TMP

You know yourself the best. You know what exactly you are interested in. You know your own qualifications. We all do our own grunt work because nobody can read our mind or understand our own needs. Chances are very little that you'll land a crackpot. Bad advisors, yes, there's a chance but the only way to know is to talk to the graduate students there. We can't help you on that. You just have to go with it and trust your instincts when you interact with the professor. It sounds to me based on your responses, you aren't exactly ready for a PhD program.... look into the MA program so you can be very competitive for the PhD.

There have been several threads about this. Look back a page or two for different replies to this question and some have provided variations in a sample letter to a professor.

Agreed that whatever you want to do really needs to be relevant and with certain qualifications. Unless you're in American history, it's very difficult to assist in professor's research. You're likely not even qualified to copy-edit their manuscripts as it requires certain proficiency in academic English if you're looking for anything to do in English. In example, one of my undergraduate professor was in Russian history and in lieu of a 20 page research paper, she gave the Russian majors primary source documents that she had collected for her research to translate for her. Once you've completed an upper level seminar, things may get a little easier. Students are more successful at securing research projects if they completed a research paper and have demonstrated interest in doing more research in that area that may complement with the professor's current research. For example, a student may take a course on World War I and want to write about the university town's WWI experiences (even if the course itself is set in Europe). At the same time, the professor is considering a pet project relating to the university town's role in WWI. So the professor can say "okay" and agree to supervise the student's research so the student can do more digging in the library and local archives to learn more about the town during World War I, thus collaborating with the professor. These kind of "local history" research projects tend to be a bit successful because students don't have to go very far to find primary sources and there's just that vested interest in developing town-gown relations by raising awareness of the past roles by the town and the university in responding to national and international issues and events. Local history is really fascinating. Don't underestimate it. In the meantime, start developing your language skills, either in French or German (two most popular languages) if you still don't know what geographical areas you want to be in. And think about what you'd like to do over next summer- find an internship or partake in a language program (though you may want to start looking around for grants like FLAS (Foreign Language Area Studies) if you're at a large university). Trust me, you are not far at all. Most people don't even think about PhD until... their senior year.

I know it's very disappointing when you're hearing things you don't really want to hear because you want to make this year happen for you. We all don't like the market either. Professors do have to take turns getting new graduate students, especially as budget cuts are forcing departments to cut back the number of people they can take in. If not this year, then maybe next year! At some point, they do need to take in one student in British history, right? Since you're in British history, have you looked into the UK at all? Like I said, make sure you have other plans you're excited about!

I think that may be why. $23K is certainly much higher and provides great quality of life in Ann Arbor compared to other places. But Michigan should have expected this when it was deciding how to make its offer off admissions. Not to 30-something people but how much it really can actually afford without suspending admissions for the following year.

Don't worry. If you still want to apply to those programs, just do it! Some professors don't want to get involved at all until they see the applications.

Generally 2-3 pages are sufficient. Remember to try and tailor each SOP.

I agree with some of the points. Before you even think about applications, talk to the people. Try to talk to every single committee member to see exactly what was the issue. Try to approach it with "What now" attitude, not "why" because the latter will only put them on defense. Say "I really want to do my PhD, what can I do now to make that happen?" Perhaps you need to skip out on this cycle to reevaluate things a bit. This just happened and it must be a huge emotional blow. I can't imagine doing my applications under this kind of stress. Remember that going to another program would mean more coursework. Do you really want to do it?

And they were so cautious with their offers for Fall 2010...

Is there a way to appeal or get a second shot at the exams?

They're icing on the cake but don't stress yourself out if you don't have any publications. Nobody expects someone with a BA degree to publish before entering a MA or PhD program.

More often than not, I think, professors make more grammatical mistakes than potential students in these e-mails. I've cringed at misspellings and awkward grammar. Totally agree with others on not reading your SOP anytime between submission and the letter of acceptance/denial. Or your writing sample!

Generally, you take 2-3 years of coursework, write your master's thesis (some programs require it) and take your comprehensive exams in 3-5 different areas in your third year. Then once you've passed all of these, you're left with your dissertation and how long it takes to write will largely depend on you, financial support that you have (grants, self-financing, etc) and your committee. Most will take 3-6 years to finish. The coursework is what separates US PhD programs from European. In European universities, you generally jump right into writing the dissertation.

Everybody has that problem. Even I've posed this question to a senior professor. You just have to judge for yourself. What I'm hearing is that you do want to have some kind of focus but the questions you ask (or areas to explore) should be fairly broadly appealing. So let's say you're interested in women's labor movement in China. Your questions should be appealing not just to the Chinese historians but also to gender and labor historians as well (even if their geographical field is in, say, Africa or United States). If you can't expand your topic to other people who make up the grad committee, you may be out of luck. That's too focused and dissertation-y.

Doubt it. He's probably already aware that you're applying to this many schools and if he had said yes to writing you a LOR, chances are, he knows it'll be bit of work. I heard it all the time from professors saying "I was just writing a LOR this morning.... " "I'll get to your paper when I'm done writing a LOR for one of my other students..." It's part of their life. They do make time in their schedules for these things- it's called time management.

Really, Don't overanalyze the whole process, including your GRE scores. ESPECIALLY your GRE scores. Right now it's all a matter of rolling the dice and seeing what happens. Better have Plans B, C, and D ready to go by the end of January. It's hard to believe that you do have to do this but you do given all the slashed funding and everything becomes as my advisors say "dicey." Just pick the programs and be done with the list. There's always another round.

(not even re-taking the GRE, hardly even worried despite less-than-stellar scores. has better things to worry about like... revising writing sample)

Generally journals follow Chicago so... do what you want. They're not going to look THAT closely. Yes, the bib part is for real. Why waste writing sample space for that when you've already cited works in the body? Well-read professors will check out your citations and maybe your lit review if you include it and figure out what secondary sources you've consulted.

1. Graduate programs spend well over $200,000-$300,000 over the course of five years on a single student. This includes living stipend, tuition waivers, health care (if you're lucky), TA-ships, and grants. For a student to walk out after 2 years, that's a loss of close to $100K. History job market is very bad and there are a lot of reasons why doctoral programs in the humanities shouldn't be funded and these programs need reasons to keep getting the money. If they keep losing students to transfer, drop out, or whatever, then it just doesn't make them look good. Doctoral programs don't make money but they DO produce scholars and that's when they think "that was a good investment," especially when the student lands a tenure-track job. 2. Some doctoral programs require students to do master's coursework and a thesis (StrangeLight's program is one of them) as part of the doctoral degree program. Others just don't do it and give you the MA after you finish the comprehensive exams. Sometimes students in the former leave- either out of academia entirely or transfer. In either case, the doctoral program isn't happy. It knows that by having the MA/PhD curriculum, it risks having students "transferring" to another one. Professors may be helpful if there are very compelling reasons (like loss of financial aid or an important scholar). Otherwise, it's frowned upon.

Generally in the US, it's frown upon, largely because programs are full-funding and they don't like to "waste" their investments. But it's acceptable if a primary faculty member left and the student has absolutely no support. Or if the program includes a MA thesis/coursework as part of the PhD (as opposed to direct PhD and picking up the MA after comprehensive exams).

Orient- Sounds like Prof. Z isn't on the committee for this coming year and Prof. Y is. He's not being rude- he's just telling you that he won't have a lot of say over your application this year. So e-mail Prof. Y and see what he says.

Not at all. The first 10 pages are the most crucial. You need to put everything out there- your deepest analyses and primary sources. They'll continue to read if they find the material interesting enough and time allows for it. Focus on your writing- make sure it's perfect.

wtncffts, Take a closer look at the syllabus. Just how much of the book are you actually expected to read? Can you swing it by requesting a couple of chapters through ILL? Also, you may want to buy books just for the first three weeks and attend your class on the first day. The professor may actually say something about the books or other students may speak up about all the books and the total cost. Reasonable professors actually empathize and offer alternative suggestions. If your new professor isn't one of those, then I feel for you.

No question about it that grad school in general is tougher than undergraduate. I personally didn't feel a HUGE burden as a MA student even though I went through a shock because I really enjoyed the material and challenge. The only courses I really struggled were of subjects that I didn't really enjoy or have much connection to. My professors had different opinions of how closely we needed to read our materials. Blackboard was great. Just about every course I took utilized Blackboard. Each professor did read our weekly responses. The question was: Just how much of our comments would they use to set up the discussion agenda? Some actively used our comments and used them to guide the discussion. In such a case, I'd go back to sections of our readings that other students really wanted to talk about. Others reacted to our responses in such as a way that s/he thought, "Interesting... but, nah I don't want to talk about this or that... I want to stick to my agenda." Then those are more challenging and it's just one of those things you'll have to learn along the way in terms of figuring out how closely you should read. Professors do expect a foundation of general knowledge. They don't expect everyone to be experts like themselves but they do expect students to connect ideas and events correctly during an analysis. Details are "for examples." The hardest thing for me as a graduate student was that I couldn't settle on a topic early enough to give me time to do the research, ILL-ordering (my university's library wasn't the best in my subfield...), write up the draft, and edit. The most important thing that I learned about doing well in courses is to have a conversation with the professor early. Ask them about their expectations. You'll find that their syllabi tend to be quite vague (as opposed to undergraduate ones). They do all have similar expectations but it's the small details that sets them apart. Some professors are more interested in the content of the paper. Others are stickler for grammar and don't care so much about the content. A few will give extra points if you cite their work... Don't be afraid to ask for specifics and feedback. And ask previous students too.