TMP

You'll want to go back to previous threads, especially Fall 2017 and Fall 2016 when posts are made around January discussing interviews (use the search function for this forum only). There are questions similar to yours and people have reported the outcomes of their conversations. Primarily, these professors want to know how you actually think and what kinds of questions you have for them/the program and you would like to explore during your time at Penn. Your cohort will be small and they want to get a sense of who you are and how different people will mesh. Good luck!

What you observed here is completely normal! PhD does that to you. There will always be characters who will share your excitement for learning and the process (usually professors). There will always be people who will say things that will make you doubt yourself (both professors and other graduate students). Discouragement tend to come from the cynics, realists, and insecure (either professors or graduate students, often the latter). I am in my 6th year of the PhD and have seen a lot and listened to several students behind me talk about their triumphs and struggles and I see patterns. As much as i'd like to forget my first years, I do certainly remember the ups and downs before I figured out how to manage that emotional roller coaster ride. And I'm a Germanist so your comment about Americanists needing German is quite puzzling. French was the lingua franca of Western diplomacy until after WWI. German would be more useful in context of the history of American capitalism. Try to read up a few history department handbooks which do spell out language requirements for different fields @historynerd97 A lot of the advice above is geared towards the PhD, which is a research degree. The MA is primarily an opportunity to study history at the graduate level without the long-term commitment of producing a dissertation (and perhaps the awful doctoral exams that occur in students' third year). Might you be able to respond to our queries so that we can have some direction?

They won't. They usually don't care because they'll expect you to figure out how to get your language proficiency up to speed when you're ready to take the reading exams and language evaluations for dissertation fellowships.

Since you have quite bit of time, you might actually want to start reading older threads and you are definitely not the first college sophomore to post. Within those threads, you will find numerous feedback. I do highly recommend that you actually start conversations with your professors, especially those in history about graduate school. FIrst: Why do you want a MA? Second: Most MAs are not funded. Are you willing to shell out thousands of dollars and/or take out loans? Third: Will you goal help you pay off those loans and any other debts you will incur during graduate school? (PhD is slightly different story as one usually gets 5 years of funding that includes barely livable stipend.)

OP, it's really about casting a wide net as well as opportunities to live abroad for a bit. It's not that the international market is any better than being in the US/Canada. With English increasingly becoming lingua franca in higher education, native/fluent English speakers are able to look at the world as their oyster.

All I can say is, "!" and "what's the deal...." I wonder if any current UMN students have insights on this.

None of us have sat on admissions committees of idiosyncratic professors with plenty of departmental politics so we can't properly assess your competitiveness

TBH, those application forms don't really get looked at too closely. Those are really for the administrators to gauge their benchmark vis-a-vis peer institutions. As for the MN residency, you're correct, but that's really for the government who clearly don't understand how academia works, meaning one must be mobile after graduation!

Don't worry about it... most profs don't even have time to look at applications after the fall semester is over the earlier deadline (Dec 1) is more for the Graduate School and depts to get organized. It does take a while to go through dozens of applications to make sure that those completed ones go forward and contact is made with the applicant about missing materials. Grad coordinators also have other tasks at hand.... so they're incredibly busy!!!

If you felt the need to spell it out, then your statement is not persuasive enough. For fellowships and jobs, nobody ever writes, "This is my top choice" because applicants must let their work/projects/ideas speak for themselves. Your SOP should clearly demonstrate ways that the adcoms and the faculty in your subfield can imagine working with you on intellectual basis for the next 5-8 years. Write in a way that you cannot imagine yourself being anywhere else. You also don't want to backtrack on your commitment should another school offer better funding and/or show you things that you didn't know about as an applicant. Most professors are reasonable people and know that applicants/prospective students have high anxiety about getting in and will forgive... but you never know who's going to hold a small grudge. Better to, as I say, "let cards fall where they may". You've done your best.

Have you tried using the PDF? You can also contact the graduate student coordinator in the department who may be able to take the PDF version of your writing sample and attach it to your application.

You're in medieval history, judging from your profile, and getting into PhD programs will always be competitive. You should spend time going through this forum and get a sense of what generally makes for a competitive PhD applicant: usually languages, a focused area (but demonstration of flexibility), and a strong writing sample that shows your potential as a researcher and writer. You simply cannot predict your chances of getting into a PhD program. Take it from someone who took three cycles of getting into a PhD program with a MA in a highly competitive but small field like yours.

@telkanuru hit the nail in the head. The harsh truth is teaching writing is very difficult and most professors don't always want to do it with their undergrads, even their best ones. When they do, they actually have to go back to the basics such as tenses, word choices, and parallelism before teaching concise writing, which arguably is more difficult to do. I once looked over a paper written by a former advisee of my adviser (who was a stickler for writing with me as her PhD advisee). I marked it up as my adviser would. This said student was so shocked; she thought our adviser prepared her well for graduate school writing (I was in my second year of PhD program, she in her 1st year of a MA program). She never talked to me again. I also realized as I progressed from my BA to my MA to my PhD that my undergrad adviser, a grammarian, and my MA adviser, an excellent editor, could only do so much to help me learn to become a better writer. Learning to write well is not something, as I tell my undergrads, that can be done overnight, let alone a semester with me, but years. As my PhD adviser said to me my first year, "Your writing can always be improved. I'm glad that you can read. If you didn't know how to read, then we would have a big program." If you like the idea of writing "long" dissertations, then why not apply to European schools? I will agree that European dissertations tend to be longer and those are of different standard. If anything, the world outside of the US are jealous of those earning a PhD in the US because dissertation length and defense are shorter. At least that's my encounter with Israeli, French, German and UK universities. Where is @Sigaba???

Yes but you will need to learn to love being concise because fellowship applications, journal articles and book publishers very, very often have word limits. A standard book review will run anywhere between 500-1000 words and somehow you have to pack the entire book within that limit. Your dissertation also *should* not be more than 300 pages of text (or roughly 100,000 words). Accepting this reality early on while do you well on the very long run. While it is fine to read Russian novels (I'm in middle of Tolstoy's War and Peace at the moment) and let some of the author's writing influence you in terms of creativity, you need to remain aware of your limitations when you actually sit down to write whatever damn thing you have to write for your profession as a historian.

One of my major teaching goals with my undergrads was to get them to work on their writing. Not all appreciated it when they realized that I gave a damn (I had one who complained that his midterm exam grade was unfair: "I thought this was supposed to be a history course where we learn facts, not writing!" The prof rebuked on my behalf ). I told them to write their papers, not just for me and the professor, but also for their proud grandparents (they giggled). In my department, we are about being accessible as writers and we don't think there has been enough writing instruction at any level, college or high school. In your case, I've re-written the first paragraph to show what "trimming the fat" means and clear, straightforward writing for history looks like (Cutting from 196 words to 69, which would give you so much more room for analysis and substential evidence down the way). This is exactly what professors mean by being "concise"/"succinct". FWIW--and not to slam your adviser-- times have changed since your adviser went to that PhD program. The PhD program and its faculty may have changed their approaches to training PhDs to make sure that their writing is marketable, not just to the academy but also to the general public. Through me, my undergrad adviser has learned a lot what's changed and stayed the same since she finished and she really appreciated all the changes and thought they're for the better. Of course, you should translate the documents according to the original language but, as my German professor reminded me as he worked with me, say what the original means in idiomatic English. Don't adhere too closely to the original as in translating word-for-word. My $.02.

Do you honeslty want to do the following: 1) Read over 200 books within 3 years? 2) Write grant/fellowship applications every single year for research funding? (numbers vary depending on dissertation topic itself) 3) Work 40-60 hours a week (Reading, classes, grad assistantships, department semianrs, lectures) including weekends? 4) Write a 200+ page dissertation that involves tons of drafts in the process? If you say "no" to the last one, then PhD is not for you. It is essentially a research degree. As for teaching, it's doable if you don't love it but you may surprise yourself when you actually give it a try. College kids can be an interesting bunch (I have a love/hate relationship).

Your interest in Dutch Republic immediately makes me think of Dagomar Deroot, who is now at Georgetown U and has a PhD from York University (Canada).

Ah, I remember @ashiepoo72's cycle.... she was quite frantic. I agree with both-- as long as you can afford the process financially, physically, mentally, and emotionally. You might want to look at Ohio State for Sara Butler. She recently joined our department for opportunities to work with graduate students and I think she's offering a course in the spring. Her work looks very, very cool! Also, with the tax stupidity happening, it doesn't hurt to look more into public universities for PhD (you get residency after one year in Ohio).

Good to see you! You got this with your exams! Do COME BACK

Footnotes for easy referencing, especially that profs won't read the whole thing and you can save them the trouble from scrolling back and forth.

My iPhone and iPad work just fine for scanning..... I use either DocScanHD or ScannerPro for apps.

@Sigaba has given excellent advice in this thread and the one on writing sample (several threads down) about shorting your work to fit within limits. In your case, keep a section that demonstrates your ability to integrate both primary and secondary sources and analyze them as part of your larger argument. You can preface your sample, "This section is part of my thesis on X, which argues Y".

@kenalyass Suppose you don't get into a PhD program and the MAPSS won't really offer funding, would you still take out loans for it? I'm also skeptical that a one-year program would be enough to get you grounded unless you are willing to wait until after graduation to apply to PhD programs. Applying to PhD programs in your first semester of any MA program is not quite wise-- you're only adding more coursework to your repertoire and not building on your research/writing skills as a thesis would. Usually the first year of a graduate program is so full of new things to learn and people to meet, in and out of the classroom. The second year has different challenges but you would at least have accustomed to daily life to devote yourself more to your studies and engaging with the academic environment, including picking up unwritten cultural norms.

What is your goal with MAPSS?l

I'll add to what @Sigaba and @Assotto said, I'd wade carefully. This may work at a place like NYU and Princeton where students are on full fellowships with no work obligations as Rutgers and others have. I looked into this briefly for the Midwest version and I learned that my funding wasn't really allow me to take classes for a semester elsewhere. You'll have to do research on the financial aspects of doing this. Unless you are dead, dead serious about going elsewhere for a semester/year to study with another department/professor during your coursework years when you should be building foundational relationships with your department's faculty for committees, I'd advise against pursuing it.