navyblackmaroon

I don't know if you actually did this or if this is a joke, but if you're for real, this is extremely childish. If you don't like someone's behavior on a web forum, you can complain to the moderators or simply stop reading.

I have had enough of the bullying by @Telkanuru, @Sigaba, and others. They have been condescending and abusive and are doing a disservice to the applicants just trying to get advice.


 
I can’t imagine that the institutions where these bullies study would in any way condone what they have been doing. I have decided to make an example of Telkanuru. Therefore, I have emailed the following people at Brown - Amy Remensnyder, Robert Self and Christina Paxson about the abuse with relevant links.

 
If there is any more bullying, I will notify other institutions about the despicable behavior of their graduate students. Sigaba and the others, you have been warned.

This seems irresponsible to me, because it sounds like you're painting the worst-case-scenario as a TT job with "a little debt" (which I assume means different amounts to different people) to pay off down the road. Anybody who enters academia these days MUST be aware that TT jobs are the best-case-scenario, even if they're at Western State U in the middle of nowhere. The majority of PhDs who want to stay in academia are forced into the miserable and unstable world of adjunct-hood. @telkanuru is right to say that people should consider the long term implications of their opportunities when making decisions.

Somebody tell Slate

You need to stop digging yourself into this hole you've foxed. I know you're angry. But you need to stop digging.

If you were to step outside of your anger (which calls into question your claim that you're happy) and use the search button you'd find that @telkanuru is, in fact, quite humble given the ground he's covered to get to where he is.
If you think that you're being professional, how about you print out the post and put it on your advisor's desk and ask for that person's opinion? And while you're at it, send it to the DGS of Georgia State.

This is, quite frankly, elitist bs, given by someone who has obviously let the ivory tower influence their mind-frame. If you ever get down off your high horse and want to tell me what's so consequential about my 5 years of full funding at the school i chose let me know.
Not all of us got into an Ivy with a $3k pot of money that we can simply ask for every year. Yeah, it would be great. I know full well the consequences of my decisions even though my situation is so "obvious" to you. No shit life would be easier with more money and opportunities for limitless research/ writing time. I'm sure you worked very hard for where you're at right now, but not everybody is as well off as you. The people you look down your nose at who didn't get the same opportunity or whatever else you want to throw in my face still have to make decisions. Yeah, i'd probably be happier and better off at Brown with that funding than the situation that i'm in, but that's not this reality i'm faced with. 
Also, it's not your choice. I offered advice — you called it shit, so be it, but that's all it was was my opinion. I think it's important to be happy for the next 5 or 6 years. You really don't have to talk down to me and tell me what to do. You made clear that you know everything about me (you called it "obvious"), which is so smug I almost got cancer. I've seen a lot of your posts recently and you always smack of arrogance. You really remind me of that South Park episode where they fart it wine glasses and sniff it. Let me and anyone else make our own mistakes and be happy or miserable on our own account. If you think i'm wrong, cool, tell me in a professional and friendly manner, don't talk down to me like you're the second coming. God damn bro, get over yourself.
 

This is, quite frankly, shit advice, given by someone who has obviously not begun to experience the consequences of their decisions.
As I have said at length elsewhere, a poor funding package is not simply a temporary inconvenience without future repercussions. Nor are these repercussions "merely" financial; a poor funding package will adversely affect your scholarship. If you're instructor of record for a course every semester, and your colleague at an Ivy* has to simply TA for 3 years, which of you do you think will have a better dissertation? When you have to scramble, beg, and borrow to get to your regional conference, your Ivy colleague has a $3k pot of money they can simply ask for every year, is spending every summer at their archives, and is also at that conference. Because they make a livable stipend, they can afford to drop $50 on the conference dinner for your specialist subfield, and thus schmooze with all the senior professors in that field. If you do not have the same benefits, you are at a massive structural disadvantage. 
If you are not offered (1) a livable stipend for 5 years, with health care and a clear means of obtaining 6th year funding, (2) reliable, regular, and easily identified internal avenues for research, conference, and travel funding, and (3) a package with a moderate to light teaching load, like TA-ships with a sabbatical year, do not attend that program, even if it means not going to grad school.
 
*NB: "Ivy" here is shorthand for "highly regarded and well funded program". I recognize there are many of these that are not technically Ivies.

Thank you for this input! I am really hoping to get the chance to work with Dr. Premo  
 
But after T H R E E application seasons, I got my first PhD admit! It still doesn't feel real? But I'm sure I'm 100000% happy about it. I was admitted to Pitt, and I love the work Putnam does (and it's actually in my region!) and I'm v interested in children's literature, and there's literally no better place to be than Pitt for that. 
 
Congrats to the other UPitt admits! And good luck to those still waiting to hear back.  
 
I'm still waiting on IU, anyone ese? I feel like IU is a stretch for me because my GPA and GRE are pretty middle of the pack, but I name dropped  jk, but I am hoping our mutual relationship with the UCR (Costa Rica), will give me some sort of "great fit" edge. I'm so anxious! 

I am here because I am a 2017 applicant. This thread is for people like me. Seriously, if I am in the middle of doing my PhD, and finding myself spending hours and hours on a thread for new applicants, I might just quit the PhD and go get a life. 

I disagree with the notion that there is a monolithic "modern approach" to history. In fact, it seems that there is a plethora of different approaches that historians can use as they see fit. That wasn't necessarily the case back 50 years ago. A contemporary historian has the advantage of selecting tools and approaches that simply did not exist back then.
 
I also disagree with the belief that history was more inclusive back in the 1960s and 1970s. First, the boundaries of appropriate historical subjects and problems has expanded. We now have less restrictions on what we can research. Historians can now study history of gender or history of "whiteness" while still continuing to work on older traditions like women's history or history of a specific racial group. Secondly, the academy has become more inclusive of non-white, non-male, non-straight historians. It is not perfect. However, it is certainly better than it was back then.
 
At the end of the day, I insist, everything hinges on your ability to market your topic and present how it is relevant to the historiography. I know people who work on diplomatic history, another field that has experienced a decline in importance, who were able to successfully navigate modern trends to develop and sell their projects. 

I wonder if UChicago could be a good match for your interests. Dain Borges has worked on the history of families in the Brazilian Northeast. Moreover, Tara Zahra's second book addressed the issue of children in post-war Europe and the political ideas that originated out of efforts to "reconstruct" families after the war.

I disagree with the notion that there is a monolithic "modern approach" to history. In fact, it seems that there is a plethora of different approaches that historians can use as they see fit. That wasn't necessarily the case back 50 years ago. A contemporary historian has the advantage of selecting tools and approaches that simply did not exist back then.
 
I also disagree with the belief that history was more inclusive back in the 1960s and 1970s. First, the boundaries of appropriate historical subjects and problems has expanded. We now have less restrictions on what we can research. Historians can now study history of gender or history of "whiteness" while still continuing to work on older traditions like women's history or history of a specific racial group. Secondly, the academy has become more inclusive of non-white, non-male, non-straight historians. It is not perfect. However, it is certainly better than it was back then.
 
At the end of the day, I insist, everything hinges on your ability to market your topic and present how it is relevant to the historiography. I know people who work on diplomatic history, another field that has experienced a decline in importance, who were able to successfully navigate modern trends to develop and sell their projects. 

I disagree with the notion that there is a monolithic "modern approach" to history. In fact, it seems that there is a plethora of different approaches that historians can use as they see fit. That wasn't necessarily the case back 50 years ago. A contemporary historian has the advantage of selecting tools and approaches that simply did not exist back then.
 
I also disagree with the belief that history was more inclusive back in the 1960s and 1970s. First, the boundaries of appropriate historical subjects and problems has expanded. We now have less restrictions on what we can research. Historians can now study history of gender or history of "whiteness" while still continuing to work on older traditions like women's history or history of a specific racial group. Secondly, the academy has become more inclusive of non-white, non-male, non-straight historians. It is not perfect. However, it is certainly better than it was back then.
 
At the end of the day, I insist, everything hinges on your ability to market your topic and present how it is relevant to the historiography. I know people who work on diplomatic history, another field that has experienced a decline in importance, who were able to successfully navigate modern trends to develop and sell their projects. 

Seriously, stop fretting about the GRE scores.  They do not necessarily make or break an application.  Drop the study guides and focus on your writing samples and statement of purpose.  Professors will be reading for your potential to succeed in the program from those documents.
The GRE scores are sometimes used for university-wide fellowship competition but there are waivers.  Just relax and focus on other parts of your application.

We really should get a "BEFORE YOU ASK US IF IT'S RIDICULOUS TO APPLY" sticky on this thread; I feel like we've been/will be answering this question a lot over the next couple of months. 

Another possible person of interest is Matthew Vitz at UCSD. He works on water use, land changes (draining lake beds to facilitate agriculture and eventually urban sprawl), and forestry resources in Mexico. I work on land and water use in Northern Mexico (but more in an urban planning vein and less as environmental history), and I found him to be very helpful and kind.
 
I don't know much about Wolfe (except reading his dissertation). I do know, however, that he had been a candidate for the job position at UCSD (which Vitz won).

The guy is just being a prick. Probably hoping to distract from the fact that Penn's history department is quickly becoming a dumpster fire. Anyone who got rejected from there--you dodged a bullet. 

Now, from what I know about the (historical) perceived reputation of Mexican History programs: Mexican historians placed in good positions often come out from U Chicago, Yale, Berkeley, UCSD, UCLA, and Arizona. Of those, Chicago and Yale strike me more as places to do modern Mexico (especially Chicago). UCLA has a long tradition of doing excellent colonial Mexican history (especially related to the study of  indigenous sources, think  Kevin Terraciano, Restall, and James Lockhart). Berkeley had a monopoly on colonial Mexican religion for a while. Van Young at UCSD had a crop of very successful graduate students. I always associated Arizona with cultural history. 
 
Another way of thinking about it is who has landed the best colonial Mexican history job openings in the past few years. From the top of my head, Berkeley graduates landed the jobs at Northwestern and Princeton (Paul Ramirez and Vera Candiani), while a UCLA graduate landed the job at UCSD (Dana Velasco). 
 
If I were to do research on pre-Columbian or early colonial Mexico, UCLA would be the top target. Penn State is another possibility (because of Restall), but their placement is nowhere near as good as UCLA's.

This study was posted in another thread: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005
 
It basically says that institutional prestige is an absurdly large factor in hiring decisions, and that if you're not in a top 20 program, your chances of employment drop catastrophically.   For history, those 20 (determined my network centrality) are, in order:   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   There may be some play in the numbers based on subfield, but it doesn't look like much

Now that this decision is a year behind me, I can offer you the criteria that, in retrospect, I would have used if forced to make a decision again. They are, in no particular order:
 - Funding relative to cost-of-living: There are programs out there that will throw money and resources at you, and there are programs that barely keep students above the poverty line. You want to be in the former kind; it's a lot easier to read and write when you're not worried about bills and you have the institutional support to do things. My school's library/librarians, in particular, have proven insanely helpful in securing obscure monographs and tough-to-find materials.
 - Program prestige: As much as it totally and completely sucks, the reality is that 50% of all tenure-track positions in History are occupied by graduates of top-10 programs. In an oversaturated job market, you need every edge you can get.
 - Dissertation Committee: Are they big names whose recommendations will go a long way in getting you a job? Do they have a reputation for protecting/helping/standing for their graduate students? Are they people you want to work with? Are they people who are qualified to help with your project?
 - Cohort: This was the criteria that mattered most to me a year ago. Do you "click" with the people you've met, as well as those in upper years? Are their projects interesting and compelling? Do you want to hang out with them more? Don't underestimate this one; you'll be spending the next 6-7 years with these people.
 
Fortunately, the decision I made was ultimately the right one either way, but hopefully this first-year's perspective can help incoming students make more informed decisions.
 
PS: I realize that some of my criteria/explanations make me sound jaded and cynical, but I really feel like I should emphasize that I've already benefited tremendously (and will no doubt continue to benefit) from institutional advantages and resources that most programs simply can't offer. Unless I had some very, very, very good intellectual or ethical reason to do so, I would not trade these away.

I'm with you Heimat! We should do a google chat every now and then, catch up on how our classes and research are going.

I spoke to my MA adviser, and she gave me great advice. After discussing the pros and cons and what I was thinking, I was glad to hear she agreed that UC Davis is the best choice for me. Had she disagreed it wouldn't change my mind, but I'm happy to have her confirm that my anxieties about Minnesota weren't overblown. I have nothing against Minn--it's an exciting and thriving department. I love that a bunch of strong female scholars run the history program, and I totally dig the interdisciplinary emphasis. But I couldn't get over certain instabilities that I feel would limit my ability to do my best work.

So yeah, I'm going to Davis, and I couldn't be happier!

I know my former adviser attended the programs years ago. He found it useful to what he thought he was going to be researching, but ultimately researched something more contemporary. He seemed to be positive about it.

Considering the current job market, I really can't disagree with that advice. The issue is when all your options are from top 20 schools or from schools outside the top 20, then the decision making becomes more complicated.

Congrats, Gambaosaka! I hope they don't give you a hard time getting the visa.
 
Chiqui, I think the added generous funding demonstrates they really want you at NYU and that you shouldn't read too much into the (apparent) aloofness of the POI.