TMP

Well you can suck it up and start being an advocate for yourself- ask!

Usually current students are referred by the department or the POI.

Let me put it another way. My Ph.D. adviser and I will plan accordingly to make me marketable. I've already got a "trendy" topic. I'm already quite interested in "internationalizing" history, may it be European or American. I like seeing things from a global perspective. I also am quite intrigue by the idea of digital humanities and have a potential project to try it out with. I'm not going to conform to my graduate colleagues' desires unless I think they make sense and will advantage my career as well. Let everyone blaze their own paths and we'll all see what happens at the end. the Ph.D. program is what you make of it and it's yours alone. Your colleagues are there to support you, help you figure out problems, and bounce ideas with. As I've said, it's up to the student to decide how s/he wants to plan her/his PhD program (with the adviser, of course) and find a group (or two or three) of colleagues to hang out with for years to come. If you're going to go into the PhD program without any intentions of not being aware of what's in demand and only say "hello" to your graduate colleagues and professors for the entire time, you aren't going to get quite far at all. After all, your adviser can only go so far with you and it's really up to you to apply for fellowships, grants, and jobs, and submit articles and book proposals. You're the one clicking that "SEND" button.

No. That's why you apply for grants and fellowships in the department and around the universities (like FLAS) to cover expenses for summer language courses.

be prepare to shield yourself against the Big Red gumsticks at hockey games!

I will indeed report what the UW DGS says when he runs that panel on "Looking beyond academia" or something like that during the Recruitment Weekend. I will admit that I was a little surprised to see that clause in the acceptance letter, followed by tooting its horn as one of the best departments in the country. I am simply going to look out for my best interests as I go through this program. I knew that I didn't want to walk out solely with US or Modern European history degree because I didn't want to compete with 200 other people for that just one job. I knew that I would have to adapt my interests and projects to meet the "demands" of the universities, which are globalization and diversity. I told every single of my POIs that I did not want to teach or study US history through WASP lens. So I hope that by being very progressive with my views, I can at least try to avoid that pitfall that so many single-minded PhDs find themselves in. As for reaching across years and subfields in the program. or even departments, honestly, it's really up to the students to decide who they want to be friends with. If they don't learn to talk to the older or younger students, or somebody in opposite field, that's just their loss for not enriching their own perspectives and potential support when your own subfield turns its back on you because you want that highly coveted dissertation fellowship and they're too jealous to admit it. There's a reason why it's almost never a good idea to date somebody in your own department. especially as they get smaller and smaller... But in any case, we are losing focus on the point of the article: the professors and how they view graduate programs and see their graduate students. I seriously forwarded this to my parents and wrote "Why X and Y want me so badly" on the subject line of the e-mail. I have talked to a number of professors, particularly those who haven't had whole lot of students, whether junior or senior. It's clear how much having graduate students mean to them- they have the opportunity to mentor someone of their very own instead of always co-advising or being one of the readers on the dissertation committee. They clearly seem to crave a chance to pass down their craft and knowledge of history that their own advisers gave them. They talk about how much they learned from their own advisers and what being one themselves would mean (whether they intend to do better than their advisers or want to emanate them). It's a different kind of relationship for them than running seminars or sitting on dissertation committees or mentoring another graduate student whose adviser always seems to be MIA.

My undergrad adviser's not thrilled with these changes at all. She acknowledges that the market does need to self-correct but she strongly feels that it was her peers (a large cohort) that made her entire graduate school experience, not her adviser or committee. She had hoped that I would get into a large department (which I did) that I would have that kind of experience. I just think 20 is a good number, not less than 10 or more than 25. You want a good sized so that there are enough perspectives to go around but not too large that there are too many people fighting for fellowship money or the atmosphere becomes so impersonal.

If you are 100% sure about NYU, you NEED to pull your name off so others can have the chance of getting off the list. If you are sure that if Rutgers pulls through and you WILL go there, then do not accept anything right now. You have until April 15th to decide. It will not be pretty if Rutgers calls you on the 15th and you only have 3 hours to decide between the two programs. Let this NYU decision settle for a bit. I find it helps to put things in perspective.

Congrats Safferz! I was wondering how you were doing! Ugh, I do think it's going to be harder than I thought. Wisconsin's beginning to win me over.... and I'm losing my grip on OSU....

Same here, please

Guys, I think we need to start a petition for oswrous to be accepted in a PhD program with very full fundin so that he can continue to entertain us at conferences. I don't know how I'm going to start my career without Theseus comedy to keep laughing even when I'm stresijg out over my work.

Congrats, Monster! You've trumped me!

^ in short: YOUR job is done. Don't go begging for more money and sell yourself again- they already want you and want to find ways to bring you in the program. Let them sell themselves to YOU and dangle the money in front of you. One of my POIs knows all about the funding package details because she's heard about it through the other POI at some point (perhaps not this year but more in the past) and knows exactly what she needs to do to make hers look more attractive and just as competitive. And um... it's kind of working like a charm...

Ahhh I should add... congrats, Goldie! For someone who's been waiting forever and started long time ago, I'm going to be one of the last ones to decide. April 15th... can you come fast enough? This has been a long, torturous process already.

She's going to Northwestern!!!!!

I remember discussing with my senior seminar classmates about our professor. We were saying "How does he know about this or that book if it's outside his specialty?" Someone said, "I think he reads all the book reviews." Of course...book reviews give the basics of the book's central argument and supporting evidence...

Your POI. Most POIs have a good idea of funding packages at their peer institutions. So simply name that you have a generous offer of X years from University Z and the POI's program is truly your top choice. Is there a way that a better offer can be made? Something along those lines. Keep it simple.

let me beat StrangeLight to this... I know she will go on a rant. Actually, I spoke to a UW student who is on "very good funding package." She is loving it at Wisconsin and doesn't really feel all the negativity. She's in the department all the time so she hears conversations. She believes that the negativity really come from those who decide to come on 1 year TAship or self-funding with hopes of landing better funding in the subsequent years. That minority tend to be quite vocal, which I can understand how and why. I imagine that professors don't like that kind of immaturity and just don't deal with them much unless they demonstrate excellent scholarly work, to make them worthy of real funding. Truly, when you think about it, if you have a 4-5 year package already, why complain about it at all? UW's data shows that usually around 20 actually enroll each year and I imagine that the vast majority of them are on fellowships, leaving just a few on 1st year TAship or self-funding. Why they continue to do this system? I have no idea, and neither does my POI when he offered his thoughts. Hopefully as the department undergoes major changes with the faculty and program structure, the funding will be changed. Particularly how pretty much all of its peer institutions have changed in the last 10-15 years with the latest one being Indiana (I believe) just two or three years ago. Of course, look at Indiana now, with just more than 20 offers out there for a yield of 10 students instead of what probably used to be well over 40 offers.

I read Anna Karenina twice. I just LOVED it. She's such a dramatic queen! Also it's just too much fun to dream about being a Russian aristocrat... I'm a huge fan of 19th century Russian literature though I haven't read anything of that kind in 6 yearsdays Precisely what I did for last holidays: I told my parents that I would be going book shopping at the conference and charging to their credit card a few weeks before the holidays and that's their present to me! They didn't believe me until I opened up a few presents from them and said, "Oh thank you so much for these mittens and the jacket and the books!" They looked at me and said, "Books? What books?" "Uh, I bought 4 or 5 of them at the conference... I'm sure I told you that..." Seeing that I have to fix a certain piece in my paper, I'm catching up my historiography in German Jewish history. Really fun.

I say funded MA if you're willing to gamble on the chances of getting in (or not) PhD programs a few years down the road. I also second the comment on the age factor. I know, I know. A former poster and i used to complain about how we've being discriminated for our age but now 4 years later, I realize why being older than 22 in terms of entering in a PhD program makes sense. I'm not saying that 22 years old is too young but life experience really does help in terms of working with others and bringing new, fresh perspective to your work. I was saying to a few people that if I had applied to Wisconsin and gotten in 2 years ago, right before I "experienced" life and more of academia from the outside when I was done with my MA, I would've just gone. No questions asked. Now I have allowed everything I've learned in my MA program to settle in my mind, along with new perspectives I've encountered during my job and travels to Europe, I have a clearer idea of what I want to pursue and that's one of the reasons why I'm having a difficult time deciding where to go, because now Wisconsin doesn't look as appealing as it did to me 2 years ago (don't ask why I didn't apply then). Another thing is that I'm noticing a huge difference between myself and some of the students I'm talking to. If you make the most of your MA program, you will definitely have a huge leg up in terms of your academic career. Not only you may have a publishable article, but you gain more solid knowledge of your field and more importantly, professionalization. I am astonished by some of these students' attitudes towards their PhD and (lack of) awareness of how academia really works. Certainly I'm not saying this in a negative way but coming into a PhD program with greater awareness of academic politics and protocols will greatly benefit your career as a PhD student and beyond in terms of interacting with scholars, obtaining fellowships, and making the most of your time prepping for the comps and doing your dissertation. Some PhD programs generally like to take advantage of the naivety for their own particular benefit, not necessarily the students'. Consider taking your sweet time by going the funded MA route and hope for the best in your next cycle of PhD applications.

I received mine last Thursday, dated February 24th. My first funding letter... I almost dropped it several times while reading it because I kept thinking "OH MY GOD. SOMEBODY WANTS TO PAY ME!!!"

I swear to God that for UW-M and OSU it's all politics. My POis were on the right committees and they wanted a specific type of student and were probably quite able to make a sound argument. Indiana was basically crapshoot/political. My POI was in European history field and he said that the executive admissions committee only made 2 offers to Europeanists with one of them in top 20. Politics! I didn't get in Stanford and I won't bother asking why. I withdrew from Maryland but I may find out a little later to see if I even made it to the final round. I'm just so grateful that the timing of things was right.

oserius, I think that I wanted to kill you today for not being around to entertain me while I revise my article (and do more research arrgghhh). Congrats goldie!

Or when your grandfather wants to talk to you about World War II and you have zero interest in military history?

Oh. HOLY CRAP! I JUST noticed that I got promoted to Cup o'Joe with over 1,000 posts!!!! I sure hope that over 500 pieces of advice has paid off....