time_consume_me

I was accepted into a Masters in Public Health program at Yale, and when I called the financial aid office to ask if there's any way to get more funding, the head of financial aid was incredibly rude and he thought that I was lucky to be even accepted to even ask for money. I had $0 from Yale, so everything would've been in loans. All $140,000 of it.
Good luck though, if you find a way.
And congratulations of your acceptance into Yale!

Just won the Fulbright to Japan!  I'm freaking out and can't stop shaking. Oh my god....

Last year I got my CGS-SSHRC on April 1st

Same. My Trudeau application went to national last year but did not even bother to apply this year because it seemed that you need to have written about 10 books, been the mayor of a medium sized town, discovered a new particle or element, invented solar power, and also be photogenic in order to win that one. 

Here is my two cents at the end of five years:
 
I went where the funding was best, and I think it was the right decision.  Go where you will be funded to write a dissertation, not somewhere that wants you to teach classes for them (at least during your dissertation years, we teach during years 2 and 3).  This is most important in the ABD phase.  Me and my friend in my program were able to take our stipends after we went ABD and move to where our sources were in both cases for over a year, just doing research. In both cases, we both credit intimate knowledge of sources with the ability to right strong grant proposals that have paid off.  I know a lot of people in programs where you have to TA during your ABD years, and all of your research is what you can fit into a month here or there.  It's really difficult to do high level original reserach under those types of constraints.  Additionally, it's also difficult to find to write, research, and apply for fellowship while TAing and have any semblance of a happy personal life (more important than people credit.  It's very easy to get burnt out, even with good funding).
 
My program which is mid-ranked also focused heavily on how to write grant proposals and other professional skills.  In my year, two of us (out of the 6 who have survived) have gotten major grants (National Science Foundation and Fulbright) in addition to a slew of small grants and major internal fellowships.
 
Advisers are important, but if you are good at networking, you will have a lot of advisers.  The academic I talk to most is my outside reader, who I met a year and half ago on a panel.
 
I am not going to say everything is secondary to funding, but it would have to be better in every column but funding in my opinion to go against a good non-labor oreiented funding package.

Please don't neglect the library nor the proximity to archival sources related to your primary field of interest.

I just put together a very basic website.  laceyvolker.com
I applied to: MassArt, SMFA, Boston University, RISD, Yale, Tyler, Rutgers, Carnegie, SAIC, University of Miami, UT Austin, UCLA, Irvine, USC, SFAI, and CCA.. so umm yeah that's a lot! Hopefully, that means I'll have a few options.

Though my POI have mentioned some of the things they liked in my application, I find it difficult to conduct a post-mortem on my season. For privacy's sake, I'm hesitant to specify the programs I applied to, but I was accepted at three of the five schools I applied to (and every program I applied to was in the top 15, regardless of what ranking you use). I'm inclined to think that this fortune is the result of sheer dumb luck or the inane superstitious things I did to get me through February (I started seeing signs in the crossword puzzles I did to relax). But here are the things I think helped my case:
 
1) I started the process by skimming every essay I wrote for my history classes in college. I took some time off after college, so this helped remind me of who I am as a historian and my academic trajectory. I know that being able to articulate the evolution of my academic interests (both within history and without) was key to one of my acceptances. For those of us with manifold and divergent interests, knowing who you are and being able to tie this interests together to construct an image of yourself as a complex and dynamic scholar is very important. I suspect one of my rejections was in part a result of waffling about where I fell temporally. (I also used this as a chance to reflect on my potential as a scholar. With one eye on my grades, undergrad institution, and GRE score,  I asked myself honestly how competitive I would be. I guessed that I'd pass the first raw numbers cut, and took my chance applying to only top programs.) Furthermore, returning to your own essays allows you to systematically create a list of scholars you want to work with.
 
2) To create my initial list of programs, I went back through all of the important readings I did in college, compiling names from footnotes. I thought about whose work was important in my field, who was everyone talking about/citing. I looked at journals in my field. All of this legwork was helpful when contextualizing my own work in the field as it stand right now. Especially for people with only a BA, like me, you have less of an opportunity to think about trends in history and historiography so you have to do that legwork on your own. With those 25-30 names I found out what schools they worked at. I also looked at various rankings and added those schools for good measure. Most importantly, I talked to my advisors, one of whom was a relatively recent graduate in my exact area of interest. Their suggestions ultimately proved the most useful. After eliminating schools without graduate programs and schools in Europe, my list was about 20-25 school long.
 
3) I don't think I really understood fit until I started anticipating rejections and acceptances. The schools I was most nervous/excited about were not necessarily the schools with the highest ranked program or biggest name, but schools were there were a plethora of people working on projects I found very interesting. I made the mistake of not underestimating how narrow fit can be, especially in a well-established subfield. The way I see it is that there are four types of fit: temporal (do you study the same time period?), geographic (are you focused on the same country/region?), type of history (social, cultural, political, military, religious, intellectual, etc), and their individual interests/perspective (the topics they find interesting and they way they think about those topics). You need to find a POI who fits at least three of these forms of fit. There also have to be two or more POI at that school who satisfy at least two other categories of fit each (including the missing category from the primary POI). Determining fit is the hardest part of this process and the area where we're most in the dark. I poured over professors' webpages, I skimmed multiple articles and introductions to their books (if not the entire book), and I looked at the classes they teach. Sometimes a professor's interests develop or are not explored in their published work. I ended up only applying to places where I thought professors there in my field were asking similar questions to those I want to ask and where there were 2+ professors I was eager to work with. My two rejections were schools that were a good fit on paper (with two of the biggest names in my field), but my POIs there only satisfied 2-2.5 forms of fit. The programs I got accepted to were the schools I was most excited about. 
 
4) I'm a procrastinator so I didn't get nearly as much feedback on my essays as I would have liked to. I've come up with probably about 10 different ways to write my SOP over the past four years, all of which perfectly encapsulated my intellectual interests and trajectory at that time and which I forgot when it came time to write my essay. Thus, I was quite blocked with trying to write my SOP. All of the perfectly crafted sentences I wrote in my head while walking to class had vanished. Consequently, I wrote and wrote. Most of it was crap. I wrote whole essays that never made it into anything I submitted. (Plan ahead for this!) But all of that intellectual work was key to getting my brain in the place where it needed to be to write my SOP. Every iteration of my SOP started with an image of me engaging in historical inquiry. It felt forced and hokey, but I guess it worked. I jumped straight into the action and maintained a sustained focus on the types of questions I ask, how I read sources, and the research I've done in the past. When I mentioned my post-collegiate work, I folded it into an intellectual narrative. I let me CV and GPA speak for themselves and used the SOP as an opportunity to let them peak inside my head and see what ideas and questions get me excited. FWIW, one of my POI commented that my application stood out for it's excitement, curiosity, and energy. I struggled to be specific and concrete in earlier iterations of my SOP. Actually, I thought I was plenty specific, but my professors told me to suggest possible avenues for exploring the ideas and questions that interested me. I hinted at possible projects and ways I would research those projects. (I had one interview and in that interview I was asked what sources I might use. I didn't talk about my future project at length in my SOP, but I had given it a lot of thought. I knew what kind of debates it would speak to and what my basic game plan would be for approaching it. Of course, all of this will shift and mature as I learn more, but I did the best I could based on where I was.)
 
5) I got really obsessive and strategic when tailoring my SOP to fit each school. I googled the f*ck out of this website, the chronicle's forums, and the rest of the internet to glean any insight into how programs make their decisions. I don't know if any of it helped, but it calmed my nerves. I did my best to figure out who was on the admissions committees at each school, and when I couldn't really figure that out, I wrote my SOP in a way that would appeal to as many professors as possible while still maintaining my focus in my field. In the end, my SOP had to convince me that I should definitely go to that school. If you can't convince yourself it's a perfect fit, how will you be able to convince the professors who read it?
 
6) In terms of writing POIs and other forms of contact, I didn't do it for every school but I did it for every school I was accepted to (but not all my POIs). I stressed over these emails and sent them later than I should have (October, November, and in some cases December), but they didn't really help me either way, I think. Everyone I spoke to was super encouraging, but they hadn't seen my credentials at that point and their encouragement shouldn't be taken as a sign that you're a viable candidate or that you should even apply. I got some useful info about fellowship funding from one school, but otherwise, I don't think these emails made a difference either way. That said, one the professors writing me a recommendation knows two of the professors at one of the schools where I was accepted and another professor at a second school were I was accepted well. He's not a big name (yet), but he's a wonderful guy and I think those connections did benefit my application. Applicants can't do anything about this, but academia is a small community and I'm convinced that these networks make an impact in this process. Nevertheless, I also got into a school where I had no connections.
 
7) If you have an interview, reread your application and the work you've done that influences your thinking. Otherwise, DO NOT REREAD YOUR SOP. I forgot a period at the end of a paragraph amongst the various errors I made (including mistaking the location of one of my programs). Somehow, I still got in but rereading my SOP added greatly to my stress level.
 
YMMV.
 
Here's some of the insight I've gotten from professors at specific programs during this process:
1) USE PRIMARY SOURCES IN YOUR WRITING SAMPLE. This really should just be a baseline, but apparently, not all applicants do it.
2) Taking time off from school is a good thing, especially if you can use it to reflect thoughtfully on why you want to go back to school.
3) Princeton's PhD is very quick and they are looking for applicants who can "hit the ground running."
 
 
Ultimately, you do all you can do but a lot of the results come down to chance. This process requires you to both be obsessive in your research and learn to let go. Remember that neither acceptances nor rejections are referendum on your value as a human being. And most importantly, get some lucky shampoo.
 
Just my two cents.

Shit, I'm respectable? Gotta fix that right quick. But yeah, flattery will definitely get you what you want from me!
 
I have no idea what (if any) of what follows actually got me in, but I'll put it all down here any way. Caveat emptor.
 
Not only can I talk about what I'd do differently, but I can talk about what I've done differently. This is the end of my second cycle. I currently hold offers from Ohio State and Brown. I have received a rejection from UCBerkeley, and presume rejections from Harvard and UChicago. My application to UToronto is still outstanding. In my first cycle, I applied to Harvard, Harvard Divinity (MTS & ThD), Yale, UChicago, Notre Dame, UMinn, BC, and BU, all for history. I was rejected from all PhD programs, but accepted to the MTS at HDS with a 3/4 scholarship and the MAPSS at Chicago with a 1/2 scholarship.
 
There are two major reasons why I was forced to take an MA, I think. First, I was a problematic undergraduate. It took me 9 years to finish my BA, a process which started in the mechanical engineering program at UMass Amherst, involved failing out of that school twice and then working in a grocery store for 6 years, and finished at Harvard Extension (i.e. Night) School. Taking a PhD student is a risk, and the MA constituted penance for my previous sins. Second, although I very clearly knew that I wanted to study medieval history, focusing on gender and monasticism, I hadn't moved much beyond that idea. That is, I had energy, but I lacked intellectual maturity. Looking back over my old writing sample and SoP, I was a disorganized but enthusiastic mess. This is made particularly clear in my choice of schools in my first round. Yale, BC, BU, and the HDS ThD had more or less nothing to do with my areas of interest. They had strong programs, but were not strong matches.
 
I took the MTS offer from HDS. It meant that I didn't have to leave my wife for 9 months just 2 months after our wedding. This has, of course, vastly strengthened my application. If you spend two years at Harvard doing graduate work and don't have a radically stronger application at the end, something clearly went very wrong. More than that, though, when it came time to apply again, I didn't have to just page through programs hoping to find a professor who had somewhat similar interests. I knew who they were already. 
 
For my second round I cut the four programs above immediately because I knew they didn't work. I also decided to only aim at the top tier of programs because I felt (and still feel) that where I get my PhD is much more important than if I get a PhD. I wasn't willing to settle just to make sure I got in somewhere, and in this job market I think that is fantastically good sense (if I do say so myself). I cut Notre Dame because I'd visited South Bend. Also, they were really slow sending out rejections in my first cycle and I'm pretty petty. UMinn got cut as well, since my interests had shifted away from gender studies (which was their strength) to monastic history more generally. Harvard and Chicago I kept, although neither was a good fit, to be perfectly honest. But I knew and liked the professors at Harvard and their interest in digital projects (which I share), and I was moderately in love with UChicago after my MAPSS campus visit.
 
To these two, I added Berkeley and Brown as clear matches within my area of interest. Toronto went on the list after one of my LoR writers suggested it, and a professor at OSU convinced me to apply when I met her at a conference. 
 
As I said, my application was stronger just by the fact that I had been at Harvard for 2 years. All my LoR writers knew me well, and each had supervised aspects of my research. Plus, one of them was a Big Name - that doesn't hurt. This isn't really useful to anyone else, though, so I want to focus on my writing sample and SoP.
 
My writing sample was very short, about 2500 words, with as much again in footnotes. However, it was not some long, meandering senior thesis, a document only seen by the author and the grader, as my first had been. Instead, it was a paper I had written for a seminar, presented at a conference, submitted for publication, and received a revise & resubmit with substantial feedback. So, it was short, but really, really solid. Well, it's at the reviewers again, so I hope it's really solid. The paper itself was highly technical, a codicological study of a 12 c. manuscript, which showed off my paleographic and Latin skills. I also made sure that my footnotes were (somewhat unnecessarily) filled with German and French sources, to demonstrate that I could read and incorporate scholarship in those languages. Thus, I tried to ensure that my sample was not only a good example of my intellect and writing, but also of my technical skills, demonstrating that I could put what I claimed on paper to practical use.
 
With my SoP, I made sure that I not only outlined what my interests were and why, as I had done in my first season, but also where I thought these interests might lead and how I thought I might get there. I found a what (monastic communication) and a how (social network theory) which addressed what I felt to be a gap in the scholarship, but left the other details vague because they should be vague. The result was an essay which showed where I'd been, what I am (reinforced by the writing sample), where I wanted to go and how I wanted to get there, and, most importantly, why I thought the program would get me to that goal.
 
Apparently it worked.
 
If I were forced back for a third try, what would I do differently? I would be more brutal with my school selections (sorry, Harvard and UChicago). I would continue to revise and hone my writing sample, throwing it at as many critics as would read it. I would acquire new technical skills and ensure that I demonstrated those skills practically in my application materials. I would revisit my writing samples to draw even clearer lines between my academic path and the institution to which I was applying.
 
Hope this helps.

There are always new ways to interpret sources, even if something has already been written on a topic. Anyway, I think it would be arrogant for us to assume we have written on everything worth writing about. I'm sure the Great Man historians thought the same thing, before social and cultural history burst on the scene. More and more Americanists now are focusing on transnational history, which opens up a whole slew of new questions and archives and historiographies to be applied to previously written-on topics, and also makes them consider topics that have received little to no attention before, as is the case with my project which certainly has some secondary literature, but not much and definitely very little in English.
Maybe I'm trying to justify my existence to some extent, but I think there are more worthy interpretations to be made, especially in the field of modern history, because the 20th century ended only 16 years ago...the 21st century isn't even legal yet. Archives are still being declassified, material is being uncovered, historical actors from my period of study are by and large still living, their potential papers not even attached to archives or libraries yet. Much of the 20th century is still so close to our own memories--my grandparents were born in the 1930s, my great-grandmother was born in 1903 (and yes, she lived long enough for me to know her...nearly the entire 20th century), my step-grandmother lived in the South in the 1950s and 60s, so I have a transgenerational, cross-cultural memory of nearly the entire 20th century--that we haven't even achieved enough distance to see all the ways we can interpret events in the recent past, let alone all the stories hiding in the shadows.
I'm gonna stop there because I could go on and on and I have a final paper to write. I just wanna say that it's not always about the huge, groundbreaking interpretations or books. Meaning shouldn't only be ascribed to those. We don't know what'll be meaningful to people 100 years from now. I often wonder if Turner thought his frontier thesis would define much of US western history, and that even now it still has to be contended with by those who discredit it.

Deadline has been extended 24 hours - check portal!

Cool. The CCV sounds like a good concept. When I applied, there was no CCV but instead, a very confusing documents with very similar sections to the CCV and then instructions to number these sections ourselves, but we still had to skip sections if we had no content. So, I think this document, for me, went Section 1, 5, 9 etc. and was super confusing and made me paranoid I was missing sections. Also, they had really complicated formatting requests, which seems to be taken care of by the CCV form. 
Maybe NSERC/SSHRC/CIHR got tired of students screwing up the standardized formatting and went with an automated procedure  lol

Oh boy well I just looked at the NSERC CGS-M allocations per university, interesting stuff. Here if anyone's interested.
Anyone have advice on writing/structuring the proposal?
 
 

congrats! I suspect many more of these will come in the next few days since the accept deadline for initial offers is this tuesday.