historygeek

Attended Nova's Admitted Students Day and couldn't be happier with my choice!

The US News and World Report's rankings are worthless. You should go to School A. Your advisor's reputation will follow you long after s/he dies. Think about Prof. B's time constraints. Running academic institutes is time consuming. My advisor is on multiple committees and it can be a chore to meet with her at all.
You should also look at placement. Having a "star" advisor is worthless if s/he can't place students.

I think it might help if you browsed the Psych forum here as all of your questions have been asked and a variety of answers have been shared.  Ultimately its not too early to be thinking about grad school and there's nothing wrong with taking a gap year or two or three to figure out exactly what you want to do.  Depending on what kind of a career you want a Master's may be all you need or it may make more sense to apply straight to PhD programs with a few Master's as a back up.

My senioritis is THROUGH THE ROOF. I have so much to do that I'm just... checked out. I'm also trying to apartment hunt and that's just awful. 

Not every roommate will be your friend. Some will want a house mate simply because of finances, but may not be looking for a new friend. Others are more social and want someone who will also hang out with them. That's a question to bring up with potential roommates and to keep in mind when you choose one. 
The finances question is separate. You'll need to ask yourself if you can afford to live alone in your prospective city, and if so, if it's worth the extra investment as opposed to having a roommate. This is a personal choice so no one can tell you what to do. If you've never lived away from home, in my opinion a roommate situation is often easier to get started because they will help with furniture and paying bills and other questions you might have (as well as things you never knew you needed to ask). I'm also suggesting this because someone who's never lived alone may also have a harder time planning their finances, so it's safer to start slower and learn to understand your own spending habits, then move out and live alone later if you so choose. That said, it's totally personal and up to each person to decide.

@Calmly_WaitingIn short, it’s illegal and a federal violation (I’m an attorney). Further, if you had to withdrawal by your own accord for the pregnancy, federal law requires that you must reinstated following your leave without penalty. Both title IX and the ADA have specific legal instruction and accommodation for your situation. That said, what happens on the retail level can be quite different and stark.....but you have very specific legal protections.

I also had an F on my transcript in a course unrelated to my major that I didn't address. I was in a motorcycle accident and withdrew that semester and the professor refused to allow me to submit work to change the incomplete once I resumed classes, which caused a default F. If I were you, I would not address it unless they ask you first because honestly I really doubt they will. Let the improvement in your transcript speak for itself because it will. 

Okay, I went through and thought about everything in this thread, all of which I'm very appreciative for. My apologies for being short and frankly rude earlier; my mental health hasn't been in the best spot, obviously.
My concentration for my MA is definitely going to be European history, and I'm going to be taken a course on Medieval history (the focus is going to be largely social and cultural, including intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and global encounters in Medieval England, France, and Iberia) in addition to my required Theory and Methods course. Since I want to apply to a PhD program again after getting my Masters, I will likely take @WhaleshipEssex's advice and produce research during the spring/summer while reading more, though I plan on continuing reading through next fall, obviously! I may take the research project from the Medieval history course and refine it. I'm temporally most interested in the High to Late Medieval period, into the Renaissance, in urban areas of England and north and central Italy. I'm going to use the rest of this semester and the summer to really come up with questions that I'm interested in, since I'm sure my current questions of what was life really like and are the preconceived notions that we have about the Medieval period really correct are a bit too broad.
Regarding language, I'll be taking an intensive Latin course over the summer (as well as referring to the Latin course by the National Archives of the UK, which is specifically Medieval Latin) and will also be working on French and German. 
 
 

Just got a voicemail that I was accepted to Loyola's PhD program! I'm not going to take the offer (no real European history and it's unranked) but it's exciting nonetheless.

That still has to make you feel good!! Congrats! These late decisions are killing me, I still have one I haven't heard back from and accepted another offer yesterday. I just gave up waiting.

@historygeek Coming out of my undergrad, I was in a somewhat similar boat to you. I knew I wanted to study history at the graduate level but struggled to really understand what it was that I wanted to research. I talked about this with one of my professors about this and the advise I got was to take something outside of history that I was passionate about (in my case it was watches), combine that with my interest in history, and see what came out the other end. I had no idea that there was anything to the history of watches and timekeeping, but as I dove into the existing literature I was able to find the answers to the questions that all of us have been asking about why you have the specific interests that you do. I know this approach doesn't work for everyone, and you may find that in following this advice you'll discover that your interests have no relation to your passions outside of history, but as someone who was in the same spot you were at one time, I think it's worth a shot.

I'm not sure I agree on this divide between flexibility and focus. If you're pursuing an MA with the goal of then reapplying to Ph.D programs you need some of both, realistically. For instance, I chose my MA program because I knew what, when, and where my interests were, but was still working out how I wanted to approach things. But I had also taken a year off between finishing my BA and applying to MA programs to answer those questions and it was only to my benefit, since it was quite different from the work I had done as an undergrad. I chose the program that I did because it has scholars who provide more focused direction on what my interests already were, but also would allow me to explore how I wanted to study these things. Focus and flexibility was what I needed in the program, but you also need time to really think about what you want to put your effort towards.
I think it's ok to go into your MA with some uncertainty about what you want to do specifically, but you'll have to work that out fairly quickly since realistically you only have about a year of MA work before Ph.D applications are due (assuming you want to go right from one to the next). My advise would be to spend your first semester figuring those questions out while doing as much reading as you can, and then spend the spring and summer producing a real quality piece of research that you can use for applications that shows you're committed to what you say you are.

I would encourage you to refine specifically why you want and need the languages you're taking up. I understand @telkanuru's point about German, but I'm not sure I agree with him. Certainly some sub-fields benefit very much from having access to German language sources, including my own (history of medicine). With other sub-fields, however, focusing intensely upon French and Latin will prove far more useful. German history of science literature, for example, heavily focuses on late 19th/early 20th century physics and the development of disciplines like physiology, biology, and organic chemistry.
I do echo his call, however, about finding a very specific time period and framework. For example, my MA project is about attempts to control syphilis, focusing on human medical experimentation, in both the US South and one Latin American country between 1945 and 1965. My SoP discussed French Jesuits in the New World and their role as knowledge producers and circulators. My question for you is, precisely: what do you want to do and why do you want to do it? You don't need to have a completely articulated, entirely set out framework, but it does help to understand precisely what you want to look at and why it matters. I would suggest that even your current interests are far too broad. Obviously, some of the work of the MA (and PhD) is about refining and narrowing your interests, but as you show below, you have a lot of interests. I'd strongly recommend choosing one and really digging into it. Maybe it's my own work showing, but the intersection of religion and public health sounds fascinating. I can think of many profitable ways you can go with that topic alone (e.g. church attendance as a form of medical surveillance in 15th C. Vienna), but the overarching point is that you need to become more of a specialist, rather than someone with diffuse interests.
By the way, having diffuse interests is not bad, but you need to focus very heavily on one, without seemingly overly narrow. You should have a significant amount of intellectual curiosity, but you should also read with what one of my professors calls "active plunder," how a book allows you to do what you want to do.
 

One way to do this is to think about what burning historical questions you want to answer. Then, think about which region and time period is best suited for answering those questions. This exercise will also help you move beyond “a love of history” as a motivation for a PhD, which is not really sufficient to sustain a dissertation’s worth of research.

First of all, congratulation!
Your POI pushed you because you are POI first choice. Just be honest with POI that other university is a better fit for you and that you wish him finding a better candidate for his opening.

Would you say in that order, too? 
Latin and French are non-negotiable, IMO. You can get around not knowing German in certain sub-fields. 

In that case, Latin, French, and German if you want consideration from any decent program.

It depends on what you want to do. If you want to do Medieval/Early Modern, Latin is the language of most official documents/manuscripts/etc. 
It's probably not bad to know French, just so you can have some access to secondary literature. I'm obviously showing my history of science bias, but some of the foundational literature is in French. You probably don't need Old Church Slavonic unless you're planning to work on something involving the Orthodox Church.
Importantly, though, determine if you want to do Medieval, Early Modern, or modern European history. You're not always going to be wedded to one over another (18th century sort of falls in between), but you should choose one to focus on.

To be fair, since you're already accepted, you can wear anything you want and it isn't going to change anything. I think what you were planning on wearing is fine though   Usually the only time it's necessary to wear business casual is if 1. they explicitly tell you to or 2. you're interviewing prior to acceptance. At accepted students weekend, I've seen everything from someone wearing ratty sweatpants to a prom tux (yes with vest and all it was ridiculous). Congrats on your acceptance!! 

I think that's fine. Have fun at the visit!

I was in a similar place as you are now, when I finished my undergrad two years ago. I had studied abroad at SOAS, University of London, and really enjoyed my time in the history department there (I focus on modern Iraqi history). However, I knew I wanted to ultimately do my PhD in the US. I decided to do my Master's at SOAS, focusing on honing in my project and working on language skills. I'll be starting a History PhD in the US this Fall (still deciding on where), but ultimately I've been really happy with my decision. It's been a great experience for me.
My program, however, was a two-year one; most UK Master's are one year. This means that you won't have a ton of time after starting your degree to really flesh out your project/PhD proposal, and you'd be starting the application process only shortly after beginning the MA. Just so you're aware! Happy to chat more if you have more questions/specific concerns.

Got my acceptance from NYU's Masters program. They definitely got me with the congratulations!

Congrats! How exciting!

Got my acceptance from NYU's Masters program. They definitely got me with the congratulations!

Not sure if anyone is still reading this but I've been accepted to William and Mary's PhD off their waitlist! I couldn't be happier!