TMP

I agree with the veterans here. There is a careful balance that one needs to achieve for the PhD as posters have described above. I came into my PhD program with a focused topic BUT a lot of interests for which to choose my two secondary fields. To be a historian with an ABD status, my exam committee explained to me, is have 3-4 focused areas which you can sufficiently master the context and historiographical questions for teaching and conversations with colleagues outside of your main research focus/field. To get the PhD, you have to be able to read, research, and write the dissertation and use the tools you've learned during your coursework and exams. It is not unusual for ABDs (and professors!) to have to pick up a new field or two while researching a new area and have to rely on those tools to successfully defend their contributions to those fields that they did not have exams in. People who keep switching topics without a clear intellectual journey will not finish the PhD, much less pass the dissertation proposal defense.

It is true... but the most important thing about "Area Studies" PhD programs is to look at the placement record of the program AND the adviser.

Unlike the sciences and engineering, history (and humanities in general) is not an involved discipline which you have to be around peers/colleagues all the time and need to make sure you'll mesh with the group. These interviews with POIs in History are really informal and to make sure that you are what your letter writers, SOP, and writing sample are: A student who is resourceful, teachable, cooperative, intellectually engaging, and committed to the discipline at minimum. There is also a difference between being a book-smart and street-smart. The latter will get you further than the former, who tend to struggle the most after the comprehensive exams. I've seen a number of "book smart" graduate students drop before the street smart, and in greater numbers.

@telkanuru yup, January has always been such a crawl for anything. Grants, fellowships, postdocs, jobs, oh my! January has never been a favorite month anyway.

First of all, as some in the circles have said, including The Professor Is In (look her up), there is no failure, only success whether you stay or leave academia. Second, congratulations on surviving your first semester of grad school! I remember-- both in MA and PhD- finishing felt like pulling teeth. I was so exhausted and wondered if i would make through the next one or, even wonder if I wanted to finish the degree! Questioning oneself and choices is extremely common among graduate students (and new professors!) after finishing a semester, particularly a challenging one. Deciding what you ultimately want to do takes time. You'll want to have the MA for any history position anyway. If you aren't sure if the PhD is for you, take the thesis option and see how it goes. Do some research on what public historians and librarians have done to get their jobs though I suspect a good part is having both a graduate history degree and network connections. You have plenty of time-- consider taking time off after the MA . to see if you miss the intellectual energy of a research program. Meantime, give yourself a real break from all of this if you haven't

By all means, go ahead and submit fall grades to those schools. For the rest, it's your call to contact graduate administrators in the departments to see if they will take your updated unofficial transcripts.

Do you have any specific reason to? If your grades have improved, you can contact the graduate coordinator to see if it's possible to send an updated (unofficial) transcript. For most part, most of your work has been done and profs will assume that you've maintained your performance and not have failed courses

If you're looking for the PhD and to go into academia, I'd apply to higher ranking programs if you can find suitable faculty to work with. Pedigree does matter unless you're doing truly amazing work with exceptional strong letters supporting it. In the meantime, get all the funding you can for your MA.

Truthfully. most people will pass through with a satisfactory report. Professors have other ways to share their displeasure with your performance that will make the situation look like it's your fault for leaving the program, not theirs, to avoid being punished by the Graduate School (which controls the number of funding lines it will offer each year). You are better off asking how many people leave each year and why. Ask what ABDs are doing to extend their funding--TAships in other departments? GAship in a Writing Center? External or internal fellowships? Most graduate students will be honest enough to share. Ask how supportive the department is about students finding external sources of funding. Remember, most funding packages include TAing and you DON'T want to be TAing all the time. A done dissertation is a good dissertation and to get a done dissertation, you need to do less teaching and more writing.

Depends on the program. You'll need to actually read through each program's description of their PhD program. It'll usually mention whether the MA is on the way or not.

Just take it. Move on afterward and focus on what you can control-- the writing sample and statement of purpose. If you don't get anywhere this year, you can always retake the GRE.

In short: summer before for programs, mid-fall for professors. And kindly use the search functions to see a variety of answers to your question.

It's okay to mention but as long as you mention the core faculty first, you're fine. Departments do like to know that you have identified areas of resources on the campus to help you achieve your goals!

From my experience, it is helpful to be in touch with professors during the application process so that they can be aware (hopefully) of your research potential and actually look at your application. If they give a damn and don't get your application, they will find out where your application went (immediate desk reject before distributing to the faculty?). Yes, I got a lot of rejections with a 3.1 undergrad GPA and meh MA GPA and low GRE score (I had language issues) and it took several cycles with different groupings of schools. Ultimately, it's a matter of faculty being persuaded by your commitment to producing good research and a promising dissertation, who's currently sitting on the graduate admissions committee, who else is applying in your field, and, well, the size of your field.

3.01 GPA is just making the cut-off for general graduate school admissions as well as funding if it's competitive. However, your veteran status may give people a second look at your application. I can't say for sure about MA programs-- you will need to consult their websites and email the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) with additional questions that are not found on the website. You'll want to be sure that you explain your research interests and purpose of earning a MA.

Foucault has been such an influence that my adviser told me to throw out my mention of Foucault in my research proposal because, well, unless you're literally and directly engaging with Foucault's work. Otherwise, it looks like a throwaway sentence at this point.

I would definitely add NYU to the list. If you are undecided at this stage, I'd take time off, really. It takes a long time to polish the statement of purpose and writing sample and usually deadlines are around the beginning of December to mid-December. Most people use their polished portions of their senior thesis (or master's in MA programs) for writing sample. You want to put forward the best foot possible as entering PhD programs is still extremely competitive. Even at places like Brandeis and GW get over 100 applications for only 3-6 spots. Most people have found taking a year off worthwhile, especially if they haven't really had a chance to study abroad or take a gap year since high school. Have you considered exploring the transnational links between women in the United States and in Europe, especially the Soviet Union? Take a look and see if it's worth learning Russian, German or French as a second language. Tony Michels at Wisconsin is certainly in your area of interest (though not so much on gender but I think one of his grad students does...) and he's using Yiddish to explore the Jewish connection between the US and Soviet Russia.

What does the thesis consist of? Primary source research?

At this point, entering into my 8th (and final!) year, my comps feel like another lifetime. I do agree with both @Sigaba and @AP. DO go to the job talks in your department even if no other graduate student does. Even if it's not in your field. Do it. You're going because you need to see how job candidates draw out big themes in his or her work to connect to the audience and how the audience-- faculty members in DIFFERENT fields-- find ways to connect. I recall one job talk by a 18th century French cultural historian and a 20th century Chinese cultural historian raised his interest and question to her project. "I'm a Chinese historian BUT I LOVE your work on cultural networks of presses in France! Here's my question...." Not only this but you will be SO far ahead of the game from your peers. Do ask what the committee member's expectation is. Every person is going to be different. Either I was awful at phrasing my questions of "what are we really going to talk about?" as @Sigaba warned of, or my committee was reluctant to be specific, either way, I actually failed my oral exam for that reason (among a few other critical areas). Once I picked up the pieces (with the help of my saint adviser), we were able to outline clear expectations in writing. Only with this list was I able to determine when I was truly ready to re-take my oral exam. Truthfully, try to have at least one committee member who is very down-to-earth (but intense), patient, and "harmless" (like a whale shark among the white sharks). The person will make a huge, huge difference to your sanity. I had a senior, top-of-the-field professor who had nothing to lose in her ranking by throwing soft balls in my way while everyone else (including my adviser) wanted to engage deeper, provoking, out-of-the-left field questions. I could not wait for her turn during the orals. It's okay to be traumatized, even if you have (mostly) nice group of professors who mean well. Until that point, you will never have experienced that kind of stress. (Ask me again the spring when I finish my dissertation and whether that was more stressful...)

I would definitely wait. You need more time to establish relationships with these new professors and for them to see how you work and think like a historian. They will better able to describe you and offer more concrete examples in their letters, not a write a boiler template. You'll also be able to present a more polished writing sample and statement of purpose. A year away from academia in preparation for the PhD has never killed anyone-- as far as I know

@Sigaba Can't help but point out this wonderful homophone typo that's so apt from the perspective of the patriarchy. @historygeek, agreed. Put all of that away and just focus on your final papers. They will take up more time than you think.

Studying for PhD comprehensive exams is the trick

This is quite easy. You're interested in the question of the body and how it functioned in the discourses of gender, beliefs, and public health in different geographical contexts. This is grounded in your interest in how cultural and scientific ideas of the body migrated from one place to another. Physicians, magicians, and related people did travel, after all.

there is no "average." Some people can financially afford a lot of applications. Some people have uncommon interests that they just can't apply widely as they'd like. Some people are constrained by their families' needs. Do what's best for YOU.

What @Sigaba is suggesting is that reading the author's reviews of others' works gives insight on his/her areas of expertise and how s/he read works slightly outside of his/her realm. Few reviewers ever get to review books directly related to their work because they're already part of the conversations that helped the author shape the book, which, in turn, the author thank them in their acknowledgments. As such, people mentioned in the acknowledgments aren't permitted to review the book in question. Reading the author's reviews of other books gives you a sense of how critically s/he engages with the scholarship and research and his/her capacity to be even-handed. Most scholars are fair but you get the occasional outliers who are extremely critical of others' in a negative sense and their own works will usually reflect their self-righteousness.