vityaz

I just received the last of my grades my MA program and was wondering what a "good" average would be, i.e. what would PhD programs expect from an applicant with an MA? I understand that the other parts of an application are more important, but am just curious. If it matters I'm in Canada.

Just officially accepted Western's MA History offer!

With that GPA it might be tough...usually spots for international students are even more competitive than domestic. According to this: http://uwaterloo.ca/graduate-studies/application-admission/review-admission-requirements/international-student-admissions-guide, you need a minimum of 3.0 to even apply to Waterloo. You're going to need the rest of your application package (GRE, SoP, LoR) to be very competitive to have a chance. If you're really set on coming to Canada, I might recommend applying to some lower ranked programs to be on the safe side. Based on these rankings: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2014/computer-science-information-systems#sorting=rank+region=+country=222+faculty=+stars=false+search=, I'd say your best shot is Calgary. I know Waterloo is super competitive so that might be a longshot.

OP has 18 posts including 3 topics, all trying to dissuade people from doing a PhD in the humanities. OP, why the agenda?

Banking on loan forgiveness is a mistake because that could change at any time. Go for the cheaper school.

Ouch, that sucks. I'd be very wary about taking any debt to go for a Public History program. You're right, people don't get into this field to get rich and it's probably not going to be worth it.

$100k for a Masters is a ton of money, especially in the social sciences where you're not even guaranteed a high-paying job straight out of University. Think of it this way, at 6.8% interest, you will be paying roughly $1150 per month for 10 years. Over 30 years that's $650 a month. Honestly, you should just consider an acceptance with no funding to be a rejection and apply again next year to programs that are more likely to provide funding.

Is this for a MA or a PhD?

Interesting, but paying 20k+ per year for a degree that employers are more than likely not going to understand/respect is a bad idea.

For what it's worth, if you reverse image search the OP's avatar it doesn't come up with any matches. There's a decent chance it's a legit pic and not one she just found online somewhere.

You mentioned that you already have a desktop at home. In this case, I'd highly recommend a Chromebook. Chromebook's come with a remote desktop application that allows you to access any programs you have on your desktop (you can test it out on any computer, it's an extension for Chrome and is available on the web store). I purchased a Chromebook (13" Toshiba Chromebook) several weeks ago and am really happy with it. It does everything I need on the go, and if I do happen to need a Windows application (which is surprisingly rare), I can just remote in to my desktop. I love the 8-10 hour battery life too. The best part is that it only cost around $350 so it wouldn't be the end of the world if something happened to it (vs. a $1000 Macbook).

Pretty much same as me. I think it's easier to wing it when applying to Canadian schools since you don't have to worry about GRE stuff. I asked LoR's over the Christmas break (deadline Feb 1) and only really started working on the SoP a week or two before the deadline. I also didn't realize that for one of the schools you had to submit your SoP before they sent out the forms to the LoRs, which gave them all of 3 days notice to get it in (which they all did, thankfully).

How much debt would you take on for the PhD vs. Masters?

Same thing happened to me for MA History. Considering I'm in Ontario I wouldn't have even been able to visit the campus in that timeframe.

Yeah, not buying this one at all.

How much debt would MassArt put you in?

House Hunters is awesome. Not a fan of Property Brothers though.

I was accepted to one program (Canadian MA) very early, and had the visit day several weeks before I even heard back from other schools. Towards the end of the visit day, one of the Professors asked me if they could expect to see me back in September. I felt like I was put on the spot a bit since it was asked in the presence of several other Professors and prospective students, so I responded with something like "oh yeah, definitely" and exited the situation. Now that I've been accepted to another school (that I didn't really think I had a shot at), I feel like a jerk for unofficially committing to the first school. To make matters worse, the potential supervisor at the first school works pretty closely with one of the Professors at the top-choice school who I will likely be taking several courses with. How do I navigate this situation? I really don't want to piss of the original potential supervisor, and I certainly don't want to piss off the other Professor. But I definitely think going to the top-choice school will be much better for my career. I'm not planning on going for a PhD or staying in academia, but I don't want to burn any bridges either.

I think the best course of action would be honesty. Let them know they're your top choice but you want to hear back from other schools so you can make a more informed decision.

I was offered admission to a program and they gave me 7 days to decide. This was in early-mid March too, so I had only heard back from one other school at that point. This was a Canadian school so I don't believe they're bound by the CGS. I ended up declining pretty much immediately since it was my last choice anyway, but I wasn't very impressed with how little time they gave me to decide - I wouldn't have even been able to visit the campus in that time period.

Just wondering how early everyone started getting their materials ready and asking professors for LoRs. I feel like I was super late since I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to do grad school right away - I sent e-mails asking for LoRs about a month before the deadline. It worked out well (went 3/3 on the apps) but I definitely should've started earlier.

I applied to a Public History program and did this too, although it was only one line about how I became interest in museums/history. I was accepted, but looking back I kind of regret including it because of how cliche it is. Not sure if it actually helped/hurt my application, but I would probably recommend against it.

For what it's worth, I had to choose between a post-doc that knew me very well and knew the director of the program I was applying to vs. a tenured Professor who I had one class with. I chose the post-doc and was accepted.

I'd say contact them at the beginning of April if you have still not heard anything. That should still give you plenty of time to decide where to go.

Bumping this up a little bit. I'll most likely be attending the MA - Public History program at UWO. Where will everyone else be attending?