everyday seminar discussion on a book outside of my field, this has proven to be enough. Sometimes, when I find that the book is regularly referencing another work or two, I will find reviews for those also so I have a better idea of the arguments they are either extending, amending, or refuting.

THIS. I'm closing out my first year and my advisor has never mentioned my writing sample topic. I'm sure that goes for most of us already in programs. Riotbeard's requirements are spot on. They want to see that you can analyze and incorporate primary sources. They also want to see that you can do the same for secondary literature.

American History R_Escobar (20th century, American Indian), crazedandinfused (antebellum, intellectual), hopin'-n-prayin' (southern, religious), stevemcn (transnational), Simple Twist of Fate (early American), zb642 (20th century, labor/working-class culture), BCEmory08 (19th-20th century Catholicism, labor), irvinchiva10 (20th century, immigration/immigration reform) natsteel (early American political culture and intellectual history) European HistoryKelkel (Modern Germany, political), goldielocks (Britain), SapperDaddy (Eastern and Central Europe), kotov (Modern Romania, Holocaust, labor), RevolutionBlues (Modern Western Europe/France labor and leftist politics), theregalrenegade (18th/19th cent British Empire/environment), jrah822 (19th century Britain; emphasis on colonial relationship to India), grlu0701 (Intellectual & cultural history,fin de siecle Germany and Italy), naturalog (modern European [mostly German] intellectual and cultural/sexuality and gender/political radicalism), runaway (Eastern/Central, memorialization & visual culture), Sequi001 (Modern France, gender and sexuality, colonialism/imperialism) African HistoryOseirus (precolonial/early colonial West Africa), Singwaya18 (20th century East Africa), Safferz (20th century Horn/Northeast Africa), The People's Scholar (Spanish colonialim in Africa- i.e. middle/West Africa) Latin American HistoryCageFree (20th century, Southern Cone), BH-history, The People's Scholar (18th-19th century Colombia) East Asian Historyalleykat (Modern China), kyjin (Pre-Modern Japan) Near/Middle Eastern Historyuhohlemonster, (modern Israel, Iran, Palestine) oswic (modern Egypt, gender) Atlantic World sandyvanb Global/World History [*]cooperstreet (Cold War) Jewish History [*]uhohlemonster, (modern Israel) [*]hopin'-n-'prayin, [*]kotov (Holocaust), [*]naturalog (sometimes modern European/Holocaust), [*]runaway (memorialization & visual culture), [*]ticklemepink (20th c. Germany/U.S) Science/Technology [*]shaxmaty1848 (Cold War) Social [*]annieca (Cold War and Post-Cold War East and Central Europe) Classical and Medieval [*]Hogs of War (Monastic Studies and Conflicts in Authority)

My favorite two pens are both from Uni-Ball... the Vision (for everyday stuff) and the Deluxe (for notes and important stuff), both in Fine (0.7mm). I have however recently begun considering trying out a fountain pen, as I've always liked "the idea" of them and a friend of mine uses one and likes it a lot.

The fact is the OP filled out an evaluation according to their own criteria rather than the accepted criteria of those asking for the evaluation. What I mean is that the OP should have an understanding of how course evals are read and used. Giving a 1 or a 2 is considered a heavily damning rating by most administrations, regardless of whether you consider it as such on your own personal 1 to 5 scale. By "sticking to your morals," you gave the false impression that your advisor was incompetent in those areas you rated a 1 or 2, and those ratings will be a permanent blemish on that professor's teaching record. How is that moral? For me, the moral thing would be to understand that the evals are not being read according to your own criteria but by those of the administration and rated the professor accordingly rather than using a course eval as an opportunity to feel morally superior to the rest of academe and to make what you think to be a "statement" against grade inflation at the expense of your advisor.

Some are not PhDs, but the vast majority of adjuncts I have known or encountered have been PhDs. Saying they're not PhDs might make us feel better temporarily but it's not true. As to Sigaba's comment about 200 applicants for every t-t job, I think the number is significantly higher than that. One person posted their rejection letter on Twitter because it said they had had 900(!) applicants for a t-t job at a Midwestern school. As to the statement about alternative fields, I don't know any graduate program that would let someone actually do a minor field in administration as opposed to letting someone take extra administrative courses. If there are any, good for them. Overproduction of PhDs is not a myth. It may seem that way if we hold some ideal (nostalgic) notion of how academia should work. The fact is that as long as there are 100 or more PhDs out there waiting to teach a course for $1200 or $1500 dollars with no benefits and no contract, the administrations will continue to hire them instead of replacing or, god forbid, creating new t-t lines. The number of PhDs being produced is higher than ever, but it still should not be too many. However, the reality is that there are not enough jobs to go around. That is the very definition of overproduction. And StrangeLight and Sparky are right. Until adjuncts are unionized and/or the outsized role of the adjunct is heavily publicized to prospectives and their parents, this process will unfortunately continue apace to the detriment of everyone except the administrators whose ranks and salaries continue to grow.

Yale has had over 400 in at least each of the last two years, so I would be shocked if that Columbia number is accurate.

I'm an early Americanist as well. OP, yours is a borderline situation. Stony Brook has generally had decent faculty in early America, with Ned Landsman there now (who I think is criminally underrated as a historian) as well as Donna Rilling. And, as someone said, Stony Brook is THE SUNY school. Also, as someone said, there is so much that goes on behind the scenes that the quality of your application (in the latter stages of the admission process) becomes less than the most important factor. That is generally why many people apply to more schools. I can sympathize with your predicament. If SUNY-SB had been my only admit, I would've been quite tempted to take it. The video about the program on Historians TV was well done and reflected well on the program (for whatever that's worth). However, if you are already working, taking another year to polish your SOP and writing sample and then giving it another shot at more than four schools might be worth it. I feel for you as this is a very tough situation. As to your job concerns, Stony Brook is not a so-called "elite school," but people have made careers out of there in many fields including history. If you do decide to go there, your eventual success will depend far more on your scholarly production than the school's name; after all, even a top Ivy League PhD does not guarantee one a job.

braunsg, I strongly agree with those who say to give it a chance. Don't deny yourself the chance to try out an opportunity which you have earned because of anyone else (i.e., the other student who would take your spot). I think it's very possible that you will find something new to be passionate about once you're here. After all the resources here at Yale are fantastic. There's also the possibility that you could indulge your interests in Asian Studies here as well. You have a very rare opportunity and it would be crazy to not even give it a shot. Best of luck!!

I've mentioned this before (as have others), but I'm on a Mac and I have found no better way of organizing PDFs than Papers 2. An added benefit, it that, upon installation, it will scan your entire hard drive for PDFs and you can set the settings so it will gather them all into a single folder (with subfolders) and rename them anyway you want. It will also let you search the major scholarly repositories (in my field, JSTOR and ProjectMuse) as well as Google Books/Scholar and Amazon all from within the program and import them into your library with one click. It will also fetch metadata for articles you import from your hard drive. It also creates OCR text files for non-OCR'd PDFs (though it doesn't attach them to the PDF) so you can run full-text searches of everything in your library. It also acts as a citation manager which allowed me to finally dump EndNote. Also, it has apps which allow you to sync your library (all or part) to your iPhone and/or iPad. All that said, Papers isn't for everyone, but it's definitely worth taking the free trial to see if it might work you.

I put up a Duke acceptance on the results board for a friend of mine who's not a member. They were admitted to do Haitian/French history and got their email back on January 26. P.S. - If there are any Yale admits on here that have any questions, please feel free to PM me. Once again, there were well over 400 applicants.

From another perspective... There's been a push by the AHA in the face of the job market to have doctoral students in history consider other career paths and for departments to support them and even assist them in doing so. You might find particular departments a bit more open to alternative career prospects. However, I would second ticklemepink's advice to apply as normal and just keep your post-graduation plans on the down-low.

ADMITedlyLucky, I got in straight from undergrad at a very large regional public city college system and there is another who got his/her MA at a very large public southwestern university,

ticklemepink, the attitude among many PhD students here in the History Department that I've talked to is the exact opposite of yours. They don't appreciate that the Dean, being from a science field, is trying to make humanities departments run more like their science counterparts without taking into account the significant differences between sciences and the humanities. Admissions interviews is only a very small part of that larger process of corporatization and increasing "efficiency." One proposal included having humanities students take part of their orals after the first year (which is done by the Econ Dept.). A big part of it is that the administration wants to find a way to stop wasting money by funding students who eventually don't finish the PhD. This is not something unique to New Haven as it is very much a broader trend occurring in higher education.

Just a heads-up... Apparently, the GSAS will be requiring Humanities departments to interview potential candidates this year for the first time. http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/jan/11/grad-school-divided-over-interviews/

The column is not about looking down on students for "wanting to go to college, loving learning, and wanting to read books" or trying to "quash [their] love of learning and reading." How would not pursuing a PhD in hopes of an academic career "quash" someone's "love of learning and reading?" Someone who loves learning and reading would presumably do that with or without going to grad school or a job in academia. Pannapacker does go for shock value to some extent but that is for a very specific reason. Many undergraduate advisors do not tell their students who are considering graduate school about the realities of pursuing a job in academia. Many undergraduates who are advised about it do not take it seriously. That is why he uses such seemingly harsh language (though it often seems to appear harsh to those unfamiliar with what he's talking about). He is certainly not alone. Spend a week or two reading through the Chronicle of Higher Education forums and you will find that his views reflect the vast majority of faculty members there. Unfortunately, academia has always been about the "elites and non-elites." You seem to imply that you thought academia was solely about merit or that it was at one time. If you look at the department websites in my field (History) of any regional public university, such as the one from which I got my BA, 90% of the faculty come from about 10 schools (some less). Yet, there are hundreds of programs producing PhDs in my field every year. There have never been so many PhDs. At the same time, university administrators continue to sacrifice full-time jobs for adjunct positions with minimal pay, no benefits, and no job security. So, while the number of PhDs grows, the number of jobs available decline. I just saw a part of a job rejection letter someone posted on Twitter for a position in early American history which said the department had received 900 applications for one job. NINE HUNDRED!! Your odds of getting that job are 40x less than they are of getting into Yale's PhD program which received 450 applications for 20 positions. Even graduates from the top 10-15 programs in their field are having trouble getting jobs. The adjunct system will never go away or likely even lessen because there are so many PhDs willing to work for nothing just to have an academic job. I'm not saying that's wrong, but as long as there is a huge pool of unemployed PhDs willing to work for nothing that grows larger every year, administrators have no reason to change their way of doing things. As young grad students or hopefuls we don't see what Pannapacker sees and is warning about. We are surrounded by faculty who got into great grad programs and got jobs, i.e., success stories. However, that is the exception not the rule. Too many students will take loans to go to schools whose degree will generally not be good enough to get a full-time job. They then end up with debt that must be repaid and the only thing they are qualified to do is to adjunct. By adding to that pool of exploitative laborers through advising, Pannapacker feels himself (and others) to be complicit in perpetuating the adjunct system which is killing academia both professionally and educationally. I would hardly call that "condescension." If anything, it's more like "tough love."

Both StrangeLight and Sigaba have given you very good advice. I would like to just give some info on one of your options which was a second degree. If you're serious about a second B.A. degree and feel like CUNY is an option, you might consider the CUNY Baccalaureate Program. They generally transfer 90 of your previous credits leaving you to fulfill your new major's requirements. The program also allows you to design your own major and requires you to have a faculty mentor throughout your time in the program. It also allows you to take classes at any of the 8 CUNY senior colleges so you essentially have 8 History Departments to find faculty with whom to work. You could conceivably do the 30 remaining credits in a year, but since they would mostly be major courses, you'd probably be better off stretching it out over 3 or even 4 semesters. I did my BA at CUNY and it was a fantastic experience. Additionally, in the last 3 years, CUNY BA Program students have received fully-funded graduate school acceptances in History at Harvard, Yale, and Northwestern along with a few others at lower-ranked programs.

Papers2 will do this, among many other things. You can even search and import from JSTOR, Project MUSE, Amazon, Google Scholar, etc... right from within the application. My workflow can basically be boiled down to Papers2-Scrivener-Word. I use Papers2 to manage my PDFs (about 2500 and counting), Scrivener for research and writing, and Word basically just for final page layout details. Scrivener itself will not "create" a bibliography. Papers2 will, however. It allows you to select your citation style and then you can simply go to your library and highlight the works you want included in your bibliography, right-click and choose "Copy as Reference" and then just paste it into Scrivener or Word. However, right now Papers2 only has the option to copy as a "reference," i.e., a bibliography entry. I use it for footnotes and just change the periods into commas and reverse the author's first and last name. But the developers say they are working on allowing the copy-and-pasting of footnote/endnote citations as well as bibliography entries. I hate to sound like a shill, but the combination of Papers and Scrivener literally changed the way I do research and write papers. Scrivener was originally designed for screenwriters and novelists, but its latest version has become far more accommodating to academics to the point of including MLA and Chicago style paper formatting. I'm a stickler for formatting and I was impressed by how completely the Chicago template nailed it. I'm in History and if anyone is looking at Scrivener and wondering how it might be used for long research papers, I'd be happy to show you screenshots of how I've used it effectively for large research projects.

Reading this thread, I can't help but remember what a nerve-wracking time this was for me last year. I wish all of you the very best of luck with your applications.

My headings go like this: Education Employment (academic-related only of course) Publications Presentations Honors Research Interests (Languages, if necessary) Affiliations (prof. memberships) References

I formatted mine like a regular academic review with the citation centered at the top: Firstname Lastname. Title. City: Publisher, Year. My review also had a few footnotes which were, of course, Chicago style.

FWIW, I can't speak as to what the other admittees did, but I went through the process successfully last year and I submitted my review as two pages single-spaced.

I should have made clearer that my comments were not specifically aimed at advising an undergraduate as a graduate student, which I now realize was the focus of the question. I was instead speaking of what I considered to be the responsibility of a professor. Furthermore, I don't know why you are putting "unremarkable students" in quote when responding to my post since I wrote "clearly underqualified," which is far different than "unremarkable." I also don't know how effective it is to use an outlier as an example for supporting your argument. Of course there are "unremarkable students" who have gone on to decent careers in all fields, but they are the exception rather than the rule. If a student who had taken two classes with me and gotten two C's and asked me for a recommendation to graduate school, I would do exactly what I said above. That's because a student who gets C's in their major classes is "clearly underqualified" for graduate school. If I had a student who had gotten two B's, that would be "unremarkable" and I would still give them the speech about the competition involved in applying to graduate programs and tell them about the realities of the job market (as I would to even a straight-A student). Any student that would be considering graduate school in history, regardless of their grades, without a clear understanding of the way academia and the job market works, could be considered unprepared to make such a weighty decision which could affect the rest of their lives. Making them aware of this is, as I wrote (and defined) in the post above, what I meant by "dissuade," but which you could just as easily call "advising."

I have to disagree with the final part of your post, Sigaba. Your bulleted suggestions are well taken, but none of those suggestions in and of themselves will keep someone from getting LOR requests from underwhelming students. Those types of students are not often the kind to reach out for extra help such as visiting office hours and the like. (NOTE: Keep in mind I am speaking from a Humanities point of view.) Considering the academic job market, I think it is actually a responsible decision on the part of an advisor or even potential referee to dissuade a clearly under-qualified candidate from spending hundreds of dollars on graduate school applications or, even worse, taking out thousands (if not tens of thousands) in (now) unsubsidized loans if they happen to get into a bottom-feeding, cashcow program (likely without funding) all in pursuit of what is quickly turning into a highly elusive goal even for students at the "top" universities. Also, let me be clear... When I say "dissuade," I mean pointing out the immense competition the student will face from applicants even to mid-level programs with far superior records and achievements. It would also include pointing out the dire realities of the academic job market. If they still want to apply anyway, then fine. But, for me, it's more unethical to assist in that situation than desist regardless of the fact that they designed the goal of going to graduate school themselves. To the OP's OQ, you could simply tell the student that if they are really serious about graduate school, they would need a letter from someone more familiar with their work. If that student had actually taken multiple classes with you, then you may have to be frank and simply say that, "Based on your work in my classes, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to write you a strong enough letter to get into a good program." But following that conversation with one about the intense competition and dim job prospects is advancing the student's interest especially if these are things of which they are unaware.

I know this is a little late, but... Yes, I use Notebook for class notes and EverNote for random notes (paper ideas, book lists, and my own reading notes and book reviews). There is a way to back up your Evernote by going to FILE -> EXPORT NOTES TO ARCHIVE. I then put the archive file in Dropbox as it's quite small. Also, I suppose I could just as easily use EverNote for class notes but because I used to record my undergrad classes, Notebook allowed me to drop the audio file (and other multimedia stuff) right onto the note page. I think that by now EverNote has much of the same functionality. At this point, I have (almost) completely dropped EndNote. At first, Papers did not have citation management (in the sense of CWYW). It has added that to v2 and it is so much more intuitive than CWYW ever was (which was why I never used it). I share some of your frustration with DevonThink. I basically use it as index of my document folders on my HD (for its search capabilities). I do most of my annotations in Papers and if I have a highlighted passage I want the text of, I just hit CMD-C as soon as I've highlighted it and then CMD-V it into the notes section. One last thing, if you're working on large projects or large research papers, I have found Scrivener to be indispensable. It's incredible for note-taking, outlining, writing, and organizing your research/sources. It used to be Mac only but a Windows version is out now, I think. It was originally made for screenwriters and novelists but with a bit of tweaking it's fantastic for writing and organizing 30+ page history research papers (and even historiography papers). Plus it even comes with an export feature that will automatically format your paper and footnotes to whatever style you pick. I'm an obsessive when it comes to following style guidelines and I was surprised at how good the formatting was. DISCLAIMER: I'm not shilling for the company, but just trying to share an application which not only increased my productivity but changed the way I do research and write for the better.