Jump to content

knp

Members
  • Posts

    412
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

Everything posted by knp

  1. 1) Are they equally expensive/cheap? This matters. 2) From your post, I get a sense of what's attractive about UCL, given what you want to do. What factors make St Andrews look like an attractive option for you?
  2. Since it's now mid-May, why don't you go ahead and call/email them again? As far as I can tell, a good rule of thumb is that if someone says they'll get back to you by date X, and does not do so, it isn't annoying or rude to ask for an update.
  3. Being really serious about various bits of grammatical prescriptivism: not splitting infinitives, not ending sentences with prepositions, railing against the casual use of "me" as a subject, using "I" where it should be "me" to overcorrect for the previous ("He gave the book to him and I")... At least half of them are the result of misunderstanding Latin and/or grammar. That last one in particular is nails on chalkboard. Some of those rules have their place re: formal writing (not the split infinitives one; 'to boldly go' and all that), but I know people who pedantically insist on applying them to casual speech. True Detective. Frozen yogurt. Ser Jorah.
  4. Tip: look at who advised your potential supervisors' dissertations. You can do this by searching the AHA's dissertations database, or by looking at their CVs. Who advised Professor Yaqub? Have they died, retired, moved, become emeritus/a? If so, that really is a sign that Yale is a stretch, because people do not get into programs where they are not good fits. However, you may be overlooking somebody (I know I have often done this), who would be a second, and maybe better, potential supervisor. But then look at all the other professors you are interested in working with. Do any of them have advisors who are still working? Those are worth investigating. I mean, I personally can only find professors who'd match my interests and provide good support at one top ten, one Ivy type that falls a little outside of that, and a couple big universities in the 15-30 range. It is what it is, though, so those are the places to which I am applying. ETA: Ashiepoo seems to know your field much better, so I defer to her! But the AHA database is something that was also very helpful for me.
  5. Throwing my hat into the ring for a postgraduate student award to get a MA at a university in England, I think. Here's hoping that because this university has no name recognition in the US, my chances increase from 2% to 3%!
  6. Check out the sub-3.0 acceptance thread. All is not lost! I feel like most people respect it when others grow past earlier difficulties and challenges.
  7. 1. Fight choreographer for movies and TV. 2. Fashion designer. 3. Costume designer. 4. History professor. That's three "nos" and an "I'm working on it."
  8. That depends on the field, no? Telkanuru's list a while back of the minimum languages expected of medievalists was quite long — long enough that while summers could be avoided for undergrads, probably, you'd need far more than a course or two before entering grad school.
  9. Ah, I forgot to mention - do you have an option to do an undergrad thesis, a senior honors' project, or even some sort of capstone independent study? I find that doing one of those starting independent research projects is critical to narrowing down your interests. I enjoyed the heck out of writing mine, even though I never want to work on that topic again. But! In working on my set of primary sources, I found some other things that helped lead me to the two semi-related topics I am choosing between for pitching my SOPs. The process of finding what topic you want to spend your senior year looking at, and in what broader field that topic would be located in, will be helpful practice for doing the same for your graduate school applications. Then, writing the thing will give you some useful feedback about how much you like the topic you ended up choosing. If you try out a medieval thesis and hate it, or vice versa, that's strong feedback to try for the other one. If you love your topic/field, that's strong feedback to keep going with what works. Until then, you are an undergrad, and have four more semesters' (or however many quarters) of experimentation left to do! Take advantage of it and take classes that seem like they might help inform you on these questions; these should be research-heavy, if possible, or at least have research paper options.
  10. Do you have any other committee members, advisors, or relevant professors to ask? I'd do so, because as far as I can tell from here (I am just a worker bee applying for my first cycle next year), it is very unusual not to have a precise list of books to read. So maybe other professors at your institution can help you with your situation. It's not like this forum can't help you, but people with a better knowledge of your institution and your scholarly interests within the Renaissance are in a better position to do so. For instance, re: scholarly interests, somebody studying engravings/prints in the northern/later Renaissance will have a pretty different reading list than somebody studying the transition from late medieval to early Renaissance paintings in a couple Italian city-states. There'll be some overlap, but they won't be identical.
  11. My 'area' was both the first and the last topic that ever interested me in history. I had never particularly enjoyed the basic lessons in American history presented in my elementary and middle schools, so I didn't think about history much. In high school, I took a world history survey that touched on some surprising connections between different regions. One of them made me sit up and take notice: now that was interesting! Then I forgot about this feeling for a couple years, and futzed around periods of European and American history for most of college. In late college, a lightbulb went off, I realized I could study the region that had first so interested me, and so I got started. (What can I say? I guess I'm slow on the uptake.) I ended up specializing in the same 'corner' of this region as my college's one relevant professor; it's an obscure corner of the region, but I ended up loving it, so I've stuck with it. So now I study a field I love. Most of my motivation is intrinsic interest, but some part is a lingering peevishness that "nobody told me" that I could study this region. As somebody who arrived in college with a narrow and western-centered view of what countries had history 'worth studying', I want to help represent this region (and 'my' particularly neglected corner of it) in scholarship and in students' coursework. I will note that because I study a country in a period when it was dealing with European colonialism and imperialism, the fact that I know the relevant European language(s) facilitated the switch. As for the OP, I am always going to recommend "more languages!", although I don't have targeted advice about which languages or choices are best for your interests. (Personally, I'm considering studying language and empire, so I'm taking some steps to make sure I have all my linguistic bases covered, per advice I received earlier on this forum.) Even for those with less language-based interests, more languages is usually a good way to keep your options open. You say you're interested in Native American relationships with the Europeans, "primarily the English". Do you have a specific other group in mind? On the off chance it's the Germans, that would make recommending German seem like a good idea, since it's useful for both medieval history and your colonial American interests. Otherwise, I stand back and let others advise on languages more. And what area of Native American groups are you interested in, generally? New England tribes? I don't know whether you need any or how many Native American languages for that, I just know that studying colonial New Mexico/Arizona has a very different historical and linguistic landscape than colonial New England, or Georgia/Florida/Oklahoma, etc. I assume if you study the Cherokee, you have to learn Cherokee; if you study the Wampanoag, do you have to learn Wampanoag? I don't know, but it's something to think about.
  12. It sounds like you want to do Y. If you'd been accepted to both originally, what would you have done? At the same time, why didn't you apply to this department in school Y to begin with? For what it's worth, I think "I have chosen to attend a program in a different discipline", is probably one of the reasons for reneging on an offer that is going to ruffle the least feathers. "I'm sorry, I chose to go into accounting, not chemistry." What are they going to do, tell you not to get the training you want for the job you want? Seems pretty inoffensive, as decisions go.
  13. Advisor relationships can be tricky! But why don't you start, whenever you send him stuff, asking to schedule a meeting, too? Like "here is my [output], can we meet two weeks from now on Monday or Tuesday to talk about it?" It doesn't address your broader concern, which is that you prefer a more hands-on advisor than the one you have, but it might make your working relationship a smidge less stressful.
  14. knp

    McGill vs MIT

    Assuming this is a serious question, "the Harvard of" is a figure of speech. You might say that Stanford is "the Harvard of" the West Coast or of California. This would be true; Stanford is as good a school as Harvard is. (Although most people don't in fact say that, because Stanford has enough of a reputation that it doesn't need to compare itself to anyone!) At the same time, when I applied to undergrad, I got some college mail soliciting my application from a school that, no kidding, described itself as "the Harvard of southeastern Georgia." (Or equivalent; the letter came a long time ago.) This a place with something like 1600/2400 average entering SAT scores. This place was not internationally competitive; I'm not even sure it was a research university. So, sure, people can call McGill "the Harvard of" Canada; that doesn't mean it's on the same level. It's a really good school, but I'd guess that it's more in the NYU or Emory range than the Harvard range, if we're comparing internationally. As in: people will be rightfully impressed if you go there, but might also reasonably look at you funny if you said you chose it over Harvard or MIT. Your department might be as good or better as the equivalent at Harvard, which could be a reason to choose it, but that would be the exception, not the rule.
  15. Does your college offer an honors thesis or capstone research project option? If it does, you should take it. It would give you practice with a lot of the potential weaknesses in your PhD application you identified in your first paragraph. Even if your takeaway from the thesis/project is that you never want to do history again and instead want to do a different field, or that you might like history but you never want to think about the time period/region/methodology you used in the thesis again, that's still valuable in narrowing down your interests.
  16. Does the ETA let you choose where you go? My understanding is that it does not, so I had been leaning away from it because this language is strongly regional. Unless I am placed in this one city, or the capital, I am out of luck. Nor have I found any government programs to learn the language; it's associated with a terrorist regional separatist movement from some time ago, so preserving it is low on the government's priority list. Do I misunderstand the ETA's placement system, or should I scrap this Fulbright idea altogether?
  17. Oh no, I'm not applying to anything in Europe! The country's program is really selective (I don't know why; the neighboring countries' programs are significantly less so), but I'm sure it's much easier to get than the UK or Italy. Why do I want this? My research plan is a little unsettled, but I want more language experience that would be very hard to get here: at all but one of the PhD programs I'm considering, I would be limited to summer courses, which would correspondingly do a number on my research time. This is because while I could be solid on languages, if I had different interests, there's a third, very obscure language in the picture that I really want to have started working with before I begin my PhD. So, I study a country's colonial history in a region/period in which there are two main colonial, European languages. I am 100% on one of them and 80%-but-could-easily-get-to-100%-in-a-year for the other. However, there is also an important colonized language in this region, one that I've never taken a course in. Unfortunately, it is offered in <10 PhD-granting universities in the US, and only one of them has a faculty member in the history department I could even possibly work with. (Our interests are a pretty terrible match.) Depending on how you define 'need,' I don't need to know the colonized language to do my work. 90%+ (maybe up to 'all', depending on eventual topic) of my potential source materials are in the two colonizing languages. However, I'm interested in history from the colonized people's perspective and in the history of language and in dictionaries of colonized vs colonial languages, so I really feel like I need to have started working with this language before I enter a PhD program. Yes, I could apply for the Fulbright in year four or five and take classes as I do archival research, but I really want to have some familiarity with this language, if not fluency, incorporated into the earliest foundations of my work. So, I want to go do coursework in this language at a university that offers it in my target country. Perhaps it is a failure of creativity on my part, but I don't see how I could get the foundation I want without going abroad to get it. I live in DC, and unfortunately, I haven't found a language course in my target language that is currently offered in this city. But I would appreciate thoughts!
  18. Thanks very much, that sounds like the right thing to do. My undergraduate advisor is a very kind man, but sometimes his advice about other institutions can be a little off. Much appreciated!
  19. What do you study?
  20. I might be joining you guys! (Although I’m having trouble deciding, so I just started a separate thread for advice.) If I do apply, I’m considering a mix of PhD (~1) and MA (2) applications. My two favorite professors work at universities in the UK and Canada, respectively, so I’d like to apply for the MA programs at their universities. I want to stay in/come back to the US for my PhD, as my field is much stronger here than in the UK or Canada—but before that, it would be so great if I got funding to spend a year or two studying with one of my favorite scholars!
  21. Hey there! I was going to say hello on the 2016 thread because I might be in the applications for 2016 cycle. I need to decide about that, though, so I figured I should make a separate thread for advice. I will apply to a study/research Fulbright this fall. It's to a country that has a very low acceptance rate, but if I get it, I will take it. I also, however, have a clear top choice PhD program (which is in the top 20). I feel like I'm ready to enter a PhD program in 2016, but in my ideal world, I would get the Fulbright and enter a PhD program in 2017, even more prepared than I am now. But both of those are hard feats to accomplish! So, what do I do? As far as I can tell from its website, the Fulbright gets back to you well after this PhD program does, which makes everything difficult. So is it possible to apply to the Fulbright and to PhD programs concurrently, even if there is no chance I'd turn down the Fulbright if I got it? I really wouldn't want to turn down an acceptance (!) from Top Choice to reapply the next year. At the same time, Top Choice U is really selective, so I would probably be rejected this cycle anyway. Not taking two chances at applying to Top Choice seems like a pretty significant downside to sitting out this entire PhD cycle for the chance at a Fulbright. But what if I got rejected from the Fulbright, when I would have been accepted to TC? Basically: would it be presumptuous/rude to ask, before applying, if TC lets students defer for a year for opportunities like the Fulbright? If deferrals are something that's never granted, I would just sit out the cycle for PhD programs. (I might apply to MAs, and if admitted consider whether to attend, depending on funding, or to keep working.) The only professor/advisor who's weighed in for me—who is from a different, smaller, and weirdly structured department re: graduate admissions (they just overhauled most of their admissions protocols)—has suggested that even asking about deferring would be so rude that it might put me on some kind of blacklist forever. Does that seem right? Should I proactively just not apply to this PhD program, just in case I do get a Fulbright? Should I ask when I send my POI inquiries in the fall? Should I bring it up only if I end up with both acceptances in hand in the spring? Thanks in advance, I appreciate the help.
  22. knp

    Who is a historian?

    Is 'istorian a normal way to pronounce historian in British English, or some forms of it? It would seem an affectation from Americans (my American friend who insisted on spelling 'while' 'whilst' drove me around the bend), but could it be normal in British spelling? My familiarity with British pronunciation regarding Hs does largely come from the bit in Danny, Champion of the World where Roald Dahl/the narrator spends a page or two talking about how the constable drops/adds Hs differently than people with different accents do, though, so I know very little of this.
  23. knp

    Oxford Bound?

    When I was an undergraduate, two or three of my favorite TAs had done masters' at Oxford, and they all loved it. My undergrad university was prestigious, too, so them being TAs there can only be a good sign. At the same time, I do know three or four people for whom the experience made them decide not to pursue any further graduate education. (Although none of them were medieval!) It seems like there's a lot of strong feelings either way. PS Congratulations!
  24. Oh gosh! DC is so expensive. I have no opinions or expertise on what you should do, OP—congrats on the acceptance! that's awesome—but I just want to chime in that "$700-900" for rent somewhere with a reasonable commute to Foggy Bottom might be optimistic, depending on how much space you need. For instance, I and one roommate share a 1br/den in one of the cheaper neighborhoods in NW, one that isn't on the Metro, and I view myself as having gotten a STEAL for having my share be only $900 a month with utilities. Maybe I was just unlucky when I did my housing search a year ago, but while my apartment is a little small, a little old, medium dingy, and pretty inconvenient for my work, most other apartments I was looking at were both in the $1000-1100 range, while at the same time being smaller, dingier, and less convenient than my own place. On the other hand, if you can do without your own bedroom and either put up dividers or live in the common space, you can obviously cut that $900-1000 figure in half again, so maybe that's not so bad. Here is DCist's rent map (http://dcist.com/2015/03/map_heres_how_much_a_one-bedroom_co.php) for your reference. It only covers DC (and only NW), so I might also suggest looking out along the orange/silver lines into Virginia. Perhaps things are less expensive out in Clarendon or Courthouse? Those were too far from my workplace, but they're fairly convenient to GW.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use