TMP

After my PhD app was rejected (years ago), I called for it to be forward to another dept for their MA program (which my adviser was a chair of) so I could have another shot at working with her. Worked out just fine

I wouldn't even worry about it, particularly if you've already contacted a prof you're interested in working with. Most faculty members don't even look at the applications until they come back from holiday break.

AFB! You're BACK!!!!

That prompt is usually completely separate. You can discuss your background for that "diversity" statement. But your background, then, won't belong in your general SOP. Let your LOR writers take care of it. Don't even... adcoms won't even think about why you're studying what you're studying given your interesting background! Our minds are like zebras' stripes, we don't read and understand history in the same way. You might come to general agreement but your path of understanding history will be different from others.

Very interesting story. If this doesn't have any relationship to your proposed research interests, you might want to share this with your LOR writers. They have far more leeway in the length and scope of their letters. They can contextualize your readiness for the PhD- you have enough to bring to the table and teach others about the world.

Just give them whatever you're planning to submit. They can decide for themselves how much they want to read (or at all).

My program tends to take on more experienced students where the average age of entering cohort tends to be around 27. We very, very rarely take anyone from undergrad or even a year out. We just take chances on them and see what happens. Jumping into a PhD program straight from undergrad is definitely a huge mental transition. Those people don't think of their advisers as potential colleagues and see them as a "go to" person for academic matters like classes. Good advisers/professors want to be mentors and they would like to mentor "teenagers," not "children." Sure I get very lazy and undisciplined about studying for exams (and my adviser knows that and holds me accountable) but am very independent and can be treated as a colleague on many other matters, including during talks and at conferences. Also, it makes for more pleasant seminar setting when students are open to being challenged by more advanced students and the professor.

I've done that for several schools. it doesn't bother anyone, just shows how much you want to go there and persistence. But it does help to show substantial improvement in the package including stronger SOP (yes, life experience counts too).

I agree with all of the feedback. No need for all the negative points. OP, what do you plan to do with the PhD?

czsec, that can be your Plan B! You can operate out of NYC with your girlfriend. Just wait for the fall foliage... so beautiful there. My graduate colleagues have already thought up a bunch of great ideas for our locale and joke that they're their Plan Bs.

Sigaba nailed it. I cannot tell you, how the life of me, how helpful it is to have books in your field right in your work area. Fortunately, for me, as the only one in my subfield in my department, I get to keep all the library copies of whatever's on my exam list at my disposal until I'm ready to return them. It's a real life saver when you're writing papers for your classes in which you engage your own field in addition to the topic of the class itself. I am, however, slowly buying them as I go along. Besides, graduate students are amazingly possessive of their library copies and get annoyed when their books get recalled.

It is illegal to scan the books in their entirety. I understand that the laws say that you cannot copy more than 25% of the entire book (generally about 2 chapters). I used to work with educators and we've always run into issues when the instructors would want to assign almost the entire book and we'd be considerate of the costs involved for the students. I think you'll have to look under codes relating to higher education.

One poster here suggested a few years ago that she tended to buy books for her major field and research project. I've taken that approach and it's worked well. I've also found it helpful to scan through my adviser's shelves to see what's really worth buying. For example, there was a book I didn't consider worth buying because it was published 30 years ago or so but then my adviser mentioned that she uses it for reference for teaching and it's worth owning it. I also now consider what books might be useful to have for when I teach. Also, consider the fact that you DO get a tax write-off for your books!

Case in point: A colleague of mine told me about this prospective applicant who e-mailed him. I recognized the person's interests and background from his/her posts on the GradCafe. This colleague's one of the most respected students in the department and professors deeply value him and his person was interested in working with one of his committee members. So he was careful in his responses after I told him of my impressions of this particular poster. It's unlikely that this applicant will end up applying to my program. I think what Sigaba and CageFree are trying to say is that you need to be mindful of how you're coming across people on these boards and in life. Academia is hard as it is and nobody wants a difficult, argumentative colleague. In fact, I go to a program that's solid in your interests but you don't want to come to this area of the country and I don't get a sense of collegiality here so I hesitate to even PM you to convince you to give my program a look. I know this seems a bit harsh but I'm giving you a teaspoonful of bitter medicine of how academia works.

Guys, it's YOUR last summer of freedom! This is a time where you don't have to show your adviser (or committee) what you've done over the summer. Nobody expects you to do anything other than be familiar with the grand narrative in your field over the summer preceding first year of graduate school.

I'm always going to ask this of any undergraduate anxious to continue right onto graduate school. Have you thought about taking a year or two off? If you want to be a profssor, then let me ask this: Given your geographic limitations, suppose you get a tenure track job in any of those areas that you said you don't want to be in, what would you do? Turn it down and get a different kind of job? As to your interests, it still sounds way too broad. Is there a specific theme you're interested in like the military, gender, sexuality...? If you want to cover broad geography, you'll need a theme or very specific time period to tie all the places together. Do you have languages?

Don't worry about the numbers. Spend more of your time worrying about your statement of purpose and writing sample.

I'm from Upstate and have driven down to Cornell. Maybe it's just me but I love, LOVE quiet, remote, beautiful areas so I can relax and breathe in fresh air while dealing with the tremendous stress of graduate school. You will be so busy with your coursework that isolation won't get to you too much as you think. You'll always have summers to travel/get away from Cornell. By the way, the snow is actually white there, not gray as in NYC

I prefer to be a social scientist with numbers and data but I've taken a good number of literature courses that has given me tools to analyze personal histories as a text, not just context. I'm a mix of both but prefer to categorize history under social sciences.

Do you have French? Have you talked to your history professors about this particular path? What's your reason for wanting to do the PhD?

Um no. That's what your graduate colleagues and friends are for. Get on Facebook (if you have an account) and post a status message. Don't trust your parents' (well-meaning) advice when it comes to academia.

Most people take their exams between 4th and 6th semesters. Your plan of study (including how you spend your first summer) can be discussed with your adviser. Different advisers have different expectations and priorities. Some of the advisers in my department believe that exams must be done before research while others carefully work with their students to accomplish various things over the course of time. And the rest just don't care as much and give their students total autonomy. Doing prelim research is also important but how soon you need to do that depends whether or not you need to hand in your prospectus (dissertation proposal) along with your exams or thereafter. Coming up with a dissertation topic and the process of making sure it's viable through prelim research vis-a-vis your exams should be discussed with your adviser. That's one of the major incentives of reading for your exams- you learn the historiography and what's been exhausted and what's needed. It's difficult to get departmental funding as a first or second year because your research has yet to be "proven" viable and departments have in their best interests to help those further along finish. Sometimes in your first year, you'll want to start thinking about which other departments you'd like to affiliate yourself with (in effect "poaching" their funding) and converse with advanced students where funding might be found for pre-candidacy students. You generally don't think about conferences until you've got a good chunk of research done, usually sometimes in your third or fourth year (unless you've got your MA and intend to carry your MA research with you). Publishing comes later after you've presented at conferences and started writing your dissertation.

These two are generally the most important for students in their coursework years: Language study if you need to fulfill requirements or improve your fluency. Read/prepare for your exams. Everything else is secondary. Your adviser wants you to get to the exams. Stat.