khigh
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Posts posted by khigh
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2 hours ago, fortsibut said:
This is completely inaccurate. My sister went to Brooklyn Law and she and a number of her classmates from up and down the school's GPA rankings ended up with BigLaw jobs. One of the summer students she did her summer program with her second year was from NYLS which is very, very lowly ranked and that student also scored a firm job. These were not isolated incidences. I'm also not sure why you're arbitrarily leaving out the other Ivy law programs; you think Columbia and Cornell don't place most of their students (who want to work there) in Big Law jobs? The further you go down the T14, the lower your chances may be at being able to easily move to a different location and score a BigLaw job there, but those schools still do just fine.
Additionally for anyone looking at law who might not know this: LSAC (the body that administers the LSAT and handles collecting transcripts and other elements of the application process for many schools) averages every grade you've ever made at every collegiate institution. That might not matter for many of you who went straight through college your first try with a 4.0, but my first college experience ~17 years ago was three awful semester with a lot of F's. That 1.7 will probably bring my 3.86 from the school I actually graduated from down to the low 2's. And if you took a class and failed it twice then got an A, your school may cancel out those Fs with the A, but LSAC will not be as forgiving and averages it all in. Something to keep in mind, although I'm sure most schools will look at your most recent history more closely than the overall gpa given how it's calculated.
Also for the first time, some schools (including Harvard) are letting students submit their GRE scores rather than taking the LSAT. I'd imagine that you'd want to really kill all 3 parts of the GRE (I'm pretty hopeless at math) to actually opt to go with that over the LSAT though, and who knows how Harvard would actually weigh a candidate who had a perfect GRE score vs. a perfect LSAT score. That LSAT bias might be built in pretty deep.
They're in NYC ;). You aren't going to go from a T20 outside NYC or DC to biglaw in NYC or DC. If you do, it's rare. That's like saying someone with a UW-Madison History PhD is going to go straight to teaching Ivy TT. It's possible, everything is, but it's not going to happen in any reasonable world. BigLaw at those schools are also still less than 10% and most are less than 2%.
LSAT is required by the ABA unless specific conditions are met (less than 10% of entering class is admitted without LSAT, GRE higher than 85%, and SAT/ACT scores higher than 85%, etc). The ABA is where the LSAT bias comes in.
https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/governancedocuments/2015_s503_guidance_final.authcheckdam.pdf -
I'm in the same boat as you- history PhD or Law School. Honestly, law school is it. 3 years, a little more debt, and a much better job placement rating? Sounds good to me. Start a pro-con list. Write down what you would miss by going the LS route. Take the June LSAT (apply for a fee waiver if you can, it also waives a lot of applications). Law Schools will reply within days or weeks instead of months. You don't have to go biglaw (I don't want to) and there are a lot more opportunities if you speak a foreign language (international, international business, UN, NGOs, immigration). I'm a sports fanatic and speak/read several European based languages, so I've been looking at labor and contract law and hope to get on with a baseball team or a sports firm to recruit foreign players for MLB.
There are, however, cons to the law school route. It's more expensive unless your numbers are good (pretty much all law schools look at is GPA and LSAT). Biglaw is almost impossible to break into unless you are HYS (Harvard, Yale, Stanford). Law is a regional field. If you don't go HYS, you will likely stay in the place where you go to LS. Networking is key- if you are an introvert, it's not going to work too well. It's competitive. Your grades aren't based on what you do on your own, but are curved with your class. If you are out of the top 10%, you won't get into a big firm. Outside the top 25% and you likely won't get a good summer internship (some I have seen will pay $40-$60k for the summer!). Non-profits and government work means you likely won't be able to pay off your loans.
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6 hours ago, Averroes MD said:
Acceptance?
Got accepted, but I am going to decline and reapply in September because of funding. They had already given out their big scholarships and I should get a full waiver for the next cycle. It seems to be all about the numbers. They don't really care about anything other than your LSAT score.
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Just an FYI if any of y’all are thinking about Law School as a backup, I turned in my application on Friday and got a response today. They don’t mess around!
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7 minutes ago, fortsibut said:
You seem to take things really, really personally. I wasn't trying to "vent my frustrations onto you," I was just asking you to create your own thread for whatever it is you're seeking from this one. Come down off your cross; I don't understand this martyr syndrome you've got going on, here. I've certainly been rejected from schools before as have many others on this board so your experience is certainly not unique. I only applied to Cornell this year, and while it's not a huge reach it's certainly a reach and there's a good chance in less than a month I'll be exactly where you are.
For what it's worth, I'm truly sorry that you didn't get into your dream school, and I hope you either get in next year if you choose to reapply, or find a good alternative that provides you with the training you seek in a great environment with excellent POIs. Nobody is cheering against you in this forum, least of all myself. Keep your head up and best of luck the next time around; odds are good that I'll be back here doing the same. (Although I'll definitely be applying to more than just one school the next time.)
I'm going to drop this whole issue since the general consensus seems to be that this thread should be kept for whatever it's turning into now, and I'd like to thank @Manuscriptess for creating a thread dedicated more strictly for what I was looking for in this thread.
Thank you for clarifying your position, but others in this thread have taken it to PM to tell me exactly how they feel. I have no cross. I am upset and angry.
I’m dropping this now too.
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39 minutes ago, fortsibut said:
Or maybe you take your pages of venting that are derailing the thread to another thread rather than suggesting that people who are using this thread for its intended purpose create a new thread?
Look, this is going to sound kind of rude no matter how I say it (and that's really not what I'm going for) but you're done with this application cycle so if you wanna discuss things unrelated to new acceptance and rejection info, create a new thread. I'm glad this forum gives you a place to vent and discuss things with people who understand you, but that's just as easily done in another thread.
Aaaand, I’m done. You could have taken this to PM like others have to vent their frustrations on me. I thought I could find support here, but I guess not. Very few of you actually know what this is like, so I was wrong in assuming that any of you know what it’s like to get rejected from everywhere.
Thank you to those that have offered support. Your PMs have helped immensely and the same within this thread. At least I could feel happy for a day before having to deal with all this. We will see what next cycle brings.
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34 minutes ago, cocakolakowski said:
Glad to see we could come to some sort of collegial consensus on the most recent posts ?; I for one am thankful to have the game today to serve as a pleasant distraction from the waiting game.
The game makes me bitter. My team came so close and now all we get up here is traffic. Lol!
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6 minutes ago, Manuscriptess said:
I’m really not trying to tear other people down. I agree that it is valuable to discuss personal life issues, but I get frustrated when I read through the thread, looking for advice about more nuts and bolts admissions issues, that’s all. I just think that type of conversation is being drowned out.
And then there are those of us that get frustrated with this line of talk. People here UNDERSTAND all sides of it- the anxiety and planning and admissions and rejections and alternate plans. You may come from a family of people who have gone through the process or have friends that have, so they understand. Some of us have no one outside this forum that actually gets it. This thread saved me from many breakdowns the past few days.
So, I would honestly suggest starting another impersonal thread where you just talk numbers and stats or maybe, just maybe, appreciate that there are real people on the other side of the keyboard.
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7 hours ago, TMP said:
This was exactly my concern all along, @khigh. I understand that you love the state of Minnesota, but you really need to think long and hard about how important it is for you to work with people who have the expertise to guide you in the coursework years to help you develop a strong dissertation proposal and eventually the dissertation. You need to be able to create and write a dissertation that can actually be proclaimed by the very senior scholars as making serious contributions to Dutch and Mediterranean histories, which you won't necessarily know until you begin applying for research and dissertation writing fellowships and need outside letter of support by an expert.
If a PhD program is not big on Dutch or Mediterranean in the early modern period, it's a very long shot. You may be best off seeking other EM programs with real strengths in those areas like Johns Hopkins or some of the California schools with Dutch language/literature folks on campus. When I looked at programs relating to the Holocaust, I more or less stuck with those that had strengths in both in German and US history. Prior to applying, I spoke with French and Russian/Eastern European historians in programs with solid US history faculty and no appropriate German historian, I could tell that they'd be open to working with me on my proposed ideas but my dissertation would simply not be as strong. Nowadays, when reading this board and guiding y'all with the admissiosn process while doing my dissertation research/writing abroad, I realize how my trajectory would have been different had I chose the other program with a POI who was strong in US history with an interest in Russian history as opposed to my current POI who's on top of her game with German history with an interest in US history. You will need to choose what's most important to you: excelling in a PhD program outside of Minnesota and come out with a strong dissertation or settling in Minnesota and pursue a different trajectory. I have met/talked with people in similar circumstances so you are most definitely not alone.
Thank you so much. I realize now that my SOP was wrong in explaining what I exactly wanted to do. I wasn’t clear enough in it to convince them that it is something I could do at the U. I had written about wanting to study grassroots political movements of the Dutch Republic in het rampjaar, but I found other documents that are better and more interesting and do fit with the fields that the U has. I want to do a phenomenological study of travel accounts in the Mediterranean. They have others doing Mediterranean that focus on people that came from outside the geographical regions that the profs study (Russians, Turks, and Moroccans).
I am going to take this as a hard and expensive lesson and reapply next year and apply to the law school. Some, even you, may disagree with it, but location is more important to me than anything else I finally have roots I’ve never had roots anywhere, even my hometown of 29 years. Here is where I want to raise my family and sit by the lake as an old retiree. I have only felt home here and two other places- Groningen and Rome.
I truly do thank all of y’all for your help and support this cycle and I will be sticking around.
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I’m rooting for y’all!
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i transported three rabbits from Oklahoma to Minnesota. They are horribly mean and destructive, but they're keeping me sane.
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35 minutes ago, JustPoesieAlong said:
The weird macho tone is I think part of what got to me. I felt like the show did a great disservice to Catelyn Stark, but I love where they've taken most of the other female leads. I'm totally team Cersei most days (I literally cheered with her "I choose violence" scene. YASSS QUEEN.)
I love, love, love Cersei, but Littlefinger in the books was my hero. "Knowledge is Power"
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2 minutes ago, jrockford27 said:
You MUST be from Minnesota.
I'm also a grad of "The U" and I was totally shut out my first round of applications. I spent a couple of months floating around Northeast doing a lot of karaoke, and then got back to business. Ended up someplace I really like.
I live in Minne, but I'm from Oklahoma, so I mix my y'alls with my dontcha knows, ya know? I can say "ain't that just fer cute." I love it here, so I'm going to polish my app and try again next cycle. The worst thing in the world would be to get discouraged and end up some place like Sconi.
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What field? 3000 words is only about 12 pages, double spaced Times New Roman. For the humanities, that's not even close enough, but for some sciences it may be good.
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Before I look further, which I can, I would like to know if your first language is English. That will make a difference in how people look at these.
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11 minutes ago, TheHessianHistorian said:
And if you can stand living in a very small town and commuting into a larger city, you can find extremely inexpensive living costs. I bought an enormous 2,000 sq. ft. Victorian home here in my little town of population 3,000 for a measly $30,000. (......Wait, what am I doing going to grad school again?)
I would love that! I absolutely adore Victorians. The ones in my neighborhood go for around $500k for a two bedroom and they are usually on the market for less than a week at that price.
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Got a phone call this morning from the prof I've been talking to about my app. It wasn't bad. it was one of those "it's not you, it's us" calls. They just don't have a Dutch person right now and they wouldn't want me to switch my focus. I told them about wanting to look at the Dutch in the Mediterranean, which it seems will be a much better approach for next cycle. I am going to the consortium meeting on the 21st to listen to a talk on poetry in the EM Med. I am going to take a break from looking at anything to do with apps and then spend part of the summer redoing all of it.
I was told that they were impressed with the original translations in the writing sample and asked if I had more translations or if i had only done them for that paper. I'm 250 pages into translating a 750 page travel memoir. Soooo, was told to use a spot in the extra materials section to put about 10 pages of translation next time- there is no one there that does Dutch language, so showing I can do that on my own helps. Oh, and add a translation of EM Italian because no one there does Italian. They are VERY heavy on the French side for EM except for one and they do Central Europe.
I feel a lot better today and thought some of you may find that translation information to be helpful in the future.
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6 minutes ago, TheHessianHistorian said:
Keep in mind that the value of a salary is really dependent on the cost of living in an area. $60k in a Dayton or Tuscaloosa might afford a higher standard of living than $90k in a NYC or LA. Careful not to extrapolate your experiences living in metropolitan areas to the rest of the country.
I looked up what my undergrad pays for Assoc. Prof....$35k a year. It's a regional in Oklahoma, so that makes a difference, but the number is a little scary.
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26 minutes ago, telkanuru said:
Tenured R1 faculty often make $90-150k, but I really don't like this line of reasoning, and I can't see $50k as decent salary compensation for someone with a PhD.
$60k is what a high school teacher with alternative certification makes here. $70k with a masters and five years of experience.
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7 minutes ago, Tigla said:
@khigh I'm not sure if you have seen these documents about Jenny. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/jenny/index.htm
If you do a little digging in the unexpected corners of the internet (mostly focusing on Marxist-feminists) then you might be surprised at what pops up.
UPDATE:
The archive took down the uploaded files. Sorry, but the link is useless now and can now be removed from my bookmark tab.
I have them. I wrote a paper about revolutionary women at one point. Her diaries were stored in a church in London that caught on fire during the Blitz. Her diaries are supposed to contradict what she actually wrote to people. Emma Goldman had some second or third hand knowledge about the private Jenny, but even that might have been a facade. She didn’t seem to really like falling down the social ladder, but we won’t ever know how she really felt now.
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14 minutes ago, Tigla said:
If you need help finding source material from either of them, send me a PM. I live in Berlin and have started my own research in the Bundesarchiv and Staatsbibliothek. Just a heads up, though, any material dealing with Goebbels (even his wife and family) is extremely hard to get your hands on. The German government and archivists have been limiting access to these types of documents because of the possibility for misrepresentation and misuse, especially with the current political environment in Europe.
If I go down the Magda road, I will for sure let you know. The home videos were really hard to watch with the girls playing with Blondie. I have the diary, home videos, speeches, and Michael. I’d love to do something on Jenny Marx, but her diaries got destroyed in the Blitz.
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53 minutes ago, psstein said:
It really depends on what you want to do. Some approaches to everything are dying out (some of which rightfully so!), but others just need a new generation to reinvigorate them.
I'd love to reinvigorate the phenomenological approach, which seems to be happening elsewhere, but I don't know about around here. I've done a few phenomenological investigations of "great men," but I don't think they are anything I would ever submit as a writing sample. The boyfriend loved the one I submitted for his class. I looked at Goebbels "as he was" and applied Nietzsche and Kant's concepts of humanity to show how he approached the world. I watched all of his home videos, listened to all of his speeches, read everything he wrote (from Michael to his journal) to get inside his head to see how he experienced the world around him without presentism or personal bias. My advisor was disturbed by my phenomenological approach to Robespierre. That was for a simulation and I may have defended the guillotine a little too much, but it was what it was. Boyfriend and I are talking about writing a phenomenological paper on women in Berlin in 1945. I would love to do one on Magda Goebbels or Jenny Marx, but both of those would be difficult.
We, the boyfriend and I, say that history can be one of the most depressing fields to study because you are forgotten. You may be a data point in a paper or you may not really have existed unless you can tell your own story through a researcher. One act may overshadow everything else you did or everything you did might not matter.
Just thought I would include a short passage from my defense of the guillotine. This was a simulation arguing for or against the formation of the Committee of Public Safety, so we each played a part and were supposed to view it through the eyes of a Revolutionary. I was the only one to actually defend the Committee. Everyone else in the class either looked at it as we would today or took it out of context and couldn't forget what actually happened to the followers of Robespierre.
"I beg of you, my fellow revolutionaries, to support this law. I wish it had not come to this, but this revolution will not progress if the rabble is not cleared from our ranks in a timely manner. Forgive me and this committee if these words do not ring true, that this great revolution will bring peace by the sword and liberty by the jury. Denounce your neighbor and spurn your friend if he cuts the heel of the revolution. Accuse your child and bring forth your wife if they cannot agree to the values of this great revolution. As the king betrayed us and was sentenced as an enemy of this revolution, so too must your friend, neighbor, child, and wife. We are a lawful and obedient people and through this law, we will bring about a great and lasting peace. Viva la révolution! " -
My undergrad advisor just sent me this quote. Those of you that were also rejected today might also like it. It's from Field of Dreams.
"The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that was once good and what could be again."
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4 minutes ago, Yanaka said:
Oh I'm pretty sure the Dutch system is better than the French one
I love the Dutch. They are more concise than the French and less bureaucratic than the Germans. They also streamline citizenship for people that go to universities there and get degrees in "something Dutch" (history, literature, culture, language, etc) because they don't have enough people, even Dutchies, that want to continue the culture. The government thinks they are becoming too English.
2018 Blooper Real*
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Posted
I didn't either. Here's to better writing samples next time!