Riotbeard

What are your more specific interests? I know more Southern history places. If you are open to American Studies UT Austin is also really good at everything especially the Southwest though, they may be worth looking at. Out of curiousity, are you in school in New Orleans?

I would think it might looking at Maryland, maybe even there American Studies program if you are open to it.

I made a fairly similar choice between a program with like half the faculty in my specialty of Southern history and a good couple working in my state/time period. Instead I chose to got to the program with a few Southern historians but also strong concentrations connected to but beyond Southern Latin American and Atlantic history. My general plan is to keep my research specialized but my coursework more universal by majoring in U.S. and doing minor field as Atlantic. I think it's a professionally better decision, and I am excited the diversity of cohort, who often work in Latin American slavery and emancipation which I am excited to learn about but am woefully ignorant. I think my work will be better, because I know my stuff, but also get a lot of other perspectives to work with. As far as which is better history or research, I tend to approach history from literary/ humanities perspective than social science, so I tend to be more attracted to histories that get really close to their subject and create a humanistic narrative but that is in some way indicative of a culture. I think this is more successful on the highly specialized level but I don't necessarily think either is superior. That is just my preference. Cheers!

I think I could technically register now if I had gotten all my vaxination stuff in, but the department hasn't put classes up yet or sent out a course list. My advisor said I also need to take the civil rights seminar. Term starts August 24th. We have a summer reading list....

Are you able to register yet? School of liberal arts only just sent out the how to info to us history kids. I did get a reading list and syllabus sent by the prof for the one class all first year history students have to take in the fall!

My grad program told me to get zotero, haven't yet but will.

I would say it depends. I mostly agree with Jae B. That it's only necessary if it in some way impacted you such that it is relevent to your work. If say one of your goals as an academic is to bring your topic into the public sphere, then it's worth noting. One of my goals is to teach history in prison at some point, so my work experience in the prison (which is very minimal but I have a done a few things at the law firm I work at) is relevent to my professional outlook. Also I could see it being relevent (or not relevent depending on the interviewers politics )probably would never put this on the CV just maybe bring up in an interview if it seemed wise) that I am on a commission for my political party and am experienced in working with others toward writing party statements, etc. I don't think anybody is suggesting that any extra-curricular activity is worth putting on, but that there may be some activities worth putting down if they are related, if only tangentially, to your professional outlook. I plan on getting with on campus leftist organizations myself. I talked about working in prison in sop as a jumping point to my approach to history, because it has a direct effect on how I view the world and human nature.

I'm willing to bet that you don't know the chair of her department or go to her school.

If your goal is a PhD from UChicago and your claim that a lot of people do progress directly into said program from MA is accurate. Then you may want to consider the extra debt depending on your finances. It may be worth asking somebody at UChicago how many people get substantially better funding when transitioning from the MA to PhD (like a TA or Fellowship, where you wouldn't incur anymore substantial debt after the MA)etc. It just depends on how much you think having the best chance of getting your PhD at UChicago is versus the money situation, and the quality of options you can reasonably expect to have leaving Wake Forest (a great school don't know about your specific program but...).

You don't have to have star LOR writers, but you do want to have productive and published academics writing for you. Where I am going, my grad advisor taught at my undergrad program about 10-15 years ago (way before I went), and I didn't realize what mine field my LOR selection was until after I got accepted and had lunch with my grad advisor. He was talking about how useless a lot of the old guard my school was (this school was almost exclusively a teaching college in the 70s with no focus on publication, so some of the dinosaurs in the dept hired in the 70s were full professors but had never published a book [which you have to do in history to get tenure these days, and I know Lit is becoming more article oriented than books but the point]). I luckily bonded and worked with the people who had good cv's but my advisors knowledge of the department could have been a disaster instead of a blessing. In short, your LOR writers don't have be super heros but they should be productive scholars with easily findable articles through JSTOR or an equivilently accessable database when possible.

To me reading level is mastering (or at least for non linguistic academic purposes). I would imagine it's pretty similar. I applied to American studies and history and there was no significant difference. From talking to English prof friends, I never got the impression there was a significant difference though. I just suck so much at foreign language that mastering for me meant finally being able to translate well.

I would say you are better off mastering at least one language than having a little bit of skill in a lot of different languages, but if get proficient at Spanish, the more you know and are able to start another language, the better.

In reapplying to schools this year, I only checked the box, and I did well with results from schools I was reapplying to, but I also had a much stronger application overall. I don't see what good it would do to discuss. It just seems like taking up space in the already very limited word count of the SOP. Good Luck! Edited for Gerunding *

I have been French Pressing for years, and I find the liquidsss still stay reasonably hot for an our. I don't see how you can properly make espresso in a french press, but the stove top one only cost 50$

Farce doesn't count cuz it's an advansed word

I went to College of Charleston for Undergrad and know the city really well, and suburbs okay, and I only moved a year ago, so my safety info. is fairly up to date.. PM with any locations (street and cross street) and I can give you advice on safety. If you are living downtown, cool apartments are houses split up, and there aren't many complexes downtown. You are going to love Charleston. If I could have stayed there forever, I would have.

I misspeeellled Cite .

Try Jerba (Yur-Ba) Mate (Ma-Tay). It's more heavily caffinated than coffee but it's tea! Also if you drink traditional style, you get to buy a gourd and a metal tea straw (Or you can use standard tea making devices of course.

I can't comment on your program, but I know at least with history, some history programs are given numbers applicants have to meet by the grad school. My advisor told me the GRE score does matter, it's not of prime importance, but sometimes to get funding you have to reach certain benchmarks. It's not always up to the department, they have to meet the needs of larger institution, and larger institutions often like impressive stats. If it were me (and I just got funding on my second try this year), I would shore up every part of my application if I thought it might be a weakness.

I agree with this mostly, but it feels wasteful to get rid of some the matress I bought a year ago for my last move where I actually fit four years of life into one scion car load... and most of that was books and movies.

I say you exclusively site Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and whenever someone brings up religion in yours classes, tell them it's a farse and not worth discussing.

Kaki King, Four Tet, Godspeed You! Black Emporer, Aphex Twin, Amelie Soundtrack, and then I second the Icelandic stuff not familliar with the others.

I will start off by saying I have still never pulled an all nighter, and I hope this doesn't change in grad school. I also only asked for one extension in all of college( and it was for the last paper due! Luckily the teacher was on the defense pannel for my other paper and was encouraging me to submit another essay to a contest the same week so she understood). For writing lots of material, I always set early deadlines for myself. Write, write early and don't worry if it's crap is my advice. If you have a draft of the essay a week before it's due, you can do wonders even if the base material is riddled with errors. If need be, you can an redo entire sections. So thats my advice, start writing as early as possible. Also if you can see a whole draft, you are more like to notice a gap in your argument or something that could be cut. I hate outlining so the first draft often acts as such.

Just make sure the bag breaths, so the mouse don't sufficate...