Sigaba

Depending upon the schools to which you apply and the specific command for which the historian works, you might want to consider carefully using a LOR from that individual. For example, if you apply to a school that has an emphasis on the Pacific rim and the historian works for USPACOM, the LOR may do more harm than good. Such are the legacies of the navy's role in American imperialism. On the other hand, if you apply to a school that has military historians and the historian works for USSOCOM, you may be especially GTG. Overall, you may benefit from doing some background research on your programs to see if faculty members were opponents or proponents of OEF and OIF, if not also the presidency of Bush the Younger. My $0.02.

Read more, repeat yourself less.

Introduce yourself, pass out and review the syllabus for your discussion section. Read the riot act on plagiarism. Distribute blank student information forms. Take photos of the students so you can have their names and faces memorized by next week. Send them on their way with ten to twenty minutes to spare. (The ice breaker is the act of taking photos for the purpose of learning their names. The ice will break even more if you pay a student a penalty if you don't remember his/her name.) My $0.02.

Yes.

MOO, things went off the rails for you last October when you established a pattern of leading off email exchanges by asking about funding. I think you'd have been better served by leaving that issue aside and just focused on topics centering around your research interests and his work. What's done is done. Focus on the here and now. By the time you go through the application process again, you will have a different perspective and more skills. In the event you feel like beating yourself up, look for threads on this BB in which graduate students reflect on their own miscues.

I agree. Without a fuller understanding of what the OP means or why the OP has posed the question, it is ill advised to form an opinion. For all we know, the OP may be attempting to balance his/her love for history with pressure from his/her family. (And there are a few threads in which members of this BB struggle with that very issue.) And with a fuller understanding of what the OP means or why the OP has posed the question, it is still ill advised to form an opinion. If the motivation is about making the biggest paycheck possible, so what? To answer the question, if you want to make a lot of money as a historian, the way to go is as a popular historian who writes narrative works on traditional fields such as war, "high" politics, and "X and his times" biographies. While this approach may land you in good stead with a lay audience, journalists, and talk show hosts, you may take some hard knocks from academic historians who have different sensibilities on how Klio should be served.

But the OP asks about a low GPA, not low GRE scores.

Hey, A-C. You might profit from tooling around on the History forum, located here. There are a number of threads that deal with language requirements and fulfilling them. Broadly, a number of variables make answering your questions difficult. You ccould end up applying to a program that has one sensibility when it comes to fulfilling language requiremetns but have professors of interest who have hold their graduate students to a higher level and thus focus upon langauge proficiency when looking at applications. IRT learning Spanish, I recommend that you go to the Spanish department at your current school and find someone who can help you develop options.

Were I in your position, I would embrace the suck and earn the B.S. As a graduate student in history, you will need to have an outside field. The work you do for the B.S. today will allow you to have more bang for the buck when you do the coursework for your outside field. This is to say that while your peers are getting their feet wet, you could be figuring out how anthropology can inform your dissertation design. Second, you might be able to parlay the statistics requirement for the B.S. into meeting a language requirement for grad school. Third, you might have more opportunities to do work as a TA because of your background. (History, anthropology, and statistics--if you go all out.) Fourth, the grind will help you to build the endurance and the confidence you'll need in graduate school. Fifth, you may have a much stronger application on a variety of levels, especially when it comes to LORs and your SOP.

@Loric The fact that you've been admitted to programs and made a living as a writer does not make you an authority on the admissions process. In the event you earn the trust of professors, you may find that their motivation is dynamic. Many don't approach their responsibilities from a negative perspective, especially when it comes to deciding who might be their peers down the line. Your POV that admissions committees approach applications from a "negative" perspective stands in stark contrast to the experiences of many graduate students on this BB who were admitted despite not being ideal candidates on paper or having classmates on whom departments took a chance. Also, it is bad form to offer broad generalizations about what an application should never or always do. For example, if the OP were to apply to a program where the professors are focused upon teaching and mentoring, it may well be a huge plus for an applicant to point out that she or he received criticism and then took corrective steps to address the issue. As you are a new member who wants to enrich this BB, I respectfully suggest that you spend time reading posts by Fuzzy Logician and Eigen. You will see that they are highly respected because they give good guidance. You will also see that their guidance is good because it is based upon their experiences in their respective programs.

Two questions. First, did you read the OP carefully? The post points out that an issue has already been identified. Is stonewalling the best way to go given the possibility that the same issue will remain evident to any one who looks at the applicant's transcript? Second, based upon what experiences is your guidance based?

I am going to stray from my lane long enough to ask the following question. Is it prudent for applicants to put such precise information out in the open? One applicant has unintentionally compromised the weight of his/her LoRs, if not also raised doubts about his/her ability to keep private information private. Members of admissions committees do come to the Grad Cafe. Google does crawl around here. PERSEC does matter. My $0.02.

I am bumping this thread because of some of the comments and concerns in that thread. #HTH

I disagree with the previous two posts. Pedigree does matter for better or for worse, fair or unfair. Some schools have reputations that work to the benefit of their alumni in ways that are obvious and subtle. That being said, I recommend that you not worry about it nor even care. Focus on the path you're about to walk, not the ones you didn't. Focus upon what you can control in the here and now. If, down the line, a professor on an AdComm wants to bypass your application because you didn't go to Happyland University at Meniscus, so be it. You will vindicate yourself by kicking ass and taking names as a doctoral student at Somewhere Else College. Here's the thing. A school's reputation is built in part by undergraduates and graduate students. Where ever you end up, you have it in you to be a feather in your department's cap.

IMO, the common threads are versatility, intellectual curiosity, and the ability to get work done. Of the three, the first two can be seen as double edged traits. Will you be able to commit to the grind of a doctoral program or will you lose interest? Will you be able to keep pace with graduate students and professors who have been eating sleeping and thinking a field since they were in junior high? MOO, in addition to figuring out just what you want to study, you will need to develop the argument that you are as committed as any other applicant, and that your track record shows that you cannot be out thought or out worked by any fellow applicant.

Focus on your exams now. Worry about your dissertation after you pass. (To answer your question, though, if you pick your topic wisely--and I did not--you may be able to "reverse engineer" existing works, especially cutting edge monographs and dissertations. Also, search engines like Google are very powerful tools. If you figure out the right four words,you can find almost any thing or any one.) But that's down the line. Focus on your exams. The process will do a number on you. You don't need more things to stress you out right now.

IMO, it depends upon the school/program to which you're applying on a case by case basis. Please do take a couple of close looks at your feeling that you need to defend yourself. If the feeling is a part of your motivation, you might hold on to it a bit longer. Else, letting it go may serve you better in graduate school. Then, you'll need ever thicker skin.

@RTL469, I mean that some schools may have had more reasons to develop comprehensive and well articulated codes of conduct than other schools. Were I in your situation, I would be more concerned with schools that have codes of conduct that read like lawyers wrote them. As for Cage's point, if you take a DADT approach, read all the fine print thrice. In this day and age, people get into trouble not for what they did, but for the denials that follow.

An elaboration. The POV of an activist may not matter to a department as much as the level of activity. For example, a department could be fighting for a budget and that may require some metrics related to average time of completion. Such a concern could see professors who hold the same views saying "For the good of the department, let's focus on applicants who are focused on the work." So if the OP feels that putting the activism on hold is the way to go, then maybe make this point clear in the SOP.

Will you be checking your activism at the door?

In the event that one feels poorly served by the training one receives from one's department, give thought to doing your outside field in your institution's school of education.

The answer you received may also be cover for an ongoing struggle within the department over the value/utility of public history vs other fields. Have you had the opportunity to do research on the faculty members? Also, is retaking the GRE the best use of your time, or might you be better off reworking your SOP and your writing sample?

IMO, the OP presents two issues of concern: the acts of theft and the rationalization that has followed. In regards to the former, I recommend that you eschew generalizations and scuttle butt about what some or most institutions do. Graduate programs are black boxes into which only tenured professors and seasoned administrators get a clear view. That is, what may be "no big deal" to those not in the know can be a serious concern to a department that has had enough scandal. I suggest that you instead spend several hours researching the codes of conduct for each program to which you will apply. Cast a wide enough net so that you understand all the codes that might apply to you. You might find that your past is not such a terrible concern as a student, but as an employee (i.e. a TA or RA) you might be subject to a different type of background check. Also note the language and detail with which codes of content are written. Some schools may have slapdash policies that have been boiler plated together. Other schools' policies may read like the U.S. Code. When you have had enough time to digest the information, then develop a plan for each school to which you will apply. In regards to the second issue, I urge you to read and reread the OP until you see the numerous tensions and inconsistencies in your narrative. (Where I am going with this second point is that as written, you come across as some one who regrets getting caught more than one who regrets the crime.)

This statement is inaccurate. Diplomatic historians brawl with political scientists on a regular basis despite the efforts of historians like John Lewis Gaddis, Zara Steiner, Michael Howard, and the late Ernest May to build bridges between the disciplines. Ultimately, a historian is a historian is a historian. While work in political science will likely expand your tools, historians will expect you to think and to act like a historian.

I respectfully disagree with the view that one needs to know the specific topic of one's dissertation when one is an aspiring graduate student. A dissertation is a work that creates new knowledge and advances the historiographical debate over a topic. Unless one has been well trained and mentored as an undergraduate, I don't think one can come remotely close to defining a specific topic. That is to say you could, maybe even should know the area and interval you would like to study (e.g. American war planning during the Eisenhower administration) but you may want to hold off before naming the specific aspects of those plans until you've had the opportunity to do directed reading and research as a graduate student. My $0.02.