pro Augustis

I don't think that you need to worry. Odds are overwhelmingly good that they are just busy folk and forgot about your email. or are just buried under a hundred other emails. Which is annoying, certainly, but doesn't mean that they won't accept you to the school or that it isn't a good school. From what I have heard, a positive communication with a poi is all well and good, but sometimes they don't respond and that doesn't mean anything save that they didn't respond.

It's great that she did not bring out evidence and that you have not been expelled, but that is not protecting you for the future. What exactly did she say? What in your essay made her think it was plagiarized? That is the crucial question. Why does she think that your writing was not your own?

What an absolutely bizarre requirement... I have no idea at all why he would refuse to do more than three schools once he has done the hard part of actually writing the letter. I hope this works out for you.

It seems like a risky tactic to me... Could you not ask someone from your undergard?

In your place, I would probably do the sooner date and, for schools that don't already have the first test, only send the new one. But here I am getting somewhat out of my depth, as I actually have no idea how deadlines and GRE scores interact or how long it takes GRE scores to arrive once sent, information that could obviously change things substantially.

In your place I would take the GRE again. Yes, it takes time away from he rest of your application and that is unfortunate, but it is a lot less unfortunate than someone not looking at the rest of your (extremely impressive!) application because of something as stupid as the GRE. I'm from a different field, so take this with a grain of salt, but in Classics/History I have been told that Quant doesn't matter so long as you don't totally embarrass yourself (anecdotally, I have a friend in art history at a top ten school who got ~50% percentile on quant), while verbal should be above 160 at least. If you didn't study much now, I am sure that you could boost your grade substantially by doing just an hour or so of vocab review or whatever every day till December, which is what I did to prep for the math over the summer.

What you want to avoid is plainly going through studies one through ten with no further linking than that they are all studies. Instead, look at each of the studies that you have and try and find either thematic groupings or a line of development. Perhaps the dominant model used to be that extra curricular activities did little to help, but then scholar X came in and pointed out a new piece of evidence that shows that they do. Scholar Y then expanded on X's model, but now scholar Z is questioning this whole development and thinks that we should perhaps go back to the original idea of extra curriculars not mattering. Of course, that is all quite simplified, but I hope it gives you an idea of the kind of structure that can make it an analysis of changing trends in scholarship, not a list of opinions. Focus on the specifics of how interpretations changed and why. Bring out the debate.

I am certainly no expert in these matters, but my guess is that a professor would not offer to write you a letter if they did not think it would be a good one. You didn't pressure them into this if they were the ones to bring it up, and if they believe they have something worthwhile to say why doubt them about it? Especially if you need to use these three letters anyway.

I'm glad to hear that the program is going so well! What did you end up reading in the post bac Latin/Greek courses? I remember being unsure what was actually covered in them. As for me, I ended up at Columbia, where things are going really well. With the exception of one post bac seminar course, we have a lot of freedom with our schedules, which is nice. Next semester I will be attempting the Latin Survey course here (700-1000 lines a week), which I am simultaneously excited for and terrified about. And we have a ton of archaeologists too.

One of my professors told me that a letter of recommendation for a phd program is three pages. I have no idea however if that was just his preference for how to do it.

For what it's worth, I was told by a professor that there is no stigma at all about a second application. For a third, according to this professor, some people will start to become quite leery, and after that the school is probably not going to give the application much of a read. This is, of course, just one academic's advice—and, in any case, your second application is totally fine. Go for it and good luck.

I would strongly recommend focusing on what you did and how to fix it rather than on why everyone else hasn't been called out on this. For all you know, they have, but, more importantly, I think that your professor would rather see you improving your own work rather than targeting that of others.

I don't think that there is any right amount of time. If you have things that you want to talk about, then going sounds like a good idea. If not, don't. However often you go, it sounds like you have a good relationship with that professor.

Good to see you, Locheaira. How are you finding the program at Penn? I was accepted there but ended up doing my post bac elsewhere.

I'm coming from a different field (ancient history), and who knows if I'll get in anywhere, so take my advice with a grain of salt. Still, I think that you may be looking at fit in too rigid a fashion. I'm interested in the ideology of Roman Emperors. Every once in a while, I see a scholar doing exactly that. Splendid! I know that I am applying there. There are not, however, all that many scholars doing exactly that, and there are even fewer when just looking at highly ranked programs. But fit doesn't need to be exact, and you can get a sort of composite fit with multiple scholars. At some schools, there is one historian doing the Roman Empire and another doing the ideology of Hellenistic kings. Neither is a perfect match, but taking them together I can study both the period and the questions/methodologies that I am interested in, and such a department is, I think, a good fit. I'm sure that if you look through the faculty at the schools you are interested in you will come across programs that cover a good amount of what you are interested in, even if that coverage is spread out over a few people.

My (sparse!) CV has the following categories: Education, Awards, Research (I don't have anything published, but my advisor encouraged me to discuss the research projects I've done as a way to concretely show what I'd done and what my interest were), Languages, Membership in Organizations, and finally Work & Academic Experience (a sort of misc. section that I'm probably going to reorganize). Hopefully that's useful!

That's a fair point that the committee would probably have some idea about his upcoming work—or, if they didn't, could just ask him. As for a LOR, I am unfortunately in a one year program, which means that I'll be applying before I know anyone quite well enough to ask. At present he has only seen me in class for a few weeks, and "pro Augustis is never late and appears to do the reading" is probably not a stellar rec. If you have nothing at all done toward the application, I would advise waiting, I think. The GRE takes quite a while to practice for, and the whole task of picking out schools and drafting SOPs isn't quick either. Of course, it is doable, and if your undergrad studies left you with a usable writing sample and you have the time to get the other stuff done and remember enough math to not need weeks/months of GRE review, it'd always be nice to not have to delay an extra twelve months.

Working on my statements of purpose, I came to an unexpected stumbling block. I am presently taking a course with Eminent Roman Historian. At one point, Eminent Roman Historian assigned a chapter from his upcoming book. That chapter is highly relevant to my research interests. His previous work, however, is tangential at best. Does anyone have any good ideas on how to deal with this in a SOP? I'm hesitant to say "I want to work with Eminent Roman Historian because of Future Book," lest the admissions committee think I'm pulling things out of thin air.

A friend of mine was in an extremely similar situation. He got into a highly ranked master's program but, because of career related reasons, could not attend at the time. They told him that, if he reapplied in a few years, his application would only be stronger from the experience he picked up in the meantime. Good luck!

The generally preposterous nature of this has already been addressed, but I was particularly struck by this: As someone coming from the Classics side of things, I can safely say that yes, people can most certainly read about Aristotle for four years. The dude wrote a lot, and enough has been written about him that I'd wager you could read for four years and still not have read half of it.

As I'm applying this cycle, I figured it was finally time to de-lurk. I'm interested in Roman history, specifically the ideology of the emperors. I already posted something like this in the Classics forum, but as I am on the borderline of classics/history and have been obsessively reading these threads, I wanted to introduce myself over here too. I am planning to apply to Austin (Classics), Berkeley (Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology), Chapel Hill (Classics), Columbia (Classical Studies), Harvard (Classics), Michigan (undecided whether Classical Studies or the Interdepartmental Program in Greek and Roman History), Princeton (Classics), and Toronto (Collaborative Program in Ancient History with York), and Yale (Classics). On top of that I should probably apply to some MA programs in case these don't pan out, but I haven't yet had the chance to put together a good list for those. Of course, some of those schools have pretty different emphases in their department. I feel like my interests are more focused on a problem/methodology (legitimacy and self-presentation) rather than a specific bit of Roman history, so I'm willing to move a bit forward or backward in chronology depending on where I am applying, even if targeting the applications like that feels a bit strange.

As I'm applying this cycle, I figured it was finally time to de-lurk. I'm interested in Roman history, specifically the ideology of the emperors, and plan to apply to Austin (Classics), Berkeley (Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology), Chapel Hill (Classics), Columbia (Classical Studies), Harvard (Classics), Michigan (undecided whether Classical Studies or the Interdepartmental Program in Greek and Roman History), Princeton (Classics), and Toronto (Collaborative Program in Ancient History with York), and Yale (Classics). On top of that I should probably apply to some MA programs in case these don't pan out, but I haven't yet had the chance to put together a good list for those. Of course, some of those schools have pretty different emphases in their department. I feel like my interests are more focused on a problem/methodology (legitimacy and self-presentation) rather than a specific bit of Roman history, so I'm willing to move a bit forward or backward in chronology depending on where I am applying, even if targeting the applications like that feels a bit strange. What sort of Roman historiography are you interested in Zelliot?