jocelynbymarcjacobs

Very true - you only need one, as Amy said! 

Where were you accepted? Congrats on the offers!!! 

Hi everyone! My first real post here, though I've been a longtime stalker of this thread.
I do Irish history (in the U.S.) with a concentration on migration and Irish America. I'm finishing up my MA with a 3.96 GPA. I've been a TA for two years, and have 4 years of experience as a research assistant. For what it's worth, I also have 2 conferences on the ole CV. I feel pretty confident in my writing sample and LoR.
I applied to 10 schools, and I've heard back from 2. Both were acceptances, with funding TBD. 
I'm really struggling with anxiety as I await news on the remaining 8 schools and the funding. I'm a FGLI student, and the imposter syndrome has reared its ugly head again. I compulsively check my email even though I have so much that I should be working on instead. I can't get over this nervous feeling that I won't get any decent acceptances with funding. 
Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated! ?

@jocelynbymarcjacobs @missamericana @bakeseal @TMP Thanks for everyone's advice!
 
I still could not find the exact time on my application system. So I decided to try to submit everything one day before the deadline, or at least before 5 pm on the deadline.
Good luck with everyone's application! 

A couple things, in no real order:
Yes, you can absolutely get into a good PhD program off an MLS.
As someone who is on the job market with a PhD and likes being in archives, not having an MLS has hurt my job prospects.
Your sense about the master's program is spot on. 
Regardless of the graduate programs you attend, it is unlikely that you can both successfully pursue an academic or academic adjacent career and stay within the Denver area. 

As I mentioned in my original post, I am not opening up my SOP for history programs with this anecdote. 
No it is not it is not a recent discovery and I would not attempt to suggest it is. There has been a shift in recent years to an ethnography of policing which warrants a discussion in my SOP. I am not telling anyone how to do their job and would never presume to do that. However, engaging with questions of the ethics of fieldwork is something that I have seen in successful SOPs from other Anthro applicants. I am not attempting to "move the needle", but show I am aware of existing debates. 
As for brevity, we're writing on a forum lol

As @ashiepoo72 and @starshiphistory have pointed out, there are diminishing returns for joining the society as an already admitted PhD student. I want to be part of societies and organizations that I can contribute to, not just passively participate in by holding a membership, and from what I can glean, participation would have been beneficial in undergrad. I thank you for your insight and will take your comments into consideration.

I don't know if you're looking for the MA or the PhD, but do not under any circumstances pay for the PhD.  You WILL be valued less by the faculty (and fellowship and search committees down the road) than those on funding packages. Universities are getting hit but your money is just as good as any college president choosing to give 10% of his salary, which is mere $80K out of $800K (plus plenty of benefits like housing). If you want to help, get on the train to pressure administrators to cut their own salary even deeper than 10%, grant more financial aid to undergraduate students, extend a semester's worth of funding to ALL graduate students, and not lay off contingent faculty (including adjuncts).  Go on the Chronicle of Higher Education to get the latest news on COVID-19 on campus (those articles are free).

I ended accepting an offer at Columbia University for an MA with a half tuition scholarship. I successfully deferred until Fall of 2021. Thank you all!

Hi, everybody. I'm sitting in on a conference call hosted by a consultancy. The topic is "Preparing Your Budget With Coronavirus in Mind."
A key take away is that the belief that COVID-19 is going to impose a new sensibility on budgeting that is generally alien to academic institutions.
The new budgeting discipline will focus on return of investment (ROI), common in the private sector, is going to push for strategic decision making at the expense of quality of programs and services. The level of analysis required will be very granular. It will focus on what can be quantified via key performance indicators (KPI). The "untangling" is going to take a significant amount of effort that has already started.
The takeaway is that I would be very careful about taking at face value comments about the continuity of funding packages and access to resources because institutions are going to be playing "catch up".
The silver lining is that the new approach will allow institutions to talk about ways to improve the services offered through better processes.
ETA. I recommend that when you're developing a list of schools, look for institutions that are focused on strategic goals. They will be further along the process of understanding their revenue streams, their expenses, and the tough choices they want to make.

Officially got my rejection after being waitlisted at Pitt today, they told me that they had a higher than usual number of applicants and a significantly higher than usual number of applicants that accepted their admission. Looks like it just wasn't meant to be for me this cycle. Congratulations to everyone who was accepted this cycle, I'm hopeful and excited to try again next year!

When you're ready to get back at it, I think you may find a lot of useful information in this forum and others for the new season.

I ended accepting an offer at Columbia University for an MA with a half tuition scholarship. I successfully deferred until Fall of 2021. Thank you all!

I ended accepting an offer at Columbia University for an MA with a half tuition scholarship. I successfully deferred until Fall of 2021. Thank you all!

I ended accepting an offer at Columbia University for an MA with a half tuition scholarship. I successfully deferred until Fall of 2021. Thank you all!

I (somewhat) disagree. 
While revising your personal finances is, of course, urgently important, a MA can help you build more academic capital than taking the year off, especially since you were admitted to two excellent programs. 
Together with your finances, make sure to weigh in your professional goals with each school’s resources beyond your potential POIs. Do they offer the possibility of working elsewhere? Do students typically stay for the PhD? What resources do they offer to support graduate students? Eg, both are in expensive cities, who do MAs deal with expenses? Do you need/would have access to language training that you would otherwise be unable to complete? What internships do they offer? Etc. 
I’m all for not mortgaging your future if you can avoid it. I’m also all for getting a job before doing a PhD. But as faculty, and with colleagues in both programs, I’m also convinced that sometimes the MA prepares you for the doctoral program in ways that only you can discern. All I’m saying is weigh in everything. 

Finally heard from Michigan today. They said they're not taking anyone off of the waitlist this season because of financial restraints due to COVID-19. I'm not shocked, the odds were stacked against me (in terms of the amount of people who still had to make their final decisions) and I wouldn't have been able to make an informed decision had they accepted me, but it does still sting a little bit.
Onward and upwards, I accepted my offer from Indiana University and I'll be moving to the Midwest in the summer! Good luck to anyone else still on the waitlist, I know it's rough with only one week to go, but I hope it's good news.

FYI this thread will be de-stickied on April 16 and the 2021 thread posted.

Skip NYU.  Take that funded masters or apply for the PhD in the fall.

Got an email from Pitt today, I’m on the waitlist! It’s not an acceptance but it’s not a rejection so I’m feeling okay, keeping my fingers crossed to hear good news by April 15th!

I've been taken off the waitlist at Indiana! Just received my formal offer today and I have to say that I'm relieved/emotional/over the moon. I'm going to get a PhD!
I'm still on the waitlist at Michigan and will be sending them an email on Monday to check on my status there and to let them know that I've been offered a doctoral position at IU. Fingers crossed that I can make my final decision soon and start my journey to a PhD in the Fall!

Congratulations!

Well, that's not entirely true. Anecdotally, I know of a person who did a terminal master's in classics there and enrolled in their PhD program immediately afterwards. From what I understand, the faculty got to know them as a master's student and that gave them a (potentially unfair?) advantage in admissions. Not sure if their rec letters were from the faculty there, but they might have been. I imagine there are other cases like this across the humanities.
That said, I agree you shouldn't do a master's if you can't afford it comfortably, and second the observation that top graduate programs that offer terminal master's degrees tend to assign them secondary importance, which puts the students in a strange position in terms of social and professional networks. But, as I said above, that can be overcome.

During my application cycle (2016), this program was send out a ton of emails to faculty at my undergrad asking for "promising students" to submit applications. I had received a few rejections in a row, so my advisor asked me if I wanted to throw my hat in the ring for this and sent them an email inquiring about funding. They replied that they didn't really have any and that tuition/fees were $60k/per year. My advisor politely told them to stop spamming her with a program that would be harmful to her students. 
It's been said before, don't go into debt for an MA. 
Unsure if it's a one year program, but I was also advised to stay away from those. If you're intending to reapply for PhDs, you'd barely start relationships with your professors there before asking them to write recommendation letters. 
A final uplifting comments. I was at my bachelorette part recently, surrounded by 7 other women also pursuing PhDs in various fields (apparently my friends are all nerds). Almost half of the women there got rejected across the board on their first attempt, came back the following year with a stronger application and a better understanding of themselves and the programs to which they were applying. Literally every one of them says that they are so happy they didn't get into some of the places they thought they wanted that first year, because they ultimately ended up exactly where they needed to be. 
Just food for thought.

Thanks for your thoughts. The person who interviewed me actually said I should probably expect to receive a significant amount of funding, so I guess I'll wait and see what they offer. This is a standalone program through the European Institute that just offers an MA, no PhD, so I'm guessing that may be why....