Strategos

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).

Right now and through May, universities will be deciding on their budget for next year and how to cut it as EVERYONE is anticipating losses in staff, funding, and enrollment. Simultaneously, as there will be less jobs in general, more people will apply to funded graduate programs. 
 
My advice is:
1) Communicate with potential POIs early on, probably during the summer. Do not -I repeat, do not- e-mail us now. We are in the last few weeks of a very difficult semester caring for our students and our families. We are all holding our breaths waiting to hear about furloughs, cancelled research funds, indefinitely postponed leaves, and layoffs. Now is absolutely not the right time to contact your POIs, but it is the right time to do the appropriate research. I doubt anyone will be doing much traveling during the summer so most faculty would be available to respond relatively promptly.
2) Consider that most programs will be highly competitive so prepare excellent applications. To be clear: your application is NOT your GPA. Also, if you have questions about GRE or TOEFL/IELTS, e-mail the graduate administrator or the graduate school, they will have updated data. Do not email POIs about that. 
3) Do not imagine possible scenarios but prepare for them. In other words, do not speculate with “do you guys think they will take less students?” Because there is no way for anyone here can answer that and speculation can lead to unnecessary hysteria and anxiety. However, do prepare for the possibility of all programs admitting less students. Prepare applications that illustrate your resilience and your ability to work across disciplines, as you would likely TA for a course outside your field. Also follow @Sigaba´s advice on contingency plans (and I would always advice that regardless of the situation, design plans B, C, and D.I come from a country where there is always a crisis so I’m used to contingency plans). 
 
4) Psychologically, it’s very healthy to project into the future. I’d argue that it’s healthy to acknowledge the crisis while working towards your goals in the best way you can control. I have to write a book and I can’t go to the archives this summer, so I will write it with what I have. but I will write it. Similarly, I urge new applicants to continue to project your careers (in grad school or not) while maintaining an informed perspective. As historians, we are aware of the deep, rapid changes this pandemic is forcing on the world while we can also appreciate the continuities. While I’m sure you are all re-evaluating your life now, remember that faculty are working hard to keep programs open and provide continuity. 
my two cents. 
 
 
 

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!

I just got notified that I've been accepted to Oxford. I am so excited. Fingers crossed for funding... 
I was wondering, is it common practice to email your potential supervisor to thank them for their support and/or let them know whether you plan to accept the offer? 

The fact that there still exist programs like this in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty...

Interestingly, at Ivy+ schools, the history major is booming. My department has been adding 1-2 TT professors a year since I got there in 2015.

Saw this on Reddit this morning --
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -- Captain Picard
"

I think they may send out responses tomorrow, if last year's release date is anything to go by.

Hopefully you get in anyway, but I wouldn't read anything into this--it's typically the case that you go through a manual procedure of setting up email access etc, and I can 100% believe that this would be a system glitch because they're pretty common. It's odd though--perhaps a reason to email the graduate administrator and ask when you might be hearing back. 

For anyone applying to Pitt:
Decisions should be out sometime next week. Info I got was that committee is meeting this week, and then decisions will go to grad dean and be sent out, which means next week.
Also, Pitt saw something a 50% increase in apps this year. So if you are rejected or waitlisted, know it may have just been the class of apps they received.
Lastly, no Rediker does not really take students anymore.
 
I’m a current Pitt grad student, so if anyone has questions, I’m happy to answer to the best of my ability
 

I also remember our application thread from last year starting much earlier in the cycle. We  had more questions and conversation during the process of researching programs in the summer and writing our applications in the fall. This year folks came in with applications already mostly done and it's more of a results chat. You all were more self-sufficient during applications, it seems! ?

Does anyone know if Chicago has an explicit waitlist?

That's very much the case.
I used to be on the f- Sigaba crowd due to the sheer brutality of some of their comments. I will say, though, that their comments are not far off from reality and actually hinge on polite. Maybe some ancedotal evidence will help. (probs not) Anyways, I'm currently a union rep for my department and have frayed a ton of relationships with faculty due to my role as a labor organizer. In fact, my secondary advisor has all but stopped talking to me and begun spreading rumors about me to other faculty. Now, I receive all kinds of looks from faculty and have a general sense of mistrust, which is fair since I had to drop a couple of hammers last semester. Anywho...Sigaba can and often does verge on the polite-asshole line, but my advice would be to learn to hear the advice out of those type of comments. You are not going to be treated well in grad school and you need to learn how to handle that reality while still holding true to yourself and advancing in your degree.
I wish you all the best in the coming weeks. If anyone needs to vent (good or bad) over the next couple of weeks, feel free to PM me.
TLDR: telling a professor to pound rocks might feel good, but will not be worth it in the end. Keep trucking along!

(OmniscienceQuest, to himself): "Gosh I haven't been over to the 2020 History applicant thread on GradCafe in a few days, wonder what's going on..."
(He enters the thread)
. . .
(He exits the thread)

Except that, given what I've seen from placement data, the sub field rankings are just as questionable. And given that, as you acknowledge,the best place for a student has to be considered in light of many different factors, a bad list like USNWR ends up skewing admissions toward the "top" schools in spite all of those other factors, which seems to me to harm the profession by reinforcing arbitrary credentialism. 

quite a lot to unpack here. you assume that I’m not using this as a way to put a better application forward next year which is quite a big assumption to make. I’d like to recontextualize: I said I was a bit put off by a rejection not being BCC’d. For you to take that and then imply that I’m not listening to advice, am more concerned with being “right” than growing and many of the other things you have implied in your response is quite the assumption.
The people on this forum are humans. We have reactions in the heat of the moment. Not everything human beings do is always about “helping to build a dynamic that encourages experienced members to stay and continue to help”. For this to then be applied on a bigger scale to “this is why academic historians don’t like speaking with undergraduates” is again a big assumption to make and if anything just highlights the issues with gate keeping in academia as an institution and the way it treats the human beings who make it up, something that I have consistently had to deal with as a marginalized person.
I’m relatively new to this website and I’ve learned a lot of things about the grad school process. People have been very kind to me. The way a small comment has been blown out of proportion and the way I’ve been mischaracterized and told I have an attitude because of it is very disheartening and doesn’t make me want to reach out and in the future.
That’s all I have to say about this. Have a good weekend and I hope we all can be kinder to those on the other side of the keyboard. 

Good, important, and timely points about water off a duck's back. In the grander scheme, it is self-defeating to dwell on rejections, and there's really no nice way of turning down someone's application. Best to dust yourself off, keep your composure, and move forward.
But unless I'm misinterpreting the initial complaint, an admissions office CCed people other than the applicants regarding decisions made about their applications? If so, it's a fair complaint about a lack of professionalism and veers awfully close to a violation of applicant privacy. That institution might want to review its procedures.

sorry but why do you feel the need to be such an asshole about this? the poster didn't get into a program they really wanted to and are upset about the way the rejection was dealt with. sounds perfectly reasonable on their part. 
pretty mean of you to turn this into a broader thing about how "professional academic historians are not particularly fond of interacting with undergraduates"! 

It is well established that most graduate students are deeply unhappy. Don't presume that  you'll be among the contented minority.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/06/new-study-says-graduate-students-mental-health-crisis.
 
 

I have been rejected by my top choice, Michigan. I am so heartbroken. Was so excited to work with my POIs there who have expressed much interest in my research. I wish I knew what it was in my application that wasn't good enough so that I could work on improving it for the next application season.

I'm not very concerned with the institution, just the market.

Hi everyone - I've been staying quiet and avoiding Grad Cafe as much as I could stand it. I was among the recent round of Yale rejects earlier this week, but other than that it's been radio silence and I've been struggling not to interpret that as a bad sign. If anyone is looking for something to keep you distracted, there was a wonderful podcast episode on NPR recently that was about the psychology of comparing yourself against other people: Counting Other People's Blessings. I don't know if it will help but I'm making the intention that every time I start getting anxious I'll remind myself of some event in my life from the past ten years or so that was a blessing. Going through old photos helps a lot to remind me of all the good things that have happened. Best of luck to you all.

Anyone have insight into what's going on with Princeton or Columbia?
P.S. It sounds like admit rates are especially low this year. Sending so much love to everyone facing rejections this week. As much as it might feel like a personal indictment, an admissions decision is not a reflection of your worth. You are all valuable, talented individuals doing interesting work and I hope that you will hear some good news as well before the cycle ends. ?

I'm sorry you are going through this. 
Rejection is not fun. Even though grad school is "like a job," we put too much personal investment in it so it's hard to even begin to disentangle it. That said, rejection is part of the game, from admissions until retirement. 
So, a couple of things: 
1) If you are still convinced you want to pursue a PhD and go into academia, by all means apply a third time. If you do, I would suggest having an honest conversation with your closest mentor to find out what you could have done better. I doubt they will have the answer, though... Would you apply to the same places? (I applied three times to one school and never got in).
1 bis) "but it's primarily qualitative" makes it sound as an apology. Qualitative research is research. Actually, most historians do that, so I'm not sure why you are upfronting a "but" there. All the career paths I mentioned in 1) would be happy to have a candidate with research experience. (I'm not sure what "professional history research experience" means, though. I'm international so maybe that's it). 
2) In addition to the wanting to have something published for next year, I'd also try to go to a conference and shamelessly introduce yourself to people. Many POIs sometimes schedule coffee hours with potential students (I've met two at the AHA).  
3) I would approach the "no-PhD" issue differently. What if you find a job that enables you to build a doctoral career in a couple of years? Eg: museums, archives, libraries, HS teaching, NGOs, political campaigning, college administration, etc. Rather than taking rejections as a final stop, what if they are an invitation to regroup and apply again in a couple of years? Given the job market as it is, my senior colleagues in my department and other departments I know (non-Ivy) are increasingly leaned towards taking students that have a strong non-academia plan. Thus, having work experience will strengthen your application while providing you with tools to navigate the job market down the line. 
4) I strongly, firmly believe that you have not "messed up." Admissions are hard, everyone is qualified. So do not absolutely not think that this is on you. Cohorts are shrinking (except Yale, apparently), departments are shrinking too, and this means less faculty are admitting students. If I am going to give you any advice on rejections, be humble enough to acknowledge many, many, many things are outside of your control (unfortunately!). 
 

I just spoke to one of my POIs at NYU, and he told me that they're planning to take in a cohort of nine new students this year for the history department (down from their usual ten because they had a higher yield than expected last year). Apparently, four offers have already been sent to modern Europeanists, including me, and there may still be a fifth going out sometime soon. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about the other fields, but I hope that people find this information useful!