pro Augustis

I am relatively new at this myself, but I TAed the last two semesters, and one thing that seemed to work well for me is picking a surprising detail from the readings and trying to get the students to explain it in a way that shed light on larger topics. For instance, I might begin by mentioning how, under Augustus' marriage legislation, a husband who did not divorce his cheating wife could be prosecuted as a pimp—why? To explain that, our discussion could (and hopefully would!) go through topics like Roman ideas of family, Augustus' attempts to reform Roman morals, our sources for Augustus and their thoughts on this (say, an ancient historian versus Ovid's love-poetry take on it), etc, basically trying to cover the key issues from the starting point of a detail weird enough that people would want to jump in and figure it out. The best advice I received from an older student, meanwhile, is that close reading is key and is a skill that students struggle with, especially in lower division classes. Whenever we had a bunch of small bits of text—a series of short laws, say, or inscriptions—I would have a student read one aloud and ask for an explanation of what it meant and how it related to our discussion. The best part for me was that it did not here matter whether the student had done the reading, as all they really needed to know was what they had just read aloud, so people who had not done the reading and were normally hesitant to participate would do so.

I am glad to hear that things worked or so well.

As @TMP said, history is much better than area studies, because in area studies the worry is that you don't have any specific methodology down. The only exception to this is if the area studies department is much higher in rank than the others, which is hard to tell from your post: tier one area studies is probably still worth your time more than tier two anything.

You do not need to have papers published before you begin grad school. The most important things are your research interests and being able to define those, your sample, and your recommendation letters. It is worth stressing, however, that if psychology is oversaturated then history is overflowing. In my family I have a psychology PhD and another relative beginning graduate school in the discipline: the job market in history is incomparably worse than that in psychology. I cannot say "don't pursue a history graduate degree," as I obviously have chosen to, but if you reasoning is that it seems to be the easier path to an academic career, know that it is not.

This definitely varies a lot by field. Our graduate advisor told us that one is not required but very beneficial. After that, you get to diminishing returns, where two is better but not hugely so, and a third will probably not change things much. For the most part, in our book field, an original and book-worthy dissertation appears to count more, once you've demonstrated that articles are a thing you can also do, and so after two it is generally better to focus additional research time on that big project. He told us that he ended up with a third article-worthy paper—and ended up saving it as something to publish during his first job, as it would help him more then.

I don't know much about those programs in particular, but congratulations on the acceptances!

Commiseration is fine and all, but to react with scorn when a more experienced student attempts to give you advice is simply foolish.

Hello, UT student here. Schools vary, but I can give you a bit of an idea about UT. It's true that, as @terraaurea mentioned, admissions will be a bit tighter this year, as the last class was mammoth, but there will be more than three, and the interview is really not as stressful as it sounds (and having done this last year, I know exactly how stressful it feels going in). The professors just want to get a sense of who you are. Don't worry about gotcha questions, much less pop quizzes. We grad students, meanwhile, are simply here to answer any questions you have and give you a feel of what life is like in Austin. That will involve lots of free food and open bar tabs. Looking forward to meeting you! ETA: You do not need a suit.

In my experience it varies by the professor. The simplest thing is to wait for them to introduce themselves. Keep an eye out, also, on how other graduate students refer to them.

Good luck! Let me know if you have any further questions.

I don't mind, but I should mention up front that I am a historian rather than a philosopher and so have not taken any philosophy courses here. The joint program is relatively small. My year has one person in it, who is actually one of my roommates. There are other ancient philosophy persons lodged in the philosophy department, though. For me, the two biggest pluses about UT so far have been the friendliness of the people, both grad students and professors, and the top-notch course selection. On that last point my more philosophically minded roommate agrees, though the specific courses we are taking have thus far had relatively little overlap. If you want to look into those be sure to check both the classics and philosophy listings.

Nothing specific, no. The interview weekend is in mid February. If last year's timeline is any indication, offers will be made shortly thereafter. When those people will get back to UT about the offers, however, does not seem predictable, nor how the reduced proportion of interviewees receiving an offer this time around will affect the timeline.

Last year's cohort (mine) at UT was extremely large. As a result, this year they are being quite selective in admissions.

Last year I got a request for an IPGRH skype interview on 1/7 and an invitation to the campus visit on 1/25.

I am glad to see that you applied to Texas, as I think your interests in provincial archaeology could be very well accommodated here. My interests are generally on the more textual side of things, but I have in the semester that I have been here seen fellow students and faculty doing fascinating things re provincial and frontier archaeology. As for publications, I don't think that you have to worry. I certainly don't have any yet, nor does the average applicant.