TsarandProphet

When you start taking graduate level classes in a history department, you will have professors who can summarize 800-page books in one sentence. Some will add a sentence like "this book could have been an article."
Is staying under a word limit about counting beans? Or is it about being concise in a discipline in which decision-makers increasingly value brevity? "Sometimes less is more," is how an Americanist who has an award named after him put it to me.

I recommend you find a way to cut your SOP to the word limit. Find ways to reduce the use of prepositional phrases, streamline verbs by cutting participles and the use of the passive voice, and cut sentences to the bone.
You will never know if an admissions committee puts you in the "no" pile for "failure to follow simple instructions," or to lower the ranking of your application materials in other ways.
Please take a close look at your frame of mind during this process. In a handful of posts, you've indicated a preference for finding shortcuts by not taking the GRE, by not searching for information on how to phrase a self-introductory note to professors, by applying to "safety schools," by picking programs using a controversial definition of "fit," and now by disregarding instructions on word limits. To me, you're sending a mixed message about how hard you're willing to work as a graduate student.
IME, professional academic historians are very perceptive when it comes to reading between the lines, and, when among themselves, tend to speak candidly. It's a "buyers' market" when it comes to applying to history graduate programs. Do what you can to put your best foot forward in your use of the written word. Do not give readers a "wait a minute" moment. They may use that moment to move on to the next applicant.

I might have the necessary expertise in that. A good way is to find an older textbook of the "grammar and reader" genre, which will take you through graded reading and translation exercises to functional reading proficiency. Then, by reading, you'll acquire speed, vocabulary, and skill in reading this language.

One more tip: advanced readers are rare but they do exist. Depending on the language, Dunwoody Press (which was dead for a long time and is now reviving its old glory) published many such readers for laughably less-taught languages. Since many of these books are out of print, it is worthwhile to search on WorldCat or your university library catalog. If you are already quite acquainted with the grammar, even a reader whose auxiliary language is other than English (the Soviets were good in publishing readers) can be useful for you -- you just need graded, well-chosen texts for your practice. Searching for old textbooks is also a gem because it helps you ease into reading primary sources. It is funny, perhaps, but reading what an American/British learner of German read to study German in the 19th century is actually quite useful in the post-beginner stage.

I might have the necessary expertise in that. A good way is to find an older textbook of the "grammar and reader" genre, which will take you through graded reading and translation exercises to functional reading proficiency. Then, by reading, you'll acquire speed, vocabulary, and skill in reading this language.

One more tip: advanced readers are rare but they do exist. Depending on the language, Dunwoody Press (which was dead for a long time and is now reviving its old glory) published many such readers for laughably less-taught languages. Since many of these books are out of print, it is worthwhile to search on WorldCat or your university library catalog. If you are already quite acquainted with the grammar, even a reader whose auxiliary language is other than English (the Soviets were good in publishing readers) can be useful for you -- you just need graded, well-chosen texts for your practice. Searching for old textbooks is also a gem because it helps you ease into reading primary sources. It is funny, perhaps, but reading what an American/British learner of German read to study German in the 19th century is actually quite useful in the post-beginner stage.

I might have the necessary expertise in that. A good way is to find an older textbook of the "grammar and reader" genre, which will take you through graded reading and translation exercises to functional reading proficiency. Then, by reading, you'll acquire speed, vocabulary, and skill in reading this language.

I might have the necessary expertise in that. A good way is to find an older textbook of the "grammar and reader" genre, which will take you through graded reading and translation exercises to functional reading proficiency. Then, by reading, you'll acquire speed, vocabulary, and skill in reading this language.

What do you expect to hear from us? Why making all these assumptions based on a form, instead of filling it and opening a dialog with them?

True, but also the other way round: There are brilliant and kind professors who'll be wonderful advisors, but they work at institutions whose graduate programs typically (or decisively) lead nowhere. Like always, the unhelpful response would be "you need a great advisor in a great school," with a great advisor in a low-tier school and a bad advisor at a great school being equally bad alternatives.

True, but also the other way round: There are brilliant and kind professors who'll be wonderful advisors, but they work at institutions whose graduate programs typically (or decisively) lead nowhere. Like always, the unhelpful response would be "you need a great advisor in a great school," with a great advisor in a low-tier school and a bad advisor at a great school being equally bad alternatives.

What do you expect to hear from us? Why making all these assumptions based on a form, instead of filling it and opening a dialog with them?

What do you expect to hear from us? Why making all these assumptions based on a form, instead of filling it and opening a dialog with them?

What do you expect to hear from us? Why making all these assumptions based on a form, instead of filling it and opening a dialog with them?

Congratulations! I am a Europeanist at Yale, so feel free to ask any questions

As a polite suggestion: It is not very clear. What historical subfields? Which actors? What are these "lived experiences"? The heartbeat metaphor is not very clear either, even if I tried to read carefully for the second and third time.

As a polite suggestion: It is not very clear. What historical subfields? Which actors? What are these "lived experiences"? The heartbeat metaphor is not very clear either, even if I tried to read carefully for the second and third time.

Well, you offered it as an example. Since you thought others might want to emulate it, we clarify that they probably shouldn't: It is vague, it leads to nowhere, there is no way to know to quickly classify your application based on that paragraph, and the heartbeats metaphor really sounds like a pretentious way of saying "I care about listening to the voices of people from the past," which is frankly what historians do.
Other people, in search of different examples, might want to consider that committees are composed of faculty members from across the department who have very little time to process what they read. It is best to exemplify concise, precise, and crystal-clear writing in the document that should be most representative of you in a stage where no one is committed to reading your carefully and slowly.

Well, you offered it as an example. Since you thought others might want to emulate it, we clarify that they probably shouldn't: It is vague, it leads to nowhere, there is no way to know to quickly classify your application based on that paragraph, and the heartbeats metaphor really sounds like a pretentious way of saying "I care about listening to the voices of people from the past," which is frankly what historians do.
Other people, in search of different examples, might want to consider that committees are composed of faculty members from across the department who have very little time to process what they read. It is best to exemplify concise, precise, and crystal-clear writing in the document that should be most representative of you in a stage where no one is committed to reading your carefully and slowly.

Just because other comments have encouraged you to find a way to combine both, you don't have to. My undergrad was history and Islamic studies/Arabic philology -- my dissertation is Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires. I have, then, several languages I had learnt without using them properly in grad school like Arabic and Persian. It's much more important to find a question you're genuinely interested in and not just a bridge between two undergrad choices you made.

Just because other comments have encouraged you to find a way to combine both, you don't have to. My undergrad was history and Islamic studies/Arabic philology -- my dissertation is Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires. I have, then, several languages I had learnt without using them properly in grad school like Arabic and Persian. It's much more important to find a question you're genuinely interested in and not just a bridge between two undergrad choices you made.

Just because other comments have encouraged you to find a way to combine both, you don't have to. My undergrad was history and Islamic studies/Arabic philology -- my dissertation is Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires. I have, then, several languages I had learnt without using them properly in grad school like Arabic and Persian. It's much more important to find a question you're genuinely interested in and not just a bridge between two undergrad choices you made.

It really depends. If the total number of languages will be three, it's fine. It's better than showing no progress whatsoever in Russian if that's your area of interest. However, as a Central-Eastern Europeanist who also does Central Asia -- there are many more languages to learn, then, unless you focus your interest (instead of spreading it further). This might intimidate schools with no adequate language programs if you suddenly need, say, Polish/Hungarian/Czech and perhaps Uzbek/Tajik/Kazakh in addition to an intensive preparation in Russian.

I don't. There's no point to them. There aren't any exams except quals, and those are their own separate thing (for these, I did 500-1000 word precis of each item), and in-class notes have no utility for any papers. I did have a notebook I'd write in for class, but that's because it's a way I think through a problem, not for later reference.

Without seeing any of the papers, I'd suggest that you choose your strongest one - which should be engaging with primary sources and secondary sources when needed. There is no golden ratio. I applied to study Eastern European history in macro, but my paper was rather micro and its repertoire of primary sources was a single journal.