MMii

I received my rejection from U-Mich today!

It's really tricky, the only way I'm making it work is because I have friends on the East Coast I can stay with in between campus visits and I'm busy writing my MA thesis so have flexi time but it will be quite disruptive in any case. I feel it's really important for my decision-making though so the benefits outweigh the costs. Incidentally, I actually did contact one of the schools to find out about visiting days. I had to apply for a visa which takes at least two weeks so I wanted to work their campus visit in (I only asked for the dates, not the status of my application). For those of us travelling internationally and who need visas it's not really possible to leave the travel bookings to the last minute so I didn't feel presumptuous doing it.

@realmarcelproust I received an offer from Yale last week.

@Gwarth I've heard back from Yale but not U-Mich. It looks like some people have received acceptances to U-Mich though.

Yeah, I hear you - I'll be reimbursed for most of my travel expenses but it's the initial outlay which is tricky. I need a B1, which hopefully will be fine but takes a bit of time to organize, do the interview, process etc.

South Africa There actually is a direct flight which is only 16 hours but, alas, not on a student's budget. Where are you coming from?

At this stage I'm facing a 60 hour round trip (cheapest flight and only one I can possibly manage right now), but I think it's totally worth it to get a sense of where I'll be living for the next 5+ years Here's hoping the visa works out. Congrats on your acceptances!

Thanks so much @Calgacus - great suggestions.

African history is mine! Focus on twentieth century South Africa intellectual history.

@viridian , thank you so much! That is really so helpful in confirming/clarifying what I had read and thought I understood. I'll definitely double check with the department about tuition though.

Hi everyone, I have a question about funding for those who have more experience with the US system. I'm an international student, who cannot afford to take on any debt for PhD studies and as I have received my first offer I thought it would be prudent to get my head around what constitutes a 'good' funding package? If I have been offered 19 quarters of support including funding for five years and four summers, does this mean that my tuition will be waived or covered for the duration or is it more complex than this? I'll obviously contact the department to find out more, but wondered if anyone here has insight about this. The funding packages in the US seem much more complicated than the ones offered in my home country (which are often just lump sum annual amounts, and tuition is comparably negligible). TIA

Excellent! Congrats to you too What's your subfield?

Thank you! Very happy/relieved to have received an acceptance!

Northwestern decisions are out (some of them, at least). I just received an acceptance via the Graduate School.

Thank you.

I use zotero for bibliography, evernote for longer note-taking and scrivener for writing and research notes related to specific chapters. Have you tried scrivener? It offers a digital index card system as one of its features which sounds like it would suit what you're trying to do and which one can attach to longer thoughts/essays about the book. (As if you're attaching an index card with skeletal data to a hard copy of a paper). One of the great features is being able to view these cards in corkboard view which is basically an overview where you can move around and sort the cards into themes etc. It is also extremely useful for thesis-writing (actually its main function is for writing typescripts).

That sounds interesting - seems like our interests overlap somewhat! I'll PM you, would be great to keep in touch in the future.

I'm happy to read over it. No expert at all, but I sent mine to a number of people and got some useful general feedback that I could perhaps draw on

Oh interesting - what's your time period and which movements? It is indeed, I know many on the home front working on the region but am curious about the extent of the interest abroad!

Thanks!! Trying to take a 'let the chips fall where they may' approach but it's not really working

Is there anybody out there? What are you guys planning to work on, what are you reading etc. etc.? I'm currently working on social welfare in South Africa but am planning to branch out for my PhD research and work on race, identity and discourses on the state in twentieth century southern Africa. Would love to hear what other new research is on the cards

Hi Soheila, I'm also an international applicant. I took the GRE in October after prepping for a few months. I used the official ETS study guides for Verbal and Quant practice and bought the Kaplan Quant study guide. I only read after buying the guides that the Kaplan is not recommended as the practice tests are easier than the actual test, but I actually found it very useful. I hadn't done maths since high school (~10 years) and found it to be a great refresher. As I'm in the humanities, for quant I just wanted to score that fell in what I felt (after some research) was an acceptable range (154-158) and the material was sufficient to get me there. For verbal, I practised using powerprep, the ETS practice books and Magoosh's free resources and it ended up being fine. Where I fell down was in Analytical Writing, which in truth, I didn't spend any time prepping for. In hindsight, this was probably a mistake but I couldn't spend any more money on the GRE so I decided not to retake it.

So interesting to see what everyone's reading Currently reading Rape: A South African Nightmare by Pumla Dineo Gqola, Derrida's Memoirs of the Blind, and re-reading Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History by Keith Breckenridge & Simon Sretzer Novel list for December: Achebe's Arrow of God and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (which mysteriously appeared in my bookshelf)

Hi everyone, I'm new to this site and just wanted to say good luck to everyone applying this cycle I submitted my last app yesterday, now to try forget about it for a few months! Any aspiring Africanist Historians out there?