VAZ

U of T has a huge and renowned history program. You may want to work with Carol Chin or Ronald Pruessen depending on which exact period (before or after WWII) you are focusing on. Given the Asianization of Vancouver, UBC has a great number of Asian Studies scholars, and literally one-third of the History faculty members specialize in some aspect of Asia. Maybe Jessica Wang best suits your purpose. Though she is an Americanist by training, she has written and supervised theses on the topic of US-Chinese/Asian relations. If your interest is in the Cold War / Communist period, you cannot miss Lorenz Lüthi at McGill.

Welcome to Canada! In terms of the admission requirement, unlike the US schools, the GPA cut-off for MA and PhD is set and spelled out on the department website in Canada. Most schools ask for 3.3, and some for 3.5 (Alberta and UBC), for the last two or one year average (if you are currently in your Senior year, it could mean THIS YEAR). McGill needs a CGPA of 3.3 though. The actual people who get the offer may have higher (or lower, in some cases) GPAs, but the numbers at least give you a sense of where you are and help you decide if you should apply. Generally speaking, admission wise, MA is way easier than PhD, and Canadian schools is easier than the US top universities. How safe it will be to get in a MA? I don't know, but not quite hard. If you are qualified for any top 30 PhD program in the US, you will be far more qualified for any Canadian MA. In your situation, if you did well in you Junior and Senior years and your Major classes, you would be fine. In fact, Toronto allows students with a 3.7 CGPA in their undergrad to apply directly to the PhD program. You may try that. Reputation wise, from my personal experiences, professors in the US schools look very high on the top 3 Canadian universities (though the East Coast knows more about McGill, and the West Coast is more fond of UBC). They belong to the first-tier in the US standard, and they will not hurt but boost your chance later. North American academia to my mind is one whole, and many Canadian professors got their PhDs from the US, and some US got theirs from Canada (especially from Toronto on Medieval History). Besides the three top schools, you may also look at Alberta, Queens and York, which are also very prestigious and well known in the academia. McMaster, UWO and Dalhousie also have great people and you can give a look. Nevertheless, it also depends on your specific field/time period/approach within American History and who you want to work with in these schools. A star supervisor is more important than a big-name university. What's your research interests?

Bedos-Rezak I bet? Honestly, NYU (and NYC) is not an ideal place for premodernists. The number of premodern faculty is like 4.75 out of 55 across the department, and even fewer for graduate students.....

I had a similar experience back in August. I really like a professor tenured in a non-history department, but she is also an affiliated (rather than jointly appointed) professor in History. I asked the history DGS if she could serve as my supervisor or co-supervisor. The answer was an absolute NO: The affiliated professors could be field examiners or dissertation committee members, but the supervisor(s) must come from the core faculty in History. Then I went to a history core professor who shares topical and temporal interests with me but not geographical. I mentioned that the other professor could help with the languages and the geographical region, but he still declined to take me. I talked with that non-history professor later in person, and she said she could do nothing about it. And I don't feel like applying to the PhD program of her host department. Therefore, I've completely given up on that university. The policy may vary from school to school though.

A quick question, pardon me if it has been raised before, do you mention your post-degree career options or future plans in the personal statement for PhD application?

@Sigaba Thank you for the informative and useful guide！It's getting real! Just one point confuses me. Why do you say "focusing less on the POIs?" I know it is probably the time to expand to a pan-departmental view, but maintaining a solid relationship with the POIs are not still essential? In my case, most of my POIs have interviewed me, agreed to take me, guided me through the application process, given invaluable suggestions on my SoPs and writing samples, and will probably argue for me in the admission committees. I got a feeling that each active senior professor has one or two applicants in his/her mind, and all professors in each general field will gather and discuss whose nominees will get the few final spots. So I have to rely on the POIs a lot in the admission as well as in the future because they will become my colleagues of the same field no matter which school I end up going. If I find they are disinterested in graduate students, don't like me or don't reply me, I will not even bother applying.

Not necessarily, and not sufficiently. What questions to ask and what perspectives to focus on are more crucial than what kinds of source to use. The prehistoric era could be, should be and will be as important as the historical era, for (future) historians, I think.

As you have heard, graduate school applications have been decreasing in number every year in all arts and humanities disciplines. I just looked at some history programs with open statistics and saw a significant drop of PhD applicants in the last three years (20%-40%) (Michigan seems to be an outlier). Is this happening in all schools, and will the number keep going down? what would you predict for the 2018 cycle?

Is it normal and totally fine to reveal to your POI where/who else you are applying to? There is no taboo about it right?

Build on OP's question, have you tried or thought about elaborating, developing or incorporating your past and recent seminar papers into your future research or publications, especially if they are irrelevant to your field or dissertation topic?

@AP but aren't 90% of them Hispanists? I think East Asian history is a bit different since China, Korea and Japan are very distinct in terms of culture, history and language. And the relation is not reciprocal. Koreanists have a better chance understanding Chinese (and Japanese) historiographies and languages but not the other way around. Most Sinologists would choose Japanese over Korean as the second research language. Same in the field of Eastern European History. Russianists know less about the rest of Eastern Europe than Polonists, Bohemists, Slovakists, Ukranianists and Balticists know about Russia. That's why if an Eastern Europeanist does not say which specific cultural/ethic groups he specializes in, it probably means he only studies Russian history. And if he doesn't say he studies Seberia or South Caucasia, it probably means he only focuses on the Russian heartland.

I believe you already have Charles Armstrong (Columbia), Kyu Hyun Kim (UC Davis), Todd Henry (UCSD), Charles Kim (Wisconsin), Yumi Moon (Stanford), Eugene Park (Penn) (He does supervise History PhDs) and Bruce Cumings (why not stay?) on your list. All of them have a pan-East Asian or global perspective/training. For those who reside in EALC, you can manage to find a way, by co-advising, i.e. a Modern East Asian Professor in History + a Korean History Specialist in EALC. For example, R. Bin Wong + Namhee Lee (UCLA), Scott O'Bryan + Michael Robinson (Indiana), and Sheldon Garon + Steven Chung (Princeton). Or, you can head north. Have you checked out Steven Hugh Lee (UBC) and Carl F. Young (UWO)? They are very Korean and also very international. Generally speaking, as you have said, you can always do East Asia in History, but you cannot do global history in EALC. And people nowadays would prefer a disciplined training background to a regional studies PhD. Unless you do literature and culture (and film), regional studies should not be your first consideration.

I think I'm encountering another problem here. What if all of my professors, POIs and academic friends know me by my social/professional name, but I guess I have to write down my full legal (and unrelated and never used in my case) name in the application form. Would it lead to a naming mismatch in the admission committee discussion? Or can I note my preferred name somewhere or maybe clarify it in my SoP? Should I tell my letter writers to use my full legal name instead?

Speaking not from personal experiences. As a non-modernist, my only interest in the modern era is on the history of historians. I have looked at the biographical history of hundred professors and I would say that if you could get tenured by 40 and full professorship by 50, you would be one of the most successful/youngest historians in the department. That leads to 33/34 for entering a TT job and minus a few years of post doc and visiting professorship, 31 would be a fairly young age for PhD conferrel and 25/26 for starting your PhD. Since you are only 19(?), you will be way ahead of your peers even if you take a few gap years. I have a feeling that youngness is not particularly welcomed in PhD admission as well as in academia. And many male professors intentionally keep their beards to appear older and perhaps more "trustable." LOL Unlike sciencists and mathematicians (and perhaps social scientists) who can be born genius, humanities scholars need a lot of time to mature and ferment. Yes, life experiences matter. That being said, however, the renowned 20th century medievalist Charles Homer Haskins got his PhD at 19 years old. East European historian Timothy Snyder got his at 26 and published the first book at 28. And Jewish historian Michael Brenner became a full professor at 33.

For those who are not proposing a source-based dissertation topic, when should you have some knowledge about the primary sources you are gonna work with, i.e. where are they located, what type and what kind, have you accessed before, if they exist at all, and giving a few examples ------ in other words, the feasibility of the project? When you contact your POI for the first time, when you write your SoPs, or don't have to worry about it until submitting the official dissertation prospectus after the second year in the program or even until the field research year? For example, "I just found an old record book from a deserted, dusted shelf in a local archive, and I'm sure no one has touched it for decades. This is what I'm using as my main primary source." LOL

@AP thank you for pointing it out. I actually mean your potential comp examiners and/or dissertation committee member/reader, those "who you also want to study with."

Would you also contact any CMOI (Committee Member of Interest) after receiving positive feedbacks from the POIs?

I have a quick and interesting question (hope not a stupid one). Are these abbreviations, such as POI and SoP, only Gradcafe (or similar forum) lingos used among graduate applicants or common sense terms known in the entire academic world? I've never seen them on any department website or personal CV (PI is a well-known abbr. in science I believe). My history folks, what's the history of these abbreviations?? I mean If I use"POI" in the email sent to my POI, will he understand and not feel weird? (I'm not really doing it). My best bet: young faculty who received the PhD in the last ten years have a better chance of understanding them.

@laleph Actually, my general research field is medieval and early modern East-Central Europe, which seems extremely broad time-wise and region-wise in the Western European/American history standard, but in fact it only has less than 20 active historians in North America, or roughly 40 in Anglophone academia. I'm not even talking about the specific century or country, not to mention approach and theme. And each of them has a distinctive era/approach and language/source coverage. That's why I may have to stretch myself, within this sparse field, or I can find two out-of-the-field supervisors and do the sandwich thing. A third alternative is to follow Norman Davies's education path, doing a PhD in Eastern Europe. But I prefer to stay in North America for a better-off general history training.

By "thin field," I do not mean "small in scope" (Rhode Island or D.C.), but "low population density" (think about Alaska, Montana, or Northwest Territories in Canada), where only 2 to 30 historians scatteredly dwell in, depending on how large "territory" I want to include (how stretchable I am) (If counting the "must go to the Top 20 programs," it only leaves 6-8 options.) And thus I have to go to each professor's tribe and build a (long)house next to him, otherwise I would lose myself in the middle of nowhere. Maybe "thin" is not a good choice of word, but "barely deserted"? LOL, my long-term goal is really to revive and rebuild the entire sub-field in North American academia.

Well, of course, no doubt. I would even call that 100% fit. But this isn't always the case. Not every school has a social/cultural historian of early modern France, not every school has a historian of early modern France, and for some fields, not every school has a historian of France (I'm just using France as an example, and "not every" here could mean "only a few'). I'm in a very thin field and some of my forerunners even do sandwiching --- working on the intersections of two professors (say, a modern French historian + an early modern British historian), but neither of them is really an expert on the exact time period + region. But I think that may work, if everyone is happy. Otherwise, compromise has to be made on my part. What if he says "I don't do France but I do Britain. I'm not interested or specialized in cultural history or women history but solely intellectual history. I don't think you should apply me." The end of game? I don't mind stretching myself. I have a few different projects in mind, which are similar in spirit. It's just a matter of which you would delve into first and use as a possible dissertation topic. Maybe having some flexibilities and offering the POIs a couple customized directions would lead to a better chance to win?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/world/middleeast/iran-rouhani-brother-arrest-united-states-nuclear.html https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/07/16/princeton-supporting-graduate-student-sentenced-prison-iran Have you guys read about this news? What's your comment? I'm sort of glad that communism is not ruling Eastern Europe anymore ... Otherwise, my archival trip would somehow be ut supra. BTW, the poor guy got his wikipedia page because of this......

@TMP @telkanuru Yes that's doable. Lay your question in depth, say women's role in public sphere in late 18th-century France. It seems terrific for a POI of social history of the French Revolution. But maybe you also apply to another professor of Early Modern France in another school, and his speciality is cross-cultural interactions in the 16th and 17th centuries. He cares less about the late 18th-century stuff. Would you just start over and construct a thoughtful SoP on Orientalism, and specifically, the origin of French-Turkish coffee trade? And then a third professor is a Late Medieval and Early Modern intellectual historian, so would you once again write something else, for example, on history of emotions in Jean Bodin's De la démonomanie des sorciers? As your field of interest is cultural history of Early Modern France, you are comfortable, capable and excited to work with any of the above themes, women, space, coffee, trade, demon, and emotion. So you just give yourself a few possible directions and would decide later which road to head down after the admission results come out. Or, would you just play the "Revolution Woman Card" for every single school and professor you apply regardless the POI's particular interest (or willingness to supervise) and the departmental strength?

So the question comes: how narrow should it be, Early Modern France? The French Revolution? Women in the French Revolution? And how do you tailor your interest to fit each school and each POI, proposing to do A with Professor X and B with Professor Y? Some fields (Modern America?) are extremely populous so you can find the right persons who work in the exact region/decade/theme as you do, but some fields (Africa?) are small enough that both faculty and students have to make some compromise I believe. There is always a conflict between being flexible and being concentrated.

The name of the university does not really matter in this case. A sixth-year TT Assistant Professor in History who is approaching the tenure consideration has, in general, published one monograph, usually growing from the dissertation. Exceptionally, some has two monographs already (might be opt for early consideration), or one monograph and one edited volume, and for some others, their book is being printed later the year. Nevertheless, the university recognizes their scholarly contributions hitherto, believes their capability as decent lecturers and researchers, and sees their potential of doing further research (kind of like a Hab. in Continental Europe); thence, the tenure is granted. However, nobody in the Tenure Committee could accurately predict if the candidate will be as productive as when he is an AP. Besides the basic teaching duties and university responsibilities, a tenured associate professor can do whatever he wants and decide how much he does. Strictly speaking, he does not have to publish anything. The only consequence of being a slacker is no promotion to the full professorship, which is a very competitive process in its own right (that's why many associate professors stay in the status quo for thirty years until they retire). So why bother publishing? And indeed, for some PhDs, their dream is merely to get a steady/tenured job in the university and teach college kids (already very hard to achieve at this day). My point is that they see themselves as college-level teachers rather than cutting-edge researchers. They just don't want to write more. This is common in third or fourth-tier programs but also not uncommon in first-rate universities. (Well, you cannot blame them for that because they may, at some point of their career, prioritize families, child-raising, non-academic involvement, free time, or at least teaching, over doing research). Nevertheless, even if an associate professor is continuing publishing, it also differs according to the kind and the quality of his work. As a convention in Humanities, monographs weigh more than book chapters or journal articles. Some historians publish a fabulous monograph to get the tenure, but afterwards, don't write any book but only short papers (those people usually fail in the further promotion). Some do write books, but few of them have a great influence in the subfield or receive a prize from the relevant academic associations (the worst scenario: more than one top scholar from your field harshly criticize your work in the review, saying the book is a crap). To answer your question directly, the publication record itself cannot necessarily determine whether or not he is a fine historian and an ideal supervisor. But he has to publish, publish at least a number of monographs, ground-breaking and mind-blowing monographs that have a far-reaching impact and possibly can somehow change our understanding of a certain history. He thus can climb up to the top of the field and become recognized as a so-called "worldwide leading historian." Then, he can stop writing books (the majority still write though). But really look carefully at what he has been doing in the past fifteen years -- to determine if he is still being "active" in the field. Is he taking an executive position or the presidentship in any academic association? Is he organizing international conferences, or giving speeches in different countries? Is he writing book reviews, or editing papers for academic journals? Is he compiling an encyclopedia or working on a decade-long project? Is he preparing for multiple book projects at the same time? Is he supervising PhD students? In most instances, the Full Professor title can be a good indicator of one's scholarship. Word of mouth also works. Who is regarded as the top historians of the day? Ask your professors and friends of the field, and if they don't know or raise their eyebrows on the name you mention, you should avoid studying with him. All in all, in my opinion, you should either find a productive mid-aged associate professor regardless how much he has published, or an active distinguished full professor regardless how much he is publishing. But at the end of the day, he must be someone that you are happy to work with. (P.S. You sure "he hasn't publishd much"? Professors may not update their publication record or provide a full CV on the internet. Check Google Scholar or World Cat.)