natsteel

I think the statement about advisors and mentors being different is a great point. When I was an undergrad, I had three mentors, one of whom was my advisor. Now, in grad school, my advisor is also my mentor. Maybe it's my field (history), my program, or my previous experience, but it seems expected by most that your advisor will mentor you in many of the ways which juillet described. That said, that is something of an ideal expectation as I do know a few people in my department who have less than enthusiastic advisors.

Exactly, ticklemepink. @Sigaba I don't think we were "focusing on politics" so much as acknowledging that it can be a factor. Also, there are other things beyond what we would call "politics" that are out the applicant's control such as budget cuts, etc.... The point is not that it's a "crapshoot," but that being the best candidate does not always translate into an offer for any number of reasons out of the applicant's control. After all, I've known persons whose only offer came from the highest-ranked program to which they'd applied. It's not uncommon and it's not ONLY about being a strong applicant, though that is the best the applicant can do.

This is so true. I got rejected by places where my POI was far more enthusiastic than at some of the places I was accepted. No email from a professor in November can tell you (even reading between the lines) if you're "going to be admitted," if, not only, because of all the unanticipated politics which can arise with adcomms. Positive responses from POIs are a great boost to your "application ego" and can help you feel more confident for the rest of the process, but in all but rare cases are they anything even intimating or approaching an offer of admission. I had a number of similarly enthusiastic initial responses from POIs. Two put out the possibility of a phone call (which I did) and one or two strongly suggested I visit the department (which I didn't). Did they leave any kind of opening in the email for further communication, i.e., phone call, visit, or even just a "if I can be of any help...." If so, then take advantage of that. However, if you're writing back with questions, be extra careful not to ask anything that you might easily find on the department or school website. Questions I asked generally had to do with job placement (not all schools post this info), the POI's current research, how many students they had (especially ABD), the culture of the department, etc.... The easiest icebreaker with any history professor is "What are you working on?" or "Tell me about your current research...." In the cases where they did not leave a clear opening in their response for further communication, I just sent a final email after the deadline to let them know that I did apply to their program and that I looked forward to a decision.

IIRC, I remember someone saying that this was the case last year also as they have had a habit in the past of making more offers than other schools for the same number of spots and that two years ago they had a totally unanticipated and large number of acceptances, even for spots where the funding wasn't guaranteed. A search would probably turn up the original post...

I am in the Humanities at a large, private institution. And though I've only been here for 2 1/2 months, I've already discussed all those things you mentioned with my advisor. We are getting along really well and, while I know others don't have such ideal mentoring situations with their advisors, I nevertheless think this should be the standard. If your advisor does not have the time to look over your conference paper, discuss your research, the field in general, job prospects, and the like, then I would think your advisor is ignoring their responsibilities to their graduate students. All that said, I've been fortunate enough to have fantastic mentors all the way through undergrad and now in graduate school. So perhaps my opinion is biased. But I wouldn't hesitate to engage your advisor concerning the things you mentioned. To a half-decent advisor, they would not consider those things as annoying coming from one of their own graduate students. Or, at leas, they shouldn't...

If funding is not an issue than an MA might be the way to go. That said, I am living proof that your undergrad institution is much less a factor than most people think, including Sigaba (IMHO). I started at a community college and finished at a four-year city-based regional, commuter college and now I'm doing my PhD at Yale. I worried about my undergrad institution hurting me initially, but, in fact, three people from my undergrad history department got into Yale (2) and one to Princeton. One got into Michigan and another to KU, and the year before one got into Harvard. All funded PhDs, not MAs. My sense is that Ivy League-type schools welcome candidates from outside the usual suspects especially as a means of diversifying cohorts. That said, the majority of my cohort here are from top undergrads (Stanford, Berkely, Columbia, etc...). Nevertheless, your undergrad institution's reputation will not take away from the quality of your work, which is why your writing sample and SOP need to be as strong as possible. All this is not to say that pedigree plays no role. It does, though I think that it is diminishing. Either way, the doors to top PhD programs are absolutely NOT closed to worthy candidates from mid, lower, or even unranked public colleges and universities.

This is so off the mark, it made me laugh. That quote is merely regurgitating the mainstream media's portrayal of the events. Is there a protest in or near your town? If so, go before characterizing a protest that is going on all around the world as "spoiled white kids." Living in New Haven, I can say that I see my fair share of "spoiled white kids" and they are definitely NOT the protestors. In fact, it's the spoiled white kids who are trying (unsuccessfully) to organize anti-protester protests. I don't care if I get flamed, but, in some ways, it's sad to see aspiring academics be so easily inclined to swallow the corporate media's party line wholesale without investigating for themselves. As for there being no "clear goals," I think that is the movement's biggest strength at this point. Obviously financial injustice is the major issue, but if you don't have clearly delineated goals, you cannot be co-opted by the left or pacified by the right, which is exactly what happened to the original Tea Party (not the Sarah Palin/Koch brothers Tea Party). I think it's actually quite prescient on their part not to be organizing some kind of leadership or vanguard and not to be issuing so-called "demands." That speaks to their critique of the economic system as a whole being corrupted and in need of serious re-organization. @ long_time_lurker, how is a public protest using a park for their own "private purposes?" If it was a protest for a shorter commute and the same amount of people were there, including yourself, would that then be public? @Behavioral Wall Street, the 1%, and the government are in many cases the same people and, as groups, control and protect each other. That is the WHOLE point. It's simply unfair that the financial sector has created a system (in partnership with the government via deregulation) in which gains are privatized and risk is socialized. The movement is not claiming to have all the answers. What they are claiming is that the system itself is in need of serious changes and, most importantly, they are trying to show that there are people all over the country and all over the world who are opposed to the status quo.

I'm also presenting for the first time this November at a regular conference. Nervous doesn't even begin to describe it... Congratulations to both of you!!

This is my approach exactly. I may read one or even two complete chapters if they seem important or especially interesting but generally I will read the first and last two paragraphs of each chapter and the first and last sentence of each paragraph. It was actually tough to do at the start, but I'm getting better at it. It's easy to feel like you're cheating when you're skimming texts, but all of my professors have told me it is an absolutely necessary skill to develop. If you're unsure, feel out the seminars to see how in-depth the discussions are and whether they focus too much on minutiae (which I doubt is the case if it's a history seminar) to get away with a lot of skimming. ON JOURNAL ALERTS: You can go to JSTOR or Project Muse and find the journal's main page there which have links for RSS feeds for the journal's Tables of Content. I keep them in a separate folder in my RSS reader. Often the RSS feeds will also be available on the journal's own websites.

I agree with runonsentence. Generally, you should not use more than one non-academic referee. But, I'm in the Humanities and I'm not sure how adcomms in MPH approach LORs. Were the internships related to the work you'd be doing in an MPH program? If so, I could see how it might be more acceptable.

My apologies, Strangefox. I didn't mean to come off so stridently. I understand what you're saying. I know people have received positive replies after sending long emails and unfavorable replies after sending short emails. All of us can only pass on suggestions based on advice that we were either given by professors and/or our own personal experience. I just happen to think that the intro email is not how the professor will determine fully whether your interests match their own. That will happen from reading your SOP and writing sample. The intro email is a way to get your name in front of them, give them a basic idea of who you are and what you do, and to make sure that they are taking new students in the first place. My template basically looked like this: I received favorable emails from every professor I contacted. Some were short replies, some unusually long. But all encouraged further contact and offered assistance. So my experience with a short intro email was pretty good. But, Strangefox and others had similar responses to longer emails. In the end, it comes down to each applicant seeking advice to weigh the often conflicting advice they have been given and choose for themselves understanding that in most cases small details like these will not kill your application prospects.

There is no direct annotation of pfds in Papers yet. You can take notes on each article, but you can't mark them up like you can in Preview. Nevertheless, when I want to annotate an article I just open it (from Papers) with Preview and annotate it. Save it and the annotations show up in Papers.

But then aren't you, in your contrarian way, just doing the same thing of which you're accusing everyone, i.e., allowing the behavior of others to dictate your own behavior? Do you really challenge "everything," or just the things you don't like? Also, I wonder what are the benefits or "the good" that comes from challenging "everything." I would think there are much more practical ways of keeping your critical thinking skills sharp than devising ways to alienate and condescend to all those "complacent" people by whom you find yourself surrounded. Many people don't have the luxury of turning down jobs or opportunities (or risking alienating those who can assist in securing them) over such trifles.

In History, it is rare to see more than a few hundred words on either methodology or historiography (our lit review) in journal articles. You're best bet is to: 1) keep in mind that a journal article is a very different thing from a thesis and 2) read other articles in your field's top journals and note their structure. Sometimes I will create a very basic outline of an article while reading it. For especially dense articles, it can help to visualize the structure. In your case, you could see how articles are commonly structured (and how much space is given over to each part of the structure) and try to structure your article accordingly.

You could upload it to My Cloud. It will tell you how many times people download it with the link it gives you. You could upload it and make it downloadable on Scribd and it will tell you how many times it has been "read." English seems to be a bit of an anomaly from the rest of the Humanities regarding not contacting POIs, in my experience. I was told never to send any email attachments unsolicited, especially in an initial email. Attaching a link to a CV though is a decent sort-of compromise.

Strangefox, I would be willing to concede that perhaps someone who is applying to a PhD program after completing an MA might be given more leeway in discussing a dissertation topic in that manner via email by a POI. But I don't think my advice is specific only to History, though it certainly may not be specific to all Humanities fields. Every professor I have talked to has suggested the same thing to me, i.e., be as brief as possible in an initial email. If the professor responds positively, you then have an opening to discuss your interests or topics more fully. From what I have been told by multiple professors, sending an overly long email implles that either a) you believe professors aren't busy and have time to read long, detailed emails from anyone considering applying to their program OR you believe you deserve more space and/or time than others to detail your ideas. The former suggests a lack of understanding of life in academia and the latter suggests entitlement. I am not saying that these implications are correct. But that doesn't mean that professors don't see them that way. Why risk making a first impression of either being unknowledgeable or prone to entitlement issues? It's better to play it safe in the initial email. Besides, nothing you could say in the first email could not be said in a follow-up email after a positive response from the POI. BTW - Answers to questions like this are always field-specific since none of us can speak from experience for any field but our own. Also, there are no answers to questions like this which would apply to all fields. That anyone's answers to questions about the application process are field-specific should be assumed by those asking, reading, and criticizing.

I would suggest that you may be coming off a bit close-minded if you are telling POIs what your dissertation topic will be in an introductory email. They couldn't possibly really judge your "dissertation topic" from an email spiel. These kinds of emails aren't about getting feedback on your topic or interest in general but how it might relate to the POI's own interests. I think it's better to say it more generally, e.g., "I am very much interested in _________________." Then mention how that fits with their own work. Begin your email by introducing yourself and tell them that you are considering applying to their program and wanted to inquire whether they were currently taking new students. Then mention your research interest. Most importantly, keep it brief... one moderately-sized (4-5 sentences) paragraph. Any more will seem presumptuous on your part because they are indeed so busy.

fuzzy is spot on. When I asked my mentors how many schools I should apply to ideally, they said 10. I ended up applying to 11: 5 tier I's, 4 tier II's, and 2 tier III's. I always think that, in my field at least, 8-10 is pretty much normal. If you plan on applying to 10 schools, you should have a preliminary list of a few more than that because, when you begin contacting POIs in September, some will not be accepting students, and some departments may have other issues of which you are unaware (i.e., funding, esp. for state schools) which might limit their decision making. I ended up dropping 3-4 off my list after making contact with all my POIs.

Fair enough. I don't always remember to preface every statement with "In my field..." As I indicated originally, that is not my own "standard" but one I have been advised about by professors and mentors. Apologies if anyone was harmed by my "dangerous" statement. Did you not notice where I said, "your own individual situation should dictate your own choice of CV length?"

Fuzzylogician, my brother is in Linguistics and his CV is about the same as yours. Probably like you, a significant portion of that details his teaching experience. Let me elaborate and amend my former statement (though I have had professors tell me the same). Most grad students think of their CV in terms of quantity over quality. I would guess that many grad students who have 5-page CVs have a lot of stuff on there that most people drop as soon as they are done with the PhD such as graduate student conferences and the like. These kinds of entries as a grad student show that you're involved, but no established or senior scholar would keep graduate student conference presentations on their CV. While it is painful (in a way) to remove items from your CV, I would suggest looking at it again as if you were already an established scholar and ask yourself what you would drop from your CV. Now to amend... If you're already ABD and getting close to the market, your CV could definitely be more than 2 pages as you should have a few conferences, a publication or two out or pending, and some teaching experience as well. Nevertheless, I can't help think that a 5-page CV in the Humanities for a graduate student is a bit too much. I could, of course, be mistaken and your own individual situation should dictate your own choice of CV length.

Just to add a footnote... Historians are sometimes remunerated for other types of writing, one I can think of off the top of my head is encyclopedia entries.

Indeed, I met with Foner back in December and he is not taking students anymore as he plans to retire within the next 2-3 years. Also, I may be mistaken, but I don't believe Gordon-Reed is in full residency at Harvard as she also holds positions at New York Law School and Rutgers. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean she's not taking students but I believe she is at Harvard Law School... definitely not in the History Department. I met Rugemer as well in February and he seemed like a nice enough guy. Though his work has largely been on the role of the Caribbean in the Civil War not gender. This is what people mean by "fit." You don't have to find someone who does exactly what you want to do, but there should be more of a connection than just time period.

I felt the same kind of guilt about skimming texts. However, all of my professors have told me that skimming is a necessary skill for all grad students in the Humanities. For books, I generally read the introduction and epilogue very carefully and the first and last 2 pages of each chapter. Alternatively, I'll go through the book reading the first and last sentences of each paragraph. Of course, the better the writer, the more effective the technique. For an average 300-page book, you can read it in 2 hours or so instead of 8-10 hours.

Exactly. Definitely only mention it if you're reapplying to a school which rejected last year.

Aside from the usual way we think of "fit" as meaning our interests in relation to those of prospective advisors and other faculty, there are other less obvious aspects. For example, if you are in 18th-century British history and the school has affiliations with similar institutions, such as a "Center for British Studies" or "Early Modern Seminar." Also, if you are an 18th-century Americanist and there is a major organization or library nearby which is relevant to your field, that could be emphasized when talking about fit in your SOP. For historians (and others), does the university's library have significant holdings or archives in your field or sub-field? While not being the primary aspect of "fit," these are just other smaller aspects which can enhance the adcomms' perception of your fit with the program and university.