Catria

One may wonder how attractive are history PhD programs at US universities to internationals in the light of the collapse in the domestic applicant pool. After all, internationals have a variety of reasons to seek seats at US schools: a different standpoint on their area of interest, advantages conferred by US degrees in the job market back home, better funding, and so on, so forth. Of course, the actual number of internationals enrolled by any one department varies wildly from year to year, but the data from NWU points to 1-4 yearly as par for the course. http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/documents/program-statistics/H20PH_adm_enr.pdf

Field please... I can only speak for physics, where you'd be better off applying for the PhD directly. It is well-regarded for particle physics, both experimental (after all, Brookhaven is nearby) and theoretical.

It's only really true of public schools (Berkeley, Michigan, Minnesota, UCLA, that sort of thing); privates are usually more lenient to internationals.

Or has English a more limited power to attract international applicants for some reason?

At Carnegie Mellon, I mentioned an area of research I know for sure they do, that is, (very) early universe, but didn't mention any POI whatsoever. How much will that hurt, if at all?

But you have to use your 4 free score reports on schools you would apply to without fail, and, between March and the actual submission of applications, months later, you may find yourself having sent some free score reports for nothing...

I expect it to be different from STEM (Vanderbilt once said that 2/3-3/4 of its applicant pool for the physics PhD was made up of internationals, with 1/2+ of the total applicant pool that came from either China or India, the data is a little dated though), but one has to wonder how many internationals apply to English programs. Take Northwestern for example. Since NWU is a private school, top-20 even, one would expect Northwestern not to favor US residents over equally-qualified internationals on the basis of residency status, and to be rather highly sought-after by internationals. Yet NWU enrolls either 0 or 1 international a year. Either NWU is highly protectionistic for a private school, international applicants are weaker on average vs. domestic applicants, or international applicants are just not that common to begin with. http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/documents/program-statistics/E25PH_adm_enr.pdf

Then what schools would be more protectionistic in your field?

Introduction to Particle Cosmology: Grand unification era Inflation Baryogenesis Electroweak symmetry breaking Hadron and lepton eras Nucleosynthesis Prerequisites: some knowledge of quantum field theory at the level of Peskin & Schroeder Chapters 1-7

I know for a fact that some schools will ask you to re-send if you do not submit an application within X months of submitting supporting materials. At Tufts, for example you have to submit an application within 3 months of sending your GRE scores, or else.

Any reason why, in this horrible market, state regionals or other non-RU/VH 4-years would assume that top-20, top-10 even, grads (from Ivies or not) would likely use a job at a non-RU/VH to land a job at a RU/VH once they're up for tenure? Wouldn't this horrible market force them to hold on to any job they can find? Although particle cosmology is one of the more hierarchical subfields within physics, it's less hierarchical than English because so many particle cosmologists leave academia altogether (I-banking seems to hire particle cosmologists, and sometimes tech industries, although neither specifically hire in particle cosmo, and I-banking is definitely more hierarchical than STEM academia in general) It's not uncommon for particle cosmologists to be hired with hundreds of citations, a large number of papers... Based on our heavy usage of QFT...

I know that protectionism, in an admissions context, means favoring domestic applicants over international ones (in a PhD context, this is due to the cost of awarding tuition waivers when fielding funded offers), sometimes to the point where less-qualified domestics (or in-staters even) get in at the expense of better-qualified internationals. For undergrad, UNC-Chapel Hill is notorious for being so protectionistic that out-of-staters (domestics and internationals alike) have to check against Duke's standards if they want to assess whether it's worth applying or not, thanks to the 82% rule in place there. I know Minnesota's physics department isn't overly protectionistic, unlike UCSB (and to a lesser extent, UNC-Chapel Hill) But how field-specific (within the same school) is protectionism? I would perfectly imagine UNC-CH (for example) physics department being more protectionistic than history, and vice-versa.

But to what extent, if any, can a higher salary make an otherwise dreary job enjoyable?

I would say, retake the GRE, study properly and then you may apply to schools other than UDel and UNL...

I checked my email about 20 times today, although I primarily check 4 out of the remaining 8 pending apps: UPenn, Notre Dame, WUSTL and Carnegie Mellon. Columbia, Tufts, Vanderbilt and Dartmouth fielded no official offers for my subfield at this point (and the one offer from Columbia listed here was for experimental condensed matter, while all UPenn offers were for experimental particle)

No. Or at least not in all fields. Physics generally sends out acceptances and waitlists first, and rejections after, even the rejects with obvious red flags.

I would have sent out the "no-brainer" rejections alongside the first round of admits... the ones with obvious red flags.

Of these federal resources, how many are military in nature? Or otherwise are sensitive from a national security standpoint?

I understand that the first year or two of property taxes in advance is highly city-dependent, but I realized that, if I was to attend WUSTL, Notre Dame or Carnegie Mellon (in St. Louis, South Bend or Pittsburgh respectively), I would still be able to carry out my original plan as it was budgeted in a Michigan context. Have any idea how much do mortgage origination cost or other bank fees associated with a mortgage?

Good thing particle cosmology isn't as elitist as English is, as far as the necessity of holding a degree from a top school to land a TT job is concerned...

Suppose that one paid careful attention to research interests and to credentials when building an application list, and that one's application list has a rather wide spread (rankings-wise). One could argue that, since fit could also comprise the discourse of a student's peers, a top student may get rejected at a lowly-ranked school for its field because the dept would feel that the student is unlikely to attend if admitted. And I also heard about a school admitting a student that the depts of its research collaborators rejected (in as much that departments may talk to each other but departments would do so primarily through their research collaborations) earlier in the cycle. Finally, are there fields that are more sensitive to likelihood of acceptance than others?