JustChill

In my field, other common national grants include Fulbright IIE, Fulbright-Hays, IREX, American Councils, Boren, and Mellon.

Yep, I heard the same during my interview with the Russian Fulbright office. Best of luck to all Russia applicants!

Nothing for me either, although a colleague of mine received a transcript request on Thursday.

I was in the same position a couple of years ago during grad admissions. One program offered about 52k more (during the course of the entire program) than the other, and so I sent my admission and financial award letters from that school to the DGS of the other one. She quickly replied that their offer was firm and that they could not raise my stipend. It was painful, but I chose the program with the lesser stipend because they had a much stronger concentration in my field. I've never regretted it.

Do we know how many of these they award per year (or per region, if that applies)?

Has anyone else here applied to the Title VIII Research Scholar program from ACTR? I think results are due fairly soon.

For an MA in REES, you can't do much better than UNC/Duke's joint program. The resources of those two institutions as well as twice the chance for FLAS funding makes that program easily the most developed among all the Title VIII REES centers. For anyone serious about doing a PhD in a R/EE related field, and particularly history, I want to reemphasize the importance admissions committees (and now I see that funding agencies, too) place on language training. Previous posters have already mentioned some of the more popular summer language programs: Indiana's SWSEEL, Pitt's SLI, ASU's CLI, Middlebury. ASU's program is tuition-free and costs only 600 or 700. I highly recommend spending a summer studying Russian or another Slavic/EE language at one of these programs in order to boost your chances for admission and funding. I participated in two of these prior to my admission into a Russian history PhD program, and one since then, and find that everyone is much more impressed by that part of my CV than any of my other academic accolades.

Modern Europe, especially Germany and Russia, are UNC's main non-American focus.

Colonial Village at Highland Hills is right on the J route and a pretty nice complex. The only draw back is that it's really on the edge of Carrboro, so you will always be dependent on your car or the bus.

In my field, my workload goes up to 20 hours a week only during midterms and finals, and possibly when papers are due. Otherwise, I have 10 hours a week max of TA related work. It's mostly going to lecture and then leading three discussion sessions, which adds up to 7 hours, and then doing some light grading during the week here and there.

Sounds interesting, I'll check it out.

The USSR was most certainly not a nation-state. A polity occupying one-seventh of the planet's surface, it inevitably included hundreds of distinct ethnic groups. The exact number has always been debated by historians, partly because the number itself was used as a political tool by the Soviets, but most Western scholars agree that the USSR was home to somewhere between 150 and 200 non-Russian peoples. As a result, the USSR (and present-day Russian, too) does not qualify as a nation-state (which tend to be much smaller, both in terms of geography and population). I would consider, say, Iceland or Mali or Laos to be nation-states, although those are also generalizations.

UPenn's history department is notoriously bad about losing documents. I always heard about this from others until they emailed me last year claiming that they never received my GRE scores. After two phone calls to the Grad School and the department, the scores magically appeared! Check, check, and then double-check everything!

There will almost certainly be more competition for admission into History programs as opposed to LA studies programs.

As usual, they will be taking far more Germanists than any other sub-European specialty. UNC is probably the best place in the country for modern German history, and they have a large number of faculty specializing in that field, so consequently they can accommodate more grad students. If you're leaning more toward Germany, than statistically you have a better chance (although a higher number of fellow applicants in that field might offset this).

I always use Dr. Brown. It's more succinct and easier to type quickly.

I've always found Columbia's database pretty useful: http://www.ais.columbia.edu/sws/gsas/search.php

You are very vague in your interests in government work, but if you're talking about federal employment (State Dept., FBI, etc), knowing the Russian language usually goes farther than nineteenth century Russian history. I can tell you with certainty that you will need to decide before your application whether you want to do pre- or post-Revolutionary Russia. Our field is inherently divided into imperial and Soviet history, and all Russianists (and thus advisors) do one or the other, but not both. When applying to graduate programs, you will definitely need to decide which side of 1917 you want to concentrate on. As you probably know, there are more American scholars working on the Soviet period than the imperial, so it's a little more saturated and therefore harder to find an academic job. In my opinion, there is still a lot more work to be done on the imperial side (especially the late nineteenth century), and I think the job market is not quite as competitive there. Bottom line, if you're trying to decide whether to do imperial or Soviet Russia, you are more likely (but obviously not guaranteed) to have more employment (not to mention more research) opportunities on the imperial side.

You know you can do a summer intensive Russian program at places like Pittsburgh, Arizona State, Indiana (SWSEEL), or Middlebury. And you can get a FLAS to do Russian, which will cover all your costs. If you're looking at a PhD in Russian history, you will need to bring up your Russian to a pretty high level to have a chance at some of the top-25 programs. I recommend trying to find a summer when you can spend it in St. Petersburg or Moscow.

I came into my PhD program without a master's, and am very happy that I did so, because everyone who comes into this program with a master's has less time to get stuff accomplished. Less time to comps, less opportunities for summer funding, etc.

I think UNC-Chapel Hill has some big names in slavery. Check out their faculty page.

I had the exact same thing happen when I was applying, and my advisor (I ended up going to that school) called me for a 45 minute conversation. He mostly sung the praises of their program and told me how great his other students are. There were some questions about my specific research interests, but these we asked in order to tell me about their campus resources. Don't expect this to be anything like a job interview. They just want to get to know you and exchange some information -- you ask a couple of questions, they answer and ask their own questions. Relax, it'll be much more laid back than you think.

In the US there aren't any specific components of an application which are much more important than the others. There are reasons why these universities ask for all this material, which means that each one has some importance in the admission process. Regarding the TOEFL score, it means that you need to score at least 109. Of course, you can and should score higher than that to have a stronger application, but that seems to be Oxford's cut off. In the US, references are very important, because they are sources of information about an applicant from other colleagues -- professors in the field who can objectively evaluate their students' potential for success in a specific academic program. Admissions committees tend to listen to the advice of their colleagues a great deal. The CV isn't very, very important, because it basically summarizes your academic background and experiences. Most of that info will be in other parts of your application anyway. A personal statement, in this case, is something that talks about your academic training and experiences and how you are qualified to study in that program -- you are basically trying to prove that you are good enough to succeed in their program. A statement of study plan is more unusual, and we in the US usually combine a personal statement and a statement of study plan into one document -- statement of purpose -- but in Oxford's case it might mean a plan on how you will satisfy the requirements for the MSc or how you will be able to accomplish this goal.

None of us can tell you anything with any certainty, but I would like to comment that your choice of schools, especially for the PhD, is very reasonable and realistic. Don't ever assume that you won't get into "better" schools because your undergrad institution is not on the same level or your professors aren't superstars. Some things are more likely than others, but anything is possible. I strongly suggest adding a couple of "reach" schools, from the top-20 range, that have faculty who match your interests well.