AfricanusCrowther

As has been mentioned, it varies a lot, although a good one (i.e. interesting and showing a strong understanding of the conventions of academic history writing) can matter a great deal in some circles. A couple years ago, my advisor didn’t want to take an otherwise well-qualified student with a great SoP because his writing sample was “boring.” Conversely, I was accepted to a program where nobody read my writing sample.

Counterpoint: if you put all your eggs in one basket, it will be extremely painful if your working relationship goes south. This can happen even if your advisor gives you a great first impression when you visit programs. I would advise incoming students to find multiple mentors and advisors where possible, and to ask experienced graduate students how they forged these relationships. My department is (or claims to be) trying to encourage a multiple mentor system now after seeing a number of promising students leave in part due to advisor malfeasance.

I think this is acceptable, and actually good practice for graduate school, where you sometimes have to email academics you don’t know (potential outside committee members, big names you want to meet at a conference, journal editors). You want to be polite (perhaps even acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation), but treat them like a future colleague. I would also make sure to email a graduate student in your sub-field, who will generally be able to give the most helpful answers to any question, and explain why you reached out to them in particular. If I were on the receiving end of this, I would be happy to answer. I think you can ask about anything germane to the program, but I would not voice any concerns about it (especially not about individuals you might want to work with). Not only is this premature, but also better saved for conversations on a campus visit. I would also try to make sure your question is relatively straightforward and best answered by a graduate student.

Not if the citation is logical and appropriate.

I have colleagues whose primary method is historical linguistics, and they get tired of explaining to fellow historians how they do what they do and why it should be considered history. A large part of their work involves explaining and defending their methodology to non-specialists. But such is the price of getting to do the work you want.

Make sure to ask graduate students at the programs you'll eventually visit about the lived reality of the language requirement. Sometimes language requirements are more fluid than what the graduate handbook suggests.

I think BU has always been strong in African history. They certainly have some heavyweights and I remember coming across BU graduates in some tenure track positions in that field. The USNWR rankings are useless because they cannot account for two important factors: placement within subfield (the USNWR subfield rankings are even worse) and placement by advisor (when Ira Berlin was active, the University of Maryland was a good place to do 19th century US). If the professor who works in your field told you that the top 20 was a good metric for program strength, maybe that happens to be the case in his or her subfield. But this is a distraction from your actual question, for which the answer is, your chance of acceptance depends almost entirely on the strength of your written materials and your ability to excite potential advisors who want to reproduce themselves through you.

Writing samples are also very annoying to adapt if you are working from a BA thesis, another hard-earned lesson. It’s good practice for turning research papers into conference presentations, but of course the stakes here are much higher.

Also bear in mind that some programs ask for different formats for the SoP from the standard two-pager. It can be hard to adapt your SOP to those formats -- which I found out the hard way when I was rejected from all of those schools.

The "struggle" of graduate school is not always a noble, dignified one. It can be humiliating, morally debilitating, infuriatingly arbitrary, and intellectually limiting, especially (precisely?) because academic work is so much more personal than most other forms of labor. I encourage you to read this classic essay by Tim Burke. As they say, your mileage may vary, and I certainly have friends who love it and are having a blast, but trust me that you cannot anticipate the ways your sense of self-worth can be destroyed in graduate school, for no good reason and by people you assumed you could trust. You need to prepare to make some provision for your mental health, beyond just dealing with the stress of being busy.

I wouldn't start a PhD program without first finding a good therapist.

How do those who work on handwritten sources or obscure foreign languages (or both, for me) work with the lack of OCR?

I took a lot of history courses in college and my research interests came out of my BA thesis, so I might not be much help. In general, I've always come to topics through trying to understand primary sources -- and one place for you to start might be an unusual or anomalous aspect of case law. FWIW, I just went to a conference where historians complained about the lack of scholarship on medicine and the law, particularly outside the United States and issues of patents.

In case you didn’t know, the lack of specificity of this response and the previous one would be inappropriate for an application essay. You need a much more focused set of interests, with at least a clearly defined period, region, theme, and set of historical questions. I would suggest getting your hands on some successful application essays or just (as OHSP suggested) taking to current graduate students about what they proposed to do in their applications.

FYI, OP, this thread is old but maybe useful as a starting point:

I don't think you'll find the most helpful answers to this question on GradCafe. I would try the following: 1. Ask the South Asian history professors whom you know. Presumably they're already aware that you're applying because you have already asked them for advice. A quick "Hi, just wanted to double check my list, what schools would you say were the top in the field for my specific research interests? Oh, great, that's what I thought," would help. Even if you don't want to tell them your plans yet (although you should if you're applying this year), you could say you're just curious. Ideally you would be having conversations that were much more in depth at this point. 2. This is the blunt force method: go through the top 100 research universities and see where assistant professors and young associate professors in South Asian history got their degrees. Remember that placement is just as much about the advisor; if you're scratching your head as to why a school appears to be punching above its weight, figure out whether that school had a star academic whose name could get students through the door (eg, Ira Berlin at Maryland), or if they have a longstanding institutional investment in a particular sub-field that is widely recognized (eg, MSU for my field). 3. Figure out where the scholars who publish groundbreaking scholarship teach and got their degrees.

I think both L13 and ashiepoo72 are right. I wouldn't assume you will be accepted because you received a positive response from a POI (some of them may find it difficult not to sound enthusiastic out of politeness). But contacting such people can still yield all sorts of useful information.

IMHO, I would be wary of locking yourself into a ranked list right now. I would also strongly suggest you consider Duke (Dubois, Gaspar, Glymph, Lentz-Smith, Peck).

I would suggest Wisconsin (Gómez, Sweet, Brown, Whiting) and Northwestern (Bryant, Hanretta, Ramírez, Molina, Harris, Liu)

NYU is at or near the top of the charts in certain fields (Latin America, Middle East) and does very well in others (Africa). You really have to go down to the level of field to get a sense of placement. My school, for example, has top placements in one field (Columbia, Georgetown, Rice, Michigan, etc.) but does relatively poorly in most others. Edit: this is based on my own compiling, not the USNWR sub-rankings (which are even worse).

NYU is a great example of why applicants need to do their own placement research (to the extent that’s possible) before crossing any school off their list. Their USNWR ranking is inexplicable. Same with Duke.

Regarding PI law, look for Loan Repayment Assistance Programs for public service when applying to law schools. The top ones all have them. And start reading the TLS forums for advice on preparing for a career in PI law and law school in general. And if you’re at all serious about considering law school, start taking a look at the LSAT and determining how best to prepare. It is a hard test that rewards consistent practice.

FWIW, I got well below 5 on my AW score (don’t ask) and I did just fine (trust me). I wouldn’t let low GRE scores alone discourage anyone from applying.

Nobody thinks like this (except maybe admins at public universities, about whom I know little). GPA and GRE aren’t comparable; large majority of academics don’t care; and at any rate your GRE score is high enough that it probably won’t receive anything more than a passing glance. Focus on your SoP, writing sample, and figuring out the markers of good historical work and professional comportment.