Sigaba

When evaluating guidance, consider the source. When someone tells you that you need to do X, Y, and Z and not worry about A, B, and C, ask critical questions.
Is the guidance specific to a particular subject, institution, or area of study?
Is the guidance based upon hearsay, scuttlebutt, something read in a book, the received wisdom of other aspiring graduate students, actionable information from grad students who have gotten into the same programs, or did it come from a burning bush--that is, from professors? (Hint: while students worry about grades, professors worry about grade inflation.)
Did the person get debriefed as to why he or she did/did not get into certain programs?
Has that person gone through the application process with a high level of success?
Does the person have a good track record for advancing successful applications by other students?

An aside. FWIW, I respectfully disagree with the emerging consensus that there's no such thing as a safety school. It depends. Academic pedigree matters. As an undergraduate, many of my classmates knew that they could continue at the same school after graduation. They knew they were the top students in one of the three highest-ranked departments in the field. Some chose to stay. Others took guidance from professors to go elsewhere to avoid the stigma of intellectual incest. Others wanted to go elsewhere (and knew they'd get in--somewhere).

Advice in line with the OP.

When researching programs, do not be overly reliant upon the internet if your field is history.

Do all you can to get to know the professors with whom you'll be working before you commit to a program. Do understand that you won't get a complete picture from a professor's graduate students. As you will all learn soon enough, a graduate student's love, hate, fear, admiration, and loathing for professors will come and go like Lindsay Lohan's sobriety. Similarly, a professor's colleagues will be constrained from telling you the poop. So, there may well be some information you will not learn until much later. These obstacles aside, do what you can to look before you leap.

Try not to worry about what you cannot control. Let go of fear. So what if everyone else applying to your programs of choice is fifteen feet tall. You're the one with the sling-bullets. Your arm is strong, your sight is clear, and your aim is true. Focus on crafting an application that will be your sling. Whisper a prayer (if you're so inclined), let fly your best shot, and go from there.*


_________________________________________________________
* Fear and terror will be waiting for you once you get to grad school.

Does it matter? You've inquired; they've declined. Now it is up to you to decide on your next step.

(Focus on what you can do, not what others won't.)

HTH.

Congratulations, you're happy. You tested well. Your methods and background worked for you. Consider yourself lucky.

You'll have a long and difficult road ahead if you think you can successfully slack your way through grad school, too- assuming you're even accepted into a program. You're not nearly as clever as you think you are; slacking on any part of the application is just a BAD idea. If you're not even willing to put forth an honest effort to study for an entrance exam, you really just don't belong in the applicant pool.

My 0.02.

Seanish--

I understand that you're concerned about your score and you want feedback. Given the fact that you need ETS's help to answer your questions, I suggest you treat everyone there with courtesy and respect. You never know when the first line of support is going to take kindly to a friendly person and escalate the call up the food chain or, by contrast, to bury a rude person's query at the bottom of a 'to do' list.

HTH.

Yeah I turn powerpoints into pdfs so there are no issues with software or anything like that. There are Windows, Mac and Linux computers here so it's easier to just convert it to pdf.

I use powerpoint to make presentations.

1. Start the process as early as possible. Seriously. It's never too early to start.

2. Spend time researching the programs you are considering applying to - read their website, as well as potential advisors' websites. Read about the location, the weather, the current funding situation. Ask your professors about each school.

3. Don't apply to "safety schools", there is no such thing. Also don't apply to schools in locations you absolutely don't see yourself living in. Don't make choices that will make you unhappy before you even start.

4. Write an early SOP draft and put it aside for at least a few weeks. You may find while writing the draft that you struggle to define your interests. Spend some time thinking about that; it can be a real soul-searching process and you should not apply before you've gone through it and are confident in your chosen field(s).

5. Think ahead. One of the papers you write for a class this year will likely turn into your writing sample next year; get good feedback and revise accordingly. One or more of the professors you are taking classes with this year will be recommenders next year. Go to office hours, make yourself known to them. Seek feedback from them on your work, maybe even on papers for other classes if they are interested.

6. Use the summer wisely. A small RAship or an independent study could go a long way towards getting you some much needed research experience, maybe also a LOR and/or a writing sample. Not to mention how much it'll help you to better define your interests for your SOP.

7. Find out if it's customary to contact potential advisors ahead of time in your field. If so, do it a few weeks before or a few weeks after the new term starts. Don't wait, this can affect your choice where to apply.

8. Don't stress overmuch about grades. For one, there's little you can do to change the ones you already have. Further, the "intangible" parts of the application are so much more important.

9. Revise, revise, and revise some more. Let professors and friends read your SOP for content and for style. Let someone read your writing sample as well. Go through multiple versions, take your time. These things are hard to write.

10. Be on top of things, part 1. I suggest a chart with the following info for each school: (a) deadline, (b ) app fee, (c ) link to app website, (d) username, password for website, (e) requirements (how many transcripts, GRE/subject GRE score, TOEFL score, LORs, SOP prompt, writing sample length, other - diversity statement, personal statement, letter of intent, etc.), (f) potential advisors, links to websites

11. Be on top of things, part 2. Have a time line: deadlines for each school, when to order transcripts (how many), when to send out application packets, when to contact recommenders, when to send reminders. If you're international, look up American holidays around when you expect to send your app so you're not surprised by the (lack of) operating times of the post office and the schools.

12. Be on top of things, part 3. Get in touch with your recommenders early. Prepare a packet for each of them with your transcript, a paper you wrote for their class, a draft of your SOP, a list of the schools you're applying to with their deadline. Ask them if/when they would like you to send them reminders. Consider having a backup plan for flaky recommenders - in particular ones that will be away and will be hard to track down if they disappear.

I will be applying to grad school this fall and those who are also applying soon or will reapply in the near future, I would advise reading Donald Asher's "Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way Into the Graduate School of Your Choice". So far, it is extremely useful in how I am approaching my schools. It is not all about crafting the best graduate school essay; its about crafting the strongest graduate school application possible.

For the past 2 weeks, I have been on this site more times than I can count and I was just so bothersome to see how the best applicants with the stellar GPAs and research experience were turned down. I do not know if it was because it were not lucky or too many people applied with few spots at hand, but I also think in comes down to how WE market ourselves.

Tip: Although I have not completed a graduate school application yet, don't list all your achievements in your SOP. Treat the graduate school process as your next potential job opportunity.

Asher goes into detail about what happens to when admission committees reviews your application and what ways you can beat more qualified applicants. I'm heard stories of people who brought this book getting accepted to all their graduate school programs so I had to loan it from the library!

I'm going to read the SOP part this week so I can start working on my SOP early. Thanks to the people above with the SOP advice. I will take that into consideration. Appreciate it. Good luck!

I would say include them if the size limits allow. Just my $0.02.

The language point can't be emphasized enough. You should have a strong reading knowledge of Latin before even thinking about applying for a PhD. My impression is that it would probably be preferable if the Latin included some work specifically in Medieval Latin, but since I'm guessing that isn't available at your school, take as much Latin as you possibly can. If you haven't taken any yet, take it for both of your remaining years; two years isn't enough, but that's one less year you'll have to do post-grad, whether independently or in a Master's program.

As for other languages, if you can manage it, French and German would both be very useful.

To get into a PhD program, you'll almost certainly have to be at a very high level of Latin, and programs would probably be happier if you'd done some French or German too. If you want to work on a topic that would make something other than Latin your primary research language (say, Old Norse or Byzantine Greek) you definitely should try to find a way to start preparing for that as well. Frankly, I don't think you'll find it possible to be ready for a PhD program by the end of undergrad, but that's no reason to be discouraged! Many Masters programs are designed for getting people up to speed in languages in order to enter a PhD, and you should have time to do enough to be very competitive for good MA programs (assuming your other stuff: writing sample, statement of purpose, recs, etc, is all good).

I am not a medievalist, however, I did flirt with the idea with quite a while and I had a long conversation with a medieval t historian at my undergrad institution about how to prep for it so I DO have some suggestions.

Firstly, are you wanting to go into an MA program or a ph.d program right away? The latter will probably expect much more from you than if you wer just doing an MA first.

Languages. German can be really useful but make sure the Latin you're taking is Ecclesiastical Latin. Try to take some independent study courses on it (even at my small institution we had a Medievalist in the English department teaching it). In my experience, even at an MA level two years' worth of a target language can look really good for you. My impression is that Medievalists, depending on their specific research interests, ultimately have to learn A LOT about other languages. So keep that in mind.

As for the courses - So long as you get good grades in them you should be ok. AFAIK the types of courses you've taken aren't what makes or breaks you. Your sample writing, your statement of purpose, and your letters of recommendation go much further than what classes you've taken.

You seem to be on the right track!

I just submitted all of mine. It's a bit weird to officially apply in October, but there's no need to put it off if you know everything's as perfect as possible.

And now the waiting begins. Oh god.

I did it! I submitted my first app today! There are still 8 more to go, but I'm feeling immensely better having done at least one. Woohoo! I've no longer finished NOTHING. Whew.

Doc--

Then why are you trying to provoke a confrontation with a highly respected member of this BB?

Doc--

Then why are you trying to provoke a confrontation with a highly respected member of this BB?

StrangeLight: there's no need for rudeness. And it seems a little strange for a criticism of another's writing to be so badly plagued by poor punctuation.

As regards jealousy and the unpleasantries it spawns, my experiences have taught me to ignore it completely. Throughout graduate school I had a nemesis colleague in my department who took every available opportunity to criticize my ideas and talk poorly of me to my peers and professors. One of my friend's attended a workshop on turning a seminar paper into a publishable essay. During the meeting, my friend mentioned that I had been published in a specific journal, at which point my nemesis felt the need to suggest that I had stolen the ideas for the paper from someone else. Amazingly, she had been a student in the seminar when I wrote the first version of the paper and had heard me give a presentation about it! The fact of the matter is that some people feel a deep sense of insecurity and choose to lash out as others as a means of dissipating that feeling. Whether it's childish, sociopathic, or just plain silly is beside the point. You will never win an argument with another person's irrationality. The best option for you is to preserve your reputation as a collegial scholar, and that usually means avoiding confrontation with provocateurs.

you're a literature student and that is probably one of the most poorly written paragraphs i've read in a while, so i'm guessing you actually earned those Bs and think far too highly of yourself.

in my experience, it's way more common for students to reinterpret criticism as praise. i've been in the room while a student gets told, gently, that everything in their writing needs to change, but "the ideas are there" or "the content looks great," because people need something nice to say other than "this is a train wreck." and those students leave the room thinking, "everyone loved my ideas and content," not "everyone basically told me i need to rewrite this."

I am an MA politics student at the New School and what other posters have mentioned here is true. There is little funding for grad students here, including PhDs (the estimate I've gotten is maybe 1 in 6 students get fully funded at that level). Further, as an external applicant you'll be admitted to the MA program and be eligible when you reach a certain number of credits to apply internally (which usually takes at least 3 semesters). I don't have figures, but they are cutting back on applications since there are too few faculty (especially senior faculty) and too many MA students. There's also a low limit on the number of credits you can transfer in, if you have any. We also effectively don't have a library, since it's under construction, so we largely use nyu's.

But if this line of theory (and theory in general is your bag), this is probably the best place in the country to be, along perhaps w/UMASS, as others have mentioned. The department seems to be dominated by theory and the Marxist brand, and I guess critical (do you mean post-structural/post-modern?) are popular here.

I'm a comparativist myself with a strong interest in this structuralist/Marxist theory and this is the only politics program I'm applying too, other perhaps than York. I suppose there are other options in Canada, about which I don't know much. But you may have to make some choices between what you want to study and where. Good luck!

What do you mean by in the "field"? Do you mean in the realm of academia, or in, say, the museum world?

As someone with ten years of experience in the public history realm -- mostly museum work -- I admit that I'm pretty burned out and frustrated with the reality that I don't get to spend nearly enough time doing research as I'd like. Think long and hard about your future career goals before you plunk money down for another degree. My MA program was excellent, but was also completely funded -- something I consider to be very important, as many public history positions come with low salaries. The last thing you want is to be burdened with large amounts of student loan debt.

All that said, the best programs are going to depend on exactly what you hope to get out of it, and where your primary interests lie. Beware of programs that promise too much; public history programs seem to be exploding these days, and seem to be all-too-often depicting themselves as being the golden ticket to a public history career. There are some great programs and professors out there, but I think in many cases it makes more sense to go with a straight History degree, supplemented with internships. My school offered a certificate in Museum Studies

There are some excellent professors at UC Riverside, but again, depends on your ultimate career goals.

If you interested in "stuff," aka are a real hands-on material culture kind of person, then make sure you take a look at the University of Delaware's Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.

A couple of things: first and most importantly, Marxist-critical approaches are not common in political science except in some parts of political theory. Are you sure you want to be in political science rather than another social science (sociology? anthro?) where they are more common? Second, if you want a decent chance at a teaching position somewhere you're willing to live for the rest of your career - which will last a LOT longer than six years - you would be well served to be flexible on the geography front. Third, your list of schools above doesn't make much sense to me. None of your reaches (as RWBG notes) are places that have a real concentration of people doing the kind of work you describe, nor do many of the big ten schools you list (to my knowledge).

Tonyum--

Hang in there. You can do it!

Remember that your department believes in you, your ability to work hard, and your potential--otherwise they'd not have offered you admission. Your department believes in you. Trust their wisdom. It wasn't by accident that they said "Come, be one of us."

Right now, the learning curve looks steep because you're building upon your previous experiences to build new skill sets. As formidable as the new terrain may seem, you have it within you to figure out ways to navigate it successfully.

Let go of fear. Your legs are shaky now. Yet visualize yourself on that day in the not so distant future when you'll be running, looking over your shoulder, and laughing "Hey, slowpokes, keep up!" You can do it.

Now, in addition to the options outlined above, please consider the utility of the following.

Get to know some of your professors. As they have been there and done that, they know what you're going through. Among them may be a professor or two who can offer words of wisdom, an empathetically appropriate response, and maybe even friendship. (If a friendship does develop, keep the boundaries clear in your own mind. And remember that empathy is different than sympathy.)

Get to know some of the grad students who have been around a while. They may know some tricks of the trade that will benefit you.

Carve out some "me time" in your schedule. As an example, when I was doing my coursework, the interval between the end of my last class of the week and the evening of the following day was mandatory decompression time. Concurrently, I made a commitment to watching most of my favorite team's games--no matter what.

Now and again, these requirements led to some long nights to make a deadline. And maybe I'd have been better off missing a Lakers' game to peck away at a draft. But sometimes you just have to stick it to the man.

If you do designate "me time," consider a counter-programing approach. For instance, if you're going to have a "Friday night" make that night Wednesday. This way, you'll have to deal with less traffic at popular venues.

Carve out some discretionary funds in your budget. I know times are hard and the life of a graduate student can be austere. But designate a certain amount for certain activities and then pursue those activities. As an example, budget fifty bucks a month for music and/or a similar amount for Starbucks. Spend some of your "me time" leisurely spending your money. (Alternatively, you could get some magazine subscriptions at the student rate.)

Then, just before you get ready for another session of hitting the books, put your feet up on a chair, take a sip of your mocha while you listen to your iPod, look around, and take pride that you are on your way to knowing more about chemistry than most people who will ever walk the face of the Earth.

These ideas both sound like things that would work in Highschool, but not so well in college. For the former- spending time in-class on marking low-stakes assignments really isn't the best idea. For the latter, I'd recommend *not* increasing the amount of grading you have to do by encouraging them to correct/hand it back in/come argue points with you at a later date.

Faith is important for me too, but I have to say -- I don't think Grad School is unique in its tendency to monopolize our time and take our focus off of God. Perhaps Grad School does this in a way other things don't; I wouldn't know exactly. I am not in grad school. But I am a busy professional (work full time, and own my own business), and between my personal and professional responsibilities, it is a significant challenge to continue making Religion a part of my life. I've found it is very easy to make excuses about time and exhaustion.

When you really think about it, many church/temple services are only one or two hours, don't require much prep at all. Morning prayer and daily meditation doesn't take much time either. There are number of ways to worship and stay engaged through the the day. There are small groups, forums, devotionals, and sometimes (depending on your faith) religious leaders are available to talk to. Most campuses have various ministries present, and often have a college chaplain. The hardest part is finding a church home, or feeling safe and secure in a new situation.

I imagine that since your life changes so much with grad school (new place, will be leaving soon), that it's not easy to fit in. Maybe you could go straight to a local pastor, or contact someone back home who can connect you with someone in the area? Or perhaps a friend of yours is willing to talk with you about faith on the phone from time to time.

For me, I keep a few devotionals at my desk and prayers printed out in my area. I make it a point to pray whenever I think of it, and before bed. Fortunately, I can talk about God with my family. When I was in school, I tried to get involved in small groups when possible. I visit church when I can; I try to be gentle with myself when I don't meet my goals there. I listen to music that to me is spiritual, and sometimes I even sing (alone) in worship. I write my religious friends from time to time. One of the greatest things in the world is the internet -- so many churches publish or podcast sermons. I bet, no matter your faith, you could find some inspirational teachings online. If it's fellowship you're looking for, you're likely going to have to reach out (which is uncomfortable and awkward to everyone) and see if anyone in your area is willing to shepherd you in a positive direction!

In any case, I understand how you feel. It is hard. Even beyond Grad School, you are not alone. *hug*

Sorry if this is a really late reply but I thought I'd put in my 2 cents on your situation as well.
First things first. Work never comes first. Your health does. Whatever you do, if you're not physically and mentally fit, you're never going to do it well. So do whatever it takes to get you happy. Antidepressants, family time, friends, boyfriend.. anything.

Secondly, I feel like you have this pressure on you to do a certain thing (finish grad school), be a certain way, etc. It doesn't matter if you don't have a plan right now. Your life is way too long for you to get wound up over that. Do one thing at a time and do it bloody well. So you don't regret anything. If it's one class. then do your best in that class. But like I said, first, focus on making yourself happy.

Getting depressed and having anxiety attacks is normal. But it's not normal if you don't take care of it and spend your whole life being miserable over it
Good luck! and have faith in yourself! You can make anything happen!

My class observation went really well, so that is a tremendous load off of my shoulders. I passed a writing sample and my SoP to another prof, and I am in the process of editing two more so I can pass these off to other profs in the department. I need to write an exam over the next few days, read a bunch of articles, and finally start writing potential advisors. I did decide to take Monday off to get things done, luckily we have wonderful graduate assistants to proctor my exams! I am planning on starting the app process at some of the schools and I have five classes of papers to grade. It never ends...

All kidding aside, I was thinking about the how that conversation relates to Saint Louis University's Policy on Academic Honesty, and what Brian Cameron, who teaches part time in SLU's Department of Philosophy might think of the OP.