rising_star

You might have better luck with this in a different forum, so I'm moving it to Applications.

MA or PhD? Why only second or third tier schools?

I always think visits are best reserved for after you've been accepted. If you have questions, why not just send emails and/or arrange phone calls with faculty and grad students?

Yea, also not sure how (or if) I'll finish the research proposal part in time. If you get any helpful hints, will you share them?

There's a place on Nassau Street and another on Witherspoon St. Can't remember the names of either.

You may also want to consider Georgia, Syracuse, Berkeley, UCLA, Washington, Kentucky, Michigan State, and CUNY. However, almost all of the geography programs in the country will NOT admit you into the PhD program without a MA. So, for example, at Arizona, you apply for the MA program and then when you finish you can be admitted into the PhD program without reapplying. Clark is a notable exception to this, and I think Syracuse as well but I can't remember. Geography is different in that basically every program we've listed offers funding to MA students, so there's no real reason to apply straight to the PhD. You can still finish both in 5 years if you're ambitious and work really hard.

I wouldn't wait to go on the market. The history market is so competitive that the time you could spend doing a MFA may be better spent getting additional publications, turning the dissertation into a book, etc.

When I applied to MA programs, the only things on my CV were my senior thesis and the research papers I wrote outside of class as a junior. I didn't put any extracurriculars or jobs on, but then I was applying straight from undergrad.

I think you can work with people from any department. Whether they can chair or co-chair your dissertation committee really depends on the specifics on your department and university. More generally, I think you'll be fine if the profs in the comp lit departments are missing a language that you're interested in or a time period. Lord knows I worked on Swahili stuff as a comp lit undergrad and my advisor didn't know Swahili. It wasn't a huge deal, provided you translate the quotes you use.

Is anyone applying for this fellowship this year? They didn't have a competition last year so it might be a longshot to find someone on these boards that has applied--or perhaps even won--this fellowship in the past...

Well, the campus deadline for Fulbright is Sept 18, which is why I'm not doing that. By the time I learned about it, there wasn't enough time to ask for recommendations. I'm not sure what our campus deadline for Fulbright-Hays is... but a stumbling block for that is that I haven't really solidified my dissertation research questions yet. I may apply anyway, but I doubt it. There's two other grants due around the same time that would potentially be better for me to have.

For the most part, this is true. The exception would be some fellowship and grant competitions where they take grades into consideration. I turned in a really bad paper last semester and still got an A in the course because I was trying and because the prof knew that my course final paper was the first stab at a conference paper and future publication. But seriously, this is my fourth year in grad school and I've never gotten less than an A. I do know that people in my master's program often got A-s or B+s in the required course, but that was the prof's way of flexing some muscle within the program. I also heard rumors that he has given out Cs a couple of times in that course. It was never really a big deal because as long as you had above a 3.0, your funding was not in jeopardy. Really, graduate school is about learning and professionalization. Instead of focusing on writing an A final paper, you should be focusing on writing a paper that you can submit to a conference or a publication of some sort. I basically refuse to write papers that won't in some way contribute to my educational goals, which is fine because I'm in a program that encourages that. How so? Losing your teaching assistantship is not the same as not being able to earn a PhD. You may lose funding but that does not mean you could not continue working towards the degree, at least not based on what you have written here.

Actually, I've never seen this information posted for any program in my discipline. That said, I definitely would NOT ask your potential advisor about that. If anything, that question should be directed at the Graduate Program Assistant or the Director of Graduate Studies. Or, you know, don't worry about that at all, which is the approach I always took.

I'm sort of working on a Fulbright-Hays application but probably won't get it done in time for the deadline since I've got some conference papers I have to write. When's your campus deadline for Fulbright?

If you have to submit a writing sample, I wouldn't worry about the AW score. All the AW shows is that you can write 5-6 paragraph essay in 45 minutes.

I never sent any sort of CV in my emails. I always focused on their research, my research, and whether or not it would be a good fit. I generally asked people if they were accepting students, about their advising style, and about current and future research plans. I also talked about my own interests and background briefly. If they want to see a CV, they will ask you. You could easily write the following in your SOP: "I am particularly interested in working with Dr. X and Dr. Y, both of whom I have been in contact with regarding my interest in the program". Or something like that.

The answer to the question in your subject line is that you don't need an original idea necessarily. It could just be a new way of looking at something or applying a different theory to a text than has been done before. As far as publishing, I did a two year MA, wrote a MA thesis, and am now in the second year of my PhD (at a different institution). I haven't published yet and probably won't even submit anything until summer 2010, at the absolute earliest.

You may also want to look into Latin American Studies programs, and perhaps geography programs. My former advisor wrote her dissertation on TRCs in South Africa and Guatemala. She went to Berkeley for a MA in LAS and then a PhD in Geography.

Awww, you didn't find that helpful? The answer is, yes, programs put stock in the undergraduate institution. How much depends on what kind of school it is. If you can get people to attest in your LORs that your undergraduate coursework is challenging and that you excelled (as evidenced by your GPA), then you should be fine. I mean, yea, they might be more impressed by a 3.9 from Princeton or Harvard but there's not too much you can do other than put forward the best application that you can.

Maybe this is a difference that has to do more with what fields we are in. There are plenty of people in my graduate program that have no intention of becoming professors and said so when they applied. I should know because I did the same thing. And guess what? We all got in and got funding at various places. So making a blanket statement that all professors in graduate programs believe they are there to train scholars and to work in academia strikes me as odd since that has not been the case in my experience. 1) The DUKE listserve is merely hosted by Duke University, just as many other academic institutions host email lists. 2) It is a resource for people that have finished graduate school, are in graduate school, and are considering graduate school. I'm not sure how or why you think it's only for current students but you've obviously never looked at the list at all. 3) Again, there are programs and fields where people will give you a stipend even if you don't want to pursue a "life of the mind". I'm pretty sure if that's all you wanted, and you wrote that in your application, you'd have less of a chance getting accepted (and particularly in anything remotely related to my subdiscipline). I guess it's different if your goal is to be the next Plato. Agreed. What I'm saying is that different programs have different goals in mind for their graduate students. Your faking an interest in academia thing wouldn't get you very far in my discipline. They want people that understand how their research and graduate work is applicable in a variety of settings, including those beyond college campuses. Please don't get stuck in the trap of thinking that whatever the goal of your specific department is, it is the same goal held by every other department. Departments have different goals just like applicants.

Yes. Invent a time machine and either go back in time and attend a different school for undergrad or go further back in time and do something or get someone to make the school famous. Or you could just not stress out about factors of your application that are completely beyond your control at this point.

dacey, you should go to a UGA game if you get the chance. Particularly one against one of their SEC opponents. The atmosphere will very much remind you of what you've described in College Station. I absolutely loved home games in Athens and some of the grads in my old dept would get together and tailgate beforehand then attend the games. Super fun.

I think you both are incredibly narrow-minded about this. Yes, doing a PhD offers training for research, but actually PhD programs offer little training in teaching (ie, 40% of being a professor). Yes, you may teach but there's little to no training provided before you're in the classroom. What you really acquire doing a PhD are research and writing skills. Those can be parlayed into any number of other fields. I think if you perused job listings, you may be amazed at the number of jobs that are specifically seeking someone with a PhD for a non-academic job. In fact, there's an entire listserve hosted by Duke University (WRK4US) for persons having advanced degrees to discuss nonacademic jobs. They share job postings, discuss job possibilities, and talk about making the transition from academia to the "real world". Have either of you even done any research on this? You're basically touting the lines that old-time professors give students. Given how unrealistic it is to think that you'll get a job in the academy, it may be helpful to demonstrate that you understand how the research, writing, and other work you do as a graduate student can translate into some sort of post-graduate experience. Or, you know, you can lie to them and say you want to be a professor even if that isn't what you want. But remember that lying on applications can be grounds for them reneging on your acceptance and funding offer...

Ask about advising style, number of students, success of students, research topics advised, etc.

If possible, you may want to apply to additional programs. Definitely inquire about the availability of funding before you apply, as there's no reason to apply to schools that won't fund you as a MA student. One advantage of UT is their CASA program in Egypt. You might also look into schools that have solid MA programs, either in Middle/Near East studies or a related "traditional" discipline, and have FLAS fellowships for Arabic available. At most schools, the people reading applications to the MA program are the same people reading them for admission to the PhD program. Yes, they apply different criteria and expect to see a bit more from PhD program applicants, but it's not as if they will be somehow ignorant of what it means to write lengthy research papers and present at conferences. After all, they are academics too. In general though, they will pay attention to the things you did as a master's student because they demonstrate your ability to succeed at the graduate level.