ashiepoo72

I totally cosign on this! I know several people with co-advisers and, if the advisers work well together, it ends up being a dynamic and exciting intellectual experience for the advisee. Then adding someone else to the committee who can speak to some other aspect of the project really makes for a great dissertation.

Well why not say you've done more work on Chinese history but have interest in Korean history, then tell him what work you've done in that direction and how you think his expertise can help you? You don't need to choose a project to fit with your adviser. They just need to be sufficiently convinced that they can guide your dissertation with the help of other profs in your department, so mentioning who else in the department you might be interested in having on your committee and why is probably a good idea. If you show confidence and interest in a project that you've selected, but also a willingness to move in new directions during grad school, that's good.

I think it's good to have specialty/emphasis diversity on the dissertation committee as a whole. If your adviser's work is very close to yours, I would just be sure to cultivate relationships with people who have specialties different from yours and include them on your committee. I have someone completely outside my geographic field who does pretty different thematic work than me, but this person challenges me in ways someone in my exact field probably wouldn't. I think one major benefit of having an adviser so close to what you do is that they know your field inside and out, can direct you to readings, trends, professional organizations/networking opportunities and they know other people in your field so they can likely help you get in touch with scholars outside of your university. As long as your committee isn't made up entirely of people exactly like you, then it'll be fine.

Are you interested in Korean history or Chinese history? I would hesitate to tell the professor what you think he wants just so you don't appear to be a bad fit. Instead, I would tell him what you're really interested in then emphasize the ways his expertise can support your project (methodologically, temporally, comparatively, etc). Ex: I want to study X, and your article/book/emphasis on Y method/theory/approach informed how I think about this project in terms of Z.

FWIW I got my MA from a non-prestigious school and some of my colleagues ended up at tippy top programs. I didn't do too shabby my application year either, though I didn't apply to Ivies due to fit. The people who got into the top tier programs took advantage of the MA's resources and professors, killed it on original research and made sure to apply to programs with strong fit. I'm not saying prestigious programs don't care about where you get your MA, but I'm confident in saying that the work you produce at whatever MA you attend matters more than anything.

Congrats! What's your field? Will you be attending the recruitment weekend?

Nature's Metropolis is in my top 3 favorite books. Cronon has a way with words, and the book is--imo--so well structured that it's a dream to read. I hope you enjoy it!

If anyone was wondering, gradcafe has a handy "ignore user" setting if you find yourself confronted by someone who is annoying and refuses to stop talking. And just in case anyone cares about my 2 cents, Madison has a solid placement record and is, in fact, one of the top 20 programs which disproportionately places its grads in TT jobs. It has an excellent record. It may not be Princeton or Yale, but it isn't a program to scoff at.

World history (even when you look at job listings for U.S. historians, many of them specify U.S. and the World. This ties into the continued popularity of transnational and global histories). Public history seems to still be quite popular and also an excellent degree if you're willing to apply for non-academic jobs. Political history has had a slight surge. I think intelligence history is very exciting, but it may end up being absorbed by a more established field like political or diplomatic. I was told that certain kinds of institutional history are becoming popular as well, but I don't know much about that. Hard to say if fields in decline (like economic and diplomatic) will continue their decline or have a resurgence, especially 4-6 years from now when most of us will be on the job market. This article is interesting: https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2015/the-rise-and-decline-of-history-specializations-over-the-past-40-years Especially this part imo "Among the topical fields, specialists in environmental history and the history of sexuality have the youngest demographic profile, as almost 70 percent of the employed faculty members in those fields earned their highest degrees since 1994 (as compared to 47 percent of all listed faculty in the Directory). Conversely, only about 30 percent of the employed faculty specializing in diplomatic, economic, and intellectual history earned their degrees after 1994. Among the geographic specialties, European and US history have the oldest demographic profiles, as 41 and 46 percent, respectively, of the specialists in each field earned their highest degrees after 1989 (and more than 13 percent earned their degrees before 1970). In contrast, more than 55 percent of the faculty working in the histories of African, Asian, Latin American, and the Middle East and Islamic world earned their degrees since 1989 (and less than 10 percent in every field earned their degrees before 1970)." Does this mean that new PhDs in environmental history and the history of sexuality will have a difficult time finding a job because most of the current profs in those fields are nowhere near retiring, or will new positions keep opening up? What does this mean for diplomatic/economic/intellectual historians, Europeanists and Americanists--will these older profs retiring open up jobs, or will those tenure streams close (probably a mix of both, not enough to address the oversaturation of the job market for sure).

Wow early acceptances are in already! How exciting! Wishing you all the best of luck. Save your acceptance letters--I still look at mine when I'm feeling beaten down and need a boost in confidence. Now's a good time to think of any questions you want to ask the DGS and/or your POIs and/or grad students in the program, and to mull over funding/cost of living issues if you haven't yet. I was lucky to have MA advisers who guided me on how to negotiate for more funding, and my most important piece of advice is to prepare for that. If anyone has questions about MSU, Binghamton, Minnesota, Santa Barbara or Davis, feel free to message me. Those were the main "contenders" among my acceptances so I know quite a bit about them (Davis is where I ended up).

Just a comment on hiring committees not knowing the contours of all subfields--true, but in my (subjective) experience, they tend to do the research on subfields for which they are hiring. They also tend to know the biggest names in most subfields, or at least one or two people on a hiring committee usually do (so they'd recognize their letters of recommendation). My MA program was hiring an Africanist and looked especially close at candidates from MSU, which is totally not an Ivy but is well known for African history. None of the scholars at my program did African history, but they were capable of looking at the NRC data (which I was told they like much more than USA Today rankings, even though it's woefully out of date). Even more often, they talk to their colleagues/friends, who are historians of all kinds of subfields at all kinds of institutions. Maybe this depends on the hiring university. TBH, it could be that a place like my MA needed to be cautious about who was hired because if the person didn't stick around, that tenure stream wouldn't be left open for a new hire--therefore, they put the work in to know the subfield in question. But I lean toward assuming research-obsessed professors take that trait into other aspects of their job. When I was selecting a PhD program, one of my rec writers, whose work is on the Civil War, race, gender and medicine, knew exactly who my potential advisers were and helped me choose between them (I do Cold War foreign policy). Like I said, this is all my subjective experience, but I'm often surprised by how well some (most?) of the professors in a given department have a sense of what's what outside of their subfield.

It's impossible to answer this. There are tons of factors going into a program's admissions decisions. Grades, GRE, language proficiency, breadth and depth of coursework all play a role. Strength of primary source-based research, writing skills, strong recommendation letters, statement of purpose exhibiting fit with the program are even more important imo. Whether or not the potential advisers you list in the statement are accepting students, whether or not a bunch of people with better profiles or better conceived projects applied to work with the same people as you, whether or not the department has limits on how many people to accept within your subfield also play a role. All you can do at this point is wait it out. If you don't get in this round, you should consider doing an MA or some sort of history related work and then reapply to more programs. I would suggest you apply to at least 5 if you have to reapply. Good luck!

I didn't outright say "hey, you're my top choice." The last paragraph of my SOPs was dedicated to fit, and for my top choice programs I concluded along the lines of "Professor X's research on [BLAH BLAH] and Professor Y's current work on [BLAH BLAH] would inform my research in xyz ways. This, combined with the history department's strength in [METHODOLOGY, THEMATIC FOCUS, ETC] and the university's [ARCHIVAL AND OTHER RESOURCES], makes Happyland University a singularly strong location for my growth as a scholar."

Working on passive voice and overly-complicated language is good advice. I'll never forget the time I went hog wild with synonyms and one of my MA profs told me I used "belie" incorrectly. Also, cutting out unnecessary sentences/superfluous words (or combining several sentences that would be more effective as a concise single sentence). I collect verbs like other people collect baseball cards--it's always helpful to have a verb in your pocket that perfectly encapsulates the action you want to convey. I usually do this by writing down fun verbs from books I love (I know, total nerd move). Read your writing sample slowly, out loud, to a non-historian. That's how I did my final WS edit and it seriously helped. I don't know the conventions of your subfield, but the first 5 sentences of the intro are kind of fluff imo. I would open with a sentence or two that dives right into your specific geographic and temporal subject matter, lay out the documents you're focusing on, then loop around to how examining the constitutional documents illuminates an important political dialogue (then be specific about who is participating in said dialogue and what that dialogue is/why it's important). After that I would bring back in some of what you said in the first 5 sentences, but I would encourage you to go broad-to-specific (so something like "the definitions of words change over time, evolving certain connotations and breathing life into actions and documents; the Union of Utrecht and Pacification of Ghent reveal a shifting understanding of xyz..."). In the 2nd paragraph, instead of "the forming Dutch Republic" I would say "nascent Dutch Republic" maybe. That's just a nitpicky point on my part, though. If I'm completely off base (I am a lowly modern Americanist after all), please feel free to ignore me

I was actually very confused about the distinction between Dr. and Professor at my MA institution, where one of my instructors was an adjunct with a PhD (I called her Professor). The chair of the department explained to me that the "proper" title for this particular professor was Dr., whereas tenured or tenure-track faculty are both Dr. and Professor (but Professor is preferred because it is the more distinguished title, that signals their tenured or tenure-track status). Anyway, I'm sure most people won't pitch a fit if they're referred to as Dr. instead of Professor, it's just one of those quirky things in academia that's good to know. FWIW when I meet other academics whose tenure status I don't know, I err on the side of Professor out of politeness. I like to mind my p's and q's in case they're one of the people who gets offended when they aren't referred to by the proper title.

Have you tried using Garamond instead of Times? I would switch to Garamond unless the department specifically requests another font (it's smaller than Times), then I would edit down the paper until it's 20 pages. I know that's a pain but manipulating margins and whatnot isn't a good idea. On the plus side, Garamond is prettier AND approved by the discipline haha I single-spaced SOPs except for Ohio State (they requested double spaced) I wrote Professor So-and-So when referring to potential advisers Good luck!

I'll add my 2 cents. PhDs are grueling in every way. Mentally, you go through the wringer. Intellectually, you're pushed beyond what you thought possible. Physically, you're exhausted from all the work and the fact that you can never really shut it off because most of that work is going on in your head and it never stops, plus I legit got a UTI from sitting for 10+ hours a day in archives at one point--yeah, it actually happens. Besides all of that, even at the better funded schools you'll probably have to do some teaching. Whether that shakes out to 1-2 years or 4-5, doesn't matter if it's not your thing. TAing in GEs when you love teaching is rough...if you don't like teaching, you can get through it, but you'll probably be miserable. Now that I'm doing comps, I finally realized that I can reach a point where I loathe reading. Thankfully, I reset pretty quickly, but that's because I'm a sicko who loves all this crap. But I naively figured once I was out of coursework I would feel fabulous. Joke's on me Just be prepared for every stage to be hard. If you truly love research, I think you totally could do well and even be happy at a PhD program--even if you aren't interested in teaching. My concern is that, if it isn't something you need for your career, the PhD could very well be a demoralizing process for you. It could also put the brakes on you beginning to build the career you want. I would suggest you do some more research on the typical trajectory of people going into your dream jobs (like Prof Plum said) while you wait for application results, and also do some soul searching. Who knows, you may find that with your first acceptance it really is what you want.

This. As an aside, I know there are financial reasons why publishers make authors use endnotes instead of footnotes, but I hate it with the fire of 1000 suns.

Best of luck! I agonized over deciding between my program and Minnesota. Minn has such a fantastic department.

Btw, if your campus has a union it's a good time to support it. My union is going into contract negotiations and one of the demands is that the university offset any financial hardship caused by tax bills targeting higher education. Obviously it's a great idea to contact your senators and try to get a better bill passed, but it's also good to do what you can to try to mitigate the damage if that doesn't happen.

There's no hard and fast rule on how many applications are too many. I would apply to as many programs as you would be willing to attend that are a good fit for your research, keeping in mind rank (overall and in your subfield) and what you can afford in terms of the cost of application materials. I applied to 13 programs after doing pretty extensive research on fit and contacting POIs. In retrospect that was probably too many, but at the time I was worried about how competitive grad schools apps are, really wanted to do a PhD and felt good about all the programs to which I applied. If you can afford it, my thinking is it's better to have a few more apps than too few. Note on placement: if your goal is to be a professor, apply to places that actually place people in academic jobs. You'll still face an uphill battle on the job market--as we all will--but you'll have a better shot.

Hey everyone, I've been gone from GradCafe for forever, but I wanted to wish all of this year's applicants the best of luck and remind y'all to breathe! Do things that take your mind off applications, especially after you submit them Now, I'm going to return to my cave, as I am knee-deep in the dreaded comps year. I'll try to pop in occasionally, especially when offers start rolling in and you may have questions about visiting programs, deciding between them and negotiating for funding. I found that to be the most exciting and terrifying part of the entire process.

I'm late to the party, but I personally think the Science Magazine study on which programs place the most people in TT jobs is extremely useful. I don't care so much about US News' rankings, and I can tell you from being at a PhD-granting institution that there's always internal movement that makes those kinds of rankings outdated pretty quickly. Anyway, I want a job at the end, so that's why I rely more on this list of "top 20" programs: Harvard University; Yale University; UC Berkeley; Princeton University; Stanford University; University of Chicago; Columbia University; Brandeis University; Johns Hopkins University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Michigan; UCLA; Northwestern University; Cornell University; Brown University; UC Davis; University of Rochester; New York University; UC San Diego Obviously there is variation depending upon field. Your adviser/committee matters as well. There are always things we can do to be more competitive--publish, get prestigious fellowships, write so well we get awards, teaching experience. But I think aiming for the top 20 programs that place the most PhDs in TT jobs is also a reasonable threshold. Then again, there are lower-ranked programs that dominate certain fields, so really we need to be up-to-date on our fields so we know which places have the leading lights.

I'm not trying to denigrate anyone who is only gaining language proficiency to check off a requirement. The fact of the matter is, it behooves us all to make normative progress and part of doing that is jumping through the hoops of minors and language requirements. These can and should be meaningful to our work in some way, and for some of us will be quite important to our projects. But keeping the bigger picture of our dissertation in mind (which involves getting through the stuff keeping us from achieving ABD status as quickly as possible) should be our main task. I also want to say that there are lots of online resources that might help you. At the very least there are free proficiency tests that aren't perfect but will give you an idea of how you're progressing.

For OP specifically--I've heard from an acquaintance who is near fluent in German that English Grammar for Students of German is an excellent resource. More generally--I second grammar books if you're self-teaching. I would combine those with vocabulary practice, flash cards work for many people but I prefer using the words in sentences because if I don't apply it I won't remember it. Once you have a decent grasp of a language, you'll need to be somewhat versed in its academese, as language exams involve translating an academic piece. I highly highly recommend spending a good chunk of time each week reading and translating scholarly articles and listening to the news in that language (the app TuneIn Radio is awesome). How intensively you study should be determined based on if you'll actually use the language or are only checking off a requirement.