rsahk

Visit and see what your gut tells you. Both UNC and Notre Dame have excellent reputations in history, though placement obviously varies by subfield. But I can look across top departments in my subfield and see *tons* of people from UNC and ND. By the way, I think you're making the right choice. I have a semi-related area studies MA and I don't think it helped a lick with admissions.

I see that some of you are considering unfunded offers from Wisconsin (and possibly other places as well). Every year the Wisconsin issue seems to arise and people make different decisions about it. The conventional wisdom, with good reason, is don't take unfunded offers, no matter what any school says about how it's ok. A friend of mine went to Wisconsin and left for a different program because the funding situation made things incredibly difficult--and he scraped together funding, though never from the history department. The following information comes directly form him (I'm enrolled in a funded PhD program elsewhere, but was admitted to and considered Wisconsin). According to him, the funding problem is acute and poorly handled. For example, TAships are doled out semester by semester based on a points scale. This means that you can be funded one semester but not the next. He knew third years who did not have TAships because there are limited number of TA spots and those with fellowships are guaranteed spots after their first year (which is a true fellowship). So, if there are 30 spots and 15 fellowship students, there are only 15 spots per semester for the other students to fight for and there are far more than 15 people who want those spots. While he was there, no first years TAed in the history department, though some people were able to get TA positions in other departments. He also said the funding situation means a disproportionate amount of time is spent dealing with funding -- talking about it, complaining about it, applying for it. This took time away from academic work. He also said that the intellectual climate suffered as a result because people griped about money rather than talked about ideas. He's told people (myself included) not to go without funding (again, I considered Wisconsin given the strength of faculty in my field). He said that there are some faculty there who are mavens of finding funding for their students. If you're considering it (and they get a good number of people who were waitlisted at other top programs), talk to your potential advisor as s/he might be good or might not be. Talk to his/her students: are they funded? how/by whom? how often have they been funded? when did they know they would be funded? Finding out August 25 that you have funding for the fall means spending the summer anxious about funding rather than productive about work. Be wary. Get a lot of information. Be skeptical. Then make a decision about whether you can live with uncertain funding for 7-9 years (their average time to degree is 8 years in US history, more in other fields).