Concordia

Make sure you have a segment of 30-35pp that is worth reading on its own, even if it doesn't tell the full story.

Since you're doing 30 pages, perhaps taking the original and figuring out which 20 can go would be the best thing. If you're cutting a big section and not just slimming down paragraphs, I suppose you could make a note where the cut occurred and maybe a squib about what is missing. Obviously, you want to make sure that whatever is left shows off your knowledge and writing ability by itself. Can one of your MA faculty offer some guidance?

I extracted two coherent excerpts from my thesis. (These totalled 5,000 words out of 20,000.) I also inserted a short paragraph before each to make it clear what the section was about. I was trying to show some of my skill and judgment, not passing the effort off as a complete paper. I left the footnotes, making sure that the first mention of each work was now the long one (and not "Thurston, p. 640" or "ibid.") I can't remember if my excerpts included tables I made or the two pictures I used. The excerpts addressed two important segments of my overall argument, and included some features that my examiners commented on favorably (which comments might well have been quoted in my letters of recommendation).

I'm in a city where sometimes everyone seems on their way to or from some kind of post-graduate degree. Some days, and in some places, it seems as though discussing your plans for a doctorate at a top-10 university (US, world, whatever) isn't much different from chatting about where your kids might go to summer camp.

19,997 words (including an allowance for two charts). Requirement was for 16-20k, and they asked for a Word file to double-check that as well as screen for any plagiarism.

My grandfather was a scholar who worked in China before the Revolution. He chose to come up with a close copy of his name in Chinese. Publishing in China wasn't such a big deal-- he just needed to have a name for his cards and that he could introduce himself with. Nobody ever would have doubted that he was foreign; in those days, that might have added to his status a little. In any case, based on the body language in the photos he took, he seemed to get along well with every imaginable kind of person, so perhaps his choice helped.

My master's dissertation ended up being a micro-historical look at a period, which drew on bits of intellectual/political/religious history. My supervisor was terrified of what he saw as the theoretical bent of my university's faculty (he was from another, competing shop), so when people in the department suggested that I look at Quentin Skinner and also the theory of diaries, I made sure to pretend expertise on those areas. [The examiners loved it.] The follow-up won't offer the luxury of being quite that kind of study, unless I find another amazingly pregnant source. So we'll have to work to find the precise tool to crack open the question-- once I know exactly what the question is. Although I'm not aiming to be especially thematic, faculty recommended that I slip a "why we care" paragraph in my application's proposal. I did use that to observe that some part of the chaos I'll be studying might be analogous and relevant to present-day politics. Yecch. Time will tell if this winds up being a Poli Sci or Marketing paper.

If you've finished undergrad, take night classes in the field that interests you-- once you're sure that you're ready to take full advantage. Otherwise, do everything you can to make sure that 2 or 3 professors actually think well of your work and remember who you are. That might mean office hours, research, more-than-minimum creativity on projects, etc.

GPA isn't as huge a requirement for business schools as it is some other places. Mine, for example, was lower than yours , and I still got into Yale and did well. It is true, though, that Yale has historically been more interested in academic types than some other MBA programs. Still, that level of GRE score might translate to a higher GMAT percentile, just given the different populations taking the two tests. And your GPA is well within their norms. Worth an inquiry.

My last name is pretty unusual, at least once you get away from certain ethnic neighborhoods in Canada. For that reason, it won't matter much what other names I use-- there won't be a lot like me in the databases. That said, I always use my full first name (even if everyone else thinks they can abbreviate it), and I add my middle initial when signing documents. I think my master's dissertation required my full middle name, and I don't object to that. It is a short family name of no particular complexity or bad associations. I don't worry about the issue much. The difference between "Firstname Lastname" and "Firstname L. Lastname" isn't going to confuse anyone who sees both forms published, and spelling out the middle name won't make me look like I'm stealing my own identity. For some, of course, middle names can be a problem. My wife's middle name was given as "Stella". She hated that (and wasn't crazy about the person it referred to), so replaced it with "S", which gave her name a nice, crisp kind of authority. There is also the option of ditching a first name altogether when changing addresses. One of my college classmates was listed in the facebook as "Barry S. Lastname" but immediately became "Steve" in his freshman year. Get rid of those playground bullying ghosts! A business-school classmate's given name sounded too much to everyone like "Sharon Stone", which became annoying to her after the famous interview scene hit the big screen. So, she dropped the Sharon and replaced it with a very obscure middle name once she arrived at school. The Southern solution, perhaps.

Don't rule out Yale SOM. New Haven is not New York, but it's not far, either. And it might be a useful springboard.

That's about what I did-- my history applications asked for a sample of 5,000 words, or two shorter samples. I chose two excerpts from my thesis, picking spots that were (a) coherent and fairly interesting in their own right, (b) that I'd done well on, (c) that my examiners had highlighted in their positive comments [which my recommenders might have quoted from to save time], and (d) vaguely relevant to my doctoral proposal, which was tangentially related to my master's topic. I made sure that a few references might have been clarified for any admissions people who didn't know anything about my topic ("President James Monroe"-- not just "Monroe"), and put a half-paragraph intro before each section to establish context and intent. Some of this was strategic in the sense of gaming the system, but it really came down to finding something worth reading that left a decent impression of my best work, and lent strength to the notion that I might continue on. There were a handful of essays from coursework that I might have used instead, but those were necessarily written with less care-- over a few weeks, not most of a year-- and about topics that were more circumscribed. Another option was a successful pre-MSt term paper that discussed the WWII atomic bombings from the point of view of "historical controversy." I had used that for my master's application because it was very good, and the right length, even though it had nothing to do with my topic. For this application, though, I didn't think it was anywhere near as useful as my recently-completed thesis. If nothing else, there was also the risk of running against a committee member who had taken a stance exactly opposite to what I'd chosen, and would be a pill about it. By contrast, my thesis was about a topic that nobody knows much about. Also, the scholar I politely trashed in my excerpts had not much to do with any of the universities to which I was applying.

I did history as an undergrad, and from a little kid was interested in the revolutionary period. I never went deep enough to figure out what new I could say about that, though. Flash forward some years, and I did a night-school class on the history of Boston. Hugely diverse student body in that, from people trying to cure boredom all the way through degree candidates. The official syllabus had the final two papers (out of 3) to be impossible projects. One was three dozen myths and old-wives tales about local history and proving/disproving them with sources. Great stuff but impossible to complete in an adequate way. Anyway, as an alternative to those 2, we were offered an unstructured project based on primary sources. Odd stuff-- one topic was Negro League baseball in New England, and there were some even more off most people's radar. I chose the War of 1812, and stumbled on a more or less unused -- and fantastic -- manuscript, to go along with the newspaper clippings and secondary sources in my frighteningly short paper. To figure out how to make better use of the document, I entered a master's degree at Cambridge. Sadly, the big source has limits on what can be explored by one person, but I will be continuing on a few themes of post-1815 history that were suggested in my dissertation research. It may be that nobody has written about these topics because there is nothing there, but I have a year to find out just how far up the creek I am.

From her point of view, it is probably "I mentioned that I probably needed C to get done, and he had no objection. Now I'm getting this crap?"

Before you worry about that, you might want to think about the best way to achieve a positive result for your own degree. It sounds as if you are approaching Year 2 of a degree. Is there a program director you can contact for guidance in the advisor's absence? Perhaps someone on the inside of this sort of situation can weigh in on the likely political ramifications.

Sounds like B is having a bad day, which is possibly exaggerating a personality disorder.

If you want to give a few good excusesf, you could say "do you remember my work well enough to recommend me to [Fabulous University X]?"

One thing to think about, which probably won't hurt you in the least. Departments do like to know that their graduates will get jobs, and there are some fields where anything but tenure-track academia is still considered a poor second choice. While age discrimination is generally illegal, admissions committees in those areas might therefore feel a little warmer toward youngsters who will bite the ass off a bear now and be an attractive candidate for 40 years of academic service afterward. That problem is almost certainly less relevant to you, since there are plausible applications for your work in government, NGOs, lobbying, consulting of all kinds, journalism, etc. In those occupations, you will be even more attractive with your experience in addition to your state-of-the-art academic work.

Practice obviously will vary-- for my history programs, one didn't even ask for a sample, figuring that if my recommenders couldn't say how wonderful it was they didn't have to bother. The other places asked for two samples (each max. 2.5k words), but said that a single paper of 5k words would also suffice. I ended up choosing the juiciest 5k words from my master's thesis, trying to include a few things that my examiners particularly liked-- comments that my recommenders might have included in their letters if they were feeling lazy or kind. An intro paragraph before each of two sections set the scene, making context a bit more obvious.

It runs the gamut at Cambridge. Often very casual, although daytime seminars or presentations might welcome a suit. One difference there, as in much of the UK, is the need for formal clothes in the evening. Much will depend on your college, but you'll almost certainly have a lot of formal halls and receptions to go to. Some are black tie, the majority will be dark suit for men.

1. Have you found a potential project close to the ground (or through reading of journals)? Talk about it as you're sounding out potential professors to study with. You may end up having a crisp analysis of a problem you'd like to solve. 2. Have your recommenders mention this if they are in a position to speak of it. (Make sure they have a transcript and CV before they start.) Also, if they have an opinion about your research aptitude, they should mention that. 3. No idea. My applications didn't require that.

Phone their offices to see if they're free for appointments (by phone). That will tell you a lot.

I'm busy trying to cut the boring half out of my master's dissertation to bring it to article length, and nobody I've talked to about it seems to have been the least bit worried.

In general, an MA can be a good way to fill gaps in your CV. While it would be nice to get into one now that leads directly to a good PhD, you might do just as well finding a program that lets you improve your record and get yourself in line for a better PhD -- assuming you still want to do that when it is all over. Just make sure that the place you're going (a) isn't totally unknown or despised, and (b) will give you a chance to earn some good recommendations, and maybe even a research project that shows what you're capable of.

Sounds like they want you a lot. Since you'll probably be a stronger student after a year in Salamanca, they are unlikely to think less of you. Worth asking. Of course, a term or two abroad while in the program might be normal and easily arranged.