JerryLandis

Every practice test (and the actual test too) I took resulted in a completely different score. I think it just depends on the person, really, how predictable scores are. I did a bit lower than I expected to on the official test, but that was probably because I couldn't sleep the night before, was stressed, didn't get lucky in my questions, etc. That said, I didn't bomb the test, and I found myself surprisingly energized by adrenaline I guess the whole way through (didn't want to take my breaks, would have preferred to plough on through after the essays). I'd say not to bother too much about predicting your score, and focus more about memorizing the material and strategies. I think the greatest benefit about practice tests is not calculating a score, but familiarizing oneself with the questions and time constraints. Good luck!

I am working on editing my writing samples, and it sure is a pain! For the MA programs I am applying to, the word/page limit is shorter than anything I have ever written as an undergraduate. Everything I have is at least 1000 words over! I wish they would just let me submit a full-length paper, and then read however much they wanted. I suppose I don't really have a question to ask, except is everyone else having this problem? For UPenn, the maximum length of a submission is 10 double-spaced pages. The shortest thing I have is 14! Should I cut out whole paragraphs and thereby weaken the entire argument, or should I just submit the first 10 pages?? I know I have asked a similar question several times before on this forum, but I need quite a bit of hand-holding when it comes to this sort of thing.

What's with the assumption Americans have that the only reason an American would attend a foreign institution is that they weren't admitted to any domestic universities? Some of the best universities in the world are located outside of the United States, and it is becoming more common for American students to consider non-American institutions for higher education. In my field, the best masters programs actually seem to be offered in Canada and the UK, not in the US. There are plenty of crappy American universities to take on weaker students - I think going to another country is generally recognized as a sign that someone is adventurous and willing to move to new places in pursuit of academic opportunities. Although, maybe I just think that because I'm an American studying outside of the US! Do Canadians find it annoying when people from the US identify themselves as "Americans" and don't identify Canadians as such? Obviously just a silly ingrained term, but I always wondered about that.

When choosing between calling someone by their first or last name, the age of that person is a misleading factor. In my experience, the younger tutors I have had have been much more ambitious than the older ones, and are very proud of their academic positions. I always call people by their professional names (Mr./Ms./Dr. X) unless they insist I use a first name. If I were to be adventurous and use a first name, I would probably be more likely to do so with older faculty members, as younger ones who have only recently become doctors seem to relish in their cool titles.

Hello everyone, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in reading my history SOP, which I have been working on for a while, but which still needs some tweaking/more specific research ideas. If so, PM me and I will send it to you, and I can have a look at yours in return to make it worth your while! I have given my SOP to a couple friends to look at, but they have been a bit too nice about it. Telling me "I'm sure you'll get in to [impossibly competitive PhD program]" doesn't help very much when the odds are so bad! I don't want to post my SOP here for the whole world to see, but I don't mind sending it off to a couple individual people. Thanks

I am also crafting an SOP and dealing with some of these questions, and as I have not been through the admissions cycle yet I'm not sure how good any of my advice is, but I suppose it's still worth offering. I would say that your high school experience really isn't relevant to graduate study. Given that you have excelled in university level studies, why should it matter whether or not you were an excellent student in high school? Your particular story, though, could be useful to mention, because it shows an impressive improvement, as you said. A lot of people applying to postgraduate programs (e.g. me) attended private or well-funded high schools, and had very normal, positive high school experiences which made for easy transitions to college. Pointing out that you had "personal issues" related to your mother's death and got a GED instead of graduating the traditional way would be a good way of demonstrating your motivation. However, I don't think I would mention the drugs and alcohol bit - some people would recognize it as a common enough problem that lots of normal/qualified people have overcome, but some people might be worried about admitting a "drug addict" to their time-consuming and challenging program. If you do mention your GED qualification in the statement of purpose, be sure to keep it brief, as your achievements during college are much more important. If you aren't sure whether or not to include an anecdote/creative introduction, don't. I am including one that may or may not get deleted in the final edit, but that's because it was what I naturally thought to write when I sat down to compose my SOP. As for your question about writing for the department, and stretching your SOP to fit with certain peoples' research interests, I'm not sure about that either. Quite honestly, there is not a single professor in the US whose research interests are sufficiently similar to mine - the period/location of history I study is not a popular topic anywhere, especially in the US. However, I have received positive feedback in emails from potential supervisors, who say that I would fit well into the department. I don't think it's too much of a problem to assume that professors would be interested in supervising topics that don't correspond exactly with the themes in their published work. However, to be sure about it I would recommend emailing them to ask if they'd be interested in supervising your kind of research.

Just because unfunded MA students are considered cash cows by certain universities doesn't mean that the degree is worthless. It's pretty common nowadays for people to graduate and not go directly into a PhD program. I am the only one of my friends applying to PhD programs - everyone else is going for MAs or is putting off thinking about their future for the time being. Just curious though, why are you looking to get a Masters in "humnanities?" I don't know anything about the programs you mentioned, or about studying humanities as a general subject, but it seems that if you want to hone your interests more and sharpen your research goals, maybe you should shoot for a more specific subject for an MA? What was/is your major at Oberlin, and would you want to stick with it or choose a new field of study?

Online applications are a godsend for anyone applying from outside the country. I can't imagine how much it would cost for me to mail out all of my application materials, and considering the ongoing London postal strike I'd be really annoyed if my materials never made it in time to be considered! I still find the patronising requests about how to fill out the applications quite annoying, since the websites often have their information scattered about on several different pages.

Wow, thank you so much for your thoughtful response. It has been a little while since I posted this, and I have made some changes to my approach. I am now only applying to 3 PhD programs, with the full knowledge that I have almost no chance of being accepted, but I still consider it worth a shot. I am applying to 4 masters programs as well, one at my alma mater, two near where I went to high school, and one in a random location that seems like a really good program (Toronto). The reason I did not decide to apply to more PhD programs is that while there are medievalists at a fair number of universities, my subfield is not widely studied, and the 4 universities I listed are indeed the ONLY US institutions with relevant faculty. I am spoiled being in the UK, where medieval history is a much more popular subject and where my university has an entire department for medieval historians, not just 2 professors within the history department. I was really worried for a while, because I started looking for relevant American faculty well over a year ago, and I think I have permanently damaged my brain and eyes from all the website scrolling! Anyways, I definitely agree that languages are my biggest problem. If I end up doing a masters program next year, which is likely, I want to focus on learning Latin and perhaps taking some French or German as well. The American programs I am applying to offer no information on their websites about language instruction. I've been meaning to give them a call about this. Anyways, does anyone here have any experience with working on language skills while earning a masters degree? How much success do you think I can expect to have in this regard? Also, will one year's worth of a language really make that big of a difference in my PhD applications the second time around? I really wish someone had told me about some of this stuff a few years ago. My tutors have all tried to be helpful, but unfortunately they have even less of an idea than I do how the American admissions system works!

Don't they usually include a warning saying you should notify your recommenders that they will be receiving emails? I felt pretty bad about flooding my recommenders' email inboxes, but they understood that it's not something I can really help. I would say that you should really only feel embarrassed if you are filling out an online application and accidentally submit your professors' details before actually asking them for the recommendation!

Congratulations! I'm sure that if you do end up choosing this program, working with an enthusiastic and friendly supervisor will make it a good experience. Funny how graduate admissions is the ONE thing that is more formalized and bureaucratic in the US than in the UK. My tutors over here are horrified when I talk to them about all the crap I have to do for US applications, which they think serves no purpose and is silly (coughGREcough).

I'm in the never-ending process of editing and re-editing my SOP. I think the best way to approach it is to start writing without the intention of producing something perfect. Don't worry about making everything sound just right in your first draft, basically try not to be too self-conscious. Be honest! Here are a couple prompts to get you thinking about things to include: My favorite part about studying my subject is.... I am very interested in... [certain subthemes you've found interesting as an undergrad and may want to continue learning about] Okay I'm running out of ideas for this format! But basically you want to convince these people that they want you to study in their program. Like you said, they know their program is great. Don't bother talking about how great it is, or how well-renowned the individual professors are. Talk about what makes you want to work with those professors apart from their reputation - have you read any specific works by them that you found interesting, for example? Is there a certain theme they work with that you are also interested in? Try to convey your enthusiasm for the department without sucking up. These are people who have been in school/academia their whole lives, and they know how to spot a suck-up! So be genuine. I suggest writing down all of your ideas in one rambling, horrible essay, and then carefully removing and reorganizing those ideas to form a coherent statement. Just be prepared to gut it quite a few times.

I think you're supposed to use it as a way of showing how you engage with secondary source material, how you fit into and understand historiographical currents, basically a way to show that you have a critical but also enthusiastic eye for reading material. The only other way this tends to come across in an application is when you're sucking up about having read everything professor X has ever published and how it was amazing and yada yada, so I guess they're trying to get a better glimpse at how comfortable you are discussing reading material, something they would see from your participation in class discussions but not from other parts of your application. Whenever I have meetings or discussions with my professors at my undergrad institution, it normally launches off into a discussion about what so and so has recently published on a certain topic, and how someone disagrees with it, and such and such's article has brings up some better points, etc. It seems that being an academic/historian involves lots of talking about people's recent publications, both in informal conversation as well as in the form of published book reviews. So I guess they want to see how well an applicant engages in that discussion.

Do you have any relatives or close friends who would be willing to take the dogs for a few months or so while you get settled? Moving with kids can be really difficult (my parents moved a few times), and if you get rid of the dogs and force your kids to relocate at the same time, they (the kids) might really resent you for a while. When my sister was in graduate school, she left her dog with my parents for a few months when she knew she would be really busy with exams and whatnot. I know some people don't have that option, but it's worth asking as some people might like the chance to take care of dogs without having to sign on to a long-term commitment.

Oops I meant influential, not interesting.

I'm sure its feasible, but keep in mind that you'd have a departmentload of potentially interesting folks feeling kind of bitter about your sneaky plot. Could be hard to get recommendations in the future and all that.

I think most places allow you to submit 3-5, so 4 wouldn't be excessive. I was considering doing the same, and someone told me (I believe on this message board) that 4 letters would be fine. The dilemma was settled for me though, because my fourth potential recommender told me he'd rather not write for me despite having a very high opinion of me (so, either he was lying and has no idea who I am, or is just too lazy to help me out - he's retired so not that busy). So, I am back to just 3 letters, but I'm sure 4 would have been okay.

I have one class per week, which lasts 3 hours. Just thought I'd throw that out there to make people jealous!

Has anyone here had a significant other who moved to another country to be with them? My boyfriend of 3 years wants to move to the US with me (we live in the UK and he is a UK citizen) when I go to graduate school next year. In fact, he was the person who convinced me not to stay in the UK, but to return to America. This is all great, but the problem is that he is not a US citizen and I don't know how he will be able to get into the country or find a job there. I know the obvious solution to this is to get married so he can move over with me and find a job once we're there. We may have to do this, but the problem is that I really don't want to get married at my young age and my parents will certainly kill me if I do. Anyone have any suggestions? My boyfriend wants to be a teacher, and has an MA in history, is certified to teach English as a foreign language, but has no long-term teaching experience. Does anyone know of any programs like Teach for America or something like that that admits non-US citizens? I realize I'm asking for the impossible here, but it never hurts to ask! The universities I am applying to offer help in finding work for the spouses or gay partners of their students. If only I were gay, then not getting married would be a possibility (probably the only good thing about gay marriage not being recognized)!

I have yet to do mine, although I already know which book I will write about. I would say you should try looking at some book reviews on Jstor to get an idea of how to structure your comments. I think that the purpose of this part of the application is 1) to prevent people from applying who aren't actually that interested in the program by adding more work to the application and 2) to get an idea of what kinds of things people read and find interesting. Advice I am giving myself for this is to be honest, and pick a book that I genuinely find to be quite interesting a well-written. You may not get much response to this post though, since everyone writing a Yale book review is in competition with one another for those coveted spots!

Yes, it's a constant back and forth. I also feel the need to mention to my friends every time I get a new indication of my prospects (I got this email from so and so from the university of such and such saying ?@*£)£*!!). It seems to be the case that the first batch of email responses I got from potential supervisors was not very encouraging. One guy said the department has no money and admission is near impossible; another professor kind of made fun of my research interests because I had been particularly vague in the interest of not writing too much in the first email. This of course made me feel horrible about my prospects, but then when I wrote them another, longer, more detailed email, I got completely different responses: "I look forward to reading your application!" "You seem to have excellent knowledge of the material!" "Don't worry, you can improve your languages once you've enrolled in our program." etc. Lots of mixed messages. I was terrified about my GRE scores because my dream university lists their average scores on their website, and my scores were far, far lower. But then they updated them with the scores for 2009 admissions and they were very close to my scores! So due to all of this teetering and tottering, I am a mess. I feel the same way about my coursework this semester: one second I feel confident that everything I hand in will be outstanding, the next second I'm worried I won't even be able to hand it in by the deadline. But the thing that keeps me somewhat sane is the realization that I've always felt this way when faced with a challenge - I don't know about the rest of you, but every autumn when a new academic year starts, I worry if I will snap and lose whatever it is that's been driving me to success this whole time. I've always felt like an academic impostor, not more naturally intelligent than the average person (hence the less than exemplary GRE scores), but hardworking and nerdily pathetic enough to convince people that I am smart. Having to convince strangers, on paper, that I am insanely intelligent is making me question whether I even deserve the coveted spots I am after.

I don't really think that what you said was insensitive. Last year my boyfriend moved in with me for a semester. I had never agreed to this, but he had nowhere else to go so I had to give him space at mine. He had also moved a long distance to be with me, so he was looking for jobs - anything that paid. Despite this apparent desperation he didn't start applying for any jobs until after he had been living with me for over a month. All he did was play video games all day, while I did my full load of coursework, cooked all our meals, did all the dishes, absolutely all the housework (I should also mention that I had a roommate at the time, who never cooked or did any housework either, so I basically had 2 dependents, and I paid for ALL of the food). When he finally did get around to applying for jobs, he was picky and would only apply to certain places. He finally did find part-time work, at the end of the semester. The whole situation was extremely difficult for me, because I would have been very stressed from coursework anyways, even had none of these problems occurred. On the one hand, I understood that he was going through something very difficult, because the economy is making it almost impossible to find a job, and because he had moved to my small university town just to be with me (he had graduated from this university a year earlier). I know that anyone having trouble finding a job, or deciding what to do with their life, is going to end up being very depressed and probably quite inactive as a result. He was very unfortunate to graduate at a time of economic collapse. While I understood this, I also thought that it was unfair for me to have to deal with all the consequences of his problems on my own. I paid for everything - food, rent, bills, and as I said before I would come home from a day of classes, serve him dinner while he played his video games (!) and then cleaned everything up before retiring to my room to do homework. On top of that, he wanted me to look for jobs with him, when I nagged at him about seeking employment instead of sitting at home doing nothing all day. We were both miserable. I was a stressed-out, sobbing mess all semester long, and he suffered a huge loss of self-confidence. It was a serious drain on our relationship because we both really started to resent each other. The next school year, he expected that he would be able to live with me and my roommate again. He promised to be better about helping out around the house and all that, but I knew that this would not be the case. I had to tell him that he could not move back in. It was very difficult for me, especially since I really did like having him around when I wasn't taking care of him, and genuinely did want to live with him. He was very hurt by me telling him all this, BUT I can say that everything is fine now. We don't live together this year, but we see each other all the time and he is doing very well for himself. Hardly spends any time playing video games! My conclusion from this is that what was needed was NOT for me to nag at him all the time about how he was being lazy and how living with him made me depressed, etc. (which I knew was a bad thing to do all along, but ranting becomes necessary sometimes for the sake of personal sanity!). The solution was to explain exactly what the problem was and force him to take care of it himself. When faced with a more drastic and immediate situation, he realized the gravity of his situation and took care of the problem. Months of living comfortably with me had given him the opportunity to ignore his problems and do nothing to solve them. Now, I know that this approach would not work exactly the same way for you because you are married and clearly have a higher level of commitment, and also because you said that your husband actually is actively looking for work. However, I think the overall point of how to approach the problem is probably pretty universal. Nagging and venting stress at him (no matter how justified it may seem) will only make the problem worse because it will make him feel worthless, and less capable of improving his situation. As for funding, do you not have some kind of a written contract with your department guaranteeing certain funding and procedures? It seems very suspicious of them to change the agreement after you have already started your course.

Personally, I think that it is unacceptable for admissions committees to "weed out" applicants by tossing out applications with low GRE scores before reading any other part of the application. I know they have a lot of applications to get through, but let's not forget that each one of those applicants has paid to have their application read - my application fees get as high as $125 each, and that's not factoring in the $20 for the GRE scores or how much it will cost to mail in my writing sample from another country. I am not paying that much money so someone can toss my carefully assembled application without even glancing at it. Even if we are not good enough to get into their university, we have still paid good money for a service and deserve to be considered. For programs with outrageous numbers of applicants, the amount of money being brought in by application fees should be enough to hire an extra person to help go through applications. I mean, what are we paying for anyway?

I'm doing the Masters applications first as they are easier (don't require a formal statement of purpose or a terribly relevant writing sample), and have a LOT of work yet to do on my PhD applications. I need to individualize my SOP for each department, and to reduce the length of my writing sample by half (!!). I also need to send my GRE scores but that won't take more than a few minutes I hope. This process drives me crazy because there are so many little things to do! I envy those of you who have finished or are near finishing.

Can't really help you, sorry. I am dealing with the same problem. Writing my 'thesis' (actually just a very very long essay) was extremely time consuming and took a lot of effort, and while I was writing it I tried to use as few words as possible. The idea of skimming it down even more is horrifying! I am applying to the University of Chicago, and they say to ignore the word limit and submit a longer paper if that's your best work. Should I try to shorten it anyway, to ensure that someone may actually read it? I'll probably have to make it much much shorter anyways, for other schools, so I'm just not sure.