TheHessianHistorian

Yes, all of us should really get together in a Facebook group or something to compare notes with each other on relocating to St. Louis. Private message me if you want my Facebook username!

I just made my official decision to go to WUSTL yesterday! It feels great to finally know where I am going to live in four months, after having started with an initial application pool of 15 different schools in every corner of the country. I have some friends and distant relatives in St. Louis that are helping to guide me through the process of finding housing. Once I have a few good options, I will have to go down to St. Louis and scope out the residences in person. Anyone going to WUSTL in 2018, feel free to send me a message or link up with me!

I would confer with some of your trusted mentors on how to most effectively shape your graduate school applications to get accepted into a history program. Your professors will have a lot of good advice. I would not also be afraid to contact professors of interest at history programs that you might like to attend, introduce yourself and explain your situation, and see if they have any thoughts on how to get admitted to their program with an undergraduate degree that's not entirely about history. On a purely numbers level, I would also hope that your grades in your history classes were good, and ideally they would be even higher than your general GPA. That would show that you have a special passion for history. Finally, I will also say that interdisciplinarity has been big for the last few decades. The fact that you bring a different type of expertise to the program might actually work in your favor. With the right wording, you might use that as a selling point in your Statement Of Purpose.

I don't have specific examples I can show you off hand, but I know that I've seen profiles of numerous other individuals who went to graduate school for history after earning an undergraduate degree in a different field. Sometimes, you can bridge the gap by specializing in a subset of history that is relevant to your undergraduate degree. For instance, someone with a BS in Biology might go to grad school and specialize in environmental history. With your English degree, might you be interested in something like literary history or the history of language?

I had some lengthy conversations with faculty and current grad students at WUSTL and left with a great impression. After consulting my mother and grandfather, both professors, they recommended WUSTL hands-down as the best choice. I have officially submitted my decision. I will be in St. Louis this fall!

So, here is what I found out about WUSTL's situation, which may help provide a kind of benchmark for what may be normal for similar-sized programs: Quals: qualifying exams at WUSTL take place at the end of year 3 Teaching Load: the teaching load at WUSTL is six semesters of Mentored Teaching Experiences (MTEs); for the first 5 semesters of MTE, it is duties like grading papers, leading discussion groups, giving an occasional lecture (not IOR); for the final 6th semester of MTE, you deliver a 200-level course as IOR Year 1: students do not normally teach in their first year, as they are adjusting to the rigors of graduate coursework; a normal course load is three 4-credit courses per term (during terms with GTA responsibilities, a normal load is two courses + GTA responsibilities) Insurance: health insurance is $1630 annually, so with a 90% subsidy I would pay $163 a year; dental has not historically been covered, but the plan for the 2018-2019 academic year onward is to include dental, although this decision has not been finalized yet Archival Research: the average amount of financial support received by a student for summer research is $2000; other funding is also available for language training, conference presentations, professional development, etc.

These are really good questions for me to be asking! Thanks for the thought-provoking guidance!

I have added the funding offer that I received today along with an acceptance off the wait list from Washington University in St. Louis: $23,360 per year up to 6 years, 90%-subsidized comprehensive health insurance, and a 100% tuition waiver. Attached to a 6-semester teaching assistantship with teaching duties in years 2, 3, and 4. Year 5 devoted to archival research and year 6 devoted to dissertation. The last couple of months, as I got rejected from all of the PhD programs I applied to, I had begun to grow accustomed to the idea of doing a Master's degree and have even begun to think that focusing on a Master's degree first would be for the best. However, I now have a fully funded PhD offer to consider. Do I jump straight into a WUSTL PhD, or do I do a Master's degree and then in 2 years try to get into a PhD program with even better job-placement rates than WUSTL? (I already know what @telkanuru would say... What does everyone else think?)

Just got a rejection from Brandeis's Master's program on Monday. Prof. Sreenivasan said he was disappointed with the decision, but it just came down to the fact that their MA program is only 1 year long and he is going to be on sabbatical for half of that year. He said if I'd applied in any other year, I wouldn't have had a problem getting in. On another note, I just got an acceptance to WUSTL's PhD program today with a $23,360/year x 6 years funding offering. Between that and my acceptances to the Binghamton, Alabama, Northern Illinois, and Texas Tech Master's programs, I have a tough decision to make...

This is a really good question. I did try my best to filter out in cursu MAs, and sometimes (when a student stated something like "I am a third-year doctoral student, and I earned my MA in 2017") I was able to do so. Oftentimes, however, when the grad student mentioned in their bio that they had "earned their M.A. at such-and-such institution," it was unclear whether the MA was earned before or after admittance to the PhD program at that same institution. For instance, just to pick at random, Juhee Kang's profile merely states, "She received her MA at Harvard and BA from Carleton College." Not much more information could be gleaned from her profile than that (unless I wanted to spend a lot more time on Google for this little project), so I felt it best to include the information rather than to risk excluding pertinent info. I do recall some other Harvard grad students who chose to divulge more information mentioned earning a Master's degree in Social Studies from Harvard before entering Harvard's History PhD program. All that being said, it would be advisable to take the numbers of those who earned their MA at the same institution as their PhD with a grain of salt--there may be a few in cursu MAs hiding in that number. If anyone has a burning curiosity about one of the schools, they might download the raw data that I attached to my original post and research the individual student names more closely to see if a LinkedIn or personal website might be found that sheds more light on each student's particular situation.

As I have been investigating the biographies of PhD students in top tier history programs, I have been compiling a spreadsheet of where each student received his/her undergraduate degree(s) and Master's degree(s). There has been a bit of discussion in this forum lately about the importance of "Master's degree prestige" in applying to top tier PhD programs, so I hope this list is helpful to other users: University of Chicago 44 history grad students list their pre-PhD degrees on their Chicago webpages 40 came into the PhD program with a Bachelor's and Master's degree; 4 only had a Bachelor's degree Most common MA institutions for Chicago PhD students: University of Chicago - 16 University of Edinburgh - 2 Washington University in St. Louis - 2 Catholic University of America - 1 Charles University in Prague - 1 Clemson University - 1 Columbia University - 1 Harvard Law School - 1 Hebrew University of Jerusalem - 1 Indiana University - 1 Johns Hopkins University - 1 New York University - 1 Northeastern Illinois University - 1 Northern Illinois University - 1 Oxford University - 1 Portland State University - 1 San Diego State University - 1 Seoul National University - 1 Universite Paris VIII - 1 University of California, Irvine - 1 University of Nebraska, Lincoln - 1 Vanderbilt University - 1 Yale Law School - 1 Most common BA institutions for Chicago PhD students: University of California, Berkeley - 5 Johns Hopkins University - 3 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor - 3 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign - 2 Washington University in St. Louis - 2 Boston University - 1 Brown University - 1 Charles University in Prague - 1 Claremont McKenna College - 1 DePaul University - 1 Eastern Oregon University - 1 Hebrew University of Jerusalem - 1 Indiana University, Bloomington - 1 Lahore University of Management Sciences - 1 New York University - 1 Ohio State University - 1 Oxford University - 1 Princeton University - 1 Saint Joseph's College - 1 Salem College - 1 Sarah Lawrence College - 1 Seoul National University - 1 Southern Oregon University - 1 University of Alabama - 1 University of British Columbia - 1 University of California, Los Angeles - 1 University of California, San Diego - 1 University of California, Santa Barbara - 1 University of Georgia - 1 University of Nebraska, Lincoln - 1 University of Nebraska, Omaha - 1 University of New Mexico - 1 University of San Francisco - 1 Villanova University - 1 Wesleyan University - 1 Yale University - 1 Columbia University 96 history grad students list their pre-PhD degrees on their Columbia webpages 63 came into the PhD program with a Bachelor's and Master's degree; 33 only had a Bachelor's degree Most common MA institutions for Columbia PhD students: Columbia University - 9 Oxford University - 5 Cambridge University - 4 New York University - 3 Bogazici University, Istanbul - 2 Fordham University - 2 University of Chicago - 2 American University in Cairo - 1 Beijing Foreign Studies University - 1 Brown University - 1 Central European University - 1 Chinese University of Hong Kong - 1 Complutense University of Madrid - 1 El Colegio de Mexico - 1 Erasmus Mundus European Masters in Migration and Intercultural Relations program - 1 Free University of Berlin - 1 Georgetown University - 1 Hong Kong University - 1 Jewish Theological Seminary - 1 London School of Economics - 1 National Taiwan University - 1 National University of Lujan - 1 National University of Singapore - 1 Old Dominion University - 1 Sarah Lawrence College - 1 Stanford University - 1 Syracuse University - 1 Tel Aviv University - 1 Tufts University - 1 University of Amsterdam - 1 University of California, Berkeley - 1 University of Maroua - 1 University of Michigan - 1 University of Notre Dame - 1 University of Roehampton in London - 1 University of Texas, Austin - 1 University of Tokyo - 1 University of Virginia - 1 University of Zurich, Switzerland - 1 Warsaw University - 1 Wheaton College - 1 Yale Law School - 1 York University - 1 Most common BA institutions for Columbia PhD students: Harvard College - 6 Columbia University - 4 Princeton University - 4 University of California, Berkeley - 4 University of Chicago - 4 Yale University - 4 Barnard College - 3 New York University - 3 Tel Aviv University - 3 Amherst College - 2 Bogazici University, Istanbul - 2 Cambridge University - 2 Cornell University - 2 Duke University - 2 Georgetown University - 2 McGill University - 2 Reed College - 2 Amsterdam University College - 1 Baylor University - 1 Beijing Foreign Studies University - 1 Bowdoin College - 1 Brandeis University - 1 Carleton College - 1 Chinese University of Hong Kong - 1 Colgate University - 1 College of William and Mary - 1 Concordia University in Montreal - 1 Dartmouth College - 1 Drake University - 2 Fairfield University - 1 Franklin & Marshall College - 1 Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva - 1 Hebrew University of Virginia - 1 Lewis and Clark College - 1 London School of Economics - 1 National Autonomous University of Mexico - 1 National Taiwan University - 1 National University of Singapore - 1 Northwestern University - 1 Oxford University - 1 Peking University - 1 Pomona College - 1 Sarah Lawrence College - 1 Stanford University - 1 Truman State University - 1 United States Military Academy at West Point - 1 University College Utrecht - 1 University of California, Los Angeles - 1 University of Michigan - 1 University of Mississippi - 1 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill - 1 University of Notre Dame - 1 University of Pennsylvania - 1 University of Texas, Austin - 1 University of Tokyo - 1 University of Wisconsin, Madison - 1 University of Zurich, Switzerland - 1 Warsaw University - 1 Wesleyan University - 1 Williams College - 1 Yonsei University - 1 York University - 1 Washington University in St. Louis - 1 Harvard University 78 history grad students list their pre-PhD degrees on their Harvard webpages 50 came into the PhD program with a Bachelor's and Master's degree; 28 only had a Bachelor's degree Most common MA institutions for Harvard PhD students: Harvard University - 14 Cambridge University - 7 Oxford University - 3 Yale University - 2 Central European University - 1 Columbia University - 1 Florida Atlantic University - 1 Florida International University - 1 Harvard Divinity School - 1 Indiana University - 1 Jadavpur University - 1 King's College, London - 1 London School of Economics - 1 National Taiwan University - 1 Peking University - 1 Princeton University - 1 School of Oriental and African Studies - 1 Stanford University - 1 Sydney Law School - 1 University de Paris I - 1 University of California, Los Angeles - 1 University of Chicago - 1 University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign - 1 University of Texas, Austin - 1 University of Tokyo - 1 University of Virginia - 1 University of York - 1 Vanderbilt University - 1 Most common BA institutions for Harvard PhD students: Columbia University - 5 University of Chicago - 4 University of Michigan - 4 Yale University - 4 Brown University - 3 Harvard University - 3 University of Pennsylvania - 3 Amherst College - 2 College of William and Mary - 2 Grinnell College - 2 Princeton University - 2 University of California, Berkeley - 2 University of Virginia - 2 Washington University in St. Louis - 2 Williams College - 2 Adams State University - 1 Arizona State University - 1 Boise State University - 1 Bowdoin College - 1 Brandeis University - 1 Bucknell University - 1 Carleton College - 1 Colby College - 1 Emory University - 1 Florida Atlantic University - 1 Fudan University - 1 Indiana University - 1 Jadavpur University - 1 King's College, London - 1 Lewis and Clark College - 1 McGill University - 1 Middlebury College - 1 Millsaps College - 1 National Taiwan University - 1 New York University - 1 Occidental College - 1 Oxford University - 1 Peking University - 1 Pomona College - 1 Stanford University - 1 State University of New York, New Paltz - 1 Swarthmore College - 1 Tufts University - 1 University of California, Santa Cruz - 1 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign - 1 University of Rochester - 1 University of St. Andrews - 1 University of Sydney - 1 University of Texas, Austin - 1 University of Zurich - 1 Princeton University 97 history grad students list their pre-PhD degrees on their Princeton webpages 68 came into the PhD program with a Bachelor's and Master's degree; 29 only had a Bachelor's degree Most common MA institutions for Princeton PhD students: Oxford University - 10 Cambridge University - 7 Princeton University - 6 Columbia University - 4 Yale University - 3 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - 2 King's College, London - 2 Leiden University - 2 New York University - 2 Yale Law School - 2 Bangalore University - 1 Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro - 1 Central European University - 1 City University of New York - 1 Courtauld Institute of Art, London - 1 Humboldt University in Berlin - 1 Hunter College - 1 Imperial College, London - 1 Jadavpur University, Kolkata - 1 London School of Economics - 1 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität - 1 Rutgers University - 1 Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey - 1 Stanford University - 1 Temple University - 1 Trent University - 1 Tufts University - 1 University of Amsterdam - 1 University of Cape Town - 1 University of Colorado - 1 University of Georgia - 1 University of Massachusetts, Amherst - 1 University of Sydney - 1 University of Texas, Austin - 1 University of Washington - 1 University Torcuato di Tella - 1 Utrecht University - 1 Warburg Institute, University of London - 1 Most common BA institutions for Princeton PhD students: University of Chicago - 7 Yale University - 6 Washington University in St. Louis - 4 Harvard University - 3 University of California, Berkeley - 3 Columbia University - 2 Cornell University - 2 London School of Economics - 2 McGill University - 2 New York University - 2 University College London - 2 University of British Columbia - 2 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor - 2 University of Pennsylvania - 2 Williams College - 2 Amherst College - 1 Aristotle University - 1 Bard College - 1 Barnard College - 1 Brown University - 1 Cambridge University - 1 Colby College - 1 Connecticut College - 1 Dartmouth College - 1 Delhi University - 1 Duke University - 1 Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - 1 Freiburg University - 1 Humboldt University in Berlin - 1 Imperial College, London - 1 Indiana University, Bloomington - 1 Leiden University - 1 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität - 1 National Law School of India University - 1 Northeastern Illinois University - 1 Northwestern University - 1 Oregon State University - 1 Oxford University - 1 Princeton University - 1 Rhodes University, South Africa - 1 Ripon College - 1 School of the Art Institute of Chicago - 1 St. John's College, Annapolis - 1 Stanford University - 1 Temple University - 1 Tufts University - 1 University of Alabama - 1 University of Amsterdam - 1 University of Bielefeld - 1 University of Buenos Aires - 1 University of California, Los Angeles - 1 University of California, Santa Cruz - 1 University of Colorado - 1 University of Georgia - 1 University of Hong Kong - 1 University of Kentucky - 1 University of King's College - 1 University of New South Wales - 1 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill - 1 University of Oklahoma - 1 University of Richmond - 1 University of Rome - 1 University of Sydney - 1 University of Texas, Austin - 1 University of Warsaw - 1 Utrecht University - 1 Wesleyan University - 1 Whitworth University - 1 Stanford University 67 history grad students list their pre-PhD degrees on their Stanford webpages 49 came into the PhD program with a Bachelor's and Master's degree; 18 only had a Bachelor's degree Most common MA institutions for Stanford PhD students: Stanford University - 8 Yale University - 3 American University in Cairo - 2 Columbia University - 2 École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociale - 2 Oxford University - 2 University of Chicago - 2 University of Edinburgh - 2 Cambridge University - 1 Central European University - 1 CSU Fresno - 1 Federal University of Parana - 1 Harvard Business School - 1 Harvard University - 1 Istanbul Sehir University - 1 King's College London - 1 London School of Economics - 1 San Francisco State University - 1 Sciences Po Paris - 1 Tel Aviv University - 1 Tufts University - 1 University of California, Berkeley - 1 University of Guelph - 1 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign - 1 University of Indianapolis - 1 University of Kent - 1 University of Maryland - 1 University of Michigan - 1 University of Tartu - 1 University of Tokyo - 1 University of Toronto - 1 University of Washington - 1 Most common BA institutions for Stanford PhD students: University of California, Berkeley - 5 Harvard University - 4 Princeton University - 3 Washington University in St. Louis - 3 Brown University - 2 Dartmouth College - 2 Emory University - 2 Oberlin College - 2 University of California, Los Angeles - 2 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign - 2 Yale University - 2 Amherst College - 1 Arizona State University - 1 Barnard College - 1 Bucknell University - 1 Claremont McKenna College - 1 Coe College - 1 Columbia University - 1 Dalhousie University - 1 Federal University of Parana - 1 Fordham University - 1 Fudan University - 1 Kenyon College - 1 McGill University - 1 Pennsylvania State University - 1 Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg -1 San Francisco State University - 1 Santa Clara University - 1 Scripps College - 1 Sorbonne Paris IV - 1 Stanford University - 1 SUNY Albany - 1 Tel Aviv University - 1 Universite Paris I - 1 University of Alberta - 1 University of California, Santa Barbara - 1 University of London - 1 University of Maryland - 1 University of Ottawa - 1 University of Pennsylvania - 1 University of Puget Sound - 1 University of San Francisco - 1 University of Southern California - 1 University of Saint Andrews - 1 University of Tartu - 1 University of Tokyo - 1 University of Toronto - 1 University of Virginia - 1 Wesleyan University - 1 Whitman College - 1 Yale University 108 history grad students list their pre-PhD degrees on their Yale webpages 63 came into the PhD program with a Bachelor's and Master's degree; 45 only had a Bachelor's degree Most common MA institutions for Yale PhD students: Cambridge University - 7 Oxford University - 4 University of Chicago - 3 Yale University - 3 Columbia University - 2 London School of Economics - 2 McGill University - 2 University of Alberta - 2 American University in Beirut - 1 American University in Cairo - 1 Bard College - 1 Bard Graduate Center - 1 Bogazici University, Istanbul - 1 Central European University - 1 Dartmouth College - 1 Duke University - 1 Fordham University - 1 Fudan University, Shanghai - 1 Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva - 1 Harvard Divinity School - 1 Harvard University - 1 Jewish Theological Seminary - 1 Linköping University - 1 Nanterre University - 1 National University of Singapore - 1 North Carolina State University - 1 Northeastern University - 1 Paris Pantheon Sorbonne University - 1 Peking University - 1 Trinity College, Oxford - 1 Union Theological Seminary - 1 Universidad de los Andes, Bogota - 1 Universite de Montreal - 1 University of Arizona - 1 University of California, Berkeley - 1 University of Cape Town - 1 University of Colorado, Boulder - 1 University of Florida - 1 University of Georgia - 1 University of New Mexico - 1 University of Pavia - 1 University of Tübingen - 1 University of Utah - 1 Vanderbilt University - 1 Yale Law School - 1 York University in Toronto - 1 Most common BA institutions for Yale PhD students: Yale University - 10 Dartmouth College - 5 Harvard University - 5 Brown University - 3 City College of New York - 3 Johns Hopkins University - 3 Macalester College - 3 New York University - 3 Princeton University - 3 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill - 3 Amherst College - 2 Georgetown University - 2 McGill University - 2 National University of Singapore - 2 Ohio University - 2 Oxford University - 2 Stanford University - 2 University of Alberta - 2 University of California, Berkeley - 2 University of Chicago - 2 Washington University in St. Louis - 2 American University - 1 Binghamton University SUNY - 1 Columbia University - 1 Emory University - 1 Gallatin School of Individualized Study in New York City - 1 Grinnell College - 1 Kennesaw State University - 1 Lahore University of Management Sciences - 1 Lehigh University - 1 Louvre School - 1 Middlebury College - 1 Montana State University, Bozeman - 1 North Carolina State University - 1 Paris Pantheon Sorbonne University - 1 Peking University - 1 Reed College - 1 Sarah Lawrence College - 1 Smith College - 1 Swarthmore College - 1 Texas A&M University - 1 Trinity College, Oxford - 1 Universidad Catolica in Lima - 1 Universidad de los Andes, Bogota - 1 Universite de Montreal - 1 University of Bologna - 1 University of California, Riverside - 1 University of California, Santa Cruz - 1 University of Florida - 1 University of Hawaii at Manoa - 1 University of King's College - 1 University of Maryland, College Park - 1 University of Minnesota, Twin Cities - 1 University of Pavia - 1 University of Pennsylvania - 1 University of Southern California - 1 University of Texas, Austin - 1 University of Toronto - 1 University of Tübingen - 1 University of Victoria - 1 Weber State University - 1 Wellesley College - 1 Wesleyan University - 1 West Virginia University - 1 Williams College - 1 ------------------------------------- My take on it is that it seems to matter very little where you got your undergrad education. There is a wide variety of undergraduate institutions, and the selection is so diverse it almost makes me wonder if admissions committees purposefully try not to accept too many students with any one undergraduate background. Perhaps ad-coms are more likely to accept a student into a PhD program if the applicant's undergrad institution is one that is not currently represented, so as to increase diversity? I don't know. All of the undergrad institutions are reasonably legitimate though: although you will see humble institutions like Lehigh or Weber State represented, you never see, say, for-profit online programs or conservative bible colleges represented. The prestige of the Bachelor's degree only seems to matter if a student is applying to a PhD program straight out of undergrad with no Master's degree in between. PhD students at top tier programs do seem to bring Master's degrees from the generally-understood "Top 40"-ish institutions, with a few exceptions. Middle-of-the-pack rated state schools don't seem particularly well represented. In order to enter a top tier PhD program, one typically needs a lower degree either from another top tier institution or from a non-US school (really any foreign school seems to do the trick, even if it's only as "foreign" as Canada). I have also attached the raw data in a spreadsheet, in case anyone wants to dig into the data a bit deeper.

One of my friends is Matthew Schandler, who is finishing up his PhD from Lehigh this year. He's also done some really interesting research on the history of video games, although his broader interests are more industry/technology related.

I totally empathize with and completely understand everything you've said in this thread. It is amazing how much our mindset changes just through the mere process of applying to schools and waiting to hear back from them over the course of a few months. With what I know now, my application strategy would have looked VERY different last fall. Personally, I see a lot of logic in turning down mediocre PhD offers in order to build up vital skills during a Master's program.

It is done, but it is sort of a dirty mark on your academic record. I replied to someone who asked about this in another thread by repeating what I've heard from my mom and grandpa who are both professors: it raises a red flag, it in itself won't sink your chances of getting accepted to a PhD program later some day, but if there is another red flag or two in addition to that then you are going to have a heck of a time getting into a good PhD program after having dropped out of one before. There are tons of funded MA programs out there. You just have to do some research and, in some cases, email a POI or the graduate school for clarification on how their tuition waivers, GTA stipends, fellowships, etc. work for Master's students at that particular school.

That's actually a really cool approach! I've thought about that very idea before--doing a history from the perspective of a non-human organism. Will look forward to reading the first major monograph you get published.

Just got a rejection from University of Oregon. Email said I had an "excellent application" but that my POI (David Luebke) was going on leave next year. Darn! Still happy with any of the other 4 Master's programs who have offered acceptance this cycle. Now I just need to wait on Brandeis's decision and funding offerings.

Agreed. If you got a funded PhD offer, I don't think you'll have any problems getting acceptances to other MA programs (unless the PhD school is really, really lowly rated, and the MA schools are all very top tier). Decline the PhD offer and open the door for some waitlisted applicant who really wants to get into that doctoral program and doesn't care how highly ranked the school is.

Does anyone have any specific knowledge about the dates when the bulk of decisions will be released from Brandeis University and University of Oregon? I know that their websites state that their decisions will come out "6-8 weeks after the January 15th application deadline" and "mid-March," respectively, but previous years' results indicate that Brandeis and Oregon's acceptances often roll out earlier than that. Just curious if perhaps anybody has insider info they're able to share. The wait is interminable!

Learning Sütterlin and Fraktur scripts (German) for me was just 95% digging right in and figuring it out as I went. A simple Google search yielded a couple of good websites that compared Sütterlin or Fraktur letters to their modern equivalents, which helped in some tough spots. When I got really stuck due to sloppy/faded/ink-blotty handwriting, I would sometimes send a picture of the word or phrase in question to a trusted authority (a professor or researcher) to get their take on it. I also found a really great reference book that lists the most common German words (and their English translations) found in old German vital records and church documents, and I refer to that book often when an archaic word crops up that is too outdated to appear in modern dictionaries.

Not a bad question. Mainly because the top-tier history departments almost unanimously offer PhDs only--no terminal MAs in history. One of the few exceptions I found was Yale. Hence, I tried applying to several top-tier PhD programs but I don't think I'm getting into any of them this cycle. In addition to a lack of top-tier terminal MAs, my range of schools to apply to was further restricted by finding POIs who were a great fit for me. Chicago and Georgetown, for instance, offer terminal MAs in history, but I couldn't find a good fit with the faculty there. If I had known last fall what I know now, I might have done things differently: applied for only top-tier Master's programs, but widened my options from solely History MAs to include European Studies MAs, Germanic Studies MAs, Germanic Languages MAs, etc. The one decision that makes me kick myself the most is my inexplicable decision not to apply to UPenn's History MA program. I don't know what my reasoning was that it didn't get included in my list of applications this year. In the last couple weeks, I've really hit it off with Thomas Max Safley via email. It turns out we both hail from the same rural corner of Iowa. His grandparents and my great grandparents were actually friends, which I had no idea about until we started chatting and he divulged where he was from.

It's looking like I'm going to be doing my Master's in History at a middle-of-the-pack state university for the next couple years. My strategy is, in 2 years' time, to apply to top-tier PhD programs as well as some other top-tier Master's programs. If I have to do a second Master's degree--say, Yale's Euro/Russ. Studies MA, or Chicago's Germanic Studies MA, or another History MA at Humboldt in Berlin--I'm willing to put in a measly extra couple years in order to get into the top-tier PhD program 4 years from now. So long as the funding situation is doable (I can subsidize a chunk of my unfunded tuition/living expenses through income from my genealogy business), I think it's a worthwhile investment for my long-term goal.

I would also add to that the sometimes-frustrating but all-too-real point that most of the "top 10" PhD programs strongly, strongly prefer to admit applicants who earned their undergrad or Master's from another top/Ivy program or a foreign program. Take a look at the Princeton/Yale/Harvard current grad student profiles, and you will see endless Bachelor's degrees and Master's degrees from top 10 schools and overseas schools.

Almost every history department website now has a section that lists the names and email addresses of all their grad students. Most of the time it's in the "People" section of the department homepage. Under "People," they should have subsections like "Faculty," "Emeritus Faculty," "Departmental Staff," and "Graduate Students."

It's called up-selling.

From what I've heard from my professor mother and grandfather, many ad-coms understand that sometimes it happens and it's unavoidable. Someone gets to a program, they realize it's not working for them, and they transfer to another program. However, it does raise a red flag that either the student did not do their homework on whether or not the first school was a good "fit" for them, or that the student is hard to get along with, or that the student doesn't finish things that they commit to. That one red flag in and of itself won't sink your ship, but if it's combined with another red flag, like a lackluster LOR, or a SOP that mysteriously dances around the transfer issue, or any sign of negativity or contentiousness in your communication with POIs at the new school, it's not going to bode well for you.