random_grad

Fulbright, SSHRC, DAAD - basically the awards which ask you for a research proposal as part of the application, as opposed to need-based awards or awards which are given out for academic merit post-factum by your own school without having to apply for them. I mean, it sure is great to have the latter on your application but it's even better to have the former. If it does not align with your career at this time, there is not much you can do, really. Also add IFA. The reason why these were listed is because that's the obvious choice that comes to mind. You might need to dig a bit deeper to find more programs. An easy way to do it is look at scholars who publish in your subfield and track where they're at. The hard way is to sift through all more-or-less major art history programs. I personally had to do just that for my subfield. It took me several months to narrow down the list of where to apply. Or you can just ask your professors if there is a listing of schools in your subfield(s) or come to them with a list and ask if you forgot anything.

I was also quite surprised to count 16h a day but it is true. Less than 8h of sleep, then maybe 1h of relaxation at the end of the day... I do include brief moments of distraction in the 16h, such as writing on grad cafe or eating something, because I think these are breaks which are otherwise paid for if you work in an office, so ought to be included. I don't know how long I will be able to sustain that pace, but it's been like this since september, 6day/week. Before that, during my MA, I was doing a lot less. 10h/day was an accomplishment back then. I am currently in a PhD program at a top school in my subfield. My field is art history.

I'd agree on this. This was exactly my situation: after the undergrad I had roughly 30k in debt and had to take another ~8k to do the master's, which was otherwise funded by a grant. I consider it totally worth it. in retrospect, I should have taken less money in debt and lived a more austere life. but we're all wise in retrospect. The master's gave me a competitive edge and improved me as a scholar. I would do it again if, for example, I'm close to finishing my phd and need a little money. Hopefully it won't happen. This may sound irresponsible to some, but I frankly don't care about money. My dependents and I don't exactly bathe in money right now with me as grad student being the sole bread winner, so if later on I have an income plus debt I think we will manage just by habit of being poor. I kinda love my monastic life. Many of my friends went on to law school, which for a moment made me jealous, but then I remembered that 1. I would not have had the money to finance it anyway, 2. grad school is awesome. I love my 16h work days right now. Even if you think the academic career may not be for you in the end, imo you should at least finish the MA because it's a great achievement. yolo! xD

In my situation, it was that one of my profs knew me really well, and the other was the prof with whom I wrote the writing sample. It took me a good half a day or even more to write that email to the 3rd prof. ( Back in the day all emails to profs took me like half a day or more ) I totally agree. The reason why I had to justify is because I somehow forgot to check how many recommendations one had to submit and assumed it was 3, so I included that dpt in the list for that professor to send letter to.

I'd say add in brackets [hired, prospective start date: ...]

I am of the opinion that when bureaucracy gives a guideline, follow that guideline. I had a school which also asked for only 2, so I only gave 2 (I got admitted). In fact, there was room for only 2 uploads. So the website left me no choice. You may want to justify to your 3rd recommender why you didn't pick them though. I found that the trickiest part.

I was saying what I was saying in the context of: If it truly was influential, then quote it. Of course, in other contexts it doesn't have to be a rule. That's not what I said people said. However, people did say that it's not too important to read their research. That's where my position differs. I think it is "extremely important."

I second what ashiepoo72 said. Most likely, you will just waste your time and money for no significant difference. Instead, consider taking year off and work on your writing sample. It is not uncommon for people to get into History programs without a major or MA in history. I know folks who did just that with a strong writing sample and solid project. Furthermore, the fact that you are not willing to move for your academic career may be a red flag for some because that's what an academic career typically requires.

It seems redundant to include GPA and specific courses on CV since they are already on transcript. Precisely because your department's calculation seems unusual, I don't think it would have much impact on decisions because where you're applying will probably be another approach. I'd say let them do the math on their own least they suspect you're trying to distort the evidence.

I'd give a week. Then send a message saying "just wanna make sure the previous message was delivered properly" - always blame the technology. Or if you don't care much about this prof's reponse, email the other prof directly. Then if both respond, you can divide the reqs between the two.

This seems like a smart way to show that you really bothered to look in detail at what they are doing! I think the best way to show this is to quote professor Z in your writing sample. You can do both. But definitely try to quote profs in your sample. Contrary to what some have said, I think it is extremely important to familiarize yourself with the research of potential advisors. If they happen to do stuff in a way that you find unacceptable, it will not be a good match. A genre that I've found most helpful is book reviews. You usually see more personality in books reviews. It's also shorter and shows fields in which the prof in considered an expert. Love book reviews. It can show who's an asshole and who's awesome. Still, the writing is usually not enough to show who would be a good advisor. So if you don't have enough time, don't worry, there are other ways to find out. The best way to find out at this point is talking to your profs. They know who is who in your field, and they know of situations when a student is abadoned by their advisor. Then, once you get admitted, talk to upper-year students, but these may not be as open with prospective students. But there are ways to ask questions in a way that they won't know what would be the good answer for you and thus find out about the prof. E.g. how involved they are which can become how controlling they are. It's basically about asking positive questions about negative stuff lol. Also, if you happen upon a talkative upper-year student, they can give you gold - in time.

It appears that developing a minor field is generally encouraged, especially if you can link it to your main interest thematically or some other way. It is very beneficial on the job market. A situation which I've seen a couple of times is people switching from a well-established subfield to a young subfield. It is, of course, problematic in terms of reforming the potential committee, but that's also why the committee does not get formed immediately: we're free to explore. You might want to stick with your initial topic for now and develop the other interest after your graduate, or might want to switch fields. It is a very delicate thing to do, on which I would not be able to advise you in depth. But it can be done. Otherwise, I'd say this shows that you have a genuine interest in your field broadly, which is great!

Does your school have a rubric with definitions of what grades mean? E.g. "A+ is publishable material", "A is original research" etc? If you feel concerned about using the word "A" try connecting the desired grade to the rubric. It may actually turn out that rubrics are not reflections of grades. But in any event, I don't think it would come through as weird if you come to the prof as being concerned for potentially getting a B+. At my previous school B+ meant no more grants. That's a pretty dire situation. At that school, when I was at the verge between A- and A, I went to talk to the prof and told her I don't wanna end up with A-, and she told me what to do. As a graduate student, you're expected to strive for perfection, so yeah, your concern with getting an A would not be out of place, considering that the way you describe your school they actually seem to care about grades (there are schools which don't, e.g. at my current school there hasn't been any grades yet this semester. Love that, actually.).

This sounds like a nice part of a SoP, focused and to the point! Consider who your audience is: on the committee you are lucky if you'll get one person who knows anything about this particular topic, and, due to funding consideration, you need more than one person on board for your app. Most people won't be in that subfield. So they won't know if what you're talking about is great or random. Nor will they spend a lot of time reading through the intricacies of your prose (during 1st run. they will, if you get past that stage). They will look for keywords which can help them answer some very specific questions: 1. what are your interests and how do you plan to approach them? = are you focused enough to write a dissertation + some departments require that you be open enough to try new things, so some might consider extreme focus not too good actually 2. how does it fit with this department? = who will be your advisor and who might be on your committee (=who will be charged with reading your writing sample) + have you bothered to learn about them at all 3. what have you done towards this goal? = do you actually have an idea of what it's all about or you just invented a neat topic for the SoP and, most importantly, 4. why does it matter to the discipline as a whole? = are you aware of what's happening in your field, do you have that maturity + will you be able to publish in major journals (NB: this last point just came to mind while writing this, and I am pretty convinced that this is true, but I do not have direct evidence on that and haven't ever seen this point elsewhere, so it may be just random conjectures). Furthermore, by your ability to show this all in a concise and approachable yet pleasant manner, they will also be able to assess your potential in scoring research grants. I've found that the way I wrote my SoP was a kindof slightly more sophisticated version of the winning apps I wrote for grant committees. Now, the reason why your reviewer wrote "(even the information about depression to explain wobbly grades, surprisingly.) " may be that (s)he, too, was skimming your SoP rather than reading, which is what the committee will likely do on the first, eliminating, run. So you shouldn't blame him for that. He was just trying to recreate the conditions of real life. So, back to my point: the reason why your reviewer wrote that is because he saw you mention that and immediately connected that to what he's seen time and again without really linking it to your research interest. So, to remedy this situation, I would suggest the following (and it may or may not be relevant, as I haven't seen the original text) : do not talk about grades in your SoP. The committee's seen your grades and now they want to fly away from that ridiculous convention and look at you as a future colleague whose B+ in 2nd year won't ever matter or be known. We all have B+s. They do too. The second thing that I may suggest is to reduce the personal stuff to the minimum or even exclude that. I don't know, of course, what would be best, but at least try and see how it reads. The reason why I suggest this is because I've once been told that my project sounds like a "personal" project, which somehow was bad for that reviewer of my grant application. I'm still not sure why it would be bad, but it can be perceived as bad by some people. It would probably be hard to find out from a department's website whose opinion is what on that, but in any case, keep in mind that it may be a red flag for some.Also, there may be a conscious or unconscious bias against people "with issues" - this is something I was thinking about today, actually, when I noticed yet another time how poorly accessible was my campus and also noticed that I haven't seen a single person on wheelchair on campus. People of the older generation might still be biased. You don't want to put yourself at a disadvantage.

Each department usually has an outline of how they picture your life available online. I've seen departments say explicitely that one is expected to take courses and kindof stretch the 100% credits to 3 semesters instead of 2 (although even then they admitted that it would be acceptable to do 2 intense semesters). But most I've seen have it as research time for your summers. (although in later years you might actually end up adjuncting)

yeah, it does seem like a rather odd practice. Hope you get your paper in soon!!

I'm very curious as to: why?

I was in a similar situation when I applied, although not to the point that the program start dates were different. I requested a deadline extension in a one-on-one conversation with the person who sent me the admission letter, after a long conversation during which I showed how excited I am about this program etc. When it all came to the deadline extension question, it was as if both of us knew exactly that it was coming to that, and the previous questions were just foreplay, AND when I asked for the maximum deadline that I really wanted (Apr 15), it was absolutely clear that her pretense at thinking about it was well rehearsed and that she knew exactly which date she'd be willing to give me. So from this I draw that one should ask for the maximum deadline that they need. If you give a lesser deadline (such as "a month" or "two weeks") they will use it against you and give you even less time than what they planned on giving. Now, it may be different for some programs which don't care much about what happens in the USA, in that they might be surprised that you ask about deadline extension, but asking for the maximum (which at the same time would fit in with the sessional dates, of course) still makes sense I believe. They will not rescind their offer just because you are trying to be serious about your decision - they want you! (obviously, don't say "there is my #1 choice I'm still waiting on" but rather tell them graciously "these are all very exciting programs, I love your program, but this is such a big decision, I need a little bit more time). It's all about how you frame your request.

give yourself a break, these are great scores.

if only they bothered actually ringing and bringing it to the door of my apt (or waiting for me to come downstairs) ! I'm home most of the time (love working from home) and they did that maybe like once. So if they don't bother, I won't either.

Profs don't always answer emails from students, esp. prospective students, esp. if the prof is on sabbatical. The message might have gone to spam because of university's filter. There can be many reasons. It is not an indicator of much, although it might also be an indicator that this prof in particular would make for a rather absent advisor.

for the other conditions you mention, yes; but sabbatical is not necessarily a reason for not taking new students. I've seen that happen more than once. if the department to which you're applying has a practice of assigning students to specific profs from the start, then you must mention with whom you want to work.

I got a package for a previous tenant. Was too busy/lazy to do anything about it, left it in the lobby for a week. It misteriously disappeared today! I wonder what happened xD

Try working out a plan B which would be exciting and which might potentially help you in case of rejection. It's nice to have an exciting plan B. Heck, might even become your plan A!

it's so true! I have French and Latin and now I find myself able to read articles in Spanish and Italian even though I never learned these. It's uncanny. I'd say Dutch would be a nice addition, and possibly Ottoman Turkish - how cool would that be! seriously though, I think learning a language from a different group is a major commitment that even a language-lover might find difficult to sustain without proper motivation. I've been toying with the idea of learning Arabic, even tried just to see how it goes, and man it was hard. I think I will get back to it eventually, but this is the kind of thing that needs a purpose to succeed. Like, if you study the relationship of France with a particular country, so then you'd learn the language of that country. Maybe you'll become interested in France's colonies and then learn a local language of one of the colonies.