history1920

Sorry to here that your funding package wasn't great. I really don't know what the funding situation at Davis is writ large--only the history department. It seems that funding problems this year extend beyond individual departments to the entire division. But that's just speculation.

I just learned about the funding situation at Davis and it's not good. Davis was my top choice. I was admitted but I just found out that I am not getting funding. I hope a spot will open up or they find more money but...it's not looking great. Apparently, the department's main sources of funding drastically cut their budget. I know Davis has made some funded offers though. They offered admission to way more people then they could afford this. The department did not anticipate the budget cuts would be as severe as they are. My sense is the situation will be similar next year. Anyone else have any more information on funding at Davis? Anyone thinking about turning a funded offer down.....?

I got an unoffical notification that I was accepted at Temple (PhD) from a Potential Advisor a few days ago. I have not heard anything offical from the department. It doesn't seem like Temple releases all their acceptances/rejections on one day. They seem to trickle out. Good luck.

I think you misunderstood my comment. I was not offering you advice; I was offering you my (very limited) knowledge of UCLA's history department and my own experiences with the less obvious costs of living in LA. I really don't think "advice" is the right word. I did not give my opinion about the nature of unfunded offers or whether or not you should take it. Now I am going to offer you some advice....if you visit/attend UCLA try "Father's Office" in Santa Monica. It's arguably the best hamburger in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. You definitely seem to have done your homework and i'm glad UCLA is accepting your partner's insurance. I think StrangeLight is right in that the quality of your work and who you work with are probably more important than the name on your diploma. Best of luck to you.

Congrats on your acceptance to UCLA. Something in your post caught my attention and I wanted to share what information I have with you. I grew up in LA and I know someone in the History Department at UCLA who accepted their non-funded offer last year. I think there are some hidden costs beyond your notion that "I will only have to come up with a loan for tuition." So here are a few cost related things about living in LA and going to UCLA: 1. You have to pay student fees and health insurance in addition to tuition. 2. Will you have a car? If yes that's expensive. FYI, your insurance rates are determined by where you live in LA. If you live in an area where your neighbors have fancy cars expect your insurance to be outrageous. Parking at UCLA is over $1,000 for the year; no street parking. If you don't plan on having a car you probably want to live in an area relatively close to UCLA that has bus lines--really freaking expensive. 3. My friend, in his second year, said there is no guarantee of funding (TA or Readership) for grad students beyond the first year, unless otherwise indicated on your acceptance letter, but the department tries to find something for you and usually does. I just wanted to offer you what I know and have heard about that program. Best of luck

I am glad to share my experiences with you. You could definitely take an intermediate level Latin class as an integrated part of your degree. A positive aspect about MAPSS is you can pretty much take whatever you damn well please and they will give you a very pretty piece of paper when your done—as long as you take the two or three courses they require (total 9 courses for graduation). The other 6 or 7 courses can be taken at your discretion. You can take almost any class offered at the UoC. I think MAPSS would advise against taking more than one language class, but you have the freedom to do so. While learning languages is very important for a Medievalist, I think Admission Committees look for much more in an applicant beyond language. From my understanding, the intensive language training you will enroll in over the summer is testimony to the seriousness and sincerity of your application. . If you are doing Medieval Europe most departments require that you PASS three language tests to advance to candidacy. Obviously, you need to have good Latin. It might be worth your time, if you haven’t done so already, to ask your department for the language tests they administer to their graduate students. That way you could get a sense of the level of expertise you need in order to pass those language exams. Also many departments do not expect incoming students to have mastered all their required languages. Often language training is done over the summer, for up to three years, and most departments have some kind of time extension for students to meet their language requirements. I’m not sure learning languages at the expense of producing a well researched and original writing sample and obtaining strong letters of rec from established historians is a prudent use of time and money. Unless you are doing comparative literature you don’t need to be an expert in 5 foreign languages. To your question about why I didn’t apply to Chicago: the University of Chicago is a weird place. Graduate students, PhD or otherwise, are really pressure to compete against each other for funding and professor’s attention. UoC professors have a lot of their plate. Think about it. They have to deal with these people writing MA Thesis, undergraduate Thesis, teaching and grading for their courses, they are under intense pressure to publish, and balancing several PhD students. That does not leave a lot of time for mentorship or deep reading of individual student’s work. Also Chicago admits some people to their PhD program with Tuition waivers but NO OTHER FUNDING for two years. The amount of students they have to manage is significantly higher then say a history professor at Northwestern. UCLA and Wisconsin share similar problems as the UoC, I think. . Personally, I work better with strong mentor/mentee relationships. The UoC has a well earned reputation of overloading the work load of their students in an effort to toughen them up. They offer little encouragement and give brutal criticism—this is probably a good thing. I knew several PhD students in the history department and they were not happy. There were other departments that were better matches for my interests but Chicago is certainly a fine fit. Yes, I think this experience would have continued if I went there for my doctorate. Email some history PhD students and see what they say…if they have time to get back to you. Or just ask your professors what the culture of the UoC is like. I can’t deny the quality of scholarship or the placement record that comes out of that institution though. Hyde Park sucks; Chicago is perhaps the best city in America (adjusted for cost of living). Look man, if you are in you early to mid 20s an extra year of waiting to apply for PhD programs is the time to have some fun for a year. MAPSS is 9 months long then you turn your MA Thesis into a writing sample and apply to PhD programs. After that...I live in a great city with my girlfriend and do the go-to-work thing. Ya know, friends, museums, music, whiskey, movies etc. You can apply for PhD programs during your time in an MA program, absolutely. I know people in MAPSS last year who applied during the program and they are in PhD programs this second. A lot of my friends from MAPSS traveled, got gap year jobs (like me), some are stilling looking for employment. Also the extra time between the end of MAPSS and the start of applications allowed me to expand my knowledge of my particular subfield so I could talk with professors and kind of sound like I knew what I was talking about. This was extremely helpful for application stuff. Right now I’m at work writing this to you, which is way this is so long. With the money I saved from this job I can probably go to China this summer before I start my doctoral training. Hope this helps =)

I graduated from MAPSS recently. My focus was History. Here are my responses to your concerns: 1. I think if you have a good GPA and decent GRE scores you will probably be offered admission to MAPSS. To use your words MAPSS is indeed a "cash cow." They want people to pay extremely high tuition to fund their PhD candidates. They acknowledge this fact and offer no apologies for it. A friend of mine applied to a Social Science PhD program at Chicago, was rejected and not offered admission to MAPSS. They don't offer it to everyone. 2. The amount of tuition waived, if any, varies from person to person. I'm the "history guy" who had his tuition completely waived. I still had to pay for living expenses. Not that I'm complaining. But this type of offer is rare. I think I only knew one other person who had her tuition completely waived. So it is possible that you could pay around 15,000 in tuition, or less, plus living expenses. 3. When I first entered the MAPSS program we met with the Chair of the History Department and he told us that of the 2008-2009 applicant pool for the discipline 7 people from MAPSS applied and 2 were offered admission. He didn't say if they were funded or not. I think he said that was twice the admissions rate of the applicant pool at large. So yes, the information I received from the History Department suggested that MAPSS (or at least an MA Degree) can increase your chances for admission to their program. That said, MAPSS is NOT a back door into the history PhD program at Chicago. My guess is if you get an MA from anywhere your chances of admission will increase. Of course, Chicago offers you the potential for a LOR from very well known historians but that really depends on what subfield of history you are interested in. I don’t know about Chicago’s Medievalists. 4. YOU WILL NOT HAVE TIME FOR LANGUAGE TRAINING…besides you can get language training anywhere. Why go to this university, with access to these fancy name professors, to learn another language? Enroll in your local community college this summer. 5. There is no particular emphasis in disciplines (history or socio or poli sci etc.). As a MAPSS student you have access to almost any professor or class offered at Chicago. History is certainly not “weaker.” This is not an issue. Whether or not history should be classified as a “Social Science” is probably a better way of expressing this concern. My MA Thesis advisor was a tenured faculty member in the History Department. I am not a MAPSS “booster.” And I am in no position to tell anyone what they should do. The true value of the MAPSS program, for me, is it gives you a taste of what it means to undergo rigorous and professional academic training for a year. The following is a MAPSS statistic: only about 1/3 of MAPSS graduates apply for PhD programs the following year. I hated my year in MAPSS. My MA advisor was a brillant and very kind-hearted person, but he was so busy that even getting an appointment with him was tough not to mention feed back on my work. My grad student housing was literally filled with cockroaches. The cultural of the UoC is adversarial and at times cruel. That said, I did get an offer this year for admission to a History PhD program from one of my top choices. I am waiting for the rest of my applications to come in. I didn't apply to Chicago.