gsc

Off the top of my head, and fairly biased towards French imperialism— Rutgers (Judith Surkis), NYU (Frederick Cooper), Wisconsin (Mary Louise Roberts), Michigan (Gabrielle Hecht), Cornell (Camille Robcis), CUNY (Gary Wilder), Stanford (JP Daughton), Minnesota (Patricia Lorcin), UT-Austin (Judith Coffin). I can't vouch for any of these historians or programs, other than my current program, but take a look at them and see what you like and what you don't-- every historian studies something slightly different, and every program is geared towards slightly different interests. It's important to nail down what about France or Europe you're interested in. Gender? Colonialism? French-American relations? Science? You need a school with a strong European contingent and at least one French historian, but beyond that thematic fit is just as/if not more important. For example, if empire is really what you dig, I wouldn't hit up Wisconsin, but I would try Rutgers or NYU.

1) I believe IR is short for International Relations. 2) Clear 160 and you'll be fine in regards to the GRE. When I talked to people about why my application was/was not successful, nobody (and I do mean nobody) brought up my GRE scores.

On the whole, I don't think you have to email your professors ahead of time. There's plenty of time for that once you get there, honestly. If you do want to write to them, though, keep it short. Something like "I'm a rising first year interested in X and Y. I was planning on taking your Z course in the fall, but I was wondering if there was anything you might recommend I do to prepare ahead of time" would be sufficient. 3 readings courses is the norm. I took 3 readings courses plus a half-credit history and theory class first year, and it was fine.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned UT-Austin-- admittedly, I'm not a Latin Americanist by any means, but the archival resources at UT would be phenomenal, if nothing else.

Related to this: The Rise of the Military Welfare State by Jennifer Mittelstadt follows military benefits (including and beyond the GI Bill) into the 1970s and 1980s.

Yes. My program has a terminal MA track and it operates exactly like this. It's not to say that it isn't a good experience for people who choose it, but it's very obvious that it's meant to bring in funds we're not getting from the university. In that situation, PhD students get priority: they get the most face time with professors, the most professional development, and precious summer funding (often carved out from already scarce resources).

Ask them why they came to the department; that can be eye-opening. Ask them what they like best about the department or if there is anything they'd change. They probably know a thing or two about your research, so ask them how they see your research fitting into the department. And look them up beforehand and generate questions that way: if they teach digital history, use it to ask them about DH opportunities on campus; if they direct something like an African studies center, ask them about the center and its programming; etc.

Plenty of graduate students live in Iowa City, but you should bring a car, because it gets cold and snowy and you won't want to walk in it. I would try and live west of the river. There are plenty of city and campus bus routes along that side of town that will stop at or near Carver on their way to downtown, and once you get downtown, it's a 10 minute walk to Seashore.

Yes, we are finished. Like I said, our admits went out last week or earlier in one big wave. I do want to correct you on the number of admits. From what I heard from the DGS, it was more like eighteen or twenty (plus wait list offers) with the expectation around ten to twelve of them will accept. Still a small cohort, though!

Rutgers student here! I believe our admits went out last week or the week before.

Every so often there are people who come through these boards wanting to do theory, but the problem is that theory is just a set of tools -- you can't just study the tools, you have to use the tools to study something. There are some theory-oriented professors in my department, but they have pretty discrete thematic and geographical interests; theory is how they explore those interests, not the thing they study in itself. If you don't want to study a particular historical period, then a history department isn't going to be for you.

Rutgers decisions won't be out until next week.

I was invited last year and it was very strange all around. I didn't end up going because a freak snowstorm left me stranded in the Dallas airport, but they followed up with a phone call and the questions they asked me felt formal and interview-esque (which I was not prepared for). I got an official acceptance letter about two days after that.

It's a little too late to worry about that now, but I think you'd be fine. Good research is good research. There's a lot of overlap between history of medicine and medical anthropology, too, so it's not like you submitted something from a completely unrelated field.

My program (not NYU) requires its applicants to write 500 words, which comes out to just under 2 pages double spaced. It seemed absurdly short at the time, but it was actually a really useful exercise, especially because I wrote the 500-word SOP first. Admissions committees inevitably pigeonhole applicants: it's how they can get through a stack of 200 applications. The point of a 500 word SOP is to do the pigeonholing for them. What do you want the admissions committee to know about you? Then cut out everything that isn't that.

Something like "Graduate study at X" should suffice. Don't apologize, because you haven't done anything wrong.

I'm happy to help! I only applied to PhD programs, and I submitted the exact same essay to Washington did that I did to everywhere else (minus the basic fit/professor things). I honestly think the MA-promotion-to-PhD policy is immaterial; they're only going to admit students that they expect to give PhDs to. It's like any school that admits PhD students directly from a BA, where you technically receive a MA on the way, except Washington seems more explicit about giving students the intermediate degree.

Washington doesn't require a MA for admittance to the program. You can start with a BA, pick up their MA requirements, and get promoted to PhD candidacy just like any other program. I don't have a MA and was admitted just fine. Source: https://depts.washington.edu/history/graduate-studies-phd-degree/degree-requirements-department and http://depts.washington.edu/history/graduate-studies-prospective-students/ma-degree

The thing about grad applications is that it's a total black box. I also applied to Ohio State with good, but not amazing, GRE scores (165V 151Q 6AW), but somehow I ended up with a university-wide fellowship. So you have no way of knowing how things shake out. I spent a lot of time (and I do mean a lot of time) stressing about the GRE and when it came down to it, nobody even said two words to me about whether my scores were good, not good, impressive, not impressive, etc. Your scores sound fine, but if you're worried, retake it for the peace of mind. The last thing I'll say is that allocations of funding differ from school to school. As we've seen, OSU does not offer the same funding to everyone - some people pick up fellowships and others get TA funding. But at my current school (also a state school) the funding package is identical for everyone. So if you were admitted there, you'd automatically have funding regardless of what your GRE scores were.

I used Evernote on my last research trip and it worked okay, but I didn't love it. It's not built as a research tool, and as such, lacks some of the functionality. Zotero and Mendeley are better, free alternatives (I went with Zotero). If you're really serious about the searchable archive, Gradhacker did a write up of Devonthink Pro (http://www.gradhacker.org/2013/10/02/building-a-research-database-with-devonthink-pro-office/) and it looks like pretty amazing software.

I'd check out Rutgers. Other than being in New Jersey (and New Brunswick is pretty small, anyways), it sounds like it could be a good fit.

They seem more qualified, sure. But the things that actually decide whether or not someone is "more" or "less" qualified are things that you can't actually know just by reading their posts. Somebody with a 4.0 GPA and a perfect GRE score can be rejected from everywhere if they submit a sloppy writing sample or don't have a good grasp of their interests, or just apply to all the wrong schools (too many, not enough, or not good fits). And sometimes good candidates get rejected for reasons entirely out of their control and not at all related to their "qualifications."

14 schools is a lot of schools to apply to. It can be done, but the sheer logistics and the expense of it all make it very difficult - by the time you've put together 14 versions of your SOP for each school, figured out 14 different application websites (all with different requirements!), and paid 14 application fees, you're exhausted. It's only August, so I think your next step is to narrow down this list further. Even if you do decide to apply to all 14, the process of figuring out which schools are better fits and why will help you nail down your own interests better. Also, as my advisor at my undergrad once told me: if you don't apply to a school because you think you won't get in, you've basically rejected yourself.

I'll admit I've sometimes started emails with "Hello!" if I'm emailing something like the registrar's office or the library reference desk (where the email address is like reference@yourschool.edu) since I don't know who exactly is going to be reading the email. "To whom it may concern" seems way too formal, and I haven't figured out a good in-between. But if you know who you're emailing, use their name!

So it turns out that a lot of very important and time-sensitive emails from my new program ended up in my spam folder. I only found this out because the department administrator called me wondering if she had the right email address for me on file, since I hadn't responded to anything in weeks. Whoops.