centinel

@oikos Stanford is definitely on my radar. Working with either Rakove or Gienapp would be excellent. My biggest concern is that admission to Stanford is so incredibly competitive that I wouldn't stand much chance at all of getting in. I may look into applying there, though; the process is competitive enough everywhere, anyhow. @psstein I am well aware of the dire state of the academic job market. I suspect Mizzou and SC would be places I would enjoy studying, but I understand what you're alluding to. I would definitely be looking at Hopkins if Jack Greene were still teaching. Morgan and Marshall work on topics/themes related to my interests, so I may still apply there, Greene's retirement notwithstanding. I'll definitely look into Berkeley's faculty. I was considering William and Mary, but their placement record is indeed surprisingly discouraging, given the outstanding quality of their faculty/program.

I am currently gearing up for my second year of an M.A. program, and I'm planning on applying to PhD programs in the fall. My primary interests are in early American political and constitutional history (I gravitate mostly toward the Revolution and the early republic, although I also have secondary interests in colonial America and the British empire). I applied to a couple of top-tier PhD programs right out of undergrad, but I didn't really have a clear research agenda and I consequently failed to identify programs and advisors whose strengths closely matched my interests. My research interests and understanding of the field have become significantly clearer in the last couple of years, so hopefully this round of applying to doctoral programs will go more smoothly. I fared reasonably well on the GRE a couple of years ago (although not quite as well as I would have liked). I think my scores should be satisfactory enough to adcoms, so I'm primarily focusing on writing a solid M.A. thesis. So far, my list of prospective schools/ advisors is: UCLA (Yirush) Ohio State (Brooke) Boston University (McConville) Maryland (Brewer) Notre Dame (Griffin) New Hampshire (Gould) Indiana (Knott/Irvin) South Carolina (Holton) Missouri (Pasley) Any fellow Early Americanists out there?