Riotbeard

Nothing against NC state, but Ohio State is a top 20 program.

Based on your acceptances line, I would go to which ever one is at Ohio State. They have a SERIOUS history program, and the contacts you make there could be huge. Also ditto about doing a history MA thesis.

Also stipends have gone up by about 500-1000 dollars every year since I have been here. No guarantee but hey.

Here is what tulane offers: From the website: What kind of financial support does the History program offer? All Ph.D. students accepted in the program are funded through a university stipend or outside funding sources. The School of Liberal Arts offers tuition waivers, in addition to a stipend, for the 2012-2013 academic year is $21,947. The stipend is paid over a twelve month period. Assuming satisfactory progress, Ph.D. students receive 5 years of stipend support. http://history.tulane.edu/web/default.asp?id=FaqGraduateProgram A little more detail based on my experience, and what I understand people come in under now (in other words, I know this is what it is, but I am sorry if I am wrong). You get $1000 toward health insurance if you use the Tulane insurance which costs approximately 2000$. Year 2 students T. A. for both semesters. Year 3 teach a survey course the first semester (you create you syllabus, etc.), and the 2nd semester they teach a self designed mid-level seminar. Years 1, 4, and 5 are funded with no service required.

Good reading... The idea of personalized rejections, while nice, is absurd. Who on earth wants to become a professor, so they can sit around writing rejection letters. Just a piece of advice reiterated, you need to improve your coping skills. Casting a wide net of applications is the sad nature of the career you are beginning for decades to come, and your golden rule should be, all you need is one acceptance at every point. For me, right now, applications are for grants and dissertation fellowships. In two years, it will be jobs/post docs. Most of my applications will get rejected. It is what it is. Form rejections are the only efficient way to accomplish this, unless you want to become an applicant grief counselor who teaches during their spare time... The best option for you is to not take it personally, and as much as possible, roll with the punches.

Although AAHM is a big tent organization, but yes there is some division. There those like myself, who are scientifically challenged history of med people, and there are the MD and MD/PhD's who are much more influenced by their knowledge of disease in more pragmatic, life-and-death ways compared to discursively oriented work like my dissertation. I would say there is room for all, but that having a professional/dual degree says something about you on the job market that has potential to help or hurt you depending on the hiring committee.

I found the admitted students weekends helpful. The fact that Tulane could pay for travel (plane ticket, hotel) was a good omen for funding in general. They are good for learning the culture of the program, to an extent. That being said, don't worry about it. Enjoy studying abroad, and skype with current students or something, if you need help making a decision.

Depending on what you want to do UPenn could be a good fit for you. A lot of students do empire there. To be fair transnational history is somewhat of a myth. Most people do transnational history of a specific country, so you would still need to pick some sort of geographical focus or focii for when applying, even if you want to look at it in transnational methods/contexts.

This is a bit of a shameless plug, but I just started a twitter account for weird medicine quotes, I come accross in the process of research. Please follow me https://twitter.com/AntiquatedMeds. Also If you know of any other good history twitter accounts (or have one), post them here.

Agreed. It should only affect you heavily if they have an arbitrary cut-off, in which case talking about in your SOP won't matter. If your application gets read all the way through, it shouldn't have a huge impact either way. I would suggest taking it again, and using a book (if you have time). My score went up over a hundred points (I don't what that is equivelent to on the current test).

I am presenting. I think saturday...

Haha!

It really depends on what you do and your approaches. I use a lot of Foucault. He is for my work the most important theorists. I also like Hayden White. Marx is big for everybody (at least everybody has to know Marx a little bit). There really isn't a good answer for this, because it's mostly a matter of what type of history you pursue. I do cultural history, but I don't use many anthropologists. I lean towards literary critics, and use a lot of deconstruction and close reading. I would ask a professor what you should be reading based on your interests/projects. Ther are a couple of good theory overviews that can be a good starting point. I would ask a professor for a reccomendation.

D'Emilio! Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities is essential reading in my opinion. It is really the foundational text of gay history, and I would definitely describe D'Emilio as a social historian. Daniel Hurewitz. Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics is also quite good. I would reccomend Glenda Gilmore's Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights. It is quite good, which deal a lot with Union organizing and the rise of the Southern communist party (many forget that Birmingham, Alabama was the second biggest chapter of communist party quite some time!). Dan Carter's The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of New Conservativism, and the Transformation of American Politics is a good book on the Southern Strategy. Also Martin Meeker's Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Communities, 1940s-1970s is a really strong book.

What papers are you writing for seminars? You should be moving toward this somewhat organically (at least in my experience, to be fair, I know others who have struggled). Have you written any papers for your adviser that he liked? What is your masters thesis on? I got to my dissertation through the snowball effect. A few papers turned into a Master's thesis, turned into a passion, then exploratory research, then a prospectus, and now I am in the research phase. I know other people kind of sit and think their way towards a diss more systematically, but you might want to calm down, and consider what you find interesting, and work on that. If that seems viable for a bigger project, then move forward. You got into this program so they clearly found your sop interesting.

Hard to answer to0 simply as there are far too many factors. There is a percieved need for chinise history and other east asian fields. U.S. history is probably the worst with late 20th U.S. being the worst of the worst. Fields with a perceived practical application, i.e. medicine, "big" science, business, and geo-politically imporant regions probably are your best bet, although, I will reiterate, this is a very difficult question to answer. There are probably more grant opportunities for U.S. history than any other geographical field; however, the applicant to grant ratio is very poor.

Apply to some MA programs also. Unless you have an incredible project, and just come off amazing in letters of rec. and writing sample, you will have a very difficult time getting in anywhere. Your GPA is low, your extra-curriculars are not going to make much of difference, but they are at least, things that could make you a better writer/teacher. Even at mid-tier PhD programs these days, you are talking about 6-10 spots for a couple hundred applicants. You look like an applicant that will have to use an MA program to boost your GPA if you are serious about pursuing a PhD. That said, we know nothing about your writing sample, personal statement, and letters of rec. Stranger things have happened.

While I agree with lucrative-ness being the wrong aim, I think it's fair to answer. Anything practical to modern geopolitics, i.e. Asia and Middle-east, business history, and history of med/science. The truth is though these will have some of the best job markets, but the most lucrative would be a job where you get hired to be a historian in a business department or medical school. These department pay much better than humanities departments. I don't think (outside of endowed chairs), there is a significant pay difference based on field within departments. I will say, I think it's stupid that people disliked your post. Oodles of money is not why I got into history, and I am not sure it is practical to go into history with expectations of making more than a middle class salery, but I don't get the need of people on this board to dislike your post, because you have different aims.

I know one person at UMass Boston. She is really smart with a really good project. Not sure what that says about their program, but the only person I have met, I am confident will transition into a solid PhD program.

I bought most of my class books, as I am a book horder, but I say, if you take good notes, you really don't need to buy books if you don't want to. I will say at some point in the future, don't you hope that at least our small reading audience of grad students and academics bother to buy our books... Just a thought.

It is also something that you could address in your personal statement and/or have people address it in you letters of recomendation. This could solve the problem, but it's a risk. If you can get your reccomenders to address it as a positive that you went back for more language training , it could work out.

I will let Mr. Crane know, and you are a discerning fan. His poetry is way better than his prose, although that stuff is certainly good too.

I don't much about this school (its canadian) Washington State University Vancouver, but they have an MA program and Sue Peabody. Her book "There are No Slaves in France" has a lot to do with the intellectual and history of race in France, which has a lot to do with materialism. She covers materialists a good deal in the book. Might be worth thumbing through her book, because she could be worth working with on an MA in your interests. http://cas.vancouver.wsu.edu/history/graduate-degrees You might also want to look at MAs in Francophone studies.

I used to yell and scream, history is a humanities, but I think I came to terms with my more social scientist oriented friends, and prefer the approach of saying, that is not what I do, but what they do is valid (almost as valid as what I do ). I guess that is just my post modern relativism, maaaaaan!

I think it depends on what you do. My work has the aims of the humanities mostly and not the social sciences. It is about studying the human condition for me and language. I use a lot of literary theory, but I think people whose methodologies are more rooted in the social sciences probably feel the opposite from me. I think there is room for history to staddle that line. I believe at my university, history is considered a humanities (at least in bureaucratic terms), but I am not sure it's university placement matters.