FruitLover

I have no insights, but I got into Columbia today. Still can’t believe it! I received an email to check my application status - and there was the offer with funding information. I’m surprised more people haven’t posted anything on the results page...

Did it also come your POI?

Do most programs require that you do an MA thesis/exam before qualifying exams and working on your dissertation?

I understand that there are things like that which may have nothing to do with our qualifications. Never heard about TA needs being one of the possible considerations, so that’s interesting. I am mainly just curious about how many people get nominated by faculty vs how many actually get admitted.

Does anyone know what the common ratio of students nominated by faculty vs students admitted is? Does each POI nominate a few people or just one and does each POI get to nominate someone (that is, if there are prospective students interested in working with them and they are not retiring)?

You can search “history” on the results page. Most schools have yet to release any decisions. Based on results from previous years, many schools send out their acceptances around the same time (i.e. one school informs all of their admitted students on the same day, another school does so within the span of a few days, etc).

Some applications ask you whether you’d like to be considered for a different/MA program if they can’t extend a PhD program offer.

I'm curious, why is it not a common practice to conduct interviews in History departments? I know some other departments don't make decisions until after they've conducted on-site interviews, but I got the impression that in History, it's more of an exception than the rule.

The only reason I'm asking is because a couple of schools encourage submission of fall grades, so I wasn't sure if it's a universal thing or just particular to those schools.

If the school's website does not specify whether they want applicants to provide fall grades after the application has been submitted but there is an option to upload additional documents after the deadline, should I or should I not upload an updated transcript?

I submitted a couple of applications and still have a few to go. Don't worry about the typo! I'm second-guessing my SoP, but there's no point worrying now.

Hi everyone, If the department does not specify a word limit for the statement of purpose, but the graduate school says that it should not be over 1000 words, how strictly do you think it is enforced? Berkeley recommends a SOP of 1000 words, but their sample statement of purpose is way over the limit, thus contradicting their own recommendation. This makes me wonder if they even look at the word count and if being 50-100 words over is okay. What do you guys think?