ChibaCityBlues

I also got the official acceptance email from UT Austin, but I haven't posted on the results page. I'm also Caribbean/Latin America.

I'm also African Diaspora/Caribbean and so when I saw your post I thought I had identified my competition in the adcoms, but then I noticed that you and I didn't apply to any of the same places. I guess I always thought that there were sufficiently few of us around that we would all be applying to the same programs and for the same positions. Glad to realize otherwise.

Same boat here. Either the mass rejection email is taking it's time dispersing, we're in and haven't been informed yet, or we're in the actual Yale purgatory.

Just to expand on a point, I'm currently finishing up my MA at a "safety school" and I absolutely love it here. Professors at safety schools went to the same universities as those at top school. They're often top people in their particular fields and because they aren't super professor are often more grounded, friendly, and collegial with students. Also, I feel the days where the general intellectual conservatism of the Ivies can be disregarded are coming to an end. Someone I know at Michigan recounted that she finished up all her course work before the topic of gender ever came up in any substantive manner. That's so ridiculous it's almost inexcusable.

I received an email from the Graduate Program Administrator this morning. My field is the African Diaspora/Caribbean. I'd be interested if anyone has any information of what this weekend is all about. How much is it like an interview? How much of it is just a meet and greet? Am I mostly accepted, or do I have to put on a good show? Etc.

Just received an invite to Prospective Student Weekend at NYU.

Just to get this straight. There is no one here applying to work with Lillian Guerra at Yale, Rebecca Scott at Michigan, or Ada Ferrer at NYU on anything to do with any aspect of the Spanish Caribbean?

Not to be the curmudgeon, but isn't the whole point of the articles linked to earlier in this thread that statistically none of us will have the choice of teaching at an Ivy, R1, or SLAC? That if we do get tenure track positions it will most likely be at East Jesus Tech in Hill Billy, USA, and that more likely it'll be the case that we will be adjuncting at the local community college for as many years as it takes our significant others to get sick of the lack of money and demand that we get real jobs? questioning whether we'd be happy teaching at a SLAC is like daydreaming about what life would be like if we won the lottery. Except we actually believe it's a "choice" we'll have. I talked about this very issue a few days ago with a grad student who recently defended her dissertation and her stress was palpable. Very few job openings, hundreds and hundreds of equally qualified people applying to each one. I like the idea mentioned in one of the articles that perhaps the best thing for all of us would be if the value of the Phd were better recognized outside of academia. Surely the private sector is in need highly intelligent people with proven writing, research, and analytic skills. Hell, imagine the coherence boost print journalism in the USA would experience if we all became journalists?

The thing I found most interesting about the referenced articles isn't that they describe a demographic of graduate students with unrealistic expectations, but that they point to the failure of realistic professional mentorship on the part of faculty members. The thing is, those articles can describe the objective reality of the academy as a work place, but that isn't the version of the academy any faculty members I know of are familiar with. Something like 96% of the faculty at my university got their degrees from the Ivies, with the rest from schools such as Michigan, NYU, and Oxford. They have their tenure track jobs. They get published. All their colleagues are in the same boat. Probably goes for their friends as well. In other words, they made it. And even they are bitter, because they are only teaching at a big public university and not at Harvard or Yale. I mean, it's been mentioned often how perspective graduate students are likely those who have been praised all their lives for doing well. Well, it's no different for much of the faculty that advise us. In the end you have a system where a small group of elites with unrealistic conceptions of what it means to be an academic advise a much larger group of aspiring elites to have unrealistic expectations. Leave it to a bunch of smart people to come up with such an unfortunate system.

Well then... since every topic on this forum has been addressed time and time again ad nauseum, to an obsessive degree by some, I trust you think we should all just stop posting? We could all just read the 2007 archive and be done with it.

http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846/ I know my decision to pursue a doctoral degree would not have been affected had I read this article, but it makes some very good points. I guess the main reason why it doesn't bother me is because I have no intention of becoming a professor upon attaining my degree, an aspiration I don't talk about in my current department or in any of my application documents. Thoughts?

F that. I can objectively say the last 10 years sucked.

That's like being annoyed that one has to get wet in order to swim. I think you have the wrong idea about what an SOP is supposed to communicate. It isn't just about describing what you are interested in researching. It's about demonstrating that you are capable of conceptualizing an appropriate dissertation topic that can be appropriately researched, that can be appropriately overseen by a faculty member, and most importantly, that is relevant in terms of contemporary scholarship on the subject. Without accomplishing all these things in your SOP, your application won't be seriously considered. Most graduate students do change their research topics during the course of their studies, but at least their SOPs demonstrated that they are aware of what a properly scoped dissertation topic looks like. Remember, the requirements of a dissertation have already been determined. You are applying to have to opportunity to meet those requirements. If those requirements are offensive to you, then why bother applying? The point isn't that you should accept the offer from the lower ranked school over the higher ranked school just because the fit is better at the lower ranked school, but rather that you aren't going to get an offer from the higher ranked school in the first place if the fit isn't there. As such, if only to save money on admissions fees, there is no point in applying to highly ranked programs unless the fit is there. Nothing to get upset about. Those are just the rules of the game you are asking to participate in.

The tales of disappointment that seem to be prevalent on this forum come from people who don't seem to take the application processes seriously. They decide which universities to apply to based on where they want to graduate from instead of who they want to work with. They come up with inadequately defined or inappropriate research topics that undoubtedly reflect their interest in History, but do not indicate the applicants awareness that they are actually applying to become professional academics. The fact of the matter is that if an applicant goes about the process properly, applying to PhD programs is not a crap shoot. It should go without saying that applicants need to have good academic records. If that is what one is stressing over, then I would recommend not even applying. Beyond that, no one should be applying anywhere unless they have a pretty good indication that they will be seriously considered. This is ascertained not by hoping and praying, but by being in contact with potential advisers and graduate program directors. It doesn't take a lot of time to email a professor asking if they would be interesting in working with you given your research interests. In the end, any number of reasons might mitigate against one's application, but being dully diligent and only applying to places you know you're wanted increases your odds of being accepted well above what the game of craps has to offer.

The way doctoral plans of study are generally structured, geographic fields take precedence over topical fields such as intellectual history. And since the geographic field is determined by your research topic, it makes sense that doctoral programs place greater weight on how prospective students frame their research interests in terms of a geographic field. This is changing though. African Diaspora is an example of a topical field that is being treated like a primary field by more and more departments. I majored in Comp Sci before moving to History at the grad level. Having the Comp Sci background has been nothing but beneficial and if I have any advice for people who want to do graduate studies in the humanities, it's to double major in Comp Sci as an undergraduate.

I received an email and a few days later an envelope. This was last week. NYU doesn't fund MA students as a matter of course. Over two years, why would anyone go $60K in debt to get a degree that 'might' get you into a PhD program, and if so 'might' allow you a professional future with no real hope of ever paying off that debt?

I've just received the acceptance email for the MA in World History. I've also been accepted with a full tuition waiver and a part-time TA to my second choice program. Any chance NYU is going to match that? thanks.