OHSP

You'll find the right place!

When you reach out to a school asking when decisions are going to be released they will tell you something like "late February" even when they have sent out all acceptances and waitlists, it's just how it works.

Sorry about the extremely tough cycle. The GRE is so intensely meaningless when it comes to hist application that when depts keep it I assume it has to do solely with the university. If it's optional and you can avoid it, then avoid it -- it's a waste of time and money and says nothing about your abilities as a historian.

You might be right but I highly doubt it -- there's no real reason for them to hold off on telling accepted students, they just add the caveat that an acceptance is contingent upon the university's approval.

Don't look at messaging, talk to students. What schools are you applying to and what's your field? Don't trust lists of current students to work out who's in the department, they're not always up to date.

That's relatively standard. My program has admitted max 3 Americanists in the past four years.

It’s fair to be nervous! My advice though is that you just have no idea what’s going on in a dept, and the admissions season is not over until it’s over. Covid obviously makes shit worse but departments are always somewhat unpredictable. There have been more posts this year in which people begin to despair prematurely. Despairing will just make everything worse—see if you can just tell yourself that the probability of hearing anything before the end of Jan is very unlikely, and then get on with whatever else you need to do. It’s definitely harder said than done but let the admissions cycle run its course before you assume that you’re out of the running. **this isn’t really a response to @QuarantineQuail, just following on from their post.

Sorry to reply twice but what's up with all of the wild assumptions this year. This waiting period is unpleasant but some schools are probably only just beginning to download applications.

It's way too early. Many schools won't start getting back to people until late Jan to early-mid Feb.

No. Not at all a safe assumption. My advisor didn't respond to the emails I sent before I applied, they're not the kind of person to do so and it means nothing that they didn't respond. People have different styles, personalities, and boundaries. Meanwhile some profs who responded with interest never got back to me post-admissions season (at schools I got into). Professors are just people.

For the most part these tend to be a bit of a vibe check -- can this person work with you and are you relatively the same irl as you are on paper etc. Read through and think about your application materials again so that you can explain and/or expand on anything. Be keen to talk about what you find exciting in your field(s) at the moment. Have some questions to ask about the department, but make sure they're not extremely generic -- good questions might be things like, have students taken independent studies with you lately and what do those look like because once I get closer to exams I'd really love to do an independent study in x; (if you and the POI are more interdisciplinary) what kinds of networks are there across blah and blah department/field/institute etc etc (but don't make it sound like you would potentially be a better fit for the English/geography/whatever department).

Just an FYI that I was only offering this for the OP, otherwise it's too much sharing of my own info. If you want advice from the people on this forum I do recommend posting on the forum -- I understand the urge to lurk but you may as well ask advice, and that way people are more likely to chat about your application in DMs as a follow up to your post.

Yeah, I might have overstated the "put your specific project plan aside" line because it's SO concerning to see SoP drafts that do not foreground the questions. Have a project, sure. But make sure the plan you lay out is an enquiry into something -- some SoP drafts are borderline telling us what the author intends to find, and that's a mistake. Tell profs what you want to ASK not what you plan to illustrate.

Don't start your SoP this way -- decenter yourself. I do not know how many times ppl have to stress that an SoP is about demonstrating that you can ask robust, interesting, historical questions. Do that. Start with the questions. Do NOT begin with a bunch of vague stuff about how you identify, what you might be interested in working on, even what your senior thesis was -- professors are not going to read "I am open to a variety of topics" and think "well that's the kind of exciting work I want to be involved with". Sorry to be blunt but it needs to be said. In order to get into a program you need to write a very clear, very strong SoP. It might help to just write down (in very clear, plain English, without any frills) exactly what it is that you are hoping to ask in grad school (in coursework, research, and maybe, eventually your dissertation). A quasi-prospectus is not going to impress professors -- your project will change (and needs to) and that's the point of coursework and early years spent in conversations with profs. **If you DM me I will send you my SoP from 2017. I'm not sure you've seen enough examples and that might help.

Ditto everyone else saying no. But -- I have a law degree and my diss is partly legal (and involves legal ethnography). I can't say for certain but I strongly believe this has given me an advantage in terms of getting grants (reviewers frequently mention it as a +). If at the end of a phd you want to apply for legal history jobs (of which there are approx. zero [kind of joking, kind of not]), then I bet it would help. I wouldn't call it a significant hiring advantage at least in history depts. One thing I like about having a law degree = the knowledge that when I tank on the job market I have another option.

I should clarify! Your regional position matters (when you apply). Departments still group applications into regional categories, for one. I was responding to your concern about the "type" of historian you would be -- "the cultural/religious/economic/etc labels don't matter as much as your ability to show you have a well thought out project". I.e. don't spend too much energy trying to work out if you're a cultural historian.

It's still a little unclear to me why you would apply with four different projects (which will require four different SOPs). I would highly recommend working on one solid SOP that emphasizes your research questions--this is an opportunity to show profs that you can ask incisive and interesting questions. What are your research questions, out of interest? I don't think it's necessarily that important to "position yourself" -- for sure show that you are engaged with your field and you understand how your project relates to the concerns of the field, but the cultural/religious/economic/etc labels don't matter as much as your ability to show you have a well thought out project. From what you've written above it's not clear to me what you want to do in grad school for the next 5-7 years, so you want to avoid writing like this in your SOP. I'd advise beginning with the two-three pressing questions that are driving your project--and those should a) indicate to profs in your field that you know what's happening in current debates; b) indicate to profs in and beyond your field that you know what a research question looks like; c) be compelling and interesting (and you sort of need to think about how you are going to make your SOP questions more compelling and interesting than the questions that other applicants are going to pose).

I mean this to be a constructive question, but I'm also a little confused so maybe you can clarify -- why are you applying with four different potential projects?

My advisor did not respond and is not great at replying to emails in general, but they are a great advisor.

Would highly recommend trying to find one of Fein's students to talk to first -- they are not an active prof in the dept. Also NYU isn't going to take applications (read this as "rumor" if you like).

I work across history and anthro, I have a major anthro grant (and I get how central these qs are to anthro) -- I think it would be weird not to mention the qs of ethics that you write about here. I would talk about the rumor, it speaks to your experience w the realities of field work. Anyway feel free to DM!

They're *almost certainly* not accepting a Fall 2021 cohort. They've been very open about it within the dept (we're not talking about whispers, they have told us this at DGS mtgs) and I expect other NYU depts will do the same.

I wouldn't rule yourself out based on your GPA -- people understand that non-US systems grade differently, and grade inflation in wild in the US. I'd email advisors you might like to work with and ask for their thoughts--your experience and publications might speak louder than a gpa number (in general put less emphasis on stats, the phd application process can be much more personal if you make the right connections).

What do you understand the "tiers" to mean? If the point of the MA is to get into a good phd program, you are over-estimating how important it is to get your MA from a prestige school. To get a job, it helps, a lot, to get into a top phd program. To get into a phd program is a bit different--sure it might help to go to Columbia, but there is absolutely no way I would recommend paying that amount of $$ to get an MA. Especially in this climate. I would warn everyone to prepare for the real possibility that programs will be cutting cohort sizes enormously (some schools will not be accepting applicants this year). We're not in a normal climate.