fortsibut

Hmm, let's try this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10XIYhIw4fCbUend2WkA3iujfftu9TrXwR-YKcgr3JKo/edit?usp=sharing Did that work? I use Google docs a fair amount but pretty minimally in terms of sharing so I hope that does it.

You're absolutely right, I hadn't thought about that. Master's students working in my program weren't instructors of record, so it certainly makes sense that the grad school would spend less resources to train us. (Although I would've loved to have gotten that training had it been offered, no question) As I said, I did learn a lot from the experience regardless, but it was from a direct mentorship perspective and through observation rather than from any kind of departmental training. Good point!

Glad to hear things are better in English! Hopefully my experience isn't indicative of how things are in general. To be clear, the prof with whom I worked was great and very communicative and I ended up having an excellent experience when I actually TA'd, but I certainly didn't go into it feeling very confident. I wonder how common it is for applicants to grad programs to ask about TA training during the school selection process. It's certainly not something that I would have thought of off the top of my head, but I think that you're right and it's a factor that really should be considered.

Admittedly I'm in history (hi lit/rhet/comp folks!) so things might be a bit different across the board in history grad programs in terms of TA training (although I'd suspect there isn't), but these comments didn't reflect my experience at all. We were given a 3 hour orientation that was half paperwork and half a plea to "please try not to sexual harass your students" and were then sent on our way. We weren't given anything in the way of pedagogical training at all. I was in a grad program at a state school so YMMV, but I just wanted to pop in and say that I'm not sure that it's safe to assume that all GA training is equal in terms of being comprehensive.

For sure, hopefully we'll both get in! First round of drinks is on me in the fall if we do! =)

Hi there! Sorry for the late response; I was out of town for a couple of days. I actually only reached out to my POI once, and that was soon after I submitted my application. (Everything kind of came together last minute for me) I never heard back, and I'm not sure if that's a bad sign or just an indication of how busy the application season is. I did see that Assotto said that decisions were made last week, so hopefully we'll know pretty soon one way other the other. Given the fact that they only have one student who's an Africanist right now, your odds are probably a whole lot better than mine. =)

Just wanted to congratulate everyone who received good news today, and console those who didn't. All this waiting is making this process so intense, and I'm living vicariously through all of you! I'm also gonna express that I'm also a bit perplexed at how an Arizona MA > WashU PhD, but what do I know?

That's a good point. From a hiring standpoint, I wonder what how the job market is coming out of a clerkship. I'd imagine those who scored federal clerkships would have a pretty easy time getting a good firm job after the clerkship if they wanted.

Now you're just moving goalposts. What you said was "Biglaw is almost impossible to break into unless you are HYS (Harvard, Yale, Stanford)." If up to 10% of students from mediocre NYC-region schools make it to BigLaw firms (I'm actually extremely skeptical about this statistic but I'm too lazy to go pull numbers for Brooklyn/Fordham/CUNY/NYLS/Cordoza/etc. so I'll just let it go) then it's hardly "almost impossible" to break into-and those are not highly ranked schools. Never mind the fact that you're leaving out schools like Columbia and NYU...are you seriously going to tell me that they don't place high numbers into BigLaw firms? Cornell doesn't place in NYC? How about Georgetown in DC? Of course you're right about the role that regionalism plays in BigLaw recruitment, but that's just common sense; if you wanna work at a Vault top 10 firm in NYC, you probably don't want to go to Ohio State. This is just a poor argument on your part and you should really just drop it.

This is completely inaccurate. My sister went to Brooklyn Law and she and a number of her classmates from up and down the school's GPA rankings ended up with BigLaw jobs. One of the summer students she did her summer program with her second year was from NYLS which is very, very lowly ranked and that student also scored a firm job. These were not isolated incidences. I'm also not sure why you're arbitrarily leaving out the other Ivy law programs; you think Columbia and Cornell don't place most of their students (who want to work there) in Big Law jobs? The further you go down the T14, the lower your chances may be at being able to easily move to a different location and score a BigLaw job there, but those schools still do just fine. Additionally for anyone looking at law who might not know this: LSAC (the body that administers the LSAT and handles collecting transcripts and other elements of the application process for many schools) averages every grade you've ever made at every collegiate institution. That might not matter for many of you who went straight through college your first try with a 4.0, but my first college experience ~17 years ago was three awful semester with a lot of F's. That 1.7 will probably bring my 3.86 from the school I actually graduated from down to the low 2's. And if you took a class and failed it twice then got an A, your school may cancel out those Fs with the A, but LSAC will not be as forgiving and averages it all in. Something to keep in mind, although I'm sure most schools will look at your most recent history more closely than the overall gpa given how it's calculated. Also for the first time, some schools (including Harvard) are letting students submit their GRE scores rather than taking the LSAT. I'd imagine that you'd want to really kill all 3 parts of the GRE (I'm pretty hopeless at math) to actually opt to go with that over the LSAT though, and who knows how Harvard would actually weigh a candidate who had a perfect GRE score vs. a perfect LSAT score. That LSAT bias might be built in pretty deep.

=( /gets out trumpet /plays taps

You should totally send Arizona a "YOU CAN'T FIRE ME! I QUIT!" style message.

Yeah, no doubt. If you made it onto WashU's PhD wait list, I'm pretty pretty skeptical that you're not more than qualified for a middle-of-the-pack MA program. That's pretty baffling. But hey, as we all know, admissions is a total crapshoot.

This is absolutely not a shot at Arizona, but...they have a highly competitive history MA program? Is that true of that specific subfield, or? Sorry you got that response. From the sound of it, you have a pretty solid background that should get you into a few good programs you're aiming for!

Per the past few years' survey results, acceptances started rolling in between Feb 21s and the end of the month. Once you get past the first few days of March, things look pretty grim. I'm also a Cornell applicant, mind sharing your area of focus?

I guess that's true, but it'd only matter if a person was a big time poster about the fact that they wanted to go to x school and that they were being a real dick about it somehow, I think. I mean, there's no direct connection between that anonymous post on the survey page and any account here, plus generally speaking there are 2+ applicants for a lot of the major programs on here that post on the forums. I'm certainly not suggesting that people shouldn't do what they think is best and protect themselves, but I think there's a pretty negligible value to privacy here in terms of someone from the admissions department who could (if they wanted to) possibly match an account with an applicant. Cornell would have zero trouble figuring out who I am based solely on my avatar picture here much less anything else I've posted/PM'd to people; it's not a problem from my end because I don't tear through the forums trolling people, I guess. =)

Yeah, that's why it's a little bit frustrating when people don't post them. I guess it could identify you to the department if you post your stats and they know when you were accepted, but it's completely anonymous so I don't see what you'd have to lose. It's not like it's attached to an account where you were smack-talking the school for getting decisions out late or something. At the end of the day it's not a big deal but it's interesting to see how you stack up against people who get into really good programs, even though as well all know scores are only a small part of an applicant's profile.

Bottom one, "Interview via Other on 7 Feb 2018," there's a red diamond next to it.

That's weird. Where does it pull the info that displays when you mouseover the diamond by the decision and date from, I wonder?

That's weird. I've actually never submitted a decision on the site, so no idea. Very strange that sometimes it manages to go through though, seemingly.

I wish these Yale admits on the survey would post their damn stats. Really not for any reason other than my curiosity, but still.

You're not wrong, I just wonder how well established you have to be in a big firm before you have the luxury of taking more days at home working and taking off to go see your kid's soccer game or piano recital. I currently live in a very rural county with a number of smalltown lawyers who have nice schedules and do well enough for themselves but had to spend years establishing themselves and earning business, too. I guess the tradeoff in the big city is guaranteed work and salary for your efforts. I'm sure you're right that lawyers in big firms who aren't deadset on making partner can afford more time away from the office, and that'd certainly be appealing to me if I were a parent. One of the really frustrating things about law is the potential debt. I knew a few lawyers from my sister's graduating class who really wanted to do public interest (both because they made it through 3 years of law school and still remained determined to help the little guy and because they wanted more time with family) but had way too much debt by the time they got out of school. There are a few programs with debt forgiveness but they're not always available across the board. One of the draws for me with academia is that while there's certainly opportunity cost and some lost wages in those years you sink into the degree, you at least make a relatively liveable income (even if it doesn't allow for a lavish lifestyle) and walk away without another $100k+ in debt. Granted you're going to make a fraction of what the guy who scored the BigLaw job right out of Harvard makes, but eh. EDIT: this thread certainly escalated quickly.

I think you're vastly overreacting if you took anything anyone said as a statement that you're stupid or that anyone's really "getting worked up" about your question. I think ExponentialDecay was just pointing out that even if you manage to land a tenure track teaching job, there's no guarantee that (especially early on) you'll have a schedule that is conducive to you spending a lot of time with your kids. You might get stuck teaching night classes, late afternoon classes, 7AM classes (at some schools), have classes 5 days a week at odd times, these things happen. And in your pre-tenure years (and also as an adjunct) you're really not going to be in a position to rock the boat about the timing of your courses. It's just something to think about; I'm not sure there's always going to be an optimal solution. You may have to resign yourself to making sacrifices when it comes to time with your kids if you're really serious about a PhD and the tenure track. In terms of law, the kind of flexibility that Ragu describes is certainly possible, but that has certainly not been the experience (admittedly rather anecdotal) of my sister and a few of my friends who work at BigLaw firms in NYC. That isn't to say that it's not possible to be a lawyer and have a good home life, but at times when cases are "all hands on deck" you're spending a lot of time at the office. I'd imagine that you're going to have more time with your kids as an academic, but of course that's assuming the stars align and you end up with a tenure track gig right out of the gate rather than trying to work 3+ different adjuncting jobs on different campuses. One thing that's kind of nice about law is that for the most part you end up staying/working in the state where you go to school/pass the bar. That might be a better option for family stability/kids' lives. With academic jobs you move wherever you can find full time work, even if it's somewhere you'd really rather not settle down. (Looking at you, deep South [from my perspective]) If you don't mind me asking (because you didn't mention it), are you in a relationship already where the possibility of kids is on the table, or is this more of a theoretical "When I move to a new place for grad school I'd like to meet someone, have a relationship, and have kids" question? I'm only asking because if there's no relationship or kids in the picture right now, you have a lot more flexibility to move and figure things out. I really don't think that anyone's comments here were intended to be condescending, don't overthink it. =)

Yeah, I feel you with some of this. (Particularly while doing all of the tedious final edits on my thesis over the past week or so) If I don't get in this year I'm honestly thinking about taking the LSAT and just applying to everything I have any interest in next year: history PhD programs, law school, the Peace Corps, and Teach for America. A history PhD is what I want to do above all else, but I'm not going to go through a third cycle if I reapply in fall '18 and don't get in anywhere. I'm in my mid 30s and I've wasted enough time before starting a career. And realistically, there's not much I can do after this fall to improve my applicant profile for PhD programs, so while I know there's luck involved and it's possible that a year later the same stats might get me into a different program, I just can't afford to wait around forever in the hopes that the stars align for me. It's interesting that you mention joint law/phd programs. I looked at those as well but most of them seemed to be higher tier. Which lower tier ones would you consider?

I have good news and bad news. Good news is that I happened to have downloaded it, but the bad news is that I did so back in feb of 2016 so it's 2 years old. In any case, here it is if people wanna share/add/see/whatever. That's an open edit link but I still have a separate copy as well so if something happens again it's not a big deal. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W69Cz4WzllK2r5tf2_qKaf8pfqMp8Ggy/view?usp=sharing Lemme know if that works.