fortsibut

"Had bad vibes about this school since the application process. Got accepted elsewhere. Their loss. Fuck em." from a SUNY Binghampton history PhD applicant with a 3.4 GPA, verbal GRE at the 8th percentile, and quant at the 12th percentile. The scores are so bad that I almost feel like it's a troll. EDIT: Weird, that one's from 2012. My search must be all wonky.

And another one, this one pretty butthurt: "I'm such a winner because I didn't get into any schools in my first cycle so that I have to pay $$$ to get a useless mater degree. I score perfectly on GRE (btw, if you want to know, it's 321, I doubt if anyone can beat me). And USC only gives me $28,930 each year. Are they stupid? They aren't going to get me with this. I belong to Harvard. We will see"

Not a funny one, per se, but the wording on it was interesting: "Rejected for not being a 'fit' due to my interest in a certain theory/therapy type. APA and ACA Ethics violation." I'd like to hear more of that story. (Sorry, not sure how to just link an image of the line like other people are doing)

That's a pretty fantastic analogy. =)

Good advice, guys, thank you! AfricanusCrowther: which programs did you end up applying to, just out of curiosity? As far as the LSAT goes, I was planning to put in ~10 hours a week or so earlier in the supper for studying, and ramping it up in August and September. (Test is at the end of September this year, I believe) Think that'll be enough time? alain: thanks for the info, that sounds like a great program, even though Stanford's a tough place to get in! Do you attend there?

As I mentioned in another thread, I grew up in the Central African Republic where my parents worked as medical missionaries. We ended up doing a lot of road trips out into the bush for a variety of reasons, and there always seemed to be a site of historical value around. I loved listening to oral histories, and I vividly remember a 5 km hike that ended up at the top of a small, flat-topped mountain with crumbling waist-high rock walls around parts of the perimeter. One of my parents' friends from a nearby village told us about how the entire village used the mountain as a refuge from slave traders generations earlier; when lookouts saw the slavers coming, the entire village would gather their things and flee the 6+ kilometers to the mountain, where they were able to more easily defend themselves. According to oral tradition, the village never lost one of their own. =) Needless to say, stories like that and my experiences growing up really drew me to the field of history. I'm still really interested in the history of slavery in the region, although for undergrad I've mostly worked on Central African missions history. Maybe I'll refocus on slavery for my PhD, if I get the chance to work on one!

That's true and I'd definitely enjoy that, but wouldn't that possibly put me at risk of looking indecisive to future potential employers? I'm an Africanist and not a legal historian, might be tough to find a good fit. I'll look into it though, thanks for the suggestion!

I'm taking the GRE late summer, and applying for PhD programs this coming fall While I love history and my dream is to get a PhD and teach, I also have an interest in law so I'll also be taking the LSAT in the fall and seeing how that goes as well. If I do really well on both tests, I'll probably apply to 6-8 PhD programs if I can find that many that are a good fit for my specialization, as well as a few law schools. If I get a funded offer for a good PhD program, I'm doing that. If not and if I get a great offer from a law school (mostly paid), I might go that route, but I'd be more likely to go one more application cycle for a PhD before jumping into law. If I do horribly on both tests, don't get in anywhere, and don't do any better in the next cycle, I'm going to to go teach high school in Switzerland.

On a sort of related note, any of you have any ideas about some kind of archival software that can label files with different tags? I've been working on a project where I have access to a document scanner, and I've been scanning to PDF files. Navigating through file folders and trying to keep everything straight is a real hassle though, and it'd be so much nicer if there was software with an interface that let you throw tags on each file like "Africa," "Missions," "Gender," "(person's name)," etc. and use it to pull up those docs as well. (I guess similar to what you can do in Gmail with emails) My google-fu has been failing me, though. Right now I try to keep things organized on Google Drive, but there's a space cap and it's still not really idea. I'd appreciate any advice you have. I've had a solid undergrad education from a history and language perspective, but I haven't had access to archival courses or information. Thanks!

That's awesome, congrats! Hope you find a great job to go with it!

That's really interesting, and UMass sounds like a really solid program. I grew up in the Central African Republic where my parents worked as medical missionaries, so I fell in love with the region pretty early on. I've been doing work in missions and gender history for my honors thesis, (self-funding research trips, since my undergrad college doesn't have much funding to help out) and I'm mostly interested in the C.A.R, D.R.C, and Cameroon. I'd be willing to expand to East Africa if that's what it took to get into a PhD program, a lot of interesting study there too. But I really feel that Central Africa as a region is way understudied, and ideally I'd like to focus there. Tough to find a good fit though, my early picks would be Wisconsin, Northwestern, Oxford, Yale, Michigan State, Michigan, and Boston U. Pretty exclusive group though, so I'd have to really kill it on the GRE, although I have good grades and recommendations and a couple of conference presentations coming up. As far as topics within the region, I'm interested in missions, religious syncretism, slavery, and gender issues, among other things. Do you have a specific topic or idea for your PhD, or have you not gotten that far along yet? I'd be interested to read your bio of Lumumba if you ever post it publicly...what a sad story that whole situation was. Also sad that your adviser had to switch his specialization because of political turmoil. I guess in a sense it'd be refreshing to switch it up a little, but after years (decades?) working in an area you love, that's tough.

Hey there. I'm actually looking to apply this coming fall for grad programs, also with a Central African focus. (Not too many of us out there, it seems!) What made you choose those two programs specifically? I looked over the professors' areas of interests, and while I can see the BU fit, I don't see it for UMass. What made that an attractive program for you? Congrats to everyone else who has been getting acceptances, hopefully I'll be this luck this time next year. =)