DespSeekPhd

I found out I have two years of university funding for my MA! I cannot tell you how relieved I am, seeing how they were only able to give one person funding this year, and if I didn't get it, I wouldn't be able to go. Hooray!

Can I point out that your reduction in income may not matter as much as you think, depending on the cost of living for wherever you're going? I live in Chicago now, which is unbelievable expensive (although NY is far worse). We're moving to Kentucky, which is cheap and nice. So ultimately, we can live off far less and have literally no reduction in our creature comforts. Check out housing prices in your area, and that will give you a good indication of how much the salary decrease will affect you. And don't assume your husband will make far less - did youcheck? Because for an experienced teacher, $50K is the norm in most areas, or close enough to it for the cost of living. Heck, I only taught 5 years and was making that much in Chicago.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm a mom, too. I have 2 kids (9 and 2) and I'm going for my MA this fall in history.

Why don't you see if you can defer for a year? Go do tons of stuff, have great experiences, and you'll still be able to come back after a year to do the PhD if that's still what you want to do. Just don't tell them that you're deferring because you don't know if you want grad school Financial reasons/work related issues/research and international opportunities are all good excuses.

I'm looking for history - you should post the psych one, though, too, I'm sure some people would appreciate it.

I could swear that on a forum somewhere someone mentioned a website that lists programs that did not fill and would accept applications. Does anyone know what the heck I'm talking about? I've been accepted to an MA program in the fall, but I was curious about another, nearby one (I'm in a weird situation where I did not know where we would be moving for my husband's job until mid-March). if someone knows of this lovely website, please post. Thanks!

How could one write a statement of purpose while being deliberately vague about your, well, purpose? I'm not saying it didn't work for you, I'm just curious. I assume that when they ask for a statement of purpose, they want to see how well your can detail your plans. After all, they don't want people in their program who are floating around still trying to figure things out. They want to see that you have a narrowed focus that you are passionate about and can articulate it. Right? I applied for an MA program, as my husband's medical residency precludes me from moving anywhere for a PhD for 3 more years. I briefly outlined my research interests (ecclesiastical medieval history) and noted three professors and how they could assist me. It took a couple paragraphs. The other question is, what is the benefit of working with a professor who does not have similar research interests to you? I have no choice but to apply to programs based on one professor - the only existing program I can find that has more than one professor in my area of interest is Toronto. Every other program has maybe one professor that does early medieval and even touches on ecclesiastical. So I look at whether the professor is tenured, how long he/she has been there, how invested he/she is in the program, etc. When I apply for my PhD in a couple years, I'll need to apply to at least 10 programs to get myself a slot. So goes the application process.

Thanks for the long list. I will pursue as many of those as possible. The purpose for pursuing an MPhil in Wales is because I am looking at medieval history, particularly Celtic ecclesiastical. For that, Wales is perfectly reasonable. And I would use the MPhil as significant research for my application to a PhD program. UWales is respected in the US history departments, providing it isn't a terminal degree. As far as a terminal doctorate goes, even Oxford/Cambridge isn't as well-respected in the US for their DPhil.