Riotbeard

I got non-wait list acceptance as early as the second week of february and as late as the third week of March. It just depends on the school...

I think strangelight is mostly right here. As an Americanist, in my first semester, I did not take any courses in my time period or region for various reasons (even ended up taking an LA history class). No matter what, you will have to take things out of your comfort zone. If you are okay with that it's actually kind of awesome. One of my seminar papers I am taking to a conference and get to be involved with a whole mess of grad students working in completely different time periods. It also gives you opportunity to learn the dif. methods other subfields use. I will say, as someone who applied to both history and American studies programs, it is hard to say which is better on the job market. There are less cultural studies PhDs being produced but there are also a lot less jobs. I know an LA history person in my program decided against getting an LA studies PhD, because he was told there were so few jobs in LA studies. This was rambling but you get the jist!

Thanks so much! I will have to get it when it comes out! On a personal note, does anyone have any clue why my first post garnered a minus button from somebody??!

I am not sure what this says about my interview skills etc., but of the 6 acceptances and 1 waitlist i got last year (mind you there were 6 or so rejections too! And 5 rejections and no acceptances the year before that). I had only met or talked to faculty two of the schools and i didn't end up at one of those two... I think contacting faculty can be helpful for you and how you feel about the school, but at the end of the day your application is what is most important not what you write about in e-mails. I had plenty of rejections from places where I thought are meeting when I visited went great.

Be weary, but since this person a faculty member in your department, you should do some covert digging before you confront him or get somebody else to confront him. Figure out if he this way with everybody or just women or just you. You don't want to have some sort of moment then he whole department calls bs on you, and you look like a jerk. He could be Southern... we southern men were raised in mysterious ways, luckily I have mostly shaken it off and slam doors in everybody's faces .

I love Tulane. In the end for me, it came down between South Carolina, Tulane, and a wait list that I decided to take my name off of. I ended up going here, because despite my interest in Southern, I felt like I could get a variety of interests at Tulane, and not so purely Southern, becuase while I still have a lot to learn about Southern history, I wanted the Atlantic World aspect. The funding at Tulane is really generous, and my cohort is amazing. It's small, and we arent all cutting each others throats for books. I think our application due date isn't until like February 1. They also changed the program just before I got here to model it after Duke's, so no comps. If you have any question feel free to PM me. When I visited SC, I liked it a lot too. The faculty there are great, and the other grad students are very cool. In some respects, I would have fit in there really well, but I would be doing the diversity of work there that I do at Tulane.

I applied to like 13 schools. It sucks when you are doing it, but the more applications the more options you will probably have at the end of it all.

This a question best posed to your advisor or DGS since most of us don't know about the specific policies of your school. Good luck though!

Not sure, but it might help to look at schools that have strong law schools too.

Interested, yes, but it is not what I do mostly, although it looks like my thesis topic is going to be a form of legal history, and I am taking U.S. Legal History next semester.

My advisor is off all of this year (my first), but we have been able to meet regularly. Also, before it was clear he was going to be in town this year, I was going to have a temporary advisor. I would e-mail them, and ask if they plan on taking students, but it shouldn't be to big of a deal.

You did understand! Yes, 4 people have MAs in history, and 4 of us are picking them up on the way (This is people in my year, there are more than 8 PhD students where I go).

There are people in my grad program. My cohort is about 50/50. Most of the people who have MAs either weren't very driven in undergrad and have to make up for their poorer undergrad record or did not study history as an undergrad. This is the main reason to get an MA before PhD. In some cases, it can be helpful if you went to a much less than stellar undergrad institution to jump into realm higher ranked programs for the PhD.

I agree with this, and also try to create a cooperative culture in your cohort. Most of the other members of my cohort are aware of each others projects, and we regularly send each other things we find that may apply to other peoples research. Their is no reason to view them as a group of competitors. You are all there for good reason, and can learn a great deal from each other. Create relationships across fields. I learn a great deal from how Latin Americanists approach their topics and I like to think vice versa. In my first year, this has been the best and most helpful aspect of my program. We even have a shared blog.

So far my semester has been going pretty well (except for a disappointing turn in the world of romance). The fun thing is that I haven't had any significant grades in any of my classes yet, the final papers are pretty much everything. I have had really solid encouragment in my research so far though, and I am beginning to see how committee will probably look. My cohort is pretty awesome. I have made some really good friends. It might just be though that the wall emerges as soon as I turn in my seminar papers.

If I remember correctly from applying to their American studies program, they had something similar. Seemed a bit pointless, but alas...

It's more important that your work shows your approach to history and personal flair (I am not sure that is the best word), than it being boring but about your future temporal/spatial focus. Go with your best paper.

Go to the best school you can get it into (this includes best fit and faculty in your subfeild into the computation along with ranking. While going to a top 20 gives you a leg up, you can get a tenure track job from schools outside of it. I am a non-top 20 program and our placement record is pretty solid. You don't need to stress out tooo much about ranking, but it goes with out saying go to the best place you get into. There is someone in my program who got into a couple top programs but decided to go where the fit was best.

I am working on a project on homophobia in the Black Freedom Struggle. I was wondering if anyone knew of a bio of Pauli Murray and/or any other lesbian civil rights activists? Thanks.

Not sure, but he played a jazz show at my school this weekend. He is a badass in a variety of ways as it turns out.

Not ideal, but I wouldn't guess it's damning by any means.

Since you have a masters your undergrad GPA won't matter much. I think you are in great standing. The language barrier explains why you are on the lower end of the High GRE verbal range (mind that you are way above average compared to native speakers on the verbal section). Your language proficiency sounds amazing. You seem like you could be a top candidate. Although never forget the range of administrative/ departmental factors that go into acceptance that have no relevance to your application, so apply to a good couple schools.

In general, you are in decent standing. Your GPA is a little low but probably fine. Your list of schools is incredibly competitive though. The one thing is you may want to retake the GRE. Their is a fairly accepted theory that a lot of grad schools have a GRE cut off and your score may be a little low. Talk to your advisor, but I think with a good SOP and writing sample you would be fine as long as you make the GRE cut off.

Your GPA is great (it is in the range where any differences between others are unimportant), and assuming your GRE scores are solid you certainly have a shot. How long ago did you finish undergrad, if it has been a long time you may benefit from getting a stand alone masters or at least enrolling somewhere locally (preferably a four year institution) part time to take some history course to show that you are re-engaged in the field? Are you tied to the West because of family obligations or are you just unwilling to move, because there are a couple of great Latin American programs you are leaving out further east. I don't think your age in itself is necessarily a huge drawback (at least at most programs) but the age of your degree may hurt you, but you can fix it by getting re-connected to academia if only in a limited capacity (if your degree is old). One of my cohort member entered are program at 29 straight from undergrad, and his age is not a factor. It would also be helpful now to start tearing your writing sample apart and if needed, add a historical element to it. Thesis writing would have been a helpful exercise but it hardly expected out of someone with an undergrad degree. Sidenote: during my year outside of academia, I worked as a paralegal. I feel your pain. Academia is way more rewarding.

UVA is having epic and well known funding problems, so I am not saying drop them, but you should take that into consideration. Have you thought about U Chicago one of my 20th century profs got his PhD there, and another got hers at Yale. You do need to get your GRE up a bit (I know its stupid and says nothing about your actual ability but it is the way it is) and the kaplan course, although expensive, helped me a lot (like about 200 total points). You may also want to look at Maryland which is a solid program with some decent 20th century people and Johns Hopkins, and what about Georgetown (if you have a midatlantic fetish).