Warelin

Contacting POIs is something that is more important in the sciences than in the humanities due to the way funding is handled. Some programs in the humanities also have policies on whether or not they're allowed to reply to your inquiry in order to keep things neutral. Part of this could be the reason that you're not getting a response. Also, professors are incredibly busy people and it's midterm season so a lot of them have their focus on that. Regarding reapplying, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't re-apply. Each committee is going to have different things they consider important and will weigh things differently. Their interests in the department could also change. They could be looking for something that a previous class lacks and each cohort's pool with be different from the previous year. I see that you applied to a wide range of programs last year. What specifically are you interested in studying? History, Art History and Anthropology have very different approaches.

Hi Paula. The Grad Cafe is not a homework help site. As such, I am locking this thread.

I think the first question you need to ask yourself is this: What do you want to do in life and will a Master's degree help you achieve this? If it will, what type of Master's degree will help you reach your goal? Once you have that answer, look into programs that will help you reach that goal. Not everyone needs a Master's degree though. And it should never be something that should be done because you're trying to avoid something else or are unsure of what to do. Rather, it should be something that you want to do.

I think we're in an era of a lot of changes coming to grad schools. Policies are changing due to changes in USA law. Some schools are dropping GRE requirements or are in the middle of revamping how they choose who to admit or how their curriculum to work. Many of us remain active in our own forums. On the Literature forum, there wasn't much of ad admin presence in the past; now there is.There are other forums that lacked much of an admin presence but now have one. I'm wondering if the reason you feel that we're less active is because we're active on different forums? While the previous admins had a lot of knowledge in the Sciences, a lot of us are more comfortable with the Humanities. As a result, I think the knowledge that we feel comfortable sharing is very different from previous admins. I think we're all making an effort to be active on different forums but we don't want to give any misleading advice.

I can assure you that your GPA will be the least important thing in your admissions decisions. I think you stand a really good chance if you can showcase how your major in Economics and International Affairs has influenced you to become interested in obtaining an advanced degree in History. Best of luck!

I heavily encourage you to look into 2 year MA programs in History or in a subfield of history that you're most interested in. There are a number of reasons I'd recommend a 2 year program over a 1 year program: 2 years will allow you to gain a better understanding of your interest and discover new interests that you may never knew existed. This will allow you to gain more time to present at conferences in your field Two years also allows your professors to know you more and encourage you to submit to conferences in your field that you may not have been aware from. Grad schools might also have funding set aside that you can apply for so you can present at such conferences This will allow you to take a full year of courses to figure out who you could ask to write your letters of recommendation If your ultimate goal is to obtain a PHD in the USA, professors in the USA are more accustomed to the PHD process here. While the job market remains rough, it's easier to land a tenure-track job if it's from the same country you graduated from

Have you looked into MA programs inside the USA that are funded? Being in a funded program will allow you to focus on your application for the PHD without having to worry about finances for moving countries, living expenses and such.

I think your post means well but I'm not sure how useful it is when applying to a Ph.D. in the Humanities. Humanities tend to rely significantly less on stats than than Math does and relies more on "fit". The same applicant could submit the same application to 12 programs one year and get rejected from all 12. They could reapply next year and get into a number of schools that previously rejected them. Departments change. And the applicants they're looking for also change from year to year. You might get rejected from a school ranked T150, T100, T80, T60 but get accepted into a T40 , T20, and T30 school. You might also end up rejecting the T20 and T30 school for the T40 simply because it's a better fit. We've also seen people with perfect GRE scores and GPAs from ivy league institutions get rejected from every single school they've applied to. Writing matters. Interests matter.

Hi @Conviction, It isn't ideal to have a forum for every single subfield because then discussion would be very divided. It gets even more confusing when people are in between fields and unsure of which forum to post on. You are more than welcome to create a topic on HCI or IXD in any of the 3 forums you talked about or choose another one entirely. It wouldn't be the first time a topic regarding a specific field was created in another's board. Comparative Lit often finds a home on the Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition Forum. Biostats often finds a home in Biology. Biochemistry has found homes in the past in both Biology and Chemistry.

This one's actually my fault. This topic was originally on the "Comments, Questions, Etc." forum but I moved it here after realizing the topic would get more replies here. @humbug just happened to reply to it before I managed to move it. @sacralicious: Have you looked at who influences you in Aesthetics and where they're working or where they're got their degree from? I find working backwards is often an easy way to also discover departments and new people who may have interacted with them in the past.

Saint Louis University has a leveling option that will add on a year if you have a Bachelor's degree in another field.

This google doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XNJR4IhOJ56zd7zLuVSUK7h054dBRNvyiC7iStCOsxo/ is now back to being in public mode! I hope this creation helps you as much as it helped me when I was doing my initial research

Thank you to all of those who have contributed to these threads in the past few days. I've run some calculations to update the COL index for all numbers and have them sorted automatically with as many current figures as I could find. In terms of how far your stipend can go in a city, the top 20 schools ranking are as follows: 1. Duke University 1. Princeton University 3. University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) 4. Emory 5. Carnegie Mellon University 6. Vanderbilt University 7. Johns Hopkins University 8. University of Chicago 8. Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) 10. Rice University 10. Yale University 12. University of Chicago 13. University of Michigan 14. Brown University 14. Southern Methodist University 16. University of Notre Dame 17. Harvard University 17. University of Virginia 19. University of Southern California 20. University of Pittsburgh

I think there might be some confusion here! UPenn and Penn State are two different schools. UPenn is part of the Ivy League and is in Philadelphia. They average around ~600 applicants per year according to the stats they put out. Penn State is a state school located in State College and is part of the B10 conference for most sports. If you're considering schools in major cities, I'd also recommend looking into the following on location alone: -Columbia University -University of California, Los Angeles (Great school; Part of the UC System) -CUNY Graduate Center -Northwestern University -University of Texas- Austin -Rice University -Ohio State University (Population of Columbus is ~860k in the city; more if you include the metro) -University of Southern California ( Great Private School in Los Angeles; not too be confused with part of the UC system) -University of Illinois at Chicago -University of Minnesota -Northeastern University -Georgia State University If you're looking to consider slightly smaller cities, I'd give some thought to the following schools: -Johns Hopkins University (Pop: 614,664) -Washington University in St. Louis (Pop: 311,404) -Saint Louis University

A few notes here: 1) Has your partner looked into positions that are telecommutable? Graphic Design work lends itself well to be performed from anywhere. 2) You mention big cities and Penn State. But Penn State is in State College/University College which is rural and hours away from Philadelphia and NYC 3) It's important to remember that your competition is from those in the same field/era as you are for most schools. Often times, it means that there's also only one or two spots available in your era. 4) I'm not sure if lower-tier schools really exist in the same context. Notre Dame is ranked in the Mid-30s but they're incredibly famous for their medieval studies. University of Connecticut is also well known for their Medieval Studies. US News rankings for English Literature is based on the 14 percent of respondents who ranked schools. As a result, your experience with a school could differ dramatically from someone in a different concentration. 5) Funding matters. Not all programs offer full funding.