Ahtlatl

Choosing between Rutgers and UCLA, planning on specializing in Mexican ethnohistory. As an MA student, I'm fairly certain of the specific topic I'll write my dissertation on. POI at Rutgers is the leading expert in that particular topic, BUT she has no placements at all, since she's new-ish to advising and none of her students have yet to enter the job market (she has 5 students right now, one of which is about a year away from finishing). POI at UCLA is not a specialist in that topic, but has a perfect placement record. Should I choose UCLA on that alone? POI at Rutgers is really respected in the field, btw, she's definitely not a nobody! But no placements... yet. I also heard that you should do your PhD at a different school than where you did your MA, the reason being that you've already made all the connections and used all the resources you can use at the school where you did your MA, so it's time to move on to new lands. What do you all think of that?

Declining PSU. Currently deciding between UCLA and Rutgers for Latin American history (specifically indigenous history), see my thread in the Decisions forum.

I've narrowed down my decision to Rutgers vs UCLA, which is becoming one of the most difficult decisions of my life, especially after attending Rutgers' visit day recently (I'm currently an MA student at UCLA). Rutgers is home to a historian who is not only a leading expert in a Mexican indigenous language that I study, she is also an expert on this one particular obscure text that I am currently researching, and the broader genre that it's a part of. I'm 99% sure it will be part of my dissertation research, since I'm already doing my MA thesis on it, and I've spent countless hours on it. I was able to geek out with her over all kinds of little linguistic details over the visit day, which was so much fun! I've never been able to do that with anybody else, since we're one of like, maybe 6 people in the world that have looked at that text in depth. How I would love to do that on a regular basis! UCLA, however, is home to another historian who is not as skilled in that language, but is still very good with it (way better than me, certainly!), and is a huge figure in Mexican indigenous studies, though I doubt he'll have as much time to devote to me as the Rutgers prof, as even he himself admitted (though I should point out that he has still made every effort to devote as much time as possible to me during my time as an MA student at UCLA, he's a great guy). UCLA has many other professors too that are involved with Latin America, and they're hiring a new prof who specializes in Mexican indigenous history, with a 20th century focus. On the other hand, Rutgers is part of a consortium with the local Ivies that would allow me to take courses there and meet with other Latin Americanists. I know Columbia has one of the greats in my little sub-field. And the Rutgers professor is also just a little bit more chummy and friendly with me on a personal level (I met her family on visit day), and she was like that even before I applied to Rutgers, I've been in contact with her for a year or so and visited her before. Still, I have had other people tell me that I have a fantastic, enviable relationship with the UCLA prof; one fellow grad student confessed that he was jealous of how much the UCLA prof has taken a liking to me. It took me a long time earn his respect like that, and I feel I might be throwing it away by going to Rutgers. He recently said that he would allow me to contribute to a translation project with two other leading experts who will be visiting UCLA just to work on it, which shows he respects my abilities a great deal. That could possibly open doors for me, though I don't know how much they'll let me be involved with the project. Still, that won't be my dissertation, and the Rutgers prof could better help me to translate the text that I will study for my dissertation. The Rutgers professor told me that she would still be able to correspond with me and help me on my diss. project, although nowhere near as much as if I were to attend Rutgers. So the UCLA prof thinks I should just stay at UCLA and correspond with the POI at Rutgers, but I feel that there's no way of telling how much and often she will be able to help me. On the personal level, my family lives in San Diego, but my fiancée will be finishing grad school herself soon, and most of the jobs in her field are on the east coast. The weather in LA is way better, yeah, but LA kinda scares me, to be honest, and I'm a little tired of Southern California after living here in my life. New Brunswick seems like an extremely dull place, but it's close and connected to lots of interesting places that would give me a taste of something very different. It boils down to higher-ranking university (UCLA) with more professors in closely related fields vs a university that isn't too bad ranking wise (Rutgers history is #20) that has THE leading expert in the very specific niche of indigenous historical literature I want to specialize in, and is in a consortium with Ivies. Oh yeah, money-wise, Rutgers is offering me 3k more per year, though I'm a candidate for a fellowship at UCLA that would make my funding there equal to what Rutgers is offering, at least for 2 years. The bad news: they won't decide who wins the fellowship until the decision deadline, April 15th. For the record, most in my field have been telling me to choose Rutgers, on account of the prof there being the best tutor in that indigenous language that I could have. But becoming a great, employable historian takes more than just language skills. Please help! I'd appreciate any input.

Like I said, a person in the history dept. told me that all fields made all of their decisions as of last Friday. No word on whether acceptance letters have been sent out (still waiting for my official letter), I only got an informal phone call. My POI said that they still needed to go through some more hoops to make it 100% official, but he wanted to let me know that as long as nothing weird came up, I would be in. As I said previously, my POI and I talk frequently, he's my mentor/thesis advisor, so that's probably why he gave me the inside word on my acceptance. Another person here said that they were notified about being waitlisted by their POI at UCLA who is also their thesis advisor. So I think that the only people who have been informed are those who are in regular contact at UCLA with their POIs. My guess is that they still have to get more paperwork and other bureaucratic stuff done first, and then whenever that's done, all of the letters will be sent out, hopefully this week! Only way of knowing right now is through your POI if they are willing to be forthcoming with that info.

Ok, so a guy on the inside at UCLA told me that last Friday the history dept did indeed make all of their decisions for new students in all fields. No word on whether they already sent out all the acceptances though. My POI notified me the day after. He had my number and he was already my MA thesis advisor. If that weren't the case, then he might not have let me know so soon, so unless you already know two people in your field that have been accepted into UCLA then there is still hope! Though IIRC he told me I was the only Latin American history admit, so if you work on Latin American history then you're probably not getting in, sorry, but never say never, I may choose another school. PSU is looking pretty tempting after talking to the head of the dept there today.

Sorry, I meant that was last Friday that they met. Like I said, I don't know if they met to choose all the admits, but I'll ask my guy on the inside soon to clarify this.

The 17th is what I have on my calendar.

Well, UCLA didn't send me an acceptance. My POI just called and told me that I was the one chosen for Latin America, and that they just needed to get it formally approved (which pretty much always happens). So far there have been 2 other UCLA admits posted in the results section. They didn't say what area they're working on, though. IIRC there is only, maybe two people admitted per geographic region, so your chances depend on what fields those admits are in. Last week I asked my POI for an update (before he called me) and he said that Friday they were making their final decisions. Someone in the PhD program told me that as well. I'm not sure if they meant that the committee for Latin American history was meeting, or that all the committees were meeting to make decisions for all history fields. EDIT: I'm meeting one of my sources soon, I'll see if I can glean more info.

I got a phone call from my POI at UCLA this weekend (Saturday, Feb 6th to be exact). He said that there were two other professors in the same field (Latin America) who also had students that they wanted to bring to UCLA, but I was the one ultimately chosen. IIRC, admissions at UCLA are based on geographic field, not period, with one student admitted each year for Latin American history. So, sorry to say this, but I think that if you are doing Latin American history, regardless of the period you focus on, you're probably going to be rejected or waitlisted. I am most likely going to choose UCLA, but I'm still waiting to hear back from Rutgers and Columbia (long shot).

I was accepted into 3 MA programs (I think I have too little research experience to go for a PhD, so I'm doing an MA first): U of Utah, U of Oregon (both in history) and UCLA (Latin American studies). My tentative interest is early colonial/conquest-era indigenous Central Mexican history. I am particularly interested in the Nahua (known popularly, and incorrectly, as the "Aztecs"), which is to be expected, since they've left far more written documents than any other indigenous group in all of the Americas. All three of these schools have highly successful scholars who specialize in that area, so I think I'm faced with a tough decision. U of Utah is probably not going to be my choice though, because their one Nahuatl specialist says she won't be able to help me much over the next two years, and their one mesoamerican anthropologist mostly specializes in very early mesoamerican demography, rather than in late Nahuatl codices. Still, they do offer, in the language department, courses on modern spoken Nahuatl, which could be helpful. But I'm mainly interested in older, written Classical Nahuatl which can be vastly different from the modern form. UofO has, on the contrary, 2 specialists in that area, one of whom is working on an online dictionary of the language and an online database of Nahuatl texts. My POI has told me that she has shown interest in having me help her with those projects, which would be an invaluable learning experience for me. Both of them seem to be very eager to have me there, and my POI asked me to please take his offer of admission seriously. One problem though: their history dept. is very modern-oriented, and the two professors I spoke of (one of which isn't technically in the history dept) are the only historians there with an early-colonial focus. In fact there aren't even all that many Latin Americanists there; the dept is mostly focused on European, E. Asian and American (as in US) history (like every other history dept it seems). UCLA has the advantage of being a huge school, with an abundance of Latin Americanists, in and outside of the history department. There I would be exposed to all kinds of research. In addition, Kevin Terraciano works there, who is no doubt among the greatest living historians of indigenous Mexico. Yet he specializes more in Mixtec history, although he is very well-versed in the Nahua side of things. The downsides are that 1) the degree is in "Latin American Studies" rather than history, and I'm not sure if history PhD adcoms would take it as seriously as an actual history degree, and I don't know if it would limit me more and 2) the program length is only 4 academic quarters (so a year and a half). I'm not sure if That would give me enough time to write a great thesis. With regards to funding, I am #4 in line for a fellowship at UO, which would fully-fund my studies for at least a year; do you all think the odds may be in my favor, or is fourth place probably too far down the line? UCLA only offers limited fellowships for the LAS program, and I am being considered, although they have not decided yet. Kind of doubt that I will get any from UCLA considering my mediocre stats. I live in California, however, so the in-state tuition at UCLA would be drastically lower than at UO. Sorry for the verbosity, and I'm sorry if this should have been its own thread; I'm fairly new to this forum and I saw that others were soliciting decision advice on this thread so I figure I'd give it a shot. Thanks for reading.

Canis, you are a fountain of wisdom. You're right, I will edit that down, and just mention the bare facts. Loric (*BroHoof* to you by the way), I registered for those classes more than 3 years ago, so I'm sure they won't turn in to "F"s. I don't even think I have the option to retroactively withdraw anymore (or maybe I do). Glad to see I'm not the only one to forget to drop a course. I also see it could have been worse for me; "NS" isn't quite as bad as an "F'. Really sorry to hear that you got hit with all those "F"s. Hopefully adcomms will look over our "NS" and "F" grades and concentrate on things that actually matter. Best of luck to us.

Thank you all for your helpful advice, which has assuaged my fears considerably. The U of Utah has an addendum section. But U of Oregon (which I forgot to mention), does not. On my U of Oregon app, I plan on adding a slide to the scan of my unofficial transcript, with the following text (which I plan on adding to the U of Utah addendum as well): "NOTE: The “NS” “grades” appearing towards the end of my transcript stand for “No-Show”. They do not stand for “Not Satisfactory”. One can confirm this by consulting the UC Davis course catalog. I registered for those courses, but I did not attend them or submit any work, hence the “No-Show”. After the fall quarter of my final year (2010), I only needed to take one more history course in the following quarter in order to graduate. For personal enrichment, I planned on taking other courses outside of history in addition to the one remaining history course, so I registered for more classes. Yet, due to pressing financial concerns at the time, I eventually decided to instead work rather than attend courses that I did not need. In my final spring quarter of 2010, during the early part of that quarter, I received a job offer in my hometown of San Diego. I moved back and began working, and thus did not attend the philosophy courses I had registered for in that quarter. These “NS” marks do not affect my GPA, I received them for courses that were in philosophy and had nothing to do with my major, and thus they should not detract in any way from my otherwise strong academic performance. Please disregard them. Also disregard the the “subject to academic disqualification” status at the end of my transcript as well, which I received in my final quarter when I received those “NS” marks. It had no effect on me and did not prevent me from graduating as the enclosed scan of my bachelor's degree shall show." What do you all think?

Thanks for the suggestion; I did not consider using the "addendum" feature (although the UCLA app doesn't have it). U of Utah doesn't require an official transcript until they offer you acceptance. I just found out that their equivalent of a "No Show" grade is the "EU" grade, which represents "unofficial withdrawal". They count "EU" grades a failing grades with the same grade point value of an "E" (their equivalent to an "F" grade). Do you all think that, when they calculate my GPA, if they know that "NS" stands for "No Show", they will calculate those "NS" grades as their equivalent "EU" grades with 0.0 grade points, and thus assign me a much lower undergrad GPA than UC Davis did? I have heard that some graduate AdComms will count any non-passing "NP" grades as "F" grades, so I'm wondering if U of Utah will do the same with "NS" grades.

Additionally, should I maybe put an asterisk next to my "NS" grades on my unofficial transcript when I scan them and submit them to the U of Utah app, and then at the bottom write "*stands for 'no-show'"? Or would it be very unprofessional to write anything on my unofficial transcript?

Ugh, guys, I am losing so much sleep over this, please let me know if my fears are justified (crossing my fingers and hoping not). I'm applying to UCLA's MA in Latin American Studies program, and U of Utah's MA in history program. My overall GPA is 3.44 and my major (history) GPA is 3.68 (3.72 if you include the Nahuatl classes I took that are related to my specialization). As you can see, I didn't do too bad, got on the dean's list for 3 quarters in a row (my final 3). I finished up all my graduation requirements in winter quarter, but I had registered for a few philosophy courses for the upcoming spring quarter (philosophy being an interest of mine). I decided it wouldn't be worth taking those courses, and instead opted to head home and work, as I was offered a job back in my hometown. I didn't officially drop those courses so, lo and behold, this year, when I printed out my unofficial transcripts so I could scan them and submit them on my apps, I saw, in spring quarter, 3 "NS" grades. UC Davis apparently gives you an "NS", "no-show", grade if you don't submit any work or show up for a class. It didn't affect my GPA at all, but I did get put on "academic probation", even though that never amounted to anything since I technically graduated that quarter (even though I had already moved back home and completed my requirements and in the end received my BA). I am afraid that UCLA and U of Utah will look at this and see the "NS" as meaning "Non-Satisfactory" and thinking that I couldn't wing it in those philosophy classes, due to poor scholarship. I am also afraid that the "academic disqualification" thing will also scare them,even though, like I said, it never really affected me. Moreover, I saw on U of Utah's catalog that their equivalent of an "NS", "EU" or "unofficial withdrawal", counts negatively on your GPA, so even if they do recognize it for what it is, I am afraid they will treat it like an "F" in their calculations of my GPA. This isn't the first time I've done bad though; I also bombed one quarter a while back when I was a math major and did terrible because I was losing interest in math and thus had difficulty concentrating. Will that make them think there is some "troubling pattern", even though my transcript is overall pretty good, and I've never done bad (never less than a "B+") in history? On the plus side, my verbal GRE is in the 96th %, my major GPA is good (I think) and I have a LOR from one of the most successful scholars in the sub-field I aim to specialize in, who is professor emeritus at UCLA. I've also met with the director at the UCLA program who seems to think I have good potential. Will those pesky "NS" grades hurt me? Will they cancel out everything else? Are my chances ruined? My girlfriend told me not to worry about it, and to not mention it in my already stuffed-to-the-gills SOP, so I did not mention it in my app to UCLA which I already submitted. I can still go back to the application and submit supplementary info; should I submit a brief text document, explaining the "NS" grades? Should I email the director? There is still time to submit my app to U of Utah, should I mention it in my SoP there? Should I email them about it? Thanks for letting me vent my concerns; hopefully all is not lost.