psstein

I would boldly suggest that a writing sample ought to be at least presentable, if not publishable. Otherwise, it's like taking a knife to a gun fight. The top programs attract candidates with elite backgrounds (think: private prep school, Ivy, at least 5+ years of at least one language, and it's not rare for them to have family/connections in academia). If you don't have these advantages, which I suspect most of us don't, then you better have an application that shows you have the same level of preparation and fortitude. My friend's grandfather is a well-known scholar at an Ivy. His father is a faculty member at a state university. He's going to an elite law school. Whether or not we like it, top academic and professional programs have an incestuous component.

I hope (but doubt) that cohort sizes of 20 exist only because of attrition, but I agree, it's ridiculous.

I believe they do, yes. My friend didn't receive his rejection until very late in the process (mid-March?).

Many programs have begun to react to the somewhat self-caused crisis of the humanities, and are accepting fewer students. For some, especially state universities, having lower history enrollments makes it difficult to justify more graduate students than you can reasonably have TA.

Congratulations! Hopkins is a great place to do HoM and the place where the discipline developed its professional identity!

Desan and Boswell?

Please send me a PM with some information about your PoI(s) and your proposed project. I may be able to shed a bit of light from my side of things/experiences in the department.

Congratulations to the accepted! Please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions. For those of you who haven't yet heard, I'm sorry. The program has, at least in my experience, informed everyone accepted or waitlisted at the same time. If you weren't so lucky, please also feel free to reach out to me.

Wisconsin applicants: I'm starting to get emails about visit weekends and the number of accepted students. You'll likely know by the end of the week, if not early next week.

This is an excellent post overall. I'd like to just highlight a little bit about your last sentence. The nature of the job market right now means you should absolutely dictate where you want to go to graduate school and live. That is practically the only choice you'll get about where you live over the next 30+ years, if you manage to win a TT job. The vast majority of faculty in tenured jobs will spend their entire careers at one institution. With department contraction and declining enrollments, there's little incentive to bring in new, more senior faculty, who will demand more pay, when you can just as easily get a Harvard or Yale PhD who's thrilled to have any academic job. If you don't want to live in Southern CA, you don't have to apply to programs there. Otherwise, though, I agree with your comments, especially in this point. As I and other posters have said in the past, many sub-fields have no more than 5-8 programs worth attending if you look at outcomes/faculty support/financial support/time to degree. Anyone even vaguely considering graduate school in history, or the humanities more generally, needs to know those programs for his/her sub-field and then make an advised decision. Choosing not to go to grad school can prove a boon to your future ambitions.

I think the meeting is coming up either this week or next. I haven't seen anything yet.

I agree with @Sigaba's advice. Rather than treating rejection dismissively, even at this stage, critically evaluate your applications and materials and try to pin down which of the items you control were the weakest. Perhaps your historiography section in your writing sample was poor? Maybe the project you outlined in your SoP has already been abundantly addressed? IMO, it is worth being very critical of your own work, without considering a rejection as a personal failing. You will hear "no" much more often than "yes" in this field, and in any professional field you choose to work in.

Try Reddit, seriously. They're much more active on STEM than the fora here seem.

I think you're in the wrong sub-forum. This is history, not CS. Unless you want to do a history of CS, which would be really cool (and very marketable, looking at who's gotten history of tech jobs recently).

A bit of an addendum to your otherwise excellent points: some departments require you to have a certain number of coursework credits before you're eligible to take prelims/comps/whatever you may call them. Others require that you take coursework up until you submit a dissertation proposal, which can significantly delay your progress. In short, it's worth knowing program requirements inside and out before accepting an offer. Some places allow a lot more leeway than others.

This is a great list of things to think about during the visit. I also very much agree that the department is where you work. Being a graduate student should not (ideally) be your entire identity. It should be something you consider part of your life, but not the entirety of it.

In my experience, both as a potential grad student and as a grad student, most of the current students you meet during the visit weekend are not going to try to sell you some idealized version of who you want to work with, what the program is like, etc. Many of them are honest, sometimes brutally so.

That's pretty common in the US, sadly. This is one of the several elements where I think the UK system far superior. US letters have to gush with enthusiasm about how the student in question is truly the next Popper/Kuhn/Feyerbrand/whatever. UK letters are much more terse and will often say something like "this student was at the level I expected of a graduate student."

If you drink scotch, I recommend an appropriate dose of any of the following: 1) Laphroaig 10 2) Glenfiddich 3) Glenlivet 12 4) Johnnie Walker Double Black (the black is decent, but for the $5.00 difference, this is markedly better) 5) Teacher's Highland Cream (for the bargain minded!) I'm also happy to recommend bourbons.

It varies by university, and it's also incredibly political. Dr. Schneider on the admission committee might say that Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. has taken a graduate student each of the last 5 years and it's not fair to the other faculty members. Therefore, Dr. Jones won't have any graduate students for the next 2 years. (Yes, I watched Indiana Jones recently) At some (predominantly state) universities, admissions can also take current and future TA needs into account. My program accepted several students in one subfield after having a significant problem filling TA slots in that subfield earlier that semester.

Same is true with Wisconsin, for any applicants on this board. I'm on leave, but I still check my emails pretty regularly, so I'll tell you guys as soon as I know.

This will help you. Wisconsin, like most state systems, has a funding crunch.

That's really, really interesting, and there's a lot of really good scholarship, as well as some areas that desperately need attention, in that field. Have you read Robert V. Bruce, The Launching of Modern American Science: 1846-1876? If not, I'd strongly recommend it. You could really do a lot with a transnational US-Britain approach.

I applied, was accepted, and attended for two years (I'm currently on leave for multiple reasons, including managing a deceased relative's estate). Wisconsin's admissions focus heavily on fit, as @OHSP mentioned, and whether you have a viable project interesting to multiple members of the department. The acceptance letters usually come out around Valentine's Day, though that always varies. I usually make an announcement when I know, as the department has students with relevant interests in contact with accepted students. Regarding number of applicants, you can take a look at past years' data through the department's website. It used to be there, at least. That said, keep in mind that the number of grad school applications is down a bit over the last few years, in part due to the economy and in part due to the widely known grim outlook for humanities PhDs.

What you said about Harvard is, unfortunately, true. Most of their assistant professors don't get tenured. Associate is tenured, so it's a bit different. I think what you should do is approach this with an eye towards building a committee. Find someone who specializes in the history of oceangraphy (D. Graham Burnett at Princeton comes to mind, maybe Simon Schaffer or someone else at Cambridge) and try to find another E. Asia specialist you can work with at the same time.