Heimat Historian

THERE HAS BEEN SOME SHENANIGINS WITH THE FORUMS AND SOME THREADS HAVE BEEN MERGED THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN MERGED. I'VE MOSTLY UNTANGLED THEM BUT CAN'T FIX THIS ONE, SO I'VE APPENDED THE ORIGINAL POST TO THIS THREAD TO SORT OF FIX THINGS. - @telkanuru, 3/8/19 Posted February 26, 2015 by @Sigaba The purpose of this thread is for those who applied in 2015 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. 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. If this concept has legs, perhaps down the line there will be additional lessons learned threads that will run almost hand in hand with other annual threads. 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. Ideally, among the first respondents to this request for information will be the lurker the highly respectable telkanuru. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- @Heimat Historian's original post: I think this is a fantastic idea. Once I've made decisions I'll be happy to post my experiences.

Congrats on your funding !

Congrats to you emmd94. That's great news.

That's great Ashiepoo! Have a great weekend and report back with all the details so I know (potentially) what to expect next week when I fly to Colorado.

I read an interesting article online about "launching a public relations campaign" just prior to decisions/post decisions prior to funding. The article recommended writing a focused letter to the DGS asking detailed questions about the program, teaching commitment, what it's like to live there, etc. Has anyone written this type of letter and if so, was it successful? I'm thinking of maybe doing it for the two remaining programs I really want to get into.

HistoryGypsy, I know what you mean. I had such wonderful correspondence with both the DGS and a professor he put me in touch with who studies many of the same things I'm interested. As far as fit goes, Brandeis may be number 2 or 3 on my list. The POI is even designing a course on immigration for next semester!

I plan on attending every year and working to build the connections necessary for a good job. That includes maintains good connections with my virtual cohort.

Those are both great ideas Fianna. Count me in!

Do you have an example of such a spreadsheet? I'm not very nimble with my excel.

Anyone heard of being admitted but wait listed for funding?

Thanks for the advice!

That's really interesting stuff. I took a course in my first attempt at a Master's that dealt with those types of issues.

Being waitlisted at Michigan is quite an accomplishment. Congrats guys.

I second everything Ashiepoo said. I too was a mediocre undergrad who felt sleep was often more important than attending classes. The masters degree and time away sharpened my focus and gave me the necessary maturity. I'm also willing to look at SOPs/writing samples if for nothing else than another set of eyes.

I'd like to know the same thing. It's one of my top schools and I haven't heard a thing.

That's great JTE. Under review is certainly better than a rejection.

I wonder if there is a similar story at Penn State. Only two people announced last week and one of them was an early modernist.

Do you suggest searching by name in some fashion?

Colonialism is fascinating! In my first attempt at a master's degree I worked on British settler colonialism in New Zealand/Australia. At that point I applied to PhD programs haphazardly and didn't get in anywhere. Then I did my masters and worked on a bunch of different stuff but did my capstone research project (non-thesis track) on German immigrants in Texas. It's also interesting how I've positioned myself as a scholar to the various departments i applied to. I reread my Colorado application and suddenly I'm a Germanist with ties to Africa. Isn't academia fun?

That's excellent advice Sigaba. I feel pretty good about some of my school choices (including the ones I've been accepted to) but this is a great way to get a potential outside adviser for my dissertation.

You know even since admittance I've broadened my context for my research (19th century German immigration broadly) and looked at potential locations for comparative study. Today I learned about some Wilhemine Germans being sent to the Ottoman empire around the turn of the 20th century. History is a rabbit hole to end all rabbit holes.

Yeah it does. I was told there'd be no maths.

They do have a FLAS but I've missed the deadline (February 15) unfortunately. It will definitely be something I do next summer if I decide to go to Kansas.

I wish there was an easy to way to determine the cachet of programs. I'm now rethinking my application strategy. I think there a ways to achieve a tenure track position even at a lower T1 school it just takes a ton of work to do so.

Check out Southern Discomfort: Women's Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s by Nancy Hewitt as well as work by Carolyn Eichner on French expatriates. Dr. Eichner especially (at Wisconsin-Milwaukee) is a historian of gender, but also has served as women's study's professor. Might be a good way to gauge the style/theory of writing in both camps.