psstein

With the caveat, of course, that inadequate funding can cause you to select another program over one with funding concerns.

My Columbia friend does have a named fellowship, so that may account for the difference.

Two years ago, it was around the $30,000 mark. Columbia offers somewhere in the $35,000 range. From memory, Harvard generally doesn't pay its assistant profs the most of any program, but that information may be out of date. In terms of the information you're currently getting from faculty, trust but verify. Their objective is to get you to enroll, not tell you the unvarnished truth. It may be useful to get in contact with a few current graduate students and ask them. From my own experience, they have much less reason to not give you the whole picture. You also might want to check the stipend spreadsheet that usually pops up around this time...

Broadly speaking, February. I wouldn't concern yourself with "being too ambitious." The objective isn't "get into graduate school." The objective is getting a job after graduate school.

This is definitely my experience too. A very good friend didn't hear from NYU until mid-March.

The decisions will probably go out next week. The committee meets on the 4th.

Congratulations! What that means is, unless you're a violent felon or lied on the application, you're accepted.

It's a very good, though hardly elite program. They have some really excellent French history faculty (e.g. Shank) and a few well known historians of science, though that's a different department. As for employment, it depends what type of employment you'll want after. If you want a TT position at a top 20 program, that's less likely. State universities tend to do well at placing students in their own region. You should always act as though these sorts of things are formal interviews. Part of this meeting is seeing how well you get along with the advisor and whether the two of you can see yourselves working together profitably. That's an encouraging sign. Generally, if faculty are enthusiastic about your application and meeting with you, it's a good sign. Keep in mind that history faculty have a billion things to do at any given moment. They don't spend time lightly. If you want an academic job, placement, placement, placement. Compare the two programs. Get your hands on a list of your prospective advisor's recent students. Use Google/LinkedIn and figure out what they're doing. Any program without a list of recent placements/recent graduates should have a very big red flag. Your advisor's name follows you for the rest of your career, but your program's reputation will often keep doors open.

Unless you failed to disclose information on your application (e.g. you're a violent felon), you're likely not going to have an issue. I know one tenured professor whose advisor died as he was finishing his dissertation. Another faculty member supervised him for the remaining time.

It's both. You don't want to spend 7 years in a place you absolutely hate and where the program thwarts your progress. That said, you also want a sufficient number of faculty who can competently supervise you and have interests which intersect with your own. Very tough to tell. It may even be specific faculty who do interviews. Some faculty members probably care a hell of a lot less about these sorts of things than others. My advisor didn't know who I was until I met her two weeks into my first year, even though I was the only person in history of science that year.

Wait until you get there before asking graduate students. You can also ask semi-directly: "would it be possible to do a prelims field in Anthropology?" or something like that. Unless you apply somewhere that explicitly interviews, no. Most programs do not.

I would interpret this as an interview. "Making sure it's a good fit" is often a coded way of explaining it. Knowing about interdepartmental relationships is very important. If you're interested in working between anthropology and history, you should ask whether it's possible.

Don't be. Most of the programs you've applied to won't inform you until mid-February. Ivies can afford to take longer, so they often do. I realize it's somewhat nerve-wracking, but that's just the way it is. Try to distract yourself with another hobby or work.

What do their placements tell you? UVA has some good people in Classics, esp. Woodman (though I think he's now retired?).

I agree that HYP+ Berkeley and Chicago represent a majority of TT US history professors, but I do want to point out that the study has some significant flaws, one of which is that it measures placement by "node" vs. placement by numbers. That's not a major issue due to the fact it only measures R1 placement, but it is one to consider. I think it ranks Brandeis in the top 10, which, based on numbers, is not accurate. Brandeis has an exceptional Jewish history program, but there are quite few Jewish history openings across the US. There's also the incredibly important issue of sub-fields, advisor reputation, etc. The study is useful to understand the contours of the field, but one is far better served hunting down recent graduates' placement than solely relying on that study.

This was actually not a job talk, but a workshop presentation. The worst talk I've ever seen was about chronobiology, from a professor at another big state university. He then gave a talk for a position in history, which was apparently just as bad. Mind you, this guy had won a major prize for his book, too. I've seen another awful talk from a Yale PhD who already had a tenured job. I think I know who you're talking about with the "job talk from hell." PM incoming. Not to my knowledge, actually. I just looked her up. I don't mean "Ivy" in the strict sense of the word. I mean "Ivy" in the sense of an elite program with routinely good placement. It's also highly sub-field dependent. Wisconsin's environmental history side is certainly among the top in the US. The HoS here is better than Chicago, on the basis that Chicago doesn't have much of a program.

To add onto this, one of the worst talks I've ever heard have come from an Ivy PhD doing an Ivy postdoc.

I agree with you. One of my professors actually said to me "someone can do outstanding work at Kansas, but have absolutely no chance of finding a job." I also may have been a bit too generous by saying "20 programs," but that's probably sub-field independent. As for the state of the market, a good anecdote. Indiana's HPS is one of the oldest programs in history and philosophy of science. It has two outstanding historians of science (Newman and Meli). Their placement is not good, especially in view of their faculty members' reputations.

Younger faculty members, in my experience, are keenly aware of the problems of the job market. With older faculty, it's about 50-50. I've said this before, but faculty at one well-known program I interviewed with explicitly told me "we don't have alt-ac resources," just in not so few words. Most PhD recipients won't have academic jobs, even from the best programs. That being said, you can't telegraph that when you apply. It makes admissions committees question whether you actually have the dedication to do the PhD or whether you actually need a PhD. There are very few people who go into graduate programs wanting to do anything else than become a tenured professor at a research-first institution. There are some, but the vast majority of PhD students don't enter wanting to work for the National Library of Medicine or the FDA's historical office.

I'm sure there is, but I couldn't think of one off the top of my head. This may be a case of someone being right for the wrong reasons.

Sure, part of it has to do with the increasing hyper-specialization of the field, to the point where the general public has significant issues engaging with any of the major literature. This is basically the case made in The History Manifesto, so I'd encourage you to read it. The general public is largely interested in questions of military history and adjacent fields. The issue, however, is that military history is in some disrepute in the professional field. I'm not a military historian, but there's a poster who is ( @Sigaba, your and Col. Tigh's presence is requested!) and can speak more intelligently as to it. In my program, which is one of the major nexi for military history, the military historians are always looked at somewhat askance. My next point goes to that, which is that the humanities in general do a very poor job selling what they can offer. We live in a world where, to quote Oscar Wilde, man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing. State legislatures and many people see humanities and liberal arts as "worthless degrees" or "not real degrees" because they don't provide an easily identifiable skill, unlike, for instance, computer science. The humanities provide the ability to critically engage with ideas and, ideally, the ability to express ideas in clear, coherent fashions. Finally, there's just the brutal reality of the job market. If you want a tenured academic job, there are only about 20 (give or take 5) programs that provide a reasonable chance at that, especially if you want a tenured job at a research oriented institution. Far too many students each year graduate from middling programs who have no chance of an academic job. There may be little difference between someone from Kansas and Princeton, but, the Princeton candidate will get the offer 95% of the time. It's a structural issue that there's really no way around, despite Kansas' having an excellent historian of the US West.

It's good and bad. The good is that it shows programs pay some attention to the contracting job market, which means that there are fewer people with realistic chances at the dwindling number of tenured academic jobs. The bad side is that it's tougher to get in now to a top program than it previously was. I also have the slightly unpopular view that the "crisis of academic labor" is somewhat self-inflicted and also less of a crisis than is usually thought, but that's a topic for a different discussion.

My understanding is that the UC system is under some significant financial stress.

I've said this about a trillion times before, but I interviewed with a top HoS program, did fairly well, and still didn't get in. How do I know I did well? The department chair told me the amount of stipend I'd receive. Unless you're applying to an institution that explicitly interviews (e.g. MIT's history, anthropology, technology, and science program), you shouldn't read anything into the interview claims. Moreover, don't put too much trust in the results postings themselves. It's definitely true. Despite the relative growth of the stock market, there are increased concerns about the long-term future of the profession (some of which, IMO, are the result of hyper-specialization, but that's a different story). Moreover, humanities is experiencing funding cuts across the board. In Wisconsin, UW- Stevens Point, which is a satellite campus, cut 12 departments as a cost saving measure. There are rumors floating around that private colleges (e.g. Hampshire) may have to close. It's a bit of a black time for higher education. On a practical note, I've heard that Ivy departments are considering fewer acceptances than usual. I imagine Harvard is a bit more immune to that than others. In Wisconsin, though, there's hope that the current executive will be far more friendly to the UW system than his predecessor. This has already sort of happened. Admissions for PhDs transformed about 10-15 years ago from "admit many, fund a handful" to "admit a handful and fund them all." Cohort sizes for, say, 2015, were significantly smaller than those for 2007.

@telkanuru has first hand experience with Brown and Harvard and is a better resource than I would be.