AfricanusCrowther

Yes, four months is a reasonable amount of time to wait before following up, especially if you do so politely. In fact, I would recommend you do so -- sometimes journals lose track of submissions.

Asking faculty to ignore the GRE score might draw unwanted attention to it. I agree with psstein that it's typically a negligible aspect of a PhD application, and I would lean toward letting your record speak for itself.

It is very difficult to get alt-ac jobs in the public sector. Most employers are skeptical of applicants with no concrete experience. If you go down this path, I would strongly suggest trying to 1. secure a part-time internship (or several) during your PhD in the desired industry, if allowed to do so; 2. find a way to take courses in or teach yourself "hard skills" 3. make time for informational interviews and networking Some consulting firms have internships designed for PhDs, so that route may hold more promise.

The incessant doom and gloom is unhelpful, but IMHO universities could make alt ac careers viable by, for one thing, actually hiring their PhDs (as this essay points out). At my program alternative career programming is handled entirely by the students, which doesn't help.

Thanks for this helpful if disturbing report. Is there any plan to produce an updated version of this chart?

For a big field like modern US, I would advise against it -- not for any intellectual reasons, but because you'll be lacking a connection to a scholar in this sub-field (US medicine) with more active professional networks.

Even these jobs are not easily gotten anymore.

That’s silly. It’s an analogy. Of course I don’t presume to know your views on consumer product regulation. You are the one who is arguing in bad faith — by suggesting that I only criticize your claim because I’m somehow seeking to damage your reputation.

In my view, it's desirable for institutions to limit the range of bad decisions that people can make. Your logic appears to me to be the same as those who argue, e.g., for limiting the regulation of consumer products, or allowing retirement plan managers to offer bad investment plans so long as they also offer good ones. I would prefer unsafe products to be taken off the market than to rely on consumers to make informed decisions about whether they want to buy a death trap of a car or baby toy.

No. In fact it probably won’t be considered much at all.

I wonder if how much it matters that Kruse works in a huge field at a huge department. In my field, where there are great programs that have only two professors who can train students, reaching out before applying seems more valuable. I certainly would not advise anyone to try to schedule a Zoom call in their first email.

I don't see a problem if you specify that you're fully vaccinated and indicate that you completely understand if the person you're emailing is uncomfortable with meeting in person for whatever reason that they will not have to disclose. Why email the DGS, though? Why not a relevant faculty member or current graduate student?

It's possible to publish a journal article as an independent scholar, but it's much harder. Your novel contribution to scholarship has to be much more readily apparent than if you're a senior scholar who is considered a reliable authority on the subject. It's even more challenging to get a book contract with a university press. Book publishers see themselves as investing as much in the scholar as in the book.

You might also look at faculty pages to see if the people who identify as social or economic historians have published books or articles that use advanced statistical methods/cliometrics. My department has produced a couple of quantitative historians whose primary advisor is an economist with a courtesy appointment in history. So I would make sure to look at "Associate Faculty" or "Affiliated Faculty" pages.

You may want to look through recent issues Social Science History -- an important journal for quantitative historical approaches -- to see if there's someone you could work with. You may find that your historical interests are best served by professors whose "home" department are not history, such as sociology or economics. If that's so, you might be able work within a history department supervised by a co-advisor from outside history. Doing so would allow you to refine your understanding of both quantitative and qualitative methods.