SunshineLolipops

I'm still waiting on Ohio State, but last cycle I didn't get an email until early March.

I've submitted a relatively late application (but not past the deadline) that a couple POIs at the school seem to be genuinely interested in, but I feel that this clip pretty much sums up my feelings about waiting for rejections from the rest of the programmes I've applied to. I'm not looking forward to waiting into April again for bad news from the other schools:

Phillips O'Brien just published a book in 2015 on WWII titled How the War Was Won. Understanding the Second World War as a war of competing industrial systems, his argument was that production levels and choices about how to manage materiel rather than allocation of manpower served as the best measure of where each state put forth the greatest effort and where they saw the greatest threat. By this metric, he argues that Stalingrad, while still tragic and not without great sacrifice, was not the pivotal moment that so many scholars and theoreticians see it as. Instead, he argues that the air and sea battles were, if not pivotal, far more significant to the outcome of the war than anything that happened on land, and Russia's contribution towards victory in Europe was secondary to that of Britain and the United States. What do you think of the foundation of his argument that the human cost was completely secondary to the cost in terms of materiel in terms of understanding the war? While the argument's logic makes sense to me, particularly considering the general understanding of WWII as industrial scale war, I still have trouble on a gut level with accepting that basic premise.

I understand what you're saying, but having watched three years of faculty searches that ended with 80% top ten school grads getting the positions, I just wasn't willing to risk going much beyond the top thirty. I did apply to one school just outside the top thirty, but it's placement record was excellent. If I was flying solo, I would feel a bit more free to roll the dice in terms of programs with less impressive placement records, and I would very likely take another crack at it, but a third year of career direction limbo wouldn't be fair to my family. Again, best of luck to everyone, and if you look at past years on the results board (as I'm sure everyone has obsessively), there's still a lot of good news to come from a lot of outstanding schools.

I only applied to six. Top ten schools were such a long shot, that I didn't deem it worth the money and effort. I ruled out most schools below the top 30 because of concerns about job placement in what's a rough enough job market with a degree from a top 30 school. If I didn't have a little munchkin at home, I would have applied more broadly. That left me with six schools with a reasonable fit for my research interests. Thank God I've got a backup plan and university level teaching experience under my belt. I'm considering taking an old advisor up on applying for a different type of PhD programme, but that would be an entirely different career path for next year, and I wouldn't send out a whole slew of applications again. Although admission would be probable, getting funding as a US student in the UK can be extremely difficult, and British PhDs don't carry the same weight with hiring search committees because of their lack of breadth and teacher training. I'm glad I gave it another try though. Now I can walk away knowing that I gave it an honest shot, twice.

@tenochtitlan At least we'll always have Bill Paxton's impeccable acting skills to draw strength from...

I know it's a bit early, but past experiences have shown me that this cycle is pretty much wrapped up for this guy. I'm sure there's still lots of great news waiting to be delivered to a lot of folks though. Congrats to all of those continuing on!

Hoping that the four international admits to Ohio State are accidental spam from the same person... last year they did two different waves, hopefully it'll be the same this year

Bravo to the University of Phoenix admit. Go Fighting Phoenixes!!!

I have hits from anywhere but where I've applied. Not entirely sure why people in Ukraine, Brazil, and Mauritius are so interested in 19th century US history, but hopefully their interest will magically rub off on admissions committees. Also just got my first rejection of the cycle... laissez les bon temps rouler.

Last application submitted. Time for a beer. Congrats to the OSU admits!

I guess you could always use that as a resume bullet for an application to work at BuzzFeed if you need to make some beer money on your way to a PhD.

Hahahaha! Neist, where in the world did you find that?

Because it's that time.... Stay strong everyone, and congrats on the folks who have gotten good news!

Any bets on whether Ohio State will send out a couple of its best offers today?

Congrats L13! I'm sure that there's a lot more good news to come in the next few weeks.

Thanks for your advice TakeruK. When I planned the course as a relatively new teacher, I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to fill each fifty minute class with lecture time and thought I might have the opposite problem regarding having too little to teach in too much time. Having run over my time in a lecture in the first week, I see the value in building "light days" in my lesson plan to absorb lectures that run over time or help to absorb the loss of teaching time with a snow day. I really like the idea of leaving the last week unscheduled, and I believe that I'll find a way to work that into future syllabi.

As a student I loved snow days, but now that I'm teaching my own class, I have to figure out how to adjust my lesson plan to fit in fewer days. Does anyone have any tips on what works best to get back on schedule when you lose class days?

You can always try an MLitt programme in the UK. Deadlines are a bit later, and you'll have a masters in hand in a year which will help you start teaching earlier.

I sent extremely brief and similar letters to POIs asking only if they were accepting students , although in separate emails each time. If they replied (nearly all did) and were accepting students , I tailored my 'thanks for replying ' email to indicate why I would like to work with each individual professor. Some, rather surprisingly, turned into running conversations, and others didn't. My first email was so simple with such a bare bones description of my interests and methods, that I didn't worry too much about coming off as cold or impersonal . I also only wrote to professors who were clearly interested/published in my specific field. One thing that got better than expected results was including a link to my undergraduate thesis. Several actually looked it over and seemed to like what they saw, but I certainly did not try to pressure them to read it. We'll see if that approach paid off, but DEFINITELY make sure that your correspondence is brief, professional ,and free of grammatical errors .

As a grad student in the UK, I didn't get the same vibe at all. Of course the system is very different, the time to degree is much shorter, and I don't know that career prospects are any better, but it was nice to be able to talk about a career in history without all of the doom and gloom.

Just curious, but did anyone ever not get the "don't do it! The market is horrible!" speech? I mean, I've gotten the speech followed by enthusiastic recommendation letters, but has anyone not gotten the speech at all? Is there another speech? Having observed faculty searches as an undergraduate and now as an adjunct, I've got to agree that the market is brutal. Search committees get to choose the pick of the litter every time.

Congratulations and condolences for the first two to receive PhD news from USC.

anxietygirl. First, you probably have the most appropriate username on this thread. Second, nothing really happens until the very end of January at the earliest, but if you've got to do something just as unproductive but application related, you can always look at the results for previous years of the programs you've applied to. I'd bury myself in working on my thesis, so that when results do start rolling in, the massive productivity black hole that is thegradcafe.com isn't stealing too much time from work you actually have control over when it really matters to your thesis. I certainly wish I'd taken that advice last cycle. Good luck!

Here's to everyone getting some good news in 2016. Happy New Year!