JustChill

Yep, it's me.

It's because law school and med school grads can reasonably be expected to earn significantly more over their lifetimes compared to humanities or social sciences grad school graduates. They can pay off their debts much faster and usually with less hardship than the rest of us. My brother got his J.D. four years ago and has already cut his students debt in half. There are exception to this, of course, but that has been the underlying reason for this funding discrepancy historically.

I don't think that GC necessarily attracts the higher end of applicants. Are we really stronger applicants than those who have never even been to this site? I'm sure we're not. Many of us, including in the History field, have pretty big negatives affecting our applications (I scored 480 on the quant). It's not pleasant to think about, but I am positive that there are hundreds of people out there right now who have near perfect numbers, two or three languages, and years of primary research experience -- and many of these are our direct competitors. I, for one, found this site only because I wanted to see how well I stack up against other History applicants, and therefore I was less than confident of my chances.

Yeah, that'd be great. I'm also very surprised by the number of admits.

I'm actually (at least for now) relying on grad cafe results page to let me know if I should check any of my schools' sites for decisions. I have too many to check everyday. I wouldn't have known about UW-Madison if I hadn't seen people on here talking about it.

Make that 7, justchecked the site and I'm also in. Surprised there is no word from the profs.

I am all about the news. My homepage is Google news, and the first three sites I visit every web session are BBC News, NY Times (international edition), and CNN. I don't really know why, but for me it's very important to be up to date to what's going on in the country and the world.

This is unfortunate, yes, but if you are as well qualified for Berkeley as that email makes you out to be, then you should also be very competitive at the top private universities.

I don't mean to be rude or negative, but how do you publish a book but score so poorly on the verbal part? Yes, I am aware that this is a technical field which does not require advanced vocabulary, but that seems surprising to me.

I just went through this myself. You definitely should respond, at the very least to acknowledge the receipt of the acceptance. After that, just thank them and tell them that you'll let them know of your decision as soon as possible. They know, of course, that it's very early and that you're still waiting to hear from the other schools. I did this last week with an early acceptance, and the professor was extremely understanding and didn't take any offense at that.

I saw that too, but it's so early... I don't know. I think there'd be more entries on the results page if Harvard had sent out mass rejections. I doubt they would send only a couple at a time.

Adventure

Revolution

This whole waiting period is by the far the most annoying part of the application process.

I wonder if this is true for other history departments. I did well on the verbal and writing, but very poorly on the quantitative.

Have other applicants noticed how Stanford's History FAQ page says that "verbal and analytical scores are looked at...." Seems to me that they are conspicuously omitting any mention of the quantitative section. Is it really completely irrelevant to them? FAQ page: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/history/graduate/admissions_faq.html#2_4 Any thoughts?

Definitely retake. Those scores won't get your application past the administrator's desk.

I've been thinking about this myself quite a bit. I've been accepted into an M.Phil. program in the UK, but even though it's in one of the most famous universities in the world, I keep feeling apprehensive about how American universities are going to take that degree when I apply for top US PhD programs afterwards. I know for a fact that I want to teach and do research in the US, so my intention is to get an American PhD, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like I am better off getting an American master's too, not just PhD. We'll see what happens with my other applications, I guess.

Well, a lot of PhD programs require you to go abroad for research. I don't know about legal psychology, though. Check with your advisors/professors.

use skype

From what I've heard from my own university, the buck stops with the grad school. The department can "recommend" someone for admission, but the grad school reserves the right to veto that choice and tell the department to pick someone else. But I think this happens extremely rarely and usually only if the grad school really thinks that the students recommended by the department does not meet the minimum requirements.

this is my first, and hopefully only, grad school application season.

I have no idea about past years, but two profs from there called and emailed me last week and asked me to tell them how serious I am about their program because they will be making preliminary decisions at the end of this week. As I said earlier, I don't know if this means that they are going to start notifying some people now or what, just that that the ad coms are looking at applications.

That's true - I know for a fact (from two professors within the department) that they are making "preliminary decisions" by the end of this week. But this doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to contact people this soon.

Oh please, there is no way you need 700+ Quantitative for German studies. I got 500 quant. and am currently the top applicant at UNC's history department for Russian history (according to two different professors from the department) and already got into Oxford for Russian studies.