pro Augustis

I just got a (Skype) interview request from Michigan's Interdepartmental Program in Greek and Roman History! It's a nice note to start the responses on, even if it means that I should probably take down the Alexander the Great poster from my wall, lest it come off as a bizarre attempt at ingratiation.

Postbacs are also shorter than most MAs. If you do a one year postbac and then get into a PhD program, you have gotten there a year quicker than with a two year MA.

I ended up adding a school at the last minute, after learning that a pervasive rumor about a faculty member leaving was not accurate. When emailing recommenders, I thanked them for the letters they had already submitted and then mentioned my reasons for adding an additional program. All of them were happy to help.

Are you not taking classes this year? I understand the worry then (I am still paranoid about languages—if I don't read Latin for so much as a weekend, half of me starts fearing that the next time I pick up Tacitus or whomever I won't be able to understand a word of it), but reading papers sounds like it will keep you sharp.

Yeah, this is true. There are definitely worse problems to have than my work has improved.

Taking graduate classes this semester has truly been a great experience and has massively improved my work. The only problem with that is that, looking back at my writing sample, it now seems so entirely undergraduate. The papers I have been writing this semester feel like they are reaching for a whole new level, leaving me very tempted to replace my old writing sample with one of these for the few apps I have left. Alas, it's probably a bad decision, as I still have not received any of these papers back with comments, leaving me unsure if I've actually reached that new level or just seen it off in the clouds and then fallen short of it.

Rather ironically, your denunciation of these figures seems to be, at least as stated here, politically motivated more than methodologically. You say that Said, Khalidi, et al. are politically motivated. That does not surprise me, as, at least in the history classrooms I have been in, the assumption is that everyone (ancient source and modern scholar alike) approaches their world and work with a set of political biases. These become a problem, in scholarship, when they impair the scholar's ability to fairly/accurately assess their material. Then it is not a political problem but rather a methodological problem. This seems to be what you are suggesting, but so far your examples have not been about how this sort of scholarship methodologically fails (which I may or may not agree with but is surely a valid line of questioning) but rather how it is politically influenced (to which I say both obviously and so?).

You aren't breaking any rules: so far as I am aware, no one cares a fig whether the sample was submitted to a course or not. The reason that many say you should not write a fresh essay is that your fresh essay will not have been looked at by a professor/graded. From what you have written here, however, you have no choice, so I would just say that you should be very careful when proofing the paper and get someone to read it over if you can.

Can you give some examples of things that are no longer History?

ashiepoo72 has given some really good advice. I did something similar, though with a few fewer schools. When I first thought of applying, I went and asked my three favorite professors for advice. Two told me to find people I wanted to work with at the top ten—and then proceeded to give me a different list of what those top ten were. The third said that rankings were not as important as having a professor I loved. So I went online, looked at a few top ten lists, and collated all the schools on them into a list of ~20-25 schools. I then went through each of those schools, forgetting for the moment whether they were usually considered number one or whatever and just looking at who taught there and what they had written. Most were quickly eliminated for not having anyone I wanted to work with or similar reasons. Those that remained became my list. Furthermore, as mlvchicago pointed out, this approach is useful for more than just apps. I am applying this year (doing a post bac this year) and have found that, in all the papers I am writing this semester, those professors I researched and those books I read by them keep coming up. It hugely expanded my understanding of what people are researching right now in ancient history. After all, if a scholar sounds like someone you might want to work with for your phd, then odds are their work is relevant enough to your research that you should spend the time to learn about it in any case.

Is it ideal? No. Are you about to be rejected because you didn't hit the shift key? I'd be pretty surprised if so. Moreover, to avoid driving yourself crazy, I'd say don't reread admissions material after you can no longer change it. Everything has typos (not just your stuff by any means!), and once it's out of your hands there is no reason I can see to generate anxiety about it.

Ancient History is an extremely hard field to get into. The reason for that is simple: languages. Any worthwhile PHD program is going to want to see years of training in Greek (not just koine) and Latin. So: how are your ancient languages? Also, while I love ancient history dearly and we would love to have you, I feel obligated to point out that, after all the doom and gloom talks about historical job prospects I've got, going to the field because of career considerations sounds daring.

Yeah, a follow up email isn't a bad idea. And if you need approval before applying then that of course changes the matter substantially.

That... does not bode well. Hopefully Classics/History folk there are less interested in it.

No need to apologize or anything. It's your application, and you obviously know the structure of your CV far better than I do. Ultimately, as you said, we do what we can with these applications, and then we wait and see. Good luck with UVA.

On the off chance that they just don't want CVs for whatever reason, why not incorporate the information that you feel makes you competitive into your sop for that school? Presenting a paper there sounds both important and possible to work in (maybe the time you spent there at that conference led you to realize how good a fit for you UVA is, say).

If you have sent an email, I would let the matter rest there. If they don't get back to you, that doesn't mean that they don't want you as a student, especially since, as rising_star said, it's a busy time of year.

I'm from a field about as chronologically distant from American History as you can get, but I know the concern. Since people have been writing about Augustus et al for two thousand years, what could I possibly add? I can't say I have solved the problem. But when I think of the monographs that have really impressed me, that seem to offer something new, I realize that many of them are actually quite recent. The odds of there still being interesting stuff to say in 2011 but no longer seem low.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Oh certainly. I just meant that it's morel likely to get tenure if your work is highly regarded than if most scholars don't find your research impressive. Tenure's far from a sure thing in either case, though.

I don't know about much bias along those lines, but I think that there is an indirect relationship, because someone who puts out highly respected work is obviously more likely to get a tenure track position.

Haha that is a pretty spectacular draft, though it's probably for the best that the admissions folk never got to see it. I remember that some of my earlier drafts had sentences like "I want to work with Professor X because something something emperors."

Update (sorry for the double post): they let me fix the formatting, so no longterm harm appears to have been done. But do pay close attention to that preview before submission when submitting your stuff...

Well, I'm an idiot. I had bolded the fit portion of my SOP so I could jump to it when fine-tuning the statements for different schools. Then, of course, I forgot to unbold it when I sent off my first application. I even looked at it in the submission window and didn't think anything of the bolding, because that's how it had always looked. I guess that's one school whose answer won't be all that surprising, and it's not the most auspicious start to the season...

This document is killing me. I've sat down to write it three times now and given up each time, deleting the few shallow sentences I'd managed. Being interested in the ancient world, I can't help but feel that I've missed my chance to have a personal relationship with the subject matter by two or so millennia. The best I can come up with is the shift in my interests from writing fiction to history, but the turning point there gets way too personal for something like this, leaving me with a choice between vaulting into TMI territory and appearing totally banal.