TMP

I agree. Make sure that you can show how it's related to your primary interest. You never know how your faculty readers will respond- there will be a good number of them who expect their students to be committed to their fields if they wish to have a fruitful, productive relationship with them.

Visiting does very little good. You really should get a critical eye on your applicatoins, preferably someone in academia, not in industry. People in the industry do not always know what is really happening in graduate programs in terms of needs and direction.

Consider this as a special treat!!! Visiting her home should actually be much more relaxing than in her office. Trust me, you'll settle in much faster than you think.

Also, professors sometimes don't know whether or not their sabbaticals will be approved until the spring, after they've accepted students. So it's a tough question to ask - those who do tell you that they're going on sabbatical got their sabbatical approved already. Those who don't- they're just waiting for it and are just assuming that they're not going... therefore, they'll continue to take students. Also every professor is different in terms of being on sabbatical. IMHO, having your adviser around in your first semester is crucial for success. But if you have a second person who can serve as your advser, then terrific! Otherwise, your first semester just might be a little rougher than you'd like it to be.

Ignore it. Move on. That's one of the hardest things about being in academia- learning to push criticisms like that aside and move forward. Not everybody is going to be nice. What are you going to do with yourself at a conference when you're presenting a paper in front of 20+ strangers?

I PM you.

It's a common feeling to feel guilty if you're not putting in "enough" hours. Nobody expects perfection in your first semester. It's your time to adjust to graduate school. Your program will be forgiving to any missteps you take for your first semester, if not your first year. Are you working efficiently? Take a look at your approaches to studying. Remember, you are not an undergraduate anymore where you have to learn every small detail. Graduate school requires a different way of reading texts and thinking. In fact, you should be spend more time thinking than reading. Professors are more interested in hearing your impressions and analysis of the author's argument as a whole and some parts of his/her essay/book that you find provocative than to hear you cite every small detail. So if you have a passage or two that struck you, just take the time to think about them and why they struck out and be ready to defend your position and just skim over the rest of the text so you can at least follow the conversation. You will pick up the small details over time as you continue to read on the same subject by various scholars.

Just do it if you y want to go. The worst that can happen is that they say no.

Remember, just have FUN! Take the time to read anything that looks interesting even if it is not related to your agenda. Archival research can be trustratung if you are going to approach it with a black and white view of everything that you do from your agenda to your note taking. Be very flexible. Always say please and thank you and try to get names of people who helped you. You'd be surprised how little civility they recieve.

To a named chair position. Hard to turn that down.

Have you thought about Theodora Dragostinova at Ohio State? Don't sweat on the GRE. Focus on your SOP and writing sample.

No. It depends on his work- is it historical in nature? Or literature? Or sociology? Where did he get his PhD in Ethnic Studies from? The young guy may not be the best. He can't quite evaluate your potential compared to other students.

I agree. It will depend what kind of experience you really want.... there are pluses and minuses to both.

First, you may want to contact the DGS to see if those rules still stand (likely so) for Fall 2013. Second, it sounds like they want applicants who can work "exclusively" with most of the faculty in this area (http://php.scripts.psu.edu/dept/history/aboutUs/earlyModernHistory.php) across geographical lines. So, if you have a project idea concerning European colonial relations with Southeast Asia, you're good to go.

Take time off. That program sounds pretty interesting- it'd be just good as having work experience. The time away from academia is really meant to broaden your view and give you an opportunity to understand who you really are as a person. It wasn't really until almost a year after my MA graduation until I realized that the path I thought I wanted to take was not what I really wanted. Now I am very happy pursuing my PhD on this path that I really wanted. Sometimes our professors and peers influence us so much that it's hard to take an objective look at your interests and personality unless you step far away from that realm. When I made this epiphany, I was actually in Germany and not in contact with anyone in the US. The "work" experience is really designed to help you get out of that "student" mode and into a "colleague" mode. Many, many graduate students find this mental transition extremely difficult and it takes them years. I treat all of my professors in my PhD program and subfield as colleagues who can serve as mentors, not authority figures as most graduate students perceive them to be and treat them as so. It's just a carry over from my work experience where I dealt with former and current academics all the time and thus, called everyone by their first names. Also, it's amazing how much after working 10-6 for a year can carry over to your graduate school experiences- I actually prefer to get up and get work done so I can relax in the evening rather than sleeping in and working late as I did in my MA program. I feel much saner! As for Russian history programs and languages, you'd be surprised how shoddy people's language skills are unless they're native speakers. A couple of our PhD students came in with only 3-4 years of Russian and have had to continue their Russian during the PhD. And find time to take a reading course in French or German. The Ukrainian would be a bonus, especially if you have any interest in involving Ukraine in your dissertation project. But be careful about choosing that particular period. It's been perceived as "done to death." So take a moment and read up the literature more in a variety of themes and perspectives- religion, race/ethnicity, nationalism, gender, immigration, etc. I'd do more of your reading in any works published after 2000 when historians started publishing works using recently opened Soviet archives that they examined since the fall of the Soviet Union. In doing so, you should be able to get a sense of Russian historiography prior to 1990 and figure out what still needs to be "corrected" using the recently opened archives.

I'd consider adding Wisconsin and Michigan. See if you can get a good answer out of Charles (Chuck) Cohen at Wisconsin about your background.

Not even taking a picture of/scanning the paper and e-mailing it to them??? My undergrad was the same until I suppose enough of us demanding that we scan our requests and e-mail them that they gave up. They still don't have an online request system yet.

Oh! THIS! This is one of the traits of a GREAT adviser- being able to recognize a student's particular talents and judge him/her against his/her own merits, not others.

Consider the age difference and their experiences between undergrad and grad (if they took time off). For most part, hold onto yourself and remain friendly and polite. You want your colleagues to remember you years from now as "that person was ALWAYS so nice!" Graduate school does require a lot of patience. And so does dealing with undergrads when you become a professor (if that is your path). If there are bloodbaths going on in your seminar, that's your professor's fault for not being an effective teacher by teaching civility in the classroom. My professors try to work hard at encouraging us to say positive things about our readings no matter how much they annoy us. The atmosphere can change drastically with positive, civil attitude among graduate students. Set an example if you care that much.

I still want my $125 back from Stanford. And Maryland should've lowered its fee for being the most onerous application out there. Consider these application fees as "investment" to your future.

Several issues here: 1) You *should* use Russian in your writing sample to demonstrate your comfort with handling sources in the language, even with just a paragraph. It just shows the adcoms that you're not afraid. That's part of "original" research. 2) It is very true that a Central Europeanist would be uncomfortable dealing with a topic in Eastern European or Russian history. Do you have another faculty member interested in European politics or Russian/Eastern European history? 3) It sounds to me that you really need to update your historiography. You'd be amazed how much difference it makes in the way you think about earlier works. Take the time to do the literature review before really settling on this Black Hundreds topic. 4) Be realistic about your skills and choose an appropriate topic that fits what you have, or will acquire over the year. 5) As for fascism, you may want to check in on Germany history- there are some new works on fascism in Germany. They may be worth looking into for models and methodologies for your case study. 5) Unfortunately, you may have to check in with Russian language secondary sources to see what has been written for fascism in Russian history. I am so fortunate that my adviser's fluent in our primary research language and can tell me what's happening within the scholarship in that specific language while I'm still working on it. Hence, try to network with a Russian scholar with similar interests as you.

I agree with the above comments. Focus on big ideas and methodologies of the person who you really want to be your adviser. Don't worry about the other faculty members. They'll read your application if you mention their names in your SOP.

Remember, don't overextend yourself just to be "loved" by everyone. While it's a good practice to stretch your mind and interests and talk to different people, you don't want to commit yourself to someone who DOES expect you to commit to him/her and his/her lab..... just for the sake of "being loved" and accepted.