gnossienne n.3

I was rejected by Toronto recently; not a surprise, as I have no formal Latin training, though I have been learning Latin for the past year and a half. I was specifically told by a faculty member that even though my Latin is probably stronger than some of the students they admit, I would still be at a disadvantage because my Latin training is informal. It's absurd to me that their MA program has more stringent language requirements for admission than most PhD programs. I have some really great options for MA programs, however, and I'm waiting to hear back about the waitlist at one of the PhD programs I applied to. Well wishes and good vibes are most welcome!

Yeah, I gathered it wasn't going to be an option. Thanks for the tip.

Feel free to PM me, since I can't figure out how to delete my account entirely!

Same.

@SarahBethSortino I can think of a couple of approaches to this. First thing: either way, you've just gotta wait it out. It sucks. I recommend developing a short term hobby as a distraction. Hanging around this site may do more harm than good in the next month, though ymmv. I can think of two possible scenarios you may want to consider. 1. If school 2 accepts you before the April 15 deadline, but well in advance of it, let school 1 know and reiterate that it's your first choice. Wait until the week of April 15, then if you still haven't heard anything from school 1, follow up. Let school 2 know you're still waiting and ask for an extension--maybe a week, maybe a few days. Tell school 1 you're asking for a decision extension at school 2. If school 2 grants the extension, yay! If not, I wouldn't hold my breath for a maybe from school 1 if that meant turning down an offer from school 2. 2. If school 2 accepts you very close to the April 15 deadline, ask for an extension. Reach out to school 1 as above: tell them you really want to go there, and maybe why. Since your personal circumstances will play a role in your decision, it's okay to mention it if it's something you're comfortable doing. Up to you! Say you're requesting an extension from school 2. See how it plays out. When you ask for an extension from school 2, it may also be worth pointing out you have more to consider than just which school you're more excited about. Throwing a young family in the mix complicates things, and an admissions officer should be sympathetic to such challenges. Use your best judgement. If you are accepted to school 2, after contacting school 1 start reminding yourself why you applied to school 2. What about the program invigorates you? What resources do they have that are unique? What's great and exciting about about the faculty, or the course structure, or the research opportunities? Look over any shiny marketing materials they send you. Look at their placement record, the funding offer, the quality of life at school 2. Visit, if you can and haven't already. Maybe visit again. Talk to your mentors. Talk to your family. Work at that new hobby and let things percolate through your brain. You may find that you don't want to wait until April 15 to decide. Personally, I think I'd wait just to see if anything changed with the waitlist, but you may prefer to have things settled. And there's nothing wrong with that!

Which is why the second sentence of my initial response basically said "I understand the reasoning behind this advice" because, again, as a medievalist (or if you must, one who studies the medieval period) that makes a lot of sense to me for Islamic studies even if I didn't necessarily expect to hear that perspective echoed from the upper echelons, so to speak. I'm happy to move on from this if everyone else is.

@Sigaba You're making a lot of assumptions about me and my background that are incorrect. I'm not interested in entering an argument with you. If you don't want to take my word as to my intentions and meaning, don't. But I'm done here.

^^^^^ All of the above, for sure. I would never presume to know better than an established expert in the field. I also deliberately avoided bringing specific names into my response. I (perhaps too eagerly) assumed that anyone reading my post would know to take my comments as those of a stranger on the internet, and therefore inevitably worth far less than those of an advisor. As a medievalist I always want to encourage that people know the early history of their topic, because there's a lot to be gained by looking further back (whatever that means in the field in questions)--but I also realize this is not always going to be the most helpful direction to follow, depending on your desired outcome.

I'm not blowing it off, which I hope was evident from the rest of my comment. I found it amusing, not bad advice. It's unusual to hear advice from other fields that recommends looking to the medieval period when that is not the main period of interest. I'm far more accustomed to hearing medievalists dismissed, even by other historians. That's all I meant. I am very clearly writing as someone from a different field (you'll note I started that sentence with "As a medievalist") and I offered my perspective with all the caveats you pointed out. No need to attack my credentials.

As a medievalist, I find this advice somewhat hilarious. I see the reasoning in that particular line of logic, and of course I'm not going to argue that knowing about the early origins of Islam is going to be disposable knowledge if you're a modernist, because that simply isn't true. I just can't imagine writing a dissertation on a period other than the one I'm invested in over the long-term in order to impress hiring committees. Dissertation topics do matter in history, but mainly because they're meant to be demonstrative--or at least indicative--of a sustained area of expertise and research interest. If medieval Islam isn't your thing, and you don't plan on pursuing it after the dissertation becomes a monograph, I can't see why you'd do your dissertation on it. Especially since there's quite a bit of specialized training that you'd need to acquire simply in order to deal with your medieval sources (though this will vary depending on your languages/paleography/codicology skills). Then again--and I'm sure this is what your people were getting at--there are prejudices held by hiring committees just as by laypeople that perhaps have to be considered. It's just rare that those prejudices favor the medieval!

I'm in a similar position: I've been waitlisted at my top choice out of four, and rejected from the other three PhD programs. I've also been accepted to several MA programs, but they're in the UK and funding is extremely competitive and hard to come by. If (a very, very big if!) I'm accepted off of the waitlist, it's for a program that only accepts one or two applicants a year. I really want to know! It would be so nice to have one secure offer, instead of waiting on funding decisions that are still months away from being made.

Yeah, I think it must vary by program. Placement for Yale's Medieval Studies program in particular is excellent, although I can't find any more of their nice little summaries like this one, which is from 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20121223192423/http://www.yale.edu/graduateschool/academics/profiles/medievalstudies.pdf I also wonder how a Medieval Studies PhD plays in the job market down the line. Do you think it's common for people to try to swing across disciplines, ie. compete for an English TT position when they're really more of a historian? I'm not saying I'd necessarily do such a thing--though time will tell!--but I think there's already a certain amount of that at play with medievalists, if only because it's such an interdisciplinary field in the first place. Evidence either way would have to be anecdotal, of course, barring a statistical modeling of medievalists across the nation!

I'm still waiting to hear back from Toronto for the Medieval Studies MA. Has anyone heard anything? I'm curious about rankings (everything is made up and the points don't matter!) because while there's consensus on how to determine rankings, they do become more subjective/flexible once it gets down to subfield, and depending on the programs available. For instance, Yale is obviously a top tier program for History and for medievalists. But they've got the conventional departments (History, English, History of Art, etc) as well as a dedicated Medieval Studies PhD program which is much, much smaller. How would going the Medieval Studies route help or hinder TT applications in the long run? Is it likely to make a difference whether your degree was in a disciplinary department or not, assuming you can articulate why it wasn't if you went the Medieval Studies route? Is it likely that any difference in competitiveness for spots between the History or English departments as opposed to Medieval Studies (if there is any) would be overlooked, because Yale is already assumed to be so competitive an institution in the first place? Food for thought! I'd appreciate input from those of us who know the subfield. It gets so hard to parse things at a granular level when folks from all sorts of different areas chime in on rankings!