TheHessianHistorian

So, I broached the subject with my POI at Vandy, and he told me that on average a couple of the PhD students graduating from Vandy each year are being offered TT positions. So, I checked out their recent grads page online (https://as.vanderbilt.edu/history/graduate/recent.php) and sure enough, there are quite a few Vandy grads in TT and tenured positions. I don't know where you got "only 1 in the past 7-10 years," but that now seems like an either highly misinformed or dishonest statement. In addition to Pablo Gomez, I'm seeing names (all in the last several years) like Ansley Quiros, Erin Woodruff Stone, Erica Hayden, Rachel Donaldson, David LaFevor, and the list goes on and on. Sure Vanderbilt doesn't compare with Harvard, but it's certainly not the dead end you made it out to be. Where did you get that number?

Some history grad programs list recent years' PhD graduates and what jobs they've ended up in. Is there an easier way to find out which history graduate programs have the best tenure-track job placement rates? Any sort of list or database that compiles this information?

Early acceptances seem to be given to those who are being nominated for university-wide scholarships, due to university-level deadlines. Then, I think ad-coms tend to accept the top tier of applicants, see how many applicants accept/decline, then accept a few more based on that.

Almost never. Another user put together some handy charts showing the progression of acceptances being sent out by top-tier schools over the January-April season: https://imgur.com/a/lXdLe In every case, there is a gradual roll-in of acceptances over a period of days or weeks--in some cases the accumulation of decisions is steeper than others. However, none of the charts exhibit a perfect 90 degree angle of all the acceptances coming in at once (which would look like a vertical line) and then no more acceptances coming in after that (which would be a horizontal line). Although acceptances do plateau, it's never a perfect plateau--one or two waitlisted applicants inevitably turn into acceptances in March/April.

Current graduate students, what would you say are the upsides and downsides of working with a professor who has the exact same specialty as you, versus a professor who maybe isn't exactly in the same niche but has a similar approach or outlook? For instance, as someone interested in microhistory/social history/gender in early modern Germany, would it strongly behoove me to find a faculty advisor with that exact same combination of specialties? Might that actually limit and hinder me? Might it be better to work under a faculty advisor with a slightly different geographic focus (say France or Holland), or with a slightly different subject focus (say religion or diplomacy), but who has a similar approach to social history? Would the latter option perhaps take me slightly out of my comfort zone and strengthen/enrich my work? Or would my work suffer because of my advisor's lack of knowledge about my preferred specialties? Thoughts?

I don't know if this is necessarily the best way to go about it, but what I did was to introduce myself (via email) to the POIs at each of the 15 schools I applied to about a month or two before application season. About 80% of them responded (some quicker than others), and 20% just ignored my emails. Some of the responders really engaged with me and put out a lot to converse about. Other conversations just kind of dwindled and basically just served to plug my name into their memory bank. After I submitted each application, I then sent one more email to each of the POIs letting them know that my application was officially submitted and reiterating that I was looking forward to working with them should I be fortunate enough to be accepted. Again, some of the POIs really engaged with me after this email, some responded with a polite acknowledgement, and a few did not respond at all (the same ones who did not respond to the very first email). I felt like, regardless of whether this strategy helped my chances with the admissions process, it helped me get a much better idea of which POIs are the most supportive, enthusiastic, and aligned with my interests. That will help make my decision easier when it comes time to pick a program to enroll in.

I saw somebody else on the results page had already gotten an acceptance to University of Alabama and was thinking "Aw man, I haven't heard from them." Then I looked at my cell phone, realized it was on silent mode, and saw that there was a missed call from Tuscaloosa. Opened up my voicemail messages and voila--my first acceptance!

Pop up

Getting acceptances this early to UNC and WUSTL is nothing to sneeze at! You should feel very good about yourself. Hopefully I have some great news like that coming down the pipeline, to get me through the next month.

Whenever I hear people say "WSU," I think of Wright State University where I earned my first Bachelor's degree. Yet, much of the time when someone says "I'm planning on going to WSU" or "I got my degree from WSU," they mean anything from Washington State University to Wichita State University to Weber State University. Folks just ought to steer clear of abbreviating their university name when there's any ambiguity.

Congrats to all the UC-Davis acceptances I saw pop up on the results page today! I hope you all have been nominated for university-wide funding, and that there are more acceptances to come for the rest of us.

Yes, I have also noticed that many PhD students at top tier institutions went there straight from a Bachelor's program, and in those cases seem to have always come from a top tier or foreign undergrad. In the cases where a PhD student at a top tier institution has a Master's degree, the Master's generally came from another top tier or foreign grad school. In those cases (those who go the BA->MA->PhD route), there are some who earned Bachelor's degrees from state schools or less prestigious private schools. The trend seems to be (at least from my examination of current grad student biographies) that Ivy PhD programs have people who started from humbler roots, but that the step up from lower-tier to top-tier happened at least one degree removed from the PhD program. Every so often (maybe 1 out of 30 biographies), I find a current PhD student listed who came into an Ivy PhD program straight from a University of Georgia or a North Carolina State University--so apparently it can be done, especially if the applicant has done something noteworthy and earned a nice award or two--but they are definitely few and far between.

As I browse the biographies of the current graduate students at prestigious PhD programs like Princeton, Yale, etc., what I notice is that virtually all of the doctoral candidates at the Ivies got their Master's degrees from either another top tier institution or from an overseas institution. Can any current PhD students at top-tier (esp. Ivy) programs shed light on whether this is because there is an actual preference among ad-coms for prestigious M.A.'s from high name recognition institutions, or is it because the strongest PhD applications just come from top tier Master's programs (because top tier Master's programs best prepare students to apply to top tier PhD programs)?

Christine Johnson, who specializes in Renaissance Germany--power, identity, discovery, politics, authority, religion. Her research interests really mesh with mine. I did my BA thesis on illegitimacy (fatherless children and unwed mothers) in the rural villages of Hessen-Kassel, the roles that religion and guild economics played in this, and the socioeconomic inequalities that illegitimacy helped create that fed into the civil disorder of the 19th century.

Might not be a bad idea to start thinking about alternative options, but I wouldn't totally give up hope. Based on previous years' results, the last of the UMN acceptances trickled in as late as the first week of February.

I'm assuming that means there will be no more UNC acceptances sent out after this point? I haven't gotten a rejection from UNC, but I've been questioning whether that is even a place I would want to go, considering neither my POI nor the graduate department has ever responded to a single question I've emailed them about anything. Strikes me as a rather unsupportive program...

I was wondering when someone was going to mention this. Kind of shocked no one has brought up Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, and only @khigh has mentioned Fernand Braudel. I also found Edward Carr and David Cannadine helpful.

I can confirm I also started getting a bunch of emails from Harvard Extension School around the time I started applying for graduate programs. I did not apply to Harvard University and don't know how I got on their mailing list. I must have inadvertently clicked a checkbox somewhere.

Agreed. I actually researched and collected a spreadsheet of 200 of the best graduate programs in history for this application season. I saw TT/tenured profs with PhDs from UW-Madison everywhere. Yellow Mellow is either being very dishonest, or very ignorant.

Just got a phone call from my POI at University of Alabama for their Master's in History program. I've been accepted! Funding info to come next week. Was also invited to a meet-and-greet on campus in late February. This is the first I've heard back from any of the programs I applied to, so I'm quite excited. At least I know I'm going somewhere. Now to hear back from the other 14 programs.

It appears from a second read of his/her post that s/he was more likely trying to say "Wisconsin is not a top pogrom." In that case, I'd have to agree.

@khigh and other applicants: Just remember to put on your "everything's going to be okay" face.

Yes, the professors I named were all retiring professors who said that there was a plan to replace them with a similar specialist.

Speaking from my personal experience communicating with POIs at graduate programs around the country, a LOT of major Early Modern Germanists are retiring this year and they have almost all said that their universities intend to replace them with similar specialists in about 2 years. David Sabean at UCLA, Merry Wiesner-Hanks at UW-Milwaukee, Thomas Robisheaux at Duke, Geoffrey Parker at OSU, Isabell Hull at Cornell, and Frederick Marquart at Syracuse all independently told me this about their respective universities. I imagine the next 2 years would be an excellent time to be an Early Modern Germanist looking for a tenure-track job. Not sure how the field will look in several years when I'm finishing up...

I hear you! German name changes are often pretty logical though, and it was mostly because they just didn't care about spelling back then--pronunciation was far more important. You might have Schmidts who are sometimes recorded under Schmitt or Schmit or Smit, and then when they get to America they might also throw Smith into the mix. Some take a little more thought. Weisleder might become Whiteleather, Zimmermann might be Carpenter, Schneider might become Taylor, König might become King. So, it takes some thinking outside of the box.