Sigaba

The obstacles you faced included: Graduate degrees in education are not highly regarded outside of schools of education (and even in some departments in schools of education) Your field (as described) may still be too "traditional" for the current gate keepers of the profession. You have what can be called a check list approach to graduate admissions. A challenge of such approach is that, with few exceptions, most applicants are competing against others who have check lists that are just as good. A second challenge is that the check list approach puts one in a competitive disadvantage against applicants who approach graduate school admissions as part of professional training. Going forward, I recommend that you do more to comport yourself as what you are: a historian. Put more effort into reading, thinking, studying, speaking, thinking (again), and writing as a historian. From this perspective, your grades matter less, who edited what matters less, who wrote your LoRs matters less.** What matters more and more, what other historians notice and remember, is how you contribute to conversations about the past and will make increasingly refined contributions with training, experience, and support. ________________________________________ ** It doesn't matter who writes your LoR if the letter doesn't speak candidly about your potential as a historian. Knowing what's being said about you in a LoR is a potential warning flag that it isn't written with as much candor as one needs.

When asking these kinds of questions, please keep in mind that being told that you may do something differently may be unattached from guidance about the challenges that may follow. Too few historians are going to sit you down, walk you through the options, and make sure you understand the potential long term consequences for picking the wrong door. Fewer still are going to keep you from getting in your own way. Instead, most professors will listen with mirth shining in their eyes as you fox yourself into this hole or that one. Later, you'll have a good laugh when you say "Oh, so THAT'S what you meant...!"

IME, ABDs who have had some time to recover from qualifying exams offer better / more balanced guidance than first and second year students who have not been asked to bury any skeletons (to say nothing of sodden burlap sacks that may or may not have something moving inside). Of course, I'm kidding. The sodden burlap sack will definitely have something still living inside. Because why else would you be asked to bury something other than so it could become a skeleton. Duh.

There are too many variables to provide broad generalizations about resources for graduate students. And also, those resources will quickly disappear to clear out room for a strategic hire or a resource or a promoted professor who decides "Hey, I want THAT office." You can ask general questions. What are the current amenities for graduate students in the department? Are there carrels available in the libraries? You can also look into getting a locker in the student union or recreational sports facility. (IME, the best solution is to live across the street from campus.)

Some red flags / show stoppers / deal breakers are going to center around individual differences and preferences that are going to change with time and experience. The professor who has a reputation for using unprepared first and second year students as chew toys may end up being your truest supporter and eventual confidant and friend. So when you ask this kind of question, make sure that you understand that the responses will be going through multiple fillers. That being said, I offer a handful of diagnostic questions. Please note that the questions are offered "as is" and without warranty. What kind of feedback do graduate students get from Professor Biles? Does she comment with a light touch or does she bleed all over submissions and make students rewrite essays? (You may want the former, but you likely benefit more from the latter.) What is the mix of the faculty in terms of age, rank, and experience and how do you see yourself fitting into that mix? Are your committees going to have professors who are marking time to retirement or or bitter old greyheads who want those damn kids to get off those damn scooters or young hard chargers who want everyone to have the Mamba mentality or an appropriate mix of individuals who have a good sense of how to put a graduate student in a position to succeed? Are members of the faculty going through what HR departments in corporate America refer to as "qualifying life changes?" How are those changes impacting a professor's ability to work with graduate students? Are personal professional boundaries between faculty and graduate students appropriate? If professors are being too chummy with graduate students, trouble can be just around the corner for someone. Even if that someone isn't you, you may not want to be in the ensuing impact crater. Are professors appropriately navigating the tension between their professional opinions/judgement and personal political views? The following two items are generally applicable but especially if one is going to be working as a TA or GSI. Is there a well established readily available set of policies that address workplace conduct, student conduct, and academic honesty from the university to the subordinate college to the department and then to the graduate program as well as teaching assistant training? Are those policies explained, implemented, and, most of all, enforced equitably? There's nothing quite like the feeling of finding out that such policies are more guidelines in one's department than actual words to live by. Does the school have prominent sports programs with an exuberant fan base? There's nothing quite like the feeling of finding a letter in one's departmental mail box from an academic guidance counselor on the athletic department's letterhead.

In the strongest possible terms, I advise against the use of "et cetera" and "etc." Next fall, you will be in an intensely rigorous environment where words mean things. The last thing you want your words to indicate is that you don't take your own concerns and interests seriously. In addition to the guidance you will find if you follow @gsc's recommendations, I suggest that one reconnoiter those areas on campus where one will spend a lot of time. Do the libraries have enough of the right kinds of books given one's fields of interest? Will one have to share common study areas with less serious students? What are the walking distances like from points of interest to parking facilities and/or transit stops? What is the food like? And, to put it directly, how far away are the bathrooms that provide the highest levels of privacy, cleanliness, and optimal water pressure? Because in the coming years, you will have opportunities to understand that sometimes, it's better to be George than Kramer.

IME, academic institutions and programs benchmark themselves against peers. Providing specific information as to why one declines offers of admissions (and jobs) may not help a specific individual, but the practice can lead to increased offers of assistance/compensation for future applicants/candidates. And also, it's never too soon to start building one's professional reputation--there's a vast difference between brevity and curtness.

My take is somewhat similar to @OHSP's. You seem to be focused on metrics at the expense of defining yourself as the historian you are now and the historian you seek to be. The way you describe your work as a master's student is, IMO, problematic. It seems to me that you're checking items off a list rather than demonstrating how you've developed as a historian. Your reluctance to disclose even generally your proposed project is also problematic. It speaks to a state of mind more focused on one's individual goals at the expense of the needs of the profession. If you're as familiar with the historiography as you suggest, you should be able to present a thumbnail of your topic without disclosing methods and sources that are ground breaking. But then that raises another issue given how often historians share source materials and ideas with others working on similar projects. I've been trying to phrase the following for three days, let's see if I get it right. From your posts on this BB, you strike me as a person who is not as giving as others. It seems to me that you're much more focused on what people and programs can do for you rather than what you can contribute to the profession of academic history. Case in point, the value you place on two POIs based upon how well they're known. Name recognition can help, but the way you phrase it is controversial. As written, you are suggesting that your masters thesis is more worthy of notice than your undergraduate thesis because of your advisor's name recognition. IME, this kind of valuation of established academics simply does not work.

You could take this proposed tactic a step further by highlighting issues/points that you find especially challenging.

I would strike the word "unfortunately" because it suggests that your next stop isn't your first choice. Even if such is the case, it's the kind of information one keeps to oneself. You never know if the DGS at school B knows professors at your destination. "Yeah, BlueBerryMuffin told me that you weren't his/her first choice. How about that." Also, in some disciplines and at some institutions, referring to a professor as doctor can be taken as a jab. A safer way to go is to address the recipient as "Professor Grey" unless you have ample evidence that Grey signs correspondence as Dr. Grey. A notable exception to this rule of thumb would be professors who attended HBCUs as undergraduates or graduate students. In which case, addressing doctors as doctors is likely appropriate.

@Marier @Michael Scarn IME, discretion is critical when receiving and sharing information from professors, especially from younger professors who are still figuring things out for themselves. Even if the information shared is not confidential, it is important to know if it is shared in confidence. "I have it on good authority that announcements will be made in a week or so..." is better than "Professor X told me..."

Not necessarily. If you are responsible for a budget you want to hit your targets for both costs/expenses and revenue otherwise you may get less money the following fiscal year, if not following fiscal years as well. (This use it or lose it approach to budgets explains the spending sprees departments/organizations both private and public go on at the end of fiscal years.) Also, if a program is getting evaluated based upon key performance indicators (KPIs) beyond completion and job performance, you may end up with larger entering classes from time to time. Additionally, individual professors may getting evaluated based upon KPIs and, therefore, looking to supervise more graduate students. Or younger professors are exploring their own personal professional identities by throwing bigger hats in the ring. Penultimately , an entering class may have a number of legacy students -- undergraduates who have specific academic pedigrees that (right or wrong) are taken as indicators of future levels of high performance and professional achievement. And/or they have the same last names as various campus halls, buildings, and facilities. Finally, this year's admissions class may be that good. Applicants may be better than we were. This year's application thread was exceptionally quiet. It may well be that a larger number of aspiring graduate students received more hands-on support and mentoring from professors and graduate students than in years past. The one to one interaction would not only have made for stronger applications, it would also make for applicants better prepared for the rigors of graduate school. My $0.02.

This post is arguably the most helpful so far this season for next season's applicants as well as for this season's admitted students. @Carrots112 is touching upon the importance of being able to present oneself as prepared, composed, engaged, forward leaning, and personable. Professional academic historians aren't just looking at test scores, grades, and other metrics, they're also looking for information that indicates an applicant will be a good colleague down the line (as in this fall).

I recommend that you initiate conversations with members of your exam committee to start defining their expectations. While some professors may indicate that you're responsible for knowing all there is to know about your fields, others will subtly indicate what is important and what is less important. Some professors may even let you write your own questions beforehand. Please do what you can to understand better the format, time limits, and environment for the exam. Once you know those boundaries, you can start figuring out how you can take steps to make them work for you. For example, maybe you can pick the time of day, if not day of week, that you take the exam. In regards to the big picture, a way to go is to identify the principal debates of your discipline the last few decades and then see how works in your particular fields of interest have responded to those debates. From there, see how those responses have been the focal points of more specialized debates. If you're having trouble identifying the principal debates, look in relevant academic journals for keynote addresses, articles, round tables, extended review essays that cover multiple works, works centering around the careers of pivotal leaders, and even obituaries. It's important that you be very very gentle with yourself while simultaneously pushing yourself harder and harder. Among the worst feelings in the world is taking a qualifying/comprehensive exam with the understanding that you could have worked harder and smarter. At the same time, it is important to understand that few people are ever really ready to take their comps until well after they've taken their comps. (If even then.)

I am bumping this dormant thread. What follows is a slightly edited version of the OP. Please note the bolded portion. The purpose of this thread is for those who applied to graduate programs in history to do some chalk talk. What would you do differently and why? What parts of the process did you nail? Did you take any risks and how did they pay off? Were you surprised by any hidden fees? What role did campus visits play in making decisions on where to apply or where to go? Did you apply to too many programs, too few, or just the right amount? Because many are still learning where they've been accepted, if you post in this thread, please provide a "snap shot" of your current status. Perhaps the easiest way for many to provide this snap shot is to copy and paste the biographical information from your signature. Or, you could employ a short hand to indicate the number of schools to which you applied, the yesses, the nos, and the wait and sees. Here's the deal. Year after year, many aspiring graduate students come to the history forum of the GradCafe and ask a lot of questions and provide a lot of blow by blow details of the process. Year after year, many aspiring graduate students stop posting soon after getting offers of admission and/or letters of rejection. When they leave, they take a treasure trove of useful information and invaluable experiences. The aim of this thread is to provide an opportunity for a cathartic "exit interview" of sorts so that future members of this BB can use it to build tool kits to use when they apply. Please keep in mind that the reasons why applicants do get into their preferred programs will remain largely unknown. History departments are complex collections of interconnected black boxes and some of those black boxes are inside other black boxes. So please do what you can to differentiate between the reasons you got in (or didn't) and the reasons you think you got in (or did not). For those of you who have not had as much success as you would like, it may be especially difficult to share your experiences. But I say if you did the best that you could under the circumstances, you should be proud of the hard work you've done. Hold your heads high and tell us what you have learned. [....] A caveat. Many of you may be emotionally raw right now after years of very hard work, months of highs and lows, and weeks of checking your email every five minutes. Please do what you can to manage those emotions if you post in this thread. Do not betray any confidences. Do not do too much venting. Do not post anything that you would not be willing to say to a DGS or any of the other Powers That Be at any institution you would like to attend as a graduate student. Lastly, do not, under any circumstances, reach out to a department that declined to offer you admissions with anything resembling a chip on your shoulder. In addition to the skills you are building and the knowledge you're acquiring, you also need to focus on your personal professional reputation and your temperament. Your reputation will play a pivotal role in all of the decisions made about you between now and the time you get tenure, if not beyond.

https://www.graduate.study.cam.ac.uk/application-process/what-happens-next

Bump.

Additionally, it is important to understand the importance of how some individuals fit better into groups than others. As I've mentioned earlier, the meaning of "fit" as used on this BB has shift over the years. I think that this shift works to the detriment of those who think fit is about how established professors and departments suit the interests and needs of individual applicants. One of the hardest parts of this process and what comes after is understanding that as much as one is competing against others, one is also in an unending contest against one's own limitations. Saying anything along the lines of "screw those guys..." is, IMO (and IME in the private sector), is ultimately self limiting.

^This approach to rejection may be emotionally satisfying in the moment but unsustainable in the long run. It is never too soon to start thinking and behaving like a member of the profession one seeks to join. Between now and at least the time one earns tenure, one will likely hear "no" more often than "yes." How one responds internally and externally to disappointing outcomes will be a part of how you're viewed by the gatekeepers of the craft. My $0.02.

I would be prepared to discuss my favorite works in terms of areas and fields academic interest, and/or the writers who helped me develop my understanding of vital concepts and/or improve as a writer. I would also be prepared to discuss provisionally which books are on the short list of "best/must reads" at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels. Finally, I would be ready for some parry and thrust. "You say Book A, but what did you think of Book Z?" Do academics take a break from "heavy intellectual lifting"? Maybe. I would recommend to aspiring graduate students, regardless of discipline, that one be very careful on how one phrases such breaks.

My recommendation to those who are entering a doctoral program with a master's degree in history and balk at the notion of "starting over" or "losing time" is that you consider carefully the wisdom of departmental requirements before seeking waivers and/or exceptions. If you do have a conversation with a DGS, please keep in mind that the Powers That Be are going to have a range of assumptions about what you know and also what you know about what you need to know. Negotiating your way out of a class centered around theory and/or historiography to do more research can, at first, look like a great idea. But if one ends up with thousands of pages of primary source materials without a finely wrought set of analytical tools, or as clear an understanding of the relevant historiography, to fuse the grains of carbon into lonsdaleite, one may have second thoughts. Also, please do keep in mind that professors talk to each other about the personalities and temperaments of graduate students on a regular basis. Take risks, push limits, ask your questions, but don't be "that guy" who thinks he's smarter than everyone in the department and ends up with a PNG to go along with the Ph.D.

I think that you'll benefit in the long run if you discontinue the practice of trying to establish the rules of the road for most programs. Every department is different. Every program is different. Qualifying exam committees and dissertation committees within a program may also vary. Some students may receive waivers from requirements, others may not receive similar considerations. Many of the decisions can center around the graduate student and how she's perceived by the faculty. Instead, I recommend that you focus on understanding what kind of an academic historian you want to be, what you need to do to realize that vision, and what specific requirements and obligations you need to fulfill. (It won't matter if most schools allow grades in language classes to establish proficiency if, during your orals, a professor sits down and asks the first question in German.)

Your POI is telling you that while you may be able to finish in five years, the department understands that it may take six years or longer. Please keep in mind that when you enter a graduate program with a master's in hand, your new department is still going to want to "kick the tires."

ALCON-- Please resist the understandable urge to read the tea leaves and the rolls of the bones. Instead, I encourage you to find strength in the knowledge that you have all worked very hard to get to this point and that you've done the best that you can under the circumstances to put forward the best version of yourself in your application materials. Instead, I urge you to invest your time and your energy in matters where the outcomes are in your control: your current courses, assignments, and research projects. If you're in the private sector, you can focus on your projects and the needs of your team mates. Such an investment will have the added benefit of developing your ability to stay focused in stressful situations. If you cannot focus on academics or work, focus on taking care of yourself in ways that have immediate benefits. A good meal, time with friends, reading for pleasure, "Netflix and chill," some physical activity, a good night's sleep. If you can, tune out of social media and this BB for a few days. Right now, at this very moment, individuals against whom you will compete for funding, jobs, and professional awards are developing their trade craft. For some, it is because they "know" they're getting into Happyland University. For others, it is because they don't know but they understand that graduate school is hard and that they need every moment that they can get studying their craft.

I recommend that as a rule of thumb, aspiring graduate students should have different user names for discussion boards related to their personal professional development than the ones used for social media and other purposes. This suggestion (and it is no more than that) may be especially useful in these turbulent times of political gotcha and payback.