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@TMP @telkanuru Thank you for your insight on placement and resources. At this point, I'm between a school that has a reputation for having a supportive grad student community vs. one with better opportunities for funding and one where I'm not too sure about the collegiality of the grad student cohort. In terms of advisors, they're pretty evenly matched, as are the other potential professors who can serve on my dissertation committee. I'm only visiting the second school, so hopefully I can get more info about interactions/support among fellow grad students.

I am also in the same boat. I'll think that I will have made a decision one day but waver the next. The problem is that I can see myself being happy at all of my choices -- although the type of historian I would become would differ quite a bit according to the institution. I'm visiting one school in March and have discussed various aspects of the department with current students and faculty, so hopefully I will know my choices better in the upcoming weeks. I'm also not sure how much value to place on placement/prestige. My top two choices are well regarded in terms of the department as a whole but are relatively new in terms of the subfield. One school has recently been rebuilding its scholars and cohort in the subfield, so I would be among the first few students in the subfield, while the other school has had okay placement (some nonacademic positions) in my subfield but also have a short track record in the field.

Hi everyone, I remember going through threads like this in the history boards, so I thought I would start one for 2017. Those of you who are fortunate enough to have a few options to choose from, where are you in the decision-making process and how are you going about making your decisions?

Thanks for the info! I think I will keep my spot

Congrats! If I recall correctly, you have some great choices in front of you. Best of luck!

I also received news that I was waitlisted at Harvard. Are you planning to stay on the waitlist? In my field, history programs usually take 1-2 people at most per year, so I'm assuming if one person in my field declines their spot, I would get off the waitlist. I don't have high hopes though -- it is Harvard, so I don't think the likelihood of someone declining would be pretty slim.

Congrats! That's so amazing!

Google Flights and Skyscanner were helpful when I had to do a lot of flying and traveling last year. I would also search directly from the airline website in addition to the other flight websites. I am also in the same boat regarding visit days, except that I am living abroad and working full time. Regardless, commiting to a place for the next five years of my life without visiting seems a bit risky. I'm going to have to think about whether the 30+ hour round trip flight will be worth it.

I'm also in at Wisconsin-Madison! Received informal email admission via email from the DGS

I woke up this morning to the good news that I've been accepted to Columbia! This is my first acceptance of the season, and I wasn't expecting an offer this early, so I'm pretty happy

Congrats! I'm waiting on Berkeley but am getting a little anxious. It seems though in the past rejections started rolling in at the end of January. Looks like it's taking them more time this year.

I echo this! I'm hoping they're at least staggered by fields.

Question for those accepted at Ohio State: did your application status on the portal change at all? Oh, and congrats to the acceptees!

Congrats! UNC is such a good program. I'm sure it feels nice to already have an acceptance this early!

Are any of you feeling as anxious and nervous as I am? I'm trying to convince myself to stay positive, but that's still hard! I guess I'm a little lucky that I'm working a full-time job at the moment, so that does keep me distracted for eight hours a day. How are you all passing the time? Does anyone have book/movie recommendations for passing the time? I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm not going to be productive in the upcoming weeks!

Reporting back on my skype interview.. I can confidently say that the interview was an anomaly in the application process. As I discovered while looking back at my application materials, I found out that I attached the wrong SOP targetted for a different school! To say I was mortified was an understatement. At least I got a chance to explain that Columbia is indeed one of my top choices.

I just received a similar email, ziggysunshine! Except mine was from a professor at Columbia. I don't think Columbia does interviews, so it probably has a lot to do with the POI. I don't know how formal it's supposed to be, so I'm planning to brush up on my reading lists in my field, re-read my SOP, and go over the POI's scholarship and contributions. I was not expecting contact at all, so this is a lot of pressure!

Judging by a quick search in the results section of this website for Wisconsin history, admissions decisions haven't been released until the first week of February at the earliest. Assuming this year is no different, there's still some time! I have a little memo in my phone that tracks when decisions have been released in the past to remind myself to not panic prematurely!

Gahh. Five apps submitted. I tried to space out my applications by submitting one each day. But the submission process was still pretty tedious and agonizing! I still have a few applications with December 15 deadlines, but I'll get to them next week after I celebrate being (partly) done!

Another Fall 2017 applicant here! I'm applying mostly to programs in modern European/Eurasian history. How is everyone doing as we're nearing the December 1 deadlines? I'm also surprised to see a lack of activity during this time. I haven't submitted any apps yet, as I'm still polishing my application materials. I just started writing personal statements/diversity essays for Michigan and Berkeley. I would have liked to have started sooner on this, although I don't think they will take me as long as the process of crafting and perfecting my statement of purpose.

Thanks for the replies. SolarTemple, thanks for sharing your experiences with me. Yeah, I also think that a writing sample would be a better predictor of my writing abilities than my GRE scores, and it was very reassuring to hear that some didn't even ask you to list your writing scores. And TakeMyCofeeBlack, I will definitely consider asking specific programs about how they weigh GRE writing scores.

Yeah, I didn't really spend all that time prepping for the writing portion. I know what they were looking for, but I didn't really care too much to actually force myself through practicing writing that kind of essays. I certainly hope the gre scores aren't too important in this regard, although I'm hoping for some validation of this.

Hi everyone, I've been stalking this thread for a while trying to look for someone in the same situation, but I figured that it might be better to actually start a new thread with my actual scores. I'm probably going to apply for the next round of applications for a bunch of competitive history PhD programs, so I still have a little bit of time before really working on my SOP and writing sample. So, here's my dilemma. For verbal, I have a 169, which is the 99th percentile. Here's the catch though: my writing score is 4.5, or 78th percentile. (If it matters at all, my quant scores are about the 97th percentile). I am really happy with my verbal and quantatative scores, but the writing score seems very strange to me. 4.5 isn't a bad score, but it isn't really up to par with my other scores. I consider myself a pretty strong writer, but I'm not too good with time-constraints. There's really no guarantee that I could do better if I retook the test. And I don't really know if I can put in the effort and maintain the high scores in verbal and quant sections. However, I also don't want to put myself in the "maybe" pile of applications just because of my mediocre writing score. So, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think I should just retake the GRE to improve my writing score? Or is it not worth the time and money?

Thanks for the insight, czesc. I can see why having one regional base as a specialty would be necessary, even in transnational history. I wonder if students in programs studying transnational history identify more as a transnationalist historian or a historian in their area(s) of specialty. Your advice about revisiting my historical interests in terms languages is really helpful, although I don't think it necessarily narrows down the geographical areas of interest in my case. But it got me thinking on how I would like to utilize my set of language skills in terms of historical research. I'm fluent in one East Asian language, and I have also taken several years of Russian at the college level. I feel comfortable enough with the grammatical structures and language patterns that I can tackle reading newspaper articles armed with a dictionary (in case of archival work, I'm assuming I'll need much more language skills). I would love to utilize both languages, if possible. A thematic study on the Cold War immediately comes to mind, but it seems to me that topic has been researched to death. I could also look into studies on ethnic minority communities, migrations, or ethnic deportations in Soviet Russia.

Thanks for the insight! It's interesting that the Atlantic field is super competitive in terms of jobs. I'm still curious as to the level of specialty a Transnational historian will gain, compared one from a more traditional sub-discipline. You mentioned that a Transnational or International historian will probably specialize in one or two geographic areas - will he/she be considered as qualified for a job position in either of those geographic areas as, perhaps, a historian from a more traditional program (and possibly more depth in a single geographic area)? Seeing from the example of your friend repackaging himself seems to suggest yes. Broadly speaking, my geographic interests span East Asia, Russia and Eurasia, as well as colonial America. Do you think the rest of my time as an undergraduate would be better served if I spend more time focusing in on one geographic area (as a Russianist, East Asianist, or an Americanist) rather than exploring bit of everything?