Danger_Zone

In choosing a program, trust your gut. It knows better than your head.

Maybe he's going out of town because his mother is having a health crisis and he needs to bring her to her appointments, and he doesn't have room in his bag for a bunch of student work, but he feels responsible for his class and wants to return the papers to his students quickly.
Maybe he lost it, because he's a person.
Maybe you made a lot of typos, so he wants to use spellcheck to correct it faster.
Maybe he was doing research in the local zoo and your paper was gnawed on by rampaging wildebeests, and he would like to review a copy that's free from wildebeest tooth marks.
Why do you think that your university has a policy that students need to keep copies of their own work? Give me three reasons that could become useful. Let me tell you, they have that policy for a reason.

As someone who has long suffered from social anxiety, I very much understand your feelings. Back in the early days of my very long trek through undergrad, the hour or so prior to giving a presentation in class was filled with worry, quivering hands, elevated heart rate, nausea, and occasionally some vomiting. I have since developed a better ability to cope with the stress of talking in front of people (although to be honest, it was less about being in front of people and more about the fear of strangers thinking that I'm a complete idiot or me screwing up everything I say), but I still get nervous before presentations and before I teach my lab.
So my tips for you - first off, when doing a lecture, you will have a plan. Maybe you'll be using a power point presentation, maybe you'll be lecturing to them and writing some notes on a chalk board or white board. There are other situations as well, but since you're in history, those are probably the two situations you'll be in. Either way, you come into the classroom with a plan for what material you're going to cover, and ideally you will either go through your presentation slides/notes a few times and go over in your head what you will be saying, or you will practice out loud. I find that going through the presentation out loud helps me remember the order of material better and makes me feel more comfortable when I actually deliver the lecture. Since I only lecture for about 10 minutes before biology lab starts, it's not very time consuming to run through the lecture one or two times. If I had to lecture for a full hour, I might not have time to go through the whole thing once out loud, let alone multiple times. However, I would still want to read through my slides a few times and make a few notes.
My second tip is that it's perfectly fine to have some notes written/printed out on some paper with you to help you if you forget something or just to guide you along. Don't feel like you have to have everything memorized perfectly - maybe there are some numbers or names that you can't quite remember, and that's ok. Maybe you just covered something really interesting for 20 minutes and you can't remember what comes next - that's ok! Just look at your notes! I've seen TA's do this and I've seen seasoned faculty do this.
Third, break up the lecture if you can. No one enjoys talking for an hour (or more) straight, and no one likes listening to it, either. Plan for some discussion, include interesting materials to class if you can that will add to the lecture, like videos, photographs, even books that you might want to read a passage from. If you can, include some type of activity for students to do. 
Fourth, I also understand what it's like to have a quiet/soft voice. Depending on the size of the class and the acoustics of the room, it might not matter. It's probably best to encourage your students to let you know if they can't hear you. As long as you make it clear that they aren't being rude if they interrupt to tell you to speak louder, I find that students have no problem letting you know if you're being too quiet. A really good tactic to use though is to move throughout the classroom or stand close to/in the middle of the students instead of staying up front by the board or computer. A wireless clicker is great for this when doing computer presentations. If you're stuck handwriting on the board, you'll have to move back and forth. This will allow them to hear you better and if you move about the room, will probably keep their attention better, too.

Write detailed lecture notes and study them beforehand. Foster discussion, have in-class activities, and show interesting short videos.

Well, its official.  After the last result I was waiting for, I am going to be studying Religion in War in U.S. History at the University of Tennessee!

Hello all! I just sent a PM to someone with this info, but figured for the common good--and to correct some of the statements on GradCafe from memories of my own thinking about whether to attend--I should add to this forum. I am a MAPSS alum who had a 1/2 tuition scholarship and who had to take out student loans to pay for the rest. Attending was the best decision I ever made.
When I applied to PhD programs the first time, I received no PhD offers (there are several reasons for this), but I was really considering not going to MAPSS since everyone denigrates the program on GradCafe and calls it a "cash cow." I felt like it might be some joke going to the program. But, if you work extremely hard, it can pay off immeasurably. This round, with the MAPSS degree, the story changed completely: I received 5 funded PhD offers, including 3 at ivy league schools (one of which is #1 in my field). Since PhD offers are fully-funded these days, I feel like the investment literally pays back with funded offers, not to mention that I did get a job and have been able to pay off a good amount of loans just this year. 
Most people, I will admit, decide in that MAPSS year that they don't want to do a PhD though, so you'd have to be comfortable with the idea of taking out loans if you decide the PhD is not for you. Also, not every PhD application story is the same as my own--everyone has different experiences so nothing is a guarantee. BUT, every year MAPSS gets people who didn't get many (if any) great PhD offers and then every year they churn out students who get accepted into the top programs their next time around. And I cannot stress enough that it is completely how much you put into it: MAPSS gives you the access/chance to be seen by the top scholars in your field, but then the ball is in your court after that. But if you're a really serious student then you shouldn't listen to those on GradCafe who usually don't even go to the school, or who are undergrads with tangential experience. MAPSS has a wonderful placement rate that you can be a part of if you work for it! And I am happy to meet with anyone visiting the campus for more information if you're interested.

That's definitely good advice! I went on and e-mailed somebody from Purdue recently and he has been very helpful in discussing where graduates have ended up. I need to get more details but it sounded fairly positive.

Thank you both. It's just difficult to accept that I'm probably automatically at a disadvantage because of my school's ranking. But I'm absolutely determined to do the best I possibly can, and I hope that takes me somewhere eventually.

Thank you both. It's just difficult to accept that I'm probably automatically at a disadvantage because of my school's ranking. But I'm absolutely determined to do the best I possibly can, and I hope that takes me somewhere eventually.

Don't let the rankings discourage you. If you determined this was your top choice then it seems that this program was a perfect fit with your interests, which will go a long ways. 
Be excited. PhD programs, no matter the rankings, are incredibly difficult to be admitted to. 

Don't ever fear about the job market - you have absolutely zero sway in how it operates or functions. Take advantage of the school you have chosen, work your butt off, produce (publish, network, etc.), and be one of the better doctoral students that department has ever seen. Seriously though, do not feel bad that you aren't at one of ten schools in America...most of us aren't

It may be productive to think about how rank is a constructed bias that functions in a problematic framework of unequal distribution and access, and which does not necessarily reflect quality and in no one influences the kind of scholar a student becomes. Rank is valuable to consider in terms of resources, like which programs have the best facilities and libraries, whatever. For other purposes, talking about rank can be a little insensitive to people who don't have a lot of options. Just something to think about. 

I would very much prefer to be put on a wait list than to hear nothing, even if I happened to be low on that list. At least it gives me a better idea of my potential options. Being on a wait list is by no means an acceptance, so I don't know if they just don't want to get people's hopes up or if there is another reason.
Also, I definitely agree that it's important to visit before making your decision, I learned that personally. For my undergrad I was set on attending one school, but during the visit I absolutely hated the campus and atmosphere and people actually seemed pretty rude. I was there for an audition, so the person who looked at my portfolio was pretty nice to me, but everything else made me uncomfortable. I took another campus visit to a school I was considering and it was not only beautiful, but people were incredibly helpful and friendly and it just made me feel "right" to be there. It's really important to me that I have that feeling or I'm probably not going to be very happy about where I am!

Oh don't worry! I think, pure speculation, but based on the context and the tone of the gossip I got from a prof, it has been an issue with ideological matching. So if you did your research and picked a POI that is ideologically compatible, you have nothing to worry about. (This is my way of gently saying I think the issue is they let in a couple of right-wing scholars and it's not going well.) 

What is your field? If you don't get a chance to visit but want to know more about student life in general at UIUC, I'd be happy to chat.  

Unfortunately no, the grad secretary just said she didn't have a definite answer for me and apologized for it taking so long. I just really wish if it's a no that they would tell me. I only have a limited opportunity to visit campuses before the deadline, and it's really expensive for me to do so. So I don't really want to go all the way to Illinois on the very small chance that I'll get a yes...

I just finished doing all my visits in one week. I'm so exhausted right now. Now comes the waiting part for the universities as I process all this information and try to decide.

I would say, while I completely agree that you should inquire about rejections, it would be best to wait until April at earliest to ask. If you were to ask now, they still are dealing with waitlistings and acceptances, so you are more likely to get a poorly thought-out, generic response.

I'm a MAPSS alum, and I just went through my admissions cycle for my PhD. More on that in a minute.

The post above with the information from another MAPSS alum is pretty spot on. I'll add some random thoughts to it. Overall, if you have a funded PhD offer, I'd go for it. If you don't have another option, or you have unfunded offers staring you in the face versus a MAPSS funding offer (I had a quite generous MAPSS offer and nothing else, so I had to take it), it's worth looking into. Yes it's a cash cow, but it can also do wonders for you.

-Yes, there tends to be cliques that form along disciplinary lines. It's just something that is bound to happen. You have your preceptor group, which will group you with other students who are doing roughly the same things, which then becomes this sort of recurring cast of characters that show up in all of your classes. My MAPSS cohort was unusually large, so we were simply everywhere. After a while, I began to wonder where all the actual PhD students were, because it seemed like all my classes were 75% MAPSS, 20% PhD, 5% random smattering of undergrads and other professional schools (law, business). My preceptor seemed to be steering a lot of people into the same classes, so we kind of formed this little cohort within ourselves, and ended up bouncing our work off of each other as the year went on. That helped.

-MAPSS is tough, but keep in mind it's not strictly a 9-month program. Yes, you have 3 quarters to do your 9 courses, but you have a year after the end of your final course term to turn in your thesis and still have a faculty reader. You can take even more time after that (met a few people who were doing just that), but then you don't get a faculty reader. Personally, I came into MAPSS with a fully-formed project that got even better the more I got my ass kicked by my profs, and I turned it in at the exact minimum amount of time. I was lucky. The stats, if I recall correctly, are like 20-25% finish in the 9 months, another 50% finish by the end of summer term (essentially gives you about six extra weeks to write), and the vast majority of the remaining 25% are done within the year. Really, it's not that hard to do, they want you to write a journal article-length thesis. Do good work, but don't get overwhelmed with it.

-Do know that MAPSS can be a difficult social experience. You're there for 9 months. It's intense, you're busy, and it's difficult to make close friendships when you're basically all scattered to the wind as soon as it's over anyway. By the time you really know people, you're done.

-Now having been through the PhD application process with them, and talking to my classmates about their experiences, it seems on the whole people have been less than pleased with the actual involvement MAPSS has with your applications versus how they sold us on what that support would be. The only thing they will actually do is have whoever the point person is for your discipline write you one of your letters of recommendation. IF, that is, you apply to 8-10 schools, and they approve of where you're applying. You'll go to a meeting during spring quarter where Professor MacAloon will get up and give a really intimidating speech about the process, they give you this document on what to do, and send you on your way. It wasn't the clearest document, I found it incredibly frustrating at times, but I ended up doing most of what they said and got exactly one acceptance (so far, but it's looking like that's it), which happened to be my dream program. I'm lucky. I wouldn't be surprised if some of my classmates weren't. I talked to some folks who were applying at like 15 schools, others as low as 7. MAPSS' reputation speaks for itself, but it still only gets you so far. If you're not ready, they'll tell you. But the odds are, if you do everything, if you're competent and do good work, and you finish your MA by the time the application season rolls around, they'll support you, and the statistics show you'll probably get a funded offer somewhere (remember, MAPSS stats reflect funded offers only).

-Do be prepared for the fact that MAPSS has a mixed reputation amongst the faculty. Most of the students are pretty cool about MAPSS folk, but the profs are another story. It took me 4-5 months to find a faculty advisor for my thesis, which was an incredibly frustrating and demeaning experience at times. I ended up finding someone who was absolutely wonderful and helped me immensely, but it was a happy accident to say the least. My preceptor was helpful, but not as much as was possible. I got bumped from a class because I was a MAPSS student, I tried fighting it, and was told basically that the prof was within her rights to do it. Some professors really like MAPSS kids, some of them absolutely do not.

-Hyde Park is Hyde Park. Don't worry about living there, it's perfectly fine and has a lot of great restaurants and bookstores and such, but do take the time to figure out how to get out. And allow yourself to do it. Chicago is so incredible, with so much going on, that it's not worth sequestering yourself on the south side. Go and explore. CTA is your friend, as is the weekend UC shuttle bus that stops at the Roosevelt L stop until like 3AM.

-I can say, finally, that my MAPSS experience ended up putting me in the position to be where I wanted to be, and I'm 100% glad I did it. But I was a bit of an odd case in that I had a project that was ready to go, and didn't have to worry about things like figuring out a topic and searching local archives to find a project, which is what a lot of people end up doing. I found the program to be incredibly frustrating at times, UC can be an extraordinarily cruel and cold place, but ultimately, it is what you make it. Don't allow yourself to get sucked up in the negativity that MAPSS engenders in some people, make sure you go to all the grad socials and preceptor group nights and milk every last free drink you can get out of it, don't spend too much time at the Reg (the library) if you don't have to, get in, get out, get your degree. Move on with your life.

I'll also say that for a lot of people, they go into MAPSS thinking they 100% want to get a PhD, and by the end of fall quarter, that number has probably dropped in half. It's a great way of trying out graduate work without having a 5+ year program staring you in the face. If you find out you hate it, finish up, and go to the real world. If you can't wait for more once you're done, all the better.

If I can be of any more help, feel free to ask. I'm a longtime lurker, didn't want to register, but I thought it might help if I did for this.

A professor at my undergrad university did her PhD at Notre Dame and said it's a wonderful program and school, so congrats! 

That's awesome, congrats!! 

Just got accepted at Carnegie Mellon off the wait list! Holy cow, I wasn't expecting that.

~~~Bumpity Bump Bump~~~

If your season is (mostly) over for 2016, feel free to post about your experiences, what you would do differently, what you would do the same, and generally offer a reflection on the process that perhaps other prospective applicants can read and evaluate as they move forward.  

I don't think anyone takes it personally when you turn down an offer. As long as you do so in a courteous and polite way I don't see any problem. After all, it was these professors who have gotten you this far, they should be happy for you. I also think it's good to keep in contact with faculty from your undergraduate school, especially if they had a significant influence on your decision to attend grad school or wrote you letters of recommendation. That might help make you feel less anxious about the whole thing.

I would contact her. I am visiting Rutgers next week and plan to meet with several faculty members. Note, I have not accepted their offer either. I have had nothing but incredibly positive feedback when reaching out, especially after being accepted.