cooperstreet

StrangeLight I'm curious as to where you are getting this information. Everyone I have talked to (meaning, professors at these schools) haven't said anything remotely like this. There are a lot of non-traditional language students--people who acquired the language outside of skills outside of the traditional university setting--and they are not immediately cut, and many are admitted.

It isn't a problem that you haven't published anything yet. Few people do, and of them, most are just book reviews or research in lower quality journals (which don't really matter). I would bet that most people that go into the field do so because they cannot do anything else. What I mean by that is, its unconscionable for me to persue a career path that isn't being a professor of History. That GPA is competative, but--and you will here this over and over again on fora--LOR's and writing samples are what matter. If you want to do British in India, you should start doing language training ASAP.

It'll hurt. That math score is probably in the bottom third percentile, maybe lower. Thats pretty bad, and will raise a lot of red flags. Just work on improving it.

For schools that have a minimum language requierment of two years: Do they mean that you must have two years of training before you apply? or do they mean that you must have two years of training before you start classes? Anyone know how much creedence an adcom gives to statements in your SOP that you intend to do a summer intensive before classes start?

For schools that have a minimum language requierment of two years: Do they mean that you must have two years of training before you apply? or do they mean that you must have two years of training before you start classes? Anyone know how much creedence an adcom gives to statements in your SOP that you intend to do a summer intensive before classes start?

Is anyone out there applying to study Middle East History for 2010? If so, where are you looking? What period? What kind of language skills do you have? What are some colleges that would normally fly under the radar, but have excellent Middle East programs?

So here is my story. I flubbed my first couple years of undergrad, lost my scholarship, and almost flunked out. I switched majors (twice), would up graduating with a 3.1 cumulative. Then I applied for a MA program in a different field, got accepted, graduated with a 3.85. I wrote an MA thesis, which I worked hard on and feel is a pretty good piece of work that challenges the current historiography (of course I do). I presented my thesis at a couple of grad student conferences (which I hear are not that big a deal), then got accepted to present it at a regional conference in a broad field. I, surprisingly, got another acceptance to present my thesis at the annual conference for one of the top organizations in my field (they also publish one of the top journals). So, in preparation for applying to Ph.D. programs, how big a deal is it to present your original work at these conferences? On the one hand, I'm sharing the stage with established people, but on the other hand, my acceptance to these conferences was dependent only upon a brief abstract, which summarizes, but does not represtent, my work. Will presenting at these conferences set me apart from others applying to top 25 Ph.D programs? Or will only publication in a top journal do that? Thanks.