TMP

Look in the bibliographies of secondary sources you're working with to see if the collections/archives you're interested in has digitized images online.

You got this! Remember you are ready-- your profs wouldn't let you take the comps if they didn't! Listen to them #speakingfromexperience #iwasstupid

My answer? Defer and apply for funding again, even if it means that you will have to start repaying your previous loans. And re-apply to US PhD programs. I've said it before, I think it is much better deal to get a PhD in the US as an US citizen than in the UK, especially with the whole "Brexit" thing going on. My UK friend/colleague who is an US citizen spent a lot of time stressing out about her visa and keeping it going under increasingly tighter UK laws. Do not take out loans for tuition and living expenses. There are so many hidden costs that you will encounter once you start.

Definitely get together with OHSP. There is nothing better than a face-to-face chat with a current graduate student who just went through this process. You'll also want to ask your own adviser/professors-- they get letters from prospective students all the time. They should be able to tell you what is a good introductory e-mail and the timing (I generally suggest late September/early October when the semester has been underway for a while). In the mean time, start reading the more recent works of potential faculty members to get a handle on their most recent research questions. Trust me, you do not really want to work with someone who has published a book that inspired your research question 20 years ago. That person has very likely moved onto new questions and areas of interests.

Involve the coordinator ASAP. Whenever I've run into bureaucratic hold-ups, I just go back to my grad coordinator and tell him that the bureaucracy is being a nuisance and explain my timeline. He then contacts the right place. That's the job of the graduate coordinator in your department: they take care of all the administrative needs like reimbursements.

@hellocharlie I also come from a complicated background but not as much as yours. But I do have a good friend with a similar ethnic and socioeconomic background who can relate a good bit. As @Sigaba pointed out, you already have a good uphill climb simply because of the various privileges that exist in academia (class and race). You will want to immediately seek out resources at your new university for graduate students like yourself, either through the office of counseling or office of diversity and inclusion. You will find strong psychological and peer support to help you succeed in your program. My friend found connecting with other graduate students of his race/ethnicity quite crucial to staying in the program. Has he had doubts whether his academic pedigree was good enough for fellowships and the job market? Certainly. But he focused on creating a strong research agenda to attract attention (which it has!) and his peers, including myself, have encouraged him to keep his eye on the ball. Because of his modesty, I think he is one of the underrated graduate students in the program but his dissertation committee recognizes his brilliance and strongly support his work and goals to get the PhD and become a professor. As @Sigaba noted, professors do notice different levels of commitment among students and choose to invest in resources (including time) to the most committed and those who exhibit potential to join the profession. Given what you just went through (like many others), it's normal to feel ambivalent to enter a new program/school and you feel that you could so much. I felt similarly when I went to my first undergraduate college (which was good but not in the top 15). I did my best to embrace the college and its student body but realized the overall atmosphere wasn't really for me at the time. I also heard that "miserable student makes for miserable grades" and decided to think positively and embrace my academic work to get good grades for a transfer to my top-choice, which had difficult transfer admission rate. By the time I got my acceptance to that school, I had gotten so used to being in this college, found good people and professors to connect with, and felt okay staying. I decided to leave for a more personal reason. From that experience, I think that once you allow yourself to embrace the profession, the program's offerings, and the community (in and out of the department) and do all of that with a positive attitude, you'll feel more settled. Also, you will want to check out the blog "Conditionally Accepted" (https://conditionallyaccepted.com/) and you might find connection with the bloggers even though many of them are already professors.

Welcome to graduate school! You will definitely get conflicting information along the way in all aspects of professionalization (You will get different advice on writing a historiographical paper or an academic book review, to begin with). You will have to learn, eventually, how to make calls for yourself. (But, generally, you'll want to listen to your dissertation adviser the most.) If you hate the GRE, take it once and just move on. If you love the idea of boosting your GRE scores and take it again, be all means do it. You choose what's most comfortable for you but you also have to weigh in what will be the best use of your valuable time.

Remember, admissions for the PhD is entirely a different beast than undergraduate. Discard all the things you have learned from applying to undergraduate and start afresh with all the advice you're getting now.

90th percentile. You're fine. https://www.prepscholar.com/gre/blog/gre-score-percentiles/

I'll support that it's not a bad idea to look at places with a strong WGS department. Not necessarily for coursework but for campus speakers whom you might be able to interact with and meet students from other disciplines whom you might be able to get together and talk and discuss disciplinary methodologies (and perhaps exchange dissertation chapters). Remember, the coursework part is just a small part of the PhD education. I'd think a bit more carefully about which generation you are looking at (the immigrant generation? Second generation? Third?) and the role of acculturation into the American society shaped the outlook of American women of Italian origins. I especially would think about the differences in the American and Italian political systems and the role of religion (Catholicism for Italy, Protestantism for the US). As for careers, keep to one sentence: "With the PhD, I plan to be a professor." That's all you need to put in unless the PhD program has a strong, strong public history component. What is important is to showcase your interest in what the department has to offer and how those offerings will enrich your scholarship. I suspect this would definitely be the case in the top programs, which really tend to produce researchers, not teachers. Researchers as in becoming part of research faculty at R1s and elite SLACs with a courseload of 3-5 courses per year. Teaching institutions attract teachers with a course load of 6-10 courses per year.

"Strong writer" will have a different meaning in graduate school Don't get too ahead of your own judgment-- let others judge for you. I'm going to PM you about NYU.

I'm out of upvotes today but I am 100% with @ashiepoo72 on this very statement. I can't tell you how many graduate students will gripe when they see that individuals just can't continue to the end unless these individuals are truly struggling and becoming emotionally unhappy. I have known 2 graduate students (one of them my best friend) who told their advisers that they didn't want to continue beyond the MA. My best friend's adviser urged her to take advantage of the summer monies to get into research and finish her MA thesis to be sure that she wanted to leave all the research behind. She did the research and concluded that she still loved the research but couldn't handle the quirks of academia. Another student, an international student whose interests laid outside of US history and her home country's history, already had an uphill battle coming in. There was something about her that hinted that she would eventually leave the program, particularly her initial impression that she just wanted to study history at graduate level with no understanding of reality in academia. She confirmed it after dodging my questions about her summer, exams and dissertation plans for almost a year. Her reason was that she wanted job stability and I was not happy because I know I told her that being in academia was not going to be easy and she would need to think about jobs beyond the professoriate and no doubt that she has at least heard around the department the challenges of the job market. She admitted to me that she told our adviser back in September, beginning of her second year, I was even less thrilled. I suspect, though, my adviser knew that this student wasn't cut for the PhD as her MA thesis did not show any real sign of original thinking (it was a saturated topic. But to be honest, her BA topic was quite exciting in comparison but she didn't want to pursue it). Although my adviser and my best friend's adviser dealt differently, when graduate students leave before finishing the PhD, their departures hurt the department more than them. The Graduate School counts how many students finish as part of deciding how many students the department can fund. Also, they hurt other graduate students' morale and trust because we all have invested in time into one another through classes, chit-chats in TA rooms, and other areas of socialization. One needs to understand that once entering in a PhD program, one has become part of a community. Community members understand more if the reason for departure has to do with mental heath crisis or strongly academic. But to treat the community and its resources less respectfully? Nope.

'@psstein;s situation is an excellent example of acceptable switches. His/her adviser can justify the situation-- the student came in with an interest in XYZ but switched to ABC and the department doesn't offer as much support as whatever othe department s/he wishes to apply to. S/he did not come in knowing that s/he was going to move across the Pond, jump a century or two ahead in history, and change thematic focus. What OP wants to do is just dishonest. Period. The academic world is scary small, especially that you will run into people in the archives who you will see again at conferences and vice versa. One of the biggest considerations is the will and stamina to do the MA coursework all over again. Is it really worth another 2 years of history graduate school? Do you really want to historiography class again (not everyone will accept that credit)? After doing an interdisciplinary MA and 2 years of grad work in my PhD program, I definitely was ready to be done with coursework forever (and I still had to take a few more classes for electives and I'm still burnt out).

I wouldn't do it for that reason only. That's my short answer. Also, have you considered Middlebury Language Schools? The financial aid and fellowship competition are quite generous if you apply early.

Great suggestions above. I'd branch out to "Mediterranean" from just "italy". Italy shares more with its neighbors to either side of it, not quite with the German-speaking world just above it. As for schools, just my feedback: NYU (working with Diner/Ben-Ghiat/Gordon/Nolan) I'd strike this out if Diner is your intended person of contact-- she does have a zillion of students. Michigan (working with Chin/Gaggio/Simmons) Doesn't Chin tend to focus mostly on mid-20th century German history? I'd consider swapping her for Pamela Ballinger who is more Italian/Mediterranean oriented when it comes to human mobility. I generally agree with @AP's advice on number of schools but I'd roughly suggest no more than 8. The process itself is really exhausting. I would start filling out the online applications ASAP so they are pretty much done by the time you're ready to upload the perfectly tailored SOP and general writing sample.

With your insistence on not taking a year off and fear of not being able to get back in the swing of things, I am quite curious. Most people, if not everyone, struggle to get back in the swing of things and adjust to graduate-level work in their first year, not matter what. Most people find that their classes and passion for history and learning are enough of motivation. Everyone has to re-adjust their study habits because graduate-level courses are so different. If anything, most people who know they'd like to go to graduate school already come pretty motivated and excited to learn, no matter how long they take time off. You will be taking classes in your first year that you will be excited about and want to do the work. Yes, there will be the pre-req historiography and a professionalization class but there will usually be other courses that will be right up your alley. I honestly cannot think of a first year struggling because of lack of motivation unless s/he was dealing with depression (like I was). Why do you want to do the PhD? Why do you want to be part of academia? And, please, tell me that you have ideas other than being a professor.

Then it appears you have choices in front of you. 1) Consider taking a year off so you can really use this thesis as your writing sample as a strong evidence of your potential and ability as a historian. I didn't use my honors thesis for December deadlines for PhD programs but I did for my March deadlines for the MA programs. Then I used one chapter of my MA thesis for PhD programs later. 2) Use the paper that you already have that is strong and polish it. This may mean that you will really have to work on your statement of purpose to demonstrate your interest and skills to carry out your research on Italian-American connections. It truly is not unusual for people to take a year or two off after graduating from undergrad to devote more energy to producing strong(er) PhD applications.

Talk to your thesis adviser about how to get a writing sample ready in time for December deadlines. Only s/he can offer suggestions which one you might be better off focusing-- a chapter of your honors thesis or the paper with all the primary sources. Does your honor thesis include any Italian sources?

that said, no guarantees that you will get into the History Department at your institution. Would you be willing to stay in Comp Lit if you don't get in? I'd talk to the advisers first-- you'll then how much and what kind of work you'll need to do to get your hands on the history disciplinary methods.

Use the search functions or go back to various threads on switching disciplines-- from one discipline to history. There are many, many helpful suggestions! There is nothing uniquely different about English than, say, biology or philosophy to history.

While the train has left the station, I'd would have held back this statement. That PhD program thought you were already well-qualified and did not need extra MA prep work. It suggests that you would rather go to a more competitive program than to go there. So I'd hesitate to re-apply there. They'll then ask, "What if she gets into a school a notch above us? Will she still turn us down?" If the program offered you a funding package from the Graduate School, they likely have to report where declined offers chose to go and that can affect their ability to retain or gain more funding in the future. I'd use family as a driving force in this case..

That's the kind of stuff you should be reading up on in the department graduate student handbook, which should be posted online on the department website (or contact the graduate coordinator for a copy). Really, really start familiarizing yourself with it because most of the time your adviser (and other professors) won't know/remember what's the standard protocol (blame on a very, very busy life of being a professor!).

My university's dissertation completion fellowship.

For this and given your family situation, I'd head to Delaware.

@gorange94 Now I'm curious to know what your letter writers think about your current thoughts.