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My undergraduate institution was the opposite. Nevertheless, I think what you said is generally true. From what I heard from people, they are looking for intellectual diversity. They don't want departments to become "inbred." You've already learned the perspectives of the department during undergrad. As a graduate student, you should travel elsewhere and learn from a department with new perspectives. I'm not saying this is always correct, but it is what I was told. Specifically, many think it is ideal to learn from different "regions" of the country. I think that is somewhat of a generalization of finding intellectual diversity... I think in specific cases you can distinguish schools better than that. Nevertheless, I do believe that it comes down to intellectual diversity and expanding your (and the department's) horizons.

I was told to use my three thesis committee members. In the end, however, I used my main thesis advisor and two others that I thought could speak to different aspects of my ability and character. I don't know if this was a mistake or not (from the point of view of adcoms), but I feel pretty good about it. I really chose those that I felt could offer a deep and well-rounded perspective about me. Of course, this old adage may be counter-intuitive when it comes to graduate admissions. Maybe adcoms really do want to hear primarily about your major work (i.e. thesis). But I considered it as if I were on an admissions committee. I would rather know about a person in-depth and over a greater amount of time than specifically about the work that one did over the course of 9-12 months. Plus, I felt that if they all came from the thesis committee there would be a 90% overlap of material covered. Now, this may have just been my situation. I worked closely with my main advisor and much less so with the other two. On the other hand, I had worked more closely with two other professors over the course of my master's degree. I felt they had things to write about that would be positive, but also different from my main advisor. Whether or not my reasoning was flawed, I feel good about my decision.

I'm a little surprised there aren't too many people here and that this thread is moving slowly. Hopefully it is because people are too busy working on their applications Right now I've got four apps submitted, mostly because they required submission before they would send out the letters of rec emails to recommenders. I'm still waiting to hear back on publications, I've been told I will hear back by the end of November. Crossing my fingers! Once I hear back I will upload my CV and submit! If I don't hear back by Thanksgiving weekend, I will pull the trigger, however! Then, if I hear back after that I will see if the programs will accept an updated CV. One thing that honestly kind of annoys me are schools that require official transcripts for the initial part of the application process. I simply don't see why they can't let you use unofficial transcripts and your admission is contingent upon providing official transcripts once you accept their offer. Thankfully only a few schools I applied to require official. On that note, I wish schools would allow the same thing for GRE scores. I had a few schools request the unofficial GRE score, but I still had to submit official GRE scores. Again, why not have that at the end once you are accepting an offer. GRE scores are, what, $27 apiece? That is exorbitant. Transcripts are at least only $10-15. Sorry, just complaining about the costs of applying! Admittedly, I cut my total costs by half through using waivers and a grant, but it is still quite a bit!

I know of two: University of Toronto and the University of Virginia. Toronto: https://pasttensejournal.com Virginia: http://www.essaysinhistory.com Those are links to the actual journals (graduate student journals). They are a part of the actual department of the site, which you can google quickly enough. Hope this helps!

I've been working on my applications for months now... I've got almost all of my LORs in, GRE scores sent, official transcripts (if requested), etc. Literally everything except just a few LORs and... my CV!!!! I'm waiting to hear back on three projects and it is killing me. I should hear back before the end of November, which is really good because everything is due December 1 almost everywhere. Nevertheless, after having worked for months on my applications, now that I am basically finished, I want to pull the trigger on these applications! Then begins the long wait.

I honestly don't see the problem with the GRE besides the cost. Of course, waivers are available for low income people, so there is that (and I received the equivalent of a waiver, though not from ETS). I agree that the GRE does not provide a good indicator of PhD success in terms of motivation, etc. Nevertheless, that is why there are other aspects of the package. The GRE is a one-off test. Only a sustained commitment (visible on CV, transcripts, etc.) can show motivation, and even then it isn't entirely accurate. The GRE is the graduate level equivalent of an IQ test in some ways. You can study for it, but there will simply be some people who will never get a perfect score or even a very good score. A good GRE score shows that you either studied a lot, are very smart, or a combination of the two. It is one part of many in any application. I certainly don't agree with GRE cut-offs that immediately get your application thrown into the trash bin, but it can be a useful measure if used properly. The real killer is the $27 fee for sending the scores. And schools already use the GREs generally well. I.e. the verbal section counts for very little for math and science, and the quant counts for little in verbal disciplines. We can call just about anything a significant barrier for certain groups of people. College itself can be expensive, a four year commitment is tough for people with extenuating circumstances, low-funded colleges don't provide opportunities for adding to a CV, GPAs aren't always representative, the GRE is tough for people, application fees for PhD programs are expensive, etc. I'm not saying we can't change things to make them better, but I guess I kind of look at it as if any requirements on an application give me another avenue to prove that I should be there. If I can't succeed well in a particular requirement, there are many other requirements that I can shine in.

Hmmm, thought this was for those applying in 2016 to enter in Fall 2017. Anyway, that's what I am doing! Going to apply to 10-15 schools! Still narrowing down the list! Just took the GREs and finished an MA program! Also trying to get a few things published before the applications open on the school sites... Most are still closed, argh! Anxious to write my personal statement and get on with this, lol!

Hello, everybody! I know there are quite a few topics like this, but I wanted to share anyway. Also, I know I don't have a perfect score, but I think it's pretty darn good, so maybe someone can learn from my studying method for the GRE. Little background: Just finished a master's degree in military history. Did a lot of writing, so I did NOT study AT ALL for the AWA. I expect a pretty good score, but just so everyone knows, the AWA will not be in this guide. I studied for four months while working full time 40-50 hours per week and also working on papers for publication. I spent about 2 hours a day during the week and 4-7 hours on each weekend day or holiday. I don't think it could have been done much faster, honestly, because you can only absorb so much material and not get burned out. It could also have taken longer, if need be, but I was already forgetting material because of how long I was taking, so I don't know. Four months was a good balance between how much material there was... By the end I was getting burned out and not wanting to study, however. Study Materials Used: Magoosh Video Guides Magoosh Practice Questions Official GRE Guide Official GRE Quantitative and Verbal Guides Kaplan Premier 2016 (skip this it sucked and was pointless) Manhattan Set of 8 Prep Guides Manhattan 5 pound book Set of 6 Manhattan practice tests (quantitative only) The Verbal Grail LSAT Tests (Reading Comprehension Only) The first thing I did was I sat down and watched all of the Magoosh videos. All of them. I don't regret that, but I didn't learn THAT much from them because I had never done any practice problems. Plus, the problems in Magoosh are pretty hard (for quantitative). But, it was a nice introduction to the material, though it probably took up more time than it should have. Then I did the Kaplan review portions of that book. It sucked. Never picked it up again. Then I did the review sections and the practice problems of the official guide so that I could see what actual questions looked like and I would know what to discount when I used non-ETS material. This was essential. I did not do any official practice tests. I saved ALL of them for the end because I was not interested in seeing progress... I knew I was progressing by virtue of working so hard and doing so many practice questions (I don't mean it to sound arrogant, but I looked at practice tests as additional practice problems, not a way to gauge what I would actually receive). Then I did the 6 Manhattan Prep guides and all practice problems (but not the hundreds of problems in the books that teach skills, but are not really in the format of the test). The review sections were good for math. The verbal books (both) were pretty lousy. Just read them, that's it, no practice problems. Then I did the five pound book, but only the math chapters because Manhattan sucks at verbal. Instead, I did the Verbal Grail book concurrently. It was pretty decent, but didn't really improve my skills. Still worth doing, I think, but its impact was very limited. By the time I finished the 5 pound book and the Verbal Grail I decided to finally tackle the Magoosh problems. The math problems are REALLY hard compared to the real thing. The verbal problems are the most similar to the test that you will find, but are quite a bit easier. When I ran out of Magoosh verbal problems I was a little distraught. I really needed a good verbal score, not really a good quant score. Also, my weakness was reading comprehension. I had used the Magoosh vocabulary app, but only for a few days... It would have been a pretty good help, but my vocabulary was fine and honestly, the test doesn't really test hard vocabulary. The app is great if you want to be thorough, however, and especially if your vocabulary isn't too large. But anyway, reading comprehension was my downfall. Then I read some advice from somewhere (can't remember where) that LSAT practice tests had the hardest sets of reading comprehension you can find. This seems very much to be true! So, I got a bunch of the LSAT tests. I did the reading comprehension from tests 1-6. The LSAT was easier back in the day, so I didn't fare too badly. Then I found out that the later tests are harder. So, I did tests 45 through 65. Yes, they were very hard. Each passage is a long passage, so you get crazy experience with long passages and it makes GRE short passages really simple. If you can do decently on the LSAT tests, you will do amazing on the GRE reading comp. I was missing about 1 to 4 questions out of 27 on each LSAT test by the end (down from 7-9 in the beginning). It seems like not such a great score, missing 4 out of 27, but trust me... Basically every question is harder than anything you will find on the GRE. While finishing up the LSAT tests, I went back and re-did every missed problem in the 5 pound book (quant) and Magoosh (both sections) until I had completed all of them. Also, I re-watched Magoosh videos for topics that I was still not understanding. Then I also did all of the practice sets in the two official guides (verbal and quant). The last two weeks before the test I did the ten practice tests that I had (4 official, 6 manhattan). I skipped AWA on all of them, and only did quantitative on the Manhattan tests (subbing in more LSAT tests). I took the full official tests (minus AWA). My scores on the official practice tests were slightly lower than my official score. The Manhattan quant practice scores were significantly lower (5 points). I did all practice tests timed. So what worked? Magoosh videos and practice problems, 5 pound book, the three official guides, and LSAT practice tests. This won't work for everyone, of course. But if you struggle with reading comp, DO THE LSAT TESTS! For quantitative, just keep doing as many problems as possible. You should even review questions you got right (but I never did). What would I have done differently? I can't complain about the verbal... At the end I was doing better in reading comp than I was in sentence completion, which blew my mind. Not sure how to fix that one, there just aren't many sources for that stuff. Magoosh problems were closest to the real thing, but most of them were much easier. For quantitative, I heard that doing GMAT problems would really help because they are harder than the GRE (I can't confirm this). I do know that after doing Magoosh quant problems, the real ones seemed so simple. In the end, honestly, I just got kind of tired doing the math and didn't work on the areas that I knew I was weak in, even at the end. I knew my score would be good enough if it was over 156 or so, so I didn't really worry in the end. But I was already confident I would hit 160, so there is that. Once I get my writing score I will know if I messed up by not practicing that at all, but whatever. Oh! There is one thing that differed significantly from my practice. The real test is LOOOOONNNNGGGGGGG. In my practice tests I always skipped the 1 hour of AWA and I obviously didn't have a research section... I would say that I wish I had done a few tests under the actual 4.5 hour time constraint, but it was so grueling on test day that I think it may have broken my spirit (sounds pathetic, but it might be true). My energy never flags on tests (I like taking tests lol), but by the last section on the GRE, I was just wanting it to be over. It took a great deal of willpower to maintain focus. I did skip breaks, but I don't really think that affected me. It did force me to stop caring what my final score was. That's not to say I stopped trying, I still gave it my all even at the end, but I finally got over the last part of test anxiety at the very end, just from the sheer exhaustion of the test. I took the GRE back in 2010 (and did almost as well as this time), and it's 3.5 hours was absolutely easily manageable (I even took it after ZERO sleep the night before), but this test was GRUELING. Well, I hope this helps somebody. I read a post like this when I started studying 4 months ago... It's here somewhere on the forums, the guy got a 338 and wrote up a guide like this. Obviously he did better than I did, but I still think that my little guide gets in a few points that aren't in his (i.e. DO THE LSAT TESTS lol). Good luck to future test takers! Now, I'm going to go veg out on some computer games or sleep or something that shuts down my mind haha!

I basically did better than my practice scores. Manhattan under predicted... I only did the quantitative portions of Manhattan because I didn't think their verbal was very realistic. Average was 159.6667 over the six tests, with a range of 158-160 Average of 162.5 for the Quantitative PowerPrep tests with a range of 160-164. Average of 168.25 for verbal for PowerPrep, range of 165-170. Actual Score: 169 Verbal, 165 Quant. Very pleased. Really wanted the 170 on Verbal (applying to history programs), but it doesn't really matter. Just waiting on AWA score. I have good feelings about it, though.

For longer papers (anything over 20 pages), I use Scrivener to write it. Then, I convert it to MS Word and do final formatting. This was for two reasons... Scrivener easily breaks things down into more manageable chunks (essential when I wrote my 120 page MA thesis). Second, MS Word on Mac, while it has become really good in the last year or so, it still has problems with larger documents. For me, that is usually that pages literally won't load on the screen sometimes, or there is a delay of 2-5 seconds before a page will appear. Happens somewhat randomly. Brand new Macbook Air, but it does it, so I blame Word. But, you pretty much have to use Word if you want to absolutely ensure compatibility. Ergo, I use it as the last step to touch up the document and get formatting perfect.

I use Sente. My main reason was I wanted something that worked on both my Mac laptop and my iPad (and iPhone in some cases, but very rarely). They also give you unlimited space for the cloud. Everything still resides on your devices, but it also resides in the cloud, so if you switch devices everything syncs. I wanted unlimited cloud space as a sure-fire backup plan (I also use time machine and a separate cloud-based backup service... very paranoid lol). Also, I want to keep LITERALLY my entire scholarly library in the cloud (in addition to on my devices), so unlimited was a must. I don't know if the other products now have these features, but Sente was the only one two years ago that had everything I needed/wanted. I switched to Sente from Papers a few years ago... When I moved from Papers 2 to Papers 3 it lost my entire library (this seems to have been a fairly common occurrence with other people, too!). Maybe they've gotten better since then, but I don't trust them anymore.

Just get Sente. You have unlimited upload space once you upgrade to premium for a ONE-TIME FEE. It has an iPad app and it automatically syncs the PDFs, notes, highlights, etc.

P.S. Just looked up Gantt charts. No, OmniFocus doesn't do that, but you should still check it out. Now I am also interested in these kinds of visual displays you are talking about. Neat!

I'm not sure if this suggestion hits all of your needs, but because I now find it hard to live life without it.... OmniFocus. I have it on Mac, iPad, and iPhone. It's expensive to get all three. If you can only get one, I would suggest the Mac version. It is simply amazing. It can be used for individual tasks or full projects, and you can store tons of each. It takes some time to learn the program, so beware. Nevertheless, it took me about 20-30 minutes to learn the program enough for my own needs. My needs aren't crazy, but they aren't minimal, either. Of course, I learned it better while using it as well, so it does take some time. It can be used rather simply, or have a moderate amount of complexity (mine). But, if you really need a powerful project manager, this is it. But, I must ask... Do you mean project manager or task manager? I am assuming you want a task manager for your projects. If you want an actual project manager software, similar to the types that actual businesses use for product development, or in professional settings, Omni has something for that too, I'm pretty sure. I just can't remember the name of it right now. Good luck!

Hello! I searched the forums, but I did not find an answer to my specific question. I am in the military and I am currently getting an MA in history online. I realize this isn't considered ideal, but it is the only realistic option for me while in the military. It is a fairly rigorous program and I will be doing a thesis option, so I don't think my chances of a PhD program are abysmal. I want to go into German history (focus on 1871 to the present). At this point I know I could pass language exams from PhD departments in German. I have three years to get even better and also learn French. My program ends in 2016, and I will apply for admissions to PhD programs to enter in 2017 (when my military enlistment ends). My question... Is there any way for me to prove language competency before entering? During my undergraduate career I took one German class and got credit for everything that came before it (equivalent of 2 years of college German). My skills are much better now. I want to show this improvement. Also, I will be learning French on my own. Extra undergraduate classes are not an option for me (no money, no availability). I know that there are official competency exams, but they often have speaking and listening components. I am far better at reading than the other areas (though I am getting better). Are there any reading exams that someone can take to prove competency? Otherwise I will have to just put a "self-assessment" of my skills on my PhD applications. I am not sure adcoms will believe a self-assessment without any proof. My thesis will use primary sources showing German ability. Is this enough? Will they even notice? I won't be using French in my thesis (most likely), so that won't come up from the thesis. Coming from an online MA I want to be as strong of an applicant as I can be, and foreign language competency is one way I can show this. What are my options here?

Get Office365 for mac. It's 80 dollars for four years, which is a pretty good deal. Also, iPad has Word, Powerpoint, excel, etc... Attach it to your Office365 account and you can also actually work on your papers, etc from your ipad.

I believe this is correct. A few people here are saying that we can't use the dictionary as an authoritative source... That sounds a bit silly to me. Think of the phrase "I couldn't care less." It is commonly spoken as "I could care less." Clearly the second way is wrong (using logic, not a dictionary). Just because it is commonly said the second way it isn't magically correct because the speakers are the guardians of language. If you use a well-established word differently from the dictionary, then you are simply using the wrong word. Yes, languages and words evolve different meanings, but that is not a free pass to call every book a donkey and if you get enough people to use it that way that it is now correct. Appealing to the people is a logical fallacy. In this case, we have a word for what was done here: misattribution. Also... I am a little unhappy with the fact that many people are complaining about this only from the perspective of credit for the source. Yes, part of the reasoning for citation is to give credit to the person who came up with the idea. That is great. But there is an even higher purpose here for using citations. We want to add to knowledge in the world. We do this by coming up with our own ideas and then citing those who helped formulate our ideas from their ideas. This allows people to check the source and (hopefully) become convinced of our argument. In addition, it adds to knowledge by building a web of sources on our particular topic. If you consult two or three papers that have good citations, you will now be able to locate a plethora of other articles that deal with the subject. Our main purpose for citation is the acquisition of knowledge and contribution to knowledge, not giving personal credit to someone, though that is much appreciated and makes writers (including me) happy.

Hello, everyone! First post! I am in the US Air Force as of last year. Graduated in 2010 with a B.A. in history and economics. I can't wait to pursue a pHD in military history after my stint in the Air Force is done. Thankfully the USAF is paying for a good deal of my M.A. while I am in. I applied to Norwich University for their M.A. in military history program. Accepted as of yesterday! I was wary of online schools, but from everything I've found out it is a pretty rigorous school. All textbooks are covered in the tuition. So is the access to all of the online journals and resources like JStor. So excited, haven't had JStor since I was in undergrad and it's been horrible going without it. Anyway... as for preparing for a June 2 start date this year.... Currently setting up my technology needs... My Macbook Pro, iPad, and iPhone to seamlessly sync with each other in all of the aspects that I need for the program. Getting ready to purchase DEVONthink, which so far during the trial period is an AMAZING program (and also helps with personal document management, not just school). It is pricey at $120 (student discount), but I am thinking of the future... It has OCR technology so that anything I scan into my computer as a PDF will be searchable by DEVONthink... Very crucial especially at the pHD level. Also, getting ready to purchase Bookends for bibliographic needs. Still going to use MS Word for writing papers... I hear there are better options, but I am very comfortable with it and it does what I need so far. Any opinions on that? Debating upgrading to Papers 3 from Papers 2... especially since I will have DEVONthink... Not sure it's worth the $40, but I like the system itself... We will see! Also, gearing up with Anki for flashcard use. Studying German right now. Not quite fluent in it (took it for years in high school and college). Almost to a reading level for a pHD program. Then will move on to French sometime in the future. I also really want to upgrade the RAM in my computer... but that's just so I can play Elder Scrolls Online a little bit better, lol.