Sigaba

If you have conerns about how an admissions committee is going to interpret your transcript, you might consider using part of your SOP to provide an interperative framework. If you follow this path, draw attention to the courses that you have taken and how they make you a stronger candidate for admission and do not worry so much about the courses you may have taken out of sequence.

You are the one who changed the topic of this thread from the GRE test to LORs. If you don't want people to pick up what you put down then you stay on topic. In any case, you can change your screen name and can change your avatar and you can scrub your profile and you can down vote comments all you like. (And if you're this thin skinned, graduate school may not be the place for you after all.) However, none of your belated efforts at PERSEC are going to change the central fact that you've exercised profoundly poor judgement by betraying a professor's confidence, especially after you've broadcast your identity in a public forum frequented by academics. (You do know that your profile shows your previous user name.)

You might do well to keep your career goals under your hat if you want to end up outside of the Ivory Tower, especially if you want to work in anything related to national security affairs. As you develop your interest in the "political angle" of US military history during the Cold War, you would greatly benefit from being clearer about what you mean. The politics of command, the roles domestic and international politics play in the formulation of policy and grand strategy, political wranginlg between the executive and legislative branches over presidential war power, the politics of conflict termination, the political wrangling among the armed services as well as the branches within each service, and the politics of civil-military affairs are some of the political angles one might study. (You would also benefit from answering the question: Do you want to be a military historian who specializes on the Cold War or do you want to be a historian of the Cold War who focuses on the military aspects of that interval of time?) IRT the question of finding departments, give some thought to spending time with physical copies of the last several editions of the AHA's annual directory of history departments. Look at every department, every faculty member, and every graduate student listed. Over time, you may start to notice that the faculty members of history departments can fit together in synergystic ways that create good "fits" for graduate students specializing in X even though there's no professor who focuses on X. You may also notice that many professors studying field Y went to Happyland State and that while Happyland State doesn't rate high in general rankings, that institution may actually be The Place to Be for field Y. (E.g. Ohio State University for military history.) You may also want to use the interlibrary loan service to get copies of dissertations of prospective POIs as well as those of graduate students they've supervised. You might want to put together files on key academics whose works you'll be encountering again and again over the years. I also recommend that you pick between three and five journals that are critical to your area of interest and go through every issue over a ten year period (or longer). (For you, I'd suggest the Journal of Military History, Armed Forces & Society, the Naval War College Review, Diplomatic History, the Journal of Cold War Studies, International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Cold War International History Project Bulliten, and Studies in Intelligence. This review is on top of the review you should do of JAH, AHR, and Reviews in American History.) I recommend you do this journal-based research the old fashioned way--not on line--so that you can get a very good sense of trends and trajectories in your field. In addition to featured articles, pay particular attention to who is writing short reviews and if those individuals move up in the food chain over time. Also pay attention to the advertisements and the listing of books received. [You might also run--not walk--to the CIA's electronic FOIA reading room and start downloading everything you can while you can.] Circling back to your potential career path in policy, you are going to want to start looking at job listings at various think tanks so you can identify the skill sets you will need to be a competitive applicant. You will also have to decide if you can square your philosophy of history with what think tanks do -- produce studies that have clear policy implications. Also, you should bear in mind that men and women who have seen multiple deployments abroad are going to be your competition in the job market for years to come. As a person with a background in academia, you are going to need to develop the skills and sensibilities to interact with veterans--especially BTDTs in the SOF community--who may have pronounced views about the Ivory Tower, civilians in general, politicians in particular, and about GWOT.

If a professor does something in confidence (e.g. gives a copy of a LoR to an applicant) is it prudent to announce that fact on an internet forum-- especially when one puts enough personal information in one's posts, profile, and screen name to figure out who that applicant is?

You do know that admissions committees tend to give less weight to LoRs if they know the applicant has read them--that's why the LoS forms in the application for your preferred school have a waiver for you to sign and date.

wildviolet, it may well be that the guy sat through a different orientation before you arrived and he is operating on a different set of assumptions. A department isn't necessarily going to air its dirty laundry in front of first year students and professors who are mentoring graduate students can be more direct in private conversations. And/or, the guy could just be focused on learning as much as he can as quickly as he can and view your interest him as a distraction, albeit a flattering one.

@czesc Keep in mind that with your law degree and work experience, you've got skills and seasoning--not to mention a commendible level of humility--that will not only help you, but other graduate students as well.

Bluntly, I think you should dial down your attitude and increase your situational awareness. Is it safe for you to assume that members of admissions committees do not know about the Grad Cafe and lurk here? Is it smart for you to come to a forum, ask for guidance, and then start arguing with people who have different information and perspectives than you about the state of your field? (You do realize that telkanuru goes to Harvard and might have some information and/or a POV about that school's approach to the classics that may be useful to you?) Is it wise to think that you're good enough of an actor that your mask is not going to slip and your intolerance isn't going to shine through? Do you know for a fact that none of the professors you're going to rely upon for guidance and support in the coming years don't come from states run by "crazy people"? And what does it say about your willingness to do "anything" when you are using out of date resources, you are completely on the wrong page about Michigan, and you seem unwilling to pick up a cell phone and dial (213) 821-5303 and ask Thomas Habinek your questions about USC?

Yes. You spend almost as much time talking about what you don't want to do than what you do want to do. How do you think that level of ambivalence (for lack of a better term) is going to compare to equally qualified applicants who are willing to do what they need to do to earn their doctorate?

Please do consider applying to at least one Ph.D. program. The department may ask you to earn a master's before admitting you to candidacy for a Ph.D but then you'd not have to go through another application season. If you want to work at a think tank or for .GOV, you might want to start looking at job listings now so you can use your time in graduate school to develop the skills and expertise you'd need to be a competitive applicant (e.g. crunching numbers, familiarity with social science methodologies, and grant writing). You will also want to start positining yourself now to get a security clearance and figuring out ways to square your experiences as an activist with the sensiblities of public service. Fair enough. Just understand that many of the historians making the decisions about who gets admitted and, later, hired, are.

Read the fine print in the application materials before deciding to leave out any pertinent information. It is a buyer's market. Third party background checks are getting more extensive . You may have to sign a document that affirms that your applications are true, complete, and correct (which, by the way, would make a resume a "legal document"). You may also have to agree to subsequent background checks at your employer's discretion. Irregularities do get reported along with guideince to the prospective employer on the significance of the inconsistencies. While the laws of a particular state may require a prospective employer to give an applicant the opportunity to talk about any missing/incomplete/erroneous information, do you really want to be in that position when you could have avoided it in the first place?

What ever solution you pick for your schedule, I recommend having a different solution for your thoughts.

@wildviolet-- He may have received training on your school's and department's policies and informal guidelines on fraternization.

FWIW, my header was aligned right and said: Sigaba: Statement of Purpose. The footer was: Page x of y. The best SOP I ever wrote had a title that captured the essence of the document's narrative thrust. HTH.

A suggestion to aspiring graduate students in history. While the tendancy to assess one's competitiveness in terms of various metrics is understandable, it is never too early to start presenting oneself as a historian. That is, lead off by answering the following question. As you formulate and revise your answer, think about ways to tell the story of how your work as an undergraduate has helped you on your journey thus far. Getting into graduate school is not just about showing that you've gotten your ticket punched. The process is also about convincing established historians that you're committed to the craft and that you have the potential to contribute substantially to the discipline. @JacksonBaby -- Two suggestions and a question. First, try to think of numerous topics that combine all three of the above. Second, as you work through the application process, find ways to draw attention to your productivty and your skill as a writer. A question. Have you considered applying to Penn?

FWIW, in History: Professional Scholarship in America, John Higham discusses the push / pull historians have had with the humanities and the the social sciences. I strongly recommend that one take a deliberate, considered approach to answering this question and phrasing one's answers provisionally. Do not let anyone force you to answer this question until you've had a lot of time to read up on and to think about the issues. This is a topic that can see unsuspecting graduate students ending up as chew toys for grumpy professors and bitter ABDs. Not to add to your angst, but an additional concern to have is the declining relevance of history to more and more Americans. (FWIW, as you progress in your work, you will likely develop the skills and historiographical knowledge to see multiple connections among silos. As a mentor once told me "a historian is a historian is a historian" regardless of areas of emphasis and topics of specialization. ETA: In my view, history is a humanity. IMO, the craft can and should be informed by the methods and sensibilities of the social sciences. However, historians should be ever more wary of getting ensnared in the broader debates of the social sciences. Historians should also be vigiliant about incursions from other fields. One of the bigger reasons OEF and OIF were FUBAR was the blurring of the debate over the RMA (revolution in military affairs) with the historical scholarship on military revolutions and post-war reconstruction. The RMA debate allows for "case studies" across time and space and pushes towards policies, strategies, and operations that leave military and naval historians shaking their heads in disbelief.

You might also want to wait until you get to your school and ask around about the network service in the areas where you'll be spending most of your time (e.g. your apartment, your department, your favorite library). The best service nationally may not have the most reliable local coverage.

By my reading, the OP asked how does one figure out a historian's standing in her/his field and that question has become morphed with "how does one figure out how good of an advisor an academic will be?" A potential way to answer both questions is to look at the acknowledgements in recent important works in one's area of specialization. How often and ernestly do historians thank Professor Z for her help? Did Professor Z provide additional materials and guidance above and beyond what other scholars did in the preparation of the work at hand? In her own works, does Professor Z thank many of her colleagues by name or does she tend to go it alone? If Professor Z has given and received many thanks there's a good change that she's the real deal-- a historian who wants to advance the field and is willing to teach/mentor even as she herself learns. A second way to address both questions is to zero in on how Professor Z interacts with rival scholars and/or historical methods/interpretations she finds controversial, if not outright distasteful. Sure, it can be fun to see the fireworks as big dogs go after each other, but do you really want to work with a POI who is going to hold you to a certain level of intellectual, methodological, and political rigidity? (If you end up in a seminar taught by a "new" social historian, ask her about Eugene Genovese's rift with Herb Gutman.) Or do you want a POI who is going to say essentially, I don't agree with you, here's why but aside from that here are ways to make your work better... IRT asking Professor Z's graduate students, I suggest caution and a fifty pound bag of salt if one decides to to this route. IME, relationships between graduate students and their professors can be very complicated and fluid due to the rhythms of the professor-student relationship. (Peter Lowenberg's Decoding the Past has a couple of essays that that may be profitable if one can find a copy.) Moreover, different graduate students may have different kinds of relationships with their professors than others. This differences can range from assessments of academic potential, to interpersonal chemistry, to intellectual styles. Student A could have a very different view of Professor Z than Student B. And those views can flip and switch very quickly. How can you, an applicant who doesn't know anything about what's going on behind the curtain figure out which version of Professor Z is the one you're going to get?

Talk to your DGS. Explain the situation as you do in the OP. See if you can defer taking one of the two required classes until the next time it is offered. If they say "no," based upon the information in the OP, I recommend you take the elective P/NP (P/F).

Don't freak out. I had to take three written exams. Like many, I felt overwhelmed and had growing doubts that I would pass. A saving thought that might work for you was the realization that one is never really ready for quals. One just prepares the best one can and then does one's best on the exam and goes from there. This is good guidance from JM. However, I'd add the following. Before talking to your advisor, do two things. First, candidly assess your relationship with that person. Is she/he close enough to you that you can have a frank conversation about your concerns or will she/he take such a disclosure on your part in ways you might not like? (IME, qualifying exams were a form of initiation, even a hazing. Professors taunted those of us who were taking exams by telling stories of how hard things were when they took their quals. ("I had to walk fifteen miles in the snow, up hill both ways, during the hottest summer on record, and I couldn't even begin writing until I milled my own paper.") If the answer to the question is "yes," then by all means have a conversation. If you cannot have a true heart-to-heart with your advisor, consider the utility of having a conversation about the materials you're studying. The topics of this alternate conversation could walk a scale of complexity so that you demonstrate what you know cold, give a hint of some things on which you're not exactly sure, and, perhaps, an even vaguer indication of materials that have you stymied. Your advisor might (read: should) see what you're doing and, given the level of rapport, give you good information in return. ("Don't worry about that." "You need to brush up on that a bit." "You got that nailed cold.") As the day of your exams approaches, give serious thought for picking a cut off time beyond which you will not study and instead focus on collecting your thoughts and calming your nerves. If you like to laugh, watch/listen to some comedy. Relax, as hard as that may be to do. If you need to turn off your phone and hang a 'gone fishin'' sign on Facebook and Twitter, go ahead and do so. HTH.

My argument is simply this. The appropriation and distribution of content in violation of end user agreements is not a sustainable practice for those within the Ivory Tower given the current economic and political climate. If one wants to change the rules, I think that one should work within the system rather than deciding to bend those rules. IMO, the decision to not pay for content is an issue that has had a devastating economic and social impact on the L.A. area. Within a couple of months, TakeruK will have the opportunity to go to 475 South Lake Avenue and see first hand the result of the "power to the people" mentality that seems to be popular with some members of this BB. At that address, one may find the empty building that used to house the local Borders Books and Music. At one time, that Borders had a selection of academic titles that rivaled the Borders near UCLA. (Neither could hold a candle to the Boarders on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.) The Borders on Lake, like the Borders near UCLA, died a long, agonizing death because students spent hours occupying tables and chairs, armchairs, and stools, reading books and magazines--but not buying them. Similarly, television and movie production companies are hedging against piracy by moving location shooting out of the TMZ to Canada. This practice helps to protect the bottom line but it comes at the direct expense of craftsmen and women in unions. And then there's the epidemic of reality television programming and its impact on the ability of union writers to make a living. While I anticipate that you--and those who want to give "power to the people"--will attempt to rationalize that not paying for content in a bookstore, and piracy of content produced in the TMZ is different from piracy of content in the Ivory Tower, and that the examples I provided above are not related, I wonder what the people who have lost their jobs because of the belt-tightening necessitated by those who think they're entitled to take what they want because they think a set of rules is unfair. This sense of entitlement among those in the Ivory Tower (and/or the perception that such a sense of entitlement exists) is drawing an incredible amount of ire from the American political right today. (As a member of the Republican Party, it is my happy privilege to endure it on a daily basis.) If the GOP manages to win big in the general elections this November, it is absolutely going to punish public universities by slashing education budgets. The justification for these cuts will be the ongoing economic crisis, but the actual reason will be that many of the party's rank and file members believe that the Ivory Tower teaches values and practices that are anti-American. So when individuals such as yourself talk about bringing the Ivory Tower down because you don't like this business practice or that one, be careful of what you wish. As for your thoughtful string of "actually"'s, we may be looking at different sources and/or have different conceptions of what "heavily reliant" means." So I ask: Is the economic model driving the University of California system "heavily reliant" on research-"labor" or does the money come from the State of California's investment of tax and bond revenue and the tuition and fees generated by the undergraduate population? Is the economic model of private universities such as Harvard "heavily reliant" on the "labor" of professors or does it center around revenue generated by endowed funds? IRT your implicit comparison of the work that academics do is "labor" and, is therefore, somehow equivalent to the actual conditions members of the working classes have to endure on a daily basis, I have my doubts. I have worked in the Ivory Tower as a teaching assistant and as a research assistant. I have worked along side members of carpenters' and electricians' locals at convention centers in Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, San Antonio, and Philadelphia. I have also managed Teamsters at one of America's busiest sea ports. IME, there is no comparison between what they do and what eggheads do. One additional question. Since you seem to believe that it is all right to appropriate content when you think the rules governing its distribution are unfair, have you stood before The Man in person and said so--or do you just say it on the internet?

FWIW, I'm not an engineering/science type, but I've worked for two engineering firms. One was a software R&D lab. The other, a structural/architectural engineering consultancy. While the culture of the two shops were almost polar opposites the cultural norms allowed for behavior on the job that made work a lot of fun. Even so, both houses had an unwritten emphasis on conforming to those cultural sensibilities. At the software firm, if one dressed in anything more formal than jeans, or got to work too early, one might get weird looks and, on occasion, called into a boss's office (at which point you'd explain that you were simply out of clean clothes). At the consultancy, if you weren't cut from the same mold as the folks at the home office, or didn't get to work early enough, the Powers That Be would ask a lot of questions about you and give you quizzical looks when they came for a visit. At both shops, people either did not get jobs or lost their jobs because they gave the impression that, regardless of their skills and expertise, they simply did not fit into the culture. Ain't that something.

I recommend that you reach out to ABDs who have taken exams administered by members of your committee. I recommend that you ask them for guidance but that you frame your questions very carefully. You specifically want to avoid opening any wounds (because, as you're learning, preparing for qualifying exams is painful, and, as you will learn, taking qualifying exams is even more painful). You will want to avoid the appearance of impropriety. You will also want to be mindful of individual differences as well as the state of mind of a post-quals graduate student. That is, someone who has gone through what you're going through can still be emotionally drained from the experience. He/she may not yet have the perspective to give dispassionate guidance. (She could have done exceptoinally well on her exams, but she's a perfectionist so she may think she "blew it." He may appear nonchalant and say the exams were "no big deal" even though he's going to be licking his wounds for months--if not years--to come.) I also recommend that, as soon as possible, you come to a firm understanding of the conditions under which you'll be taking your exams. Will you be allowed to use a computer, if so, what kind? Will you have to write your answers by hand? In what room will you be taking the exams, and at what time? These kinds of questions will allow you to prepare for the inevitable gremlins. For example, if a professor wants you to take your exam in his office, and you know his mouse is lousy, you might be able to negotiate using your own. Or, if you're going to be in a room that is typically frigid, you will know to take warm clothes and, potentially, make informed dietary choices when it comes to your pre-exam meal. HTH.

@Dal PhDer-- Is there any way that you can find more information on how these situations are handled in your specific field? For example, if your department has a "go to" person who has a well earned reputation for addressing issues between graduate students and faculty members, she may be able to give you a solution. (Keep in mind that this solution may be an option you don't like.) Also, there may be a discussion of this type of situation -- and others -- in the academic journals most closely associated with your field. As you develop a plan for how you're going to communicate with your adviser about this issue, I strongly recommend that you develop a list of preferred/acceptable/unacceptable outcomes. From what you've written, it seems that you want first authorship, an acknowledgement that your adviser changed up what you thought were agreed upon points, and also acknowledgement of the hard work that you did to get this paper done. What will be your plan B and your plan C if you can only get one or two--or none--of these concessions? Additionally, give considerable thought to the means of communication. Are you going to raise the point via email? Are you going to do it informally over coffee? Are you going to make an appointment? Are you going to ask for a third party to sit in? Are your communications going to assume good faith on his part or are you going to hold to the narrative you're developing in this thread? (Both approaches have their advantages and their disadvantages--just have a sense which approach is going to best help you get the outcome that you prefer.) What ever you do, I very strongly recommend that you keep your cards very close to your vest until you decide to act. Also, do what you can to maintain a high level of dispassion. Don't get too low if the guy ends up being really shady on this. Don't get too high if this shakes out beyond your highest expectations. This thing is important to you--and it should be. But, ultimately, it is just a thing.

Rather than wondering about competing against aspiring graduate students who may embellish aspects of their applications, I recommend that you focus only on aspects of your own application that you can control. Everything else is a distraction from what is most important -- you doing the best you can to submit the strongest applications possible.