AP

Actually, knowing the stretch of the e-mail won't help you. And even if you get a response here, it won't answer your question whether it was personal or general. Prepare for the phone interview as if this was a general email but act as if it was a personal one. Good luck!

By no means write/call saying you “Feel like” something. If you don’t have the information, then write/call to kindly ask about your status. Programs are way within their timeframe to give you an answer so they might not have any decisions yet. You can include a line saying “I’d like to reiterate my interest in this program” or something to that end.

A couple of days. However, when you write/call asking for an extension explain that you are waiting on other decisions on after April 15 and allow them to give you a timeframe, do not ask it yourself.

Since Any information on both rankings and difficulty can be hardly reliable, a) there is no correlation and b) if there were, that’s not useful information.

Ditto

In addition to @telkanuru's point, let me tell you that professors are increasingly requesting incoming PhDs to think of non-professorship positions not as a back up plan but as the plan. In our program, I know applicants who have been rejected because they think library/museums is an emergency plan. The fact that you think that working in a museum or library (or archive or college administration, in some cases) does not leave room for research tells me that you urgently need to listen to your advisor. Further, I'd argue that many University librarians have more time for research than most TT positions in regional colleges. Do you have any idea how many faculty across the country do "just research"?

Oh I understood it was in another cycle.

Did you request it? I'd be interested to see what this feedback looked like.

I think looking back, we all did things that were not the norm. I bombarded the person who was then my advisor with RIDICULOUSLY ANNOYING questions throughout the application process. When I graduated and went out for drinks, we had a blast looking back to those e-mails. Anyway, if you have some rapport, you might as well use it.

I want to come back with this issue of online presence just because I've been bumping into it in the last week or so. Christopher Long, now Dean at MSU, published this widely circulated blog post: The Googled Graduate Student. This summarizes the point I was trying to make earlier: you may think digital presence does not affect your chances at anything, and that's fine. However, people are going to google you. You want to control as much as you can what they find (eg: your graduate student profile vs pictures of you on Spring Break 2016). Listen to the first ten minutes or so of Bonni Stachowiak talking with Kris Shaffer about online presence. She provides an example of what appeared on Google when she searched herself and how that changed as she became more active. Clearly, I'm arguing for people having online presence to better control what people find about themselves. It is perfectly fine to decide not to have online presence (like twitter or a personal website). However, remember that deciding not to be active online does not mean that you don't have online presence.

The short answer: No. I don't know if the people you said asked for feedback actually got feedback, but I'd advise against it. It would be inappropriate because there are several moving parts in an application to graduate school. Some of these moving parts have absolutely nothing to do with you or your application, they have to do with department politics, budget, needs, and previous cohorts. In addition, unlike some grants, faculty that see your application do not prepare feedback reports so you'd be asking faculty to put even more labor in providing personalized feedback. Although it may seem like a tiny task, I can assure you, it is not. Further, several people see your application, who would you ask? Finally, faculty don't know you so it would be hard for them to provide substantive feedback. Unlike UG admissions, PhD admissions is not only about your SoP or your LoRs. Let me point out, however, that this system of course benefits the privileged. Those who have the connections of a mentor to look over their application materials or those who can rely on a network of peers. It is incredibly unfair, I know, but I don't think that necessarily means that it's ok to ask for feedback. The AdComm is not the best position to provide feedback. Now, when you say you don't "really have a mentor/anyone to get advice/feedback from", what do you mean? How did you decide to apply to PhD programs? Who wrote your letters? Who read your SoP? Something you can do between now and the next cycle is try to attend (free) talks/events and mingle. Ask questions, introduce yourself, etc. This of course depends on where you are. However, if no school/museum/library in your area host interesting events, do sign up for newsletters and keep tabs on what's going on elsewhere. Sometimes some talks are videotaped (especially those of big-name scholars) and you can find them on YouTube. Additionally, consider listening to podcasts about research in history. My favorite is the New Books Network, but there are many others. Finally, I'd also venture keeping the conversation open with graduate students in the programs you are applying. Sometimes they are more helpful than faculty. (In my case, I met one of them when they were doing research in my city. They introduced me to a friend of theirs also doing research in the city. This friend met with me and tutored me during my application, so you never know where you'll find readers!). Good luck!

Again, if you are waitlisted and receive an offer elsewhere, do email the first program to reiterate your interest. It never hurts and might help you.

Emory, like other departments, is shrinking its cohorts. Typically, you will get an offer when someone else declines. This can happen after the invitation to campus. IDK when Emory holds those.

Re: Adjunctification https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/03/12/adjuncts-serfs-of-academe/

Absolutely. In none of the searches I've been familiar with (as grad student and as faculty) did I witness "this candidate has a crappy dissertation but, hey, they've taught three courses". On the contrary, I've seen relative green teachers get positions. Your research is far more important. A done dissertation is right there at the top.

Like @AfricanusCrowther, I'd also want to know more about these other opportunities. If you are not instructor of record, Thing can help you personally but not professionally. (I'm not saying you won't get a job with just TAing, but it won't certainly because you TAed). If you don't have the choice to be instructor of record, then try diversifying your teaching experience. Eg: In some schools, you can work for the Teaching and Learning Center facilitating workshops for faculty/grad students. There are also things like a digital scholarship center where often they hire grad students to provide support and even provide instruction on some digital tool. A friend of mine worked at the University rare books library where he eventually designed an exhibit.

It truly depends on many, many things. I want to be clear on something now that I've been hired and that I've participated in a search at my institution. There is no formula to get a TT job. THERE IS NO FORMULA. Like when applying to grad school, many things are unknown. I can assure you the job market is incredibly less straightforward than grad school admissions. At my institution, an R1, research is very important so conversations swirled around originality of argument, the literature candidates were engaging with, the possibility of grants, the possibility of cool courses. Needless to say, research production such as articles is evidence of cool research. [Tip for Americanists: please, f*cking engage with the literature of your topic outside the US. Eg: if you study gender in urban settings, do engage with scholars that study Europe and Latin America, for example] So, there's no golden time between time of degree and time of job, though if you've been out and you haven't taken a VAP, postdoc, or NTT, it's harder to come back. This is incredibly unfair to women, of course. Always take the TT offer (minus the exaggerated caveat proposed by @telkanuru). You might be able to negotiate postponing a TT starting date for a prestigious postdoc. This usually happens at institutions that do not need you right away, so it's the exception, not the rule. It's always best to do your research, though I can tell you that coming from abroad I had no idea what fellowships were least of all what I should be applying to. Peers and advisors walked me through that in my first and second years. Re: online presence, you've noticed that it doesn't matter. However, know this: people will look you up so having online presence gives you control of what they find. I've been very active on twitter and thus was able to find out about opportunities (conferences, fellowships, archives) that I could have missed. I even organized an entire conference with twitter friends. Again, I came to the US with no network so for me my online presence was a way to creating my niche.

In the departments I'm familiar with (non-Ivies but R1 or SLAC institutions), they have been hiring TT professors since at least 2012. Once or twice, the hires were for senior professors. In all four departments I'm thinking of (my grad program, my current job, my former SO's program, and their current job), people also left (retired/moved to another institution/moved to administration). These are, of course, the minority within Higher Education. they are the exception, not the rule. They only represent how privileged I am and they do not represent the stae of the job market nor of history enrollments nationwide. In addition, as programs are shrinking across the board, several Ivies continue to admit 20 students per cohort. What this model suggests to me is that Ivies/R1 will feed Ivies/R1 even more than they do now. To me, this incredibly dangerous not because Ivies are mean or anything (I have incredible friends and colleagues from Ivies), but because we, scholars, want diversity in academia. Diversity means, among other things, diversity of backgrounds, education, and approaches to the study of the past. If only a couple of programs survive this debacle, that's unlikely to happen... [It's Friday and I've been grading all day. I think I'm thinking out loud and my thoughts are kind of messy]

Meet with other professors that might inform your research. Eg: if you do environmental history, meet with environmental historians, even if they don't work on your geographical region. Also meet with others in your geographical region that might be readers of your work. Eg: If you are Americanist, meet with one or two more if you can, especially one that does a different time period. It's ok to ask your POI who they suggest meeting with. They might know of someone in another department. At my institution, I've met with PhD applicants that study Europe or the US but who are interesting in my research focus (urban history in Latin America).

Given this information, I think you will be asked about your awareness of the job market and what else you have mind after graduation. I've heard more and more faculty accepting students only if they do not plan to only apply to the academic job market. Of course, this varies by field.

It's likely.

That's a great department! I hope you are moved to the "happily accepted" list soon!

An offer is an offer. Unless you don't respond by the date they tell you, they cannot rescind it. However, you can very much contact TN and let them know you have a funded offer in hand. That might help accelerate discussions, or at least tell you where you stand. Eg: When I was applying, a faculty called me saying that I was accepted but funding didn't come through yet. It was my top choice POI. I told them that I had an offer in hand. They asked how much and when I answered they said they could never match it. I'm not saying this will happen to you, but just that the circulation of information sometimes helps.

Really???? Well, I am not so sure why we'd want many pages. I feel this year there are more conversations. But true, less people...

OH NOOOO!!! My truest apologies. Should have double-checked. ?