TheHessianHistorian

Like I said, the quote about my lacking a track record in early modern European history did not come from the rejection letter. It came from personal correspondence with the UofA director of graduate studies.

That quote came from a personalized email from the Arizona DGS after I got the standard issue rejection letter and inquired about weak spots in my application and how I might improve my application.

Nice straw man. When did I ever "shit" on Arizona's program? I maintain that they are a very good program, and I've never said anything otherwise. I'm just surprised and confused that, with my credentials and experience, they told me that I lack a "track record and foundation in Early Modern European History." I also expressed disagreement with you that Arizona is "a tier above" WUSTL, and thought it weird that WUSTL felt I was "fully qualified" (in their words) for admission into a doctoral program, while Arizona felt that after two Bachelor's degrees and 7 years' work in the field I wasn't yet qualified for entry into a Master's degree program.

Just saw a good one that took me a couple minutes to get. Stanford History, PhD (F18) Rejected via Website on 10 Feb 2018 11 Feb 2018 ?lo alto Poo-lo Alto.

The ability to immediately get into a TT job matters more now and less later. It also really matters what kind of preparation and training the program provides you with. Coming out of an Ivy PhD program can give you that boost into an assistant professorship, but if you produce unambitious scholarship or fail to produce scholarship you are going to have an unsuccessful career. The great thing about Ivy league PhD programs is that they generally DO provide that excellent training, and that is why their reputations remain high. However, there are institutions outside of the traditionally recognized "Top 10" that provide excellent training in history, even if their immediate TT placement rate isn't on par with Harvard and Princeton.

Are the rankings perfect? Of course not. But rankings by major media outlets aren't just pulled out of thin air or based on the whims of some editorialist. They are based on data regarding degree completion rates, assessment by peer institutions, faculty, financial resources, admissions selectivity, graduate performance, etc. You keep repeating that WUSTL is a low quality school because you don't like the way they do their scholarship. What I keep trying to say is, you're entitled to your opinion, and heck--you may even be right--but the popular perception is against you here in the Midwest: WUSTL is generally acknowledged as an excellent institution with a strong history program. So far, the only evidence you've provided to claim otherwise are your own insults of WUSTL grad students. And you certainly haven't provided any evidence for your very strange assertion that Arizona is "a tier above" WUSTL and that Arizona's Master's program somehow shows promise as a launching pad to a top-tier PhD program.

Despite their small cohort sizes (as you note), they manage to make plenty of TT placements. US News & World Report ranks WUSTL as 38th best history program in the US and 10th best history program in the Midwest. Business Insider rates WUSTL as 3rd best university (overall) in the Midwest, and Forbes rates WUSTL as 7th best university in the Midwest. It sounds like you don't care for the type of scholarship WUSTL puts out, but that doesn't change the fact that they're a highly regarded program in this part of the country. Your disdain for WUSTL's work also doesn't change how silly it is to call Arizona a "tier above" WUSTL, or to say that it makes more sense to choose Arizona's MA program over WUSTL's PhD program in the hopes that an Arizona MA will somehow vault you into the big leagues.

I don't really know the specifics of your situation, but here's my two cents. I limped through my first Bachelor's degree (at several different universities) from 2003-2009. I was young, reckless, and completely irresponsible. I dropped out in 2009, worked in the real world for several years, and then went back and finished the last handful of courses needed to earn my BA in 2015. Even though I earned A's in the final courses I took in 2015, my cumulative undergrad GPA was a pitiful 2.33. A decade ago, I thought my dream was to go into politics--either as a political consultant or as a political candidate myself. Working those several years in low-pay staffer jobs for political campaigns gave me the insight into the field that I needed in order to realize that politics was not the career for me. More importantly, it was during those interim years that my passion for genealogy and history blossomed. By the beginning of 2016, I had become confident that researching, writing, and teaching history was what I wanted more than anything. I finally had the maturity and sense of responsibility to get something out of an education (rather than just trudging through it as a teenager because I was expected to jump through a hoop). However, my GPA in my first BA was too awful to get accepted to ANY graduate program. With my goal of a graduate education in History, I went back to school to earn a second Bachelor's degree, this time in history, and I am on track to graduate magna cum laude. I was in my late 20s when I started this second undergrad degree, and I knew I would be 31 years old by the time I finished, but I knew this was a necessary step to get to my goal, so I forged ahead and did it. When I started researching graduate programs and preparing applications, I had no idea how admission committees would view my unusual academic history. So, I decided to both reach as far as I could AND hedge my bets. I applied to a spectrum of graduate programs (both Master's and PhD programs), at everything from very safe MA programs at state universities to the cream-of-the-crop PhD programs at Ivy League universities. I knew, given the 5%-10% acceptance rates in the top-tier grad programs, that I was bound to get a lot of rejections, and so far that is bearing out to be true. Even though my odds were slim, I viewed the process of applying to Ivy League PhD programs as an opportunity to get to know the programs, get a feel for which ones I might be the best fit for, and get to know some of the faculty in my field. It's looking like I am going to be ending up at a middle-tier Master's program at a state university next Fall, and that is fine. I am honored to get acceptances to graduate programs that have 30-60% acceptance rates. I know that if I squeeze everything I can out of the next 2 years, do the most ambitious MA thesis I can possibly do, and bust my butt learning foreign languages and developing my research/writing skills and befriending top professors, I will be much more competitive for those graduate programs with the 5-10% acceptance rates when 2020 rolls around. I will try my very best to get into a top-tier PhD program eventually, but I am viewing my progression toward this goal as a gradual stair step process. When I complete my MA in History at a middle-tier state school in 2020, I will re-apply to some of those top-tier PhD programs but I will also throw in some upper-tier Master's programs as well. If I have to do an MA in History at a middle-tier state school now, and then do a second MA in German or an MA in European Studies at a higher-tier school like Berkeley/Georgetown/NYU/Yale in 2020-2022, then so be it. That may finally be my ticket into a PhD program at a Princeton, Harvard, Chicago, etc. Just remember: It's okay to set your sights at the top of the mountain, but also give yourself some more reasonable footholds to latch onto just in case your footing slips on the way to the top. Even if you end up with 2 Bachelor's degrees and 2 Master's degrees before you get into that dream doctoral program, it will all be worth it in the end if that is the goal you truly want more than anything.

Sure. I'm 31 years old now, and I started doing genealogy as a hobby in high school. In 2011 I started having distant family and friends of the family ask me if they could pay me to do research on their own ancestry for them, so I started doing the work for pay at age 24. In 2013, I became a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists. In addition to running my own business, I have also contracted on-and-off with other companies like Genealogists.com, although I find that I can get better rates and have better communication with my customers when I "cut out the middle-man" and just fly solo. I taught myself to read and write German (along with paleography in Sütterlin and Fraktur scripts) in the process of doing research in old German records. I would originally have to mail requests to various German archives to send me copies of records (if the originals weren't available on sites like Ancestry, FamilySearch, Arcinsys, etc.), and a few years ago Archion.de was launched and they are well on their way to digitizing every extant church record in Germany. All the while that I was working as a genealogist, I was also working as a political consultant for elected officials and campaigns, mainly on marketing, fundraising, and PR. I also worked as a hired staffer on a few campaigns (one presidential, several congressional, and a few ballot initiatives). The pay was atrocious, especially for the amount of hours I would put in--it was even worse than working as an adjunct faculty in the humanities! Also, seeing so much dirty dealing behind the scenes in politics was just depressing/disillusioning. So, in early 2015, I decided to put my development-related skills to use in a "real" job and became Development Director for a non-profit that serves individuals with disabilities. I administrate all of their marketing, grant-writing, fundraising, event planning, public relations, business relations, publishing, etc. The pay is all right for a rural area (a little under $40k/year), but historical scholarship has been my all-consuming passion for quite a while now, so I'm willing to take a pay-cut to become a grad student.

WUSTL is one of the most high quality and prestigious history programs in the Midwest. For such a cozy program, they certainly seem to have little trouble placing their PhDs in Assistant and Associate Professorships: https://history.artsci.wustl.edu/RecentPlacements Sure, you could say Arizona MA > WUSTL PhD on the basis that maybe an Arizona MA could be the launch pad to a Harvard/Princeton/Yale PhD, but a look at the biographies of current H/P/Y grad students shows few if any Arizona MAs. In fact, Ivy League PhD students typically came from either other Ivy schools or from foreign schools, so I don't see much wisdom in turning down a WUSTL PhD in the hopes that an Arizona MA is going to pole-vault you into a Top 3 or even Top 10 PhD program.

I am in the exact same boat with University of Illinois-Urbana. According to previous years' results, I should have heard something from them by now, one way or the other. It's weird that I haven't gotten either an acceptance or a rejection now. I would also love some insight into the process.

Yes, I was just about to add: actually there are two history professors at Princeton who got their PhDs from Wisconsin.

Can't tell you, but heads up, you're in the History forum, not the Stats forum.

Thanks, I appreciate you sharing your info. Best of luck to you throughout the rest of decision season...!

NICE! Congrats, you earned it!

Also, if you don't mind, did it look like an automated email or was it fairly personalized? From DGS or POI?

Would you mind sharing your stats? I also applied to Oregon's MA program, and now I'm starting to stress. I haven't heard anything yet.

Just now got an email from Yale with a rejection, which I was fully expecting given their 5% acceptance rate to the graduate program. "Thank you very much for applying to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University. I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission. As you know, the very high number of extraordinary candidates among our more than 11,000 applicants far exceeds the number of places we have in each program, and we are not able to admit many excellent candidates.We wish you every success in all your future endeavors." They were much nicer about it than Arizona!

Haha, thanks. I had all these same thoughts. It's okay though, I'm already pretty excited about possibly working with Dan Riches at Alabama or Steven Zwicker at WUSTL, and I've still got 11 more programs to hear back from, so "the night is still young."

I don't know, but I had the same question... I have never heard Arizona's Master's program mentioned as "highly competitive". Not a bad program by any means, but... hmm...

Well, I inquired with the University of Arizona as to how I might improve my application as I was curious why I got rejected for their Master's program. They responded: " The Departmental Graduate Committee found that you lacked the foundational preparation needed for this highly competitive program. You might consider enrolling in graduate level classes in this field as a non-degree seeking student, so as to develop a stronger track record and foundation in Early Modern European History." Still surprising, to say the least! An entire Bachelor's degree in European History, a senior thesis that involved translating/transcribing/cataloging every church record in an entire German town (from 1650-1900), and 7 years experience as a professional genealogist writing over 50 reports for clients with European ancestry qualifies as lacking a "track record and foundation in Early Modern European History"? Compare that with the University of Alabama DGS quote: "Our Graduate Committee was certainly impressed by your ability to work with early modern German sources in their original language." Or compare with the Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) DGS quote: "We feel you are fully qualified for admission." So Arizona's comments sting a bit, but I've already got 2 acceptances to equally good Master's programs and have been wait-listed for WUSTL's PhD program. I'm not going to fret about Arizona at this point.

Got an acceptance email from Northern Illinois University's DGS at about 10 am this morning (it broke the streak of all my previous decisions coming in late at night). Excited at the prospect of possibly working with Vera Lind. Her emphases on social/cultural history, marginalized people, gender, and religious history in early modern Germany are so perfectly aligned with mine!

Roller derby

Yeah, I always fill out my stats when I post a decision. I assumed a lot more people were doing it and it just wasn't showing up on the results page. I guess only a small fraction of us are actually filling it in if only those results with red diamonds have stats listed. Don't know why more people aren't doing it.

Oh wait, scratch that, I just saw a diamond next to a Penn State decision. I guess the stats do show up when you hover over the diamond.