thomasunra

I'm currently applying for a PhD in history studying the modern middle east. I applied to three places (duke, notre dame, and harvard). I have a 3.9 GPA with a 4.0 in my major (history) as well as a few publications (only one on the middle east), two years of research assistantships, a year of teaching assistantships, and two years of working for an academic journal. I got rejected at Duke (but from what I understand they weren't taking any new students this year). I got really strong letters of recommendation from a couple of really well known/respected scholars. My language skills are OK. I'm also Arab, but never learned the language growing up and only studied it during undergrad. I can read and write but my spoken arabic is terrible. I got recruited a decent bit from Notre Dame and contacted a faculty member I *really* want to study under. I'm also looking into studying intellectual history. I haven't heard anything in a few weeks from my POI at Notre Dame and I never got an email back whenever I tried to email my POI at Harvard. It looks like a few folks already got invited to interviews at Notre Dame but I didn't, so I'm not really that confident right now. If I get rejected, I'll probably just wait again till next cycle. (I'll have two publications and three conferences on M.E. History at that point so maybe I'll look like a stronger candidate. The book I'm currently working on with my advisor at my current university should also be finished and likely published by then as well.) Best of luck with applications! I think over the next few weeks the majority of acceptances and rejections will come in. TL;DR, I'm not that confident with how things are right now. If I get into ND or Harvard, great, but if I don't, I've kind of come to terms that its time to go back to being a broke line-cook.