Riotbeard

I will say from personal experience not having to TA your first year is really nice. You will have more time to devote to classwork and outside research. I would also strongly advise visiting the other school and meeting faculty and students and keep an open mind, you have till april 15, they don't mind if you take that time. I completely changed my choice of school after a campus visit (and I had visited the other school before also). Both schools are solidly ranked so I wouldn't worry too much, but it is hard to imagine passing up a school like michigan (thats just me being honest, but I am single and don't have the family concerns you have, etc.). Also Michigan has some of the best Breweries in the country... At the end of the day though, you have a wealth of riches to choose from, so be excited!

You are in normal condition for applying. Strangelight is right. Nobody in my department had really serious publications on their CV, even those who had a masters. Any publications people had coming in were from undergrad or grad journals, and had presented at similar types of conference presentations. Having really solid publications (while certainly not unheard of) is still really rare for people applying to PhD programs. I had one publication in a medical journal (I won a medical historical library essay contest), and no conference presentations. That being said getting stuff published and presenting at conference can only help. It shows engagement, so do a few in your year off if you want, and put forthcoming or applied (depending on if you have been accepted or haven't heard) on your cv.

Oh I know, I can't wait for those free dinners!

That's my post drinking ritual

I only got one unfunded offer my first go round, so even if it doesn't work out this year (no reason to give up hope though), you can work on strengthening your application over the next six months.

My advice is to visit the schools and meet your adviser and some other professors. In my experience, a lot of schools will cover your travel and hotel costs. You need to go to the school and meet students and teachers to get a feel for the culture of department. And yes money means a lot. A lot stipends go less than you expect.

My drinking has become more suburban and is often the tail end ritual of heavy reading, although I probably drink more consistently than in college (I picked this up having a 9-5 job). Although we do go out a lot. It's New Orleans. Brewing is really fun.

My adviser signs his first name but does not want to be addressed as such. Better to be too formal than cross a boundary.

I play tennis with another member of my cohort. I also tutor English Lit. at a local high school. On more social accounts, I go out to shows (indy mostly but also local jazz and funk stuff), art galleries, and watch a lot of movies with friends. If you are a drinker like myself, I would say it is really nice to pick a local watering hole and try to go once a week or so, and make neighborhood friends. This can be really helpful, because there will be undoubtably many nights when you want to get away from work for a few hours without having to really go out. It helps me relax and get out of the young academic group and mindset and leave my work behind on a week night, if only for a few hours. I will second what strangelight said about cohort hangout. Make sure you go out sometimes, because you don't want to come off as the department stick in the mud, but you really only have to go out as much as you like. It's also good to start a hobby. Me and another cohort member brew beer together every couple weeks.

I was just in Baton Rouge last Friday for research. Their special collections library is absolutely beautiful. There are some great archives there and in New Orleans so get excited. Also since I assume you do Modern US from your name there is a great African American Library in NOLA with fantastic civil rights and harlem rennaisance collections.

Your GRE score is pretty good, but if you fell like you can do better. You may wanna take it again. A little higher score may help from an adminstrative perspective (The schools that encompass the department like having high GRE statistics), but at the end of the day, any advice you get here is guessing, and the GRE is pretty low on the importance level of your application.

I would say if you can get a free MA out of it and you tell your potential advisor up front that if you don't get more funding at the end of those two years you will have to look into other institutions, go for it. They know we can't afford the type of loans that would entail. Also if you didn't get another offer and already have an MA, wait till next year. I got an unfunded offer in Spring 09 and deferred till the next year and updated my application and got fully funded (although I didn't end up going to that school...). I also had much better results the second round of applying in general and got 5 or 6 funded offers. Patience is better than a bunch of debt. You already know they like you a lot, and that there are things in your application they like. Also it is still really early to assume this is your only option.

Revise and re-submit is a huge victory! Congratulations!

I am editing down a seminar paper for a Grad Conference (Power and Struggle at University of Alabama) in March. The final version is due Monday... I am also planning (but being lazy) on starting to get some FBI files sent to me of Civil Rights activists and copies of some oral interviews held at distant libraries, so I can turn this seminar paper into something publishable. I also started volunteer tutoring AP English at a local high school.

I can relate to the I am sad threads but I don't personally feel it. I think the transition may have been rougher and begged more questions of why am I here, if I went directly from undergrad to grad. Instead I spent a miserable year as a paralegal, which told me that academia, while maybe has longer work hours, gives me much more control over my schedule. I love my cohort. Outside of smoking way too many cigarettes, I am healthier than I have ever been. The social scene here is great, and a lot of my best friends are also my fellow grad students. You couldn't pay me enough to go back to the real world.

For Americanists, a lot of job postings ask for the ability to teach Atlantic history, so it's not a bad second field to have on your radar. It's also pretty common, but not as, to see requests for public history teaching ability, but it is harder to get these qualifications at most grad programs.

I agree with what others say. No need to join the AHA until you are looking for a job. H-net is great. I am on H-net South and Slavery. I am also a member of the Southern Historical Association ($10 per year student membership!). I have a friend who went to AHA this year and he advised against going until you are looking for a job. He said there are so many people, that meaningful networking is difficult for anyone not on the market. While their journals are solid, you have so much reading in grad school that it's unlikely that you are going to read the broad appeal articles in your spare time instead of something more focused in your interest.

When you apply to Northeast South Dakota State University, they don't have a hiring committee with 3 people in your subfield, because they probably dont have a grad program, and unless your an americanist only one faculty member in your subfield. Any school that has more than a masters program probably will have a better stacked hiring committee, but most tiny schools ( like the ones we will all be applying to for our first tenured job) won't.

Another grad student and I play tennis every week. I also have a movie watching buddy, amongst some going out friends. Having a good social life is essential. Agreed to everyone who everyone who has said this.

I mostly agree with what people are saying about ranking, etc. I didn't apply to any Ivy league schools although I did apply to some equivalent programs. I think the prestige of your advisers is more important than your school. That being said... Hiring committees are not usually made up of people in your field, and some people may not know your big wig adviser in your subfield, so name recognition of your school can only help you. Don't apply to schools with a big name if your academic fit is poor, but if you were to get into a highly recognizable program and your adviser is doing what you want to do, ranking is worth taking into account. The ranking system is more based on how good academic think programs are not "reality". While this is a stupid system, it reflects what other people think of programs. Programs in the top 20 have a strong reputation, and that reputation can only help you. People who say otherwise are just ignoring the truth. You have to think of this as a business as much as it sucks. If you think you can thrive at a specific program and get accepted, go there over a higher ranked school, but if it were a fifty-fifty split decision and the only thing better in your mind about one is there ranking, I would go to the higher ranked, because it does put an astrix on your job applications. Hundreds of people apply for academic jobs, and that name recognition may get you into the pile of applications they read. That being said, a good PhD student can put together a hireable application anywhere. Thats my 2 cents

Word to the wise, call if you are worried! Last year, I applied somewhere and it individually said it had all my items but the final status said incomplete. Since everything had a check by it, I assumed it meant no decision yet. Instead, it meant that the grad school had not sent my transcript to the department. I called a month after letters had been sent and I got waitlisted, because they didn't have any more open spots. It was one of my top choices!

D'Emilio is amazing. His bio of Bayard Rustin is great. I would add: Stein, Marc. City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 Hurewitz, Daniel. Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics Wallace, Maurice. Constructing the Black Masculine... Can't remember the subtitle.

I am still at the very beginning of my stuff, so mine is pretty basic, and based on our department's template. Here it is: "My name... U.S. South, Antebellum Period, Race, Atlantic World Awards Here I put my one non-departmental/undergrad award... Publications My one publication... Education B.A., History and English, ________ 2009 MA/PhD Candidate, _______ University..." I think this is enough. Some of the other first years have more detailed bios but many of them already have MAs.

I would really appreciate looking at the syllabus. I also agree that your racial, gender, class, sexual identities do not by any means point to what you will study. Pragmatically, as a white hetero male of protestant upbringing (now an agnostic), it would be risky to study this group from a professional standpoint, because they have received so much attention in the past. When I look at my cohort, I am the only person I know who does some queer history. The other person in my cohort who studies African Americans is also a white male. Two non-latinos study latin America. For the most part you would not be able to guess our course of study by our identities, etc.

1. Queer history is already pretty big. As a americanist, I think we need to start looking at paradigms of class, gender, race and sexuality as fundimentally tied to modern identity construction, but instead of writing queer theory vs. race theory vs. feminist theory... we need to start thinking about how all the identities converge and affect eachother. 2. I also think we need to look more and more to literary criticism/theory for influence, but historians have been reluctant to do this. I hope we bury the idea of history as a social science and just accept we are a humanities.