history110

Hi all, I'm a first year PhD student and just finished my MA at the same university. We are required to take a PhD PD course which is helpful, but is the most intense grading I've experienced in grad school. Prior to this, the lowest grade I've received in my program so far was a A- on a paper in my first MA term which I revised for an A and then all As after that. In this course, I've gotten two B+ and two A-. The other students have mostly gotten the same range, though one has gotten two As and two A minuses. These are PD assignments, so 5 year plans, conference proposals, etc. I've talked to the prof and she told me I was doing fine, and I'm talking to her again after this latest B+, which she is allowing me to revise for a higher grade, and hopefully talk more frankly ("is this really a D? Am I totally messing up?")...but it's honestly so stressful. And just sort of shameful that I can write an MA thesis successfully but now I suddenly can't do a 5 year plan that is A level---maybe my brain has broken? Has anyone experienced this with a class that is similar? I mostly just am looking for similar experiences since I know the only solution is talking to her, my advisor and just working harder.

I used Brickman (plus an online course from UW Madison) to pass mine! Brickman was really useful.

I'm on a waitlist for UBC -- I know there's just a couple people ahead of me, so if you've gotten offer and know for sure you don't want to go, please let them know!

just UBC! If I don't get in I plan on doing a much wider net next year, but I just did UBC this year for various reasons. I did talk to my POI yesterday and I'm basically waitlisted, so some offers may start showing up for those that are on the top of the list...good luck with your programs!

Has anyone heard from any canadian PhD programs yet?

Thanks for your concern! They are still offering funding through a fellowship that fully covers tuition plus some extra -- they are also going to try to add on more money to the fellowship. So thankfully it doesn't affect me that much and I have a job in my home country that relates to my field.

Just adding on that I found the sample from Berkeley immensely helpful when writing mine last year.

Very true! While I somewhat sadened by it, I am very relieved about not moving during a pandemic and dealing with undergrads (especially as my school has 60k students...) That is good advice! My department has said it is going to try organize virtual social hours so I plan on tuning into those and then reaching out to fellow graduate students to see if they want to do Zoom coffee/study/writing sessions.

Hi all! So my program is going to be online the fall due to COVID and possibly in the winter as well. I'm curious if anyone else's programs are doing the same and your thoughts on it. Obviously in history we're better suited to go online than the sciences, yet I am going miss the opportunity to see and network with my peers in person.

Hi! I was accepted to both and ended up choosing UBC -- it was a difficult decision, both seemed really great.

FYI, my program informed us that TAships for international students can't be offered this year (or rather rescinded) because Canada can only hire TAs that are living in CA...And right now international students can't get in CA and classes will be online. Thankfully, I have a job in my home country I can continue that is related to my area of study, but I imagine this will be hard for many + common in other programs. I suppose at least since people will be at home, they will not have to worry about paying living expenses in Canada and hopefully can continue current jobs as well.

If it makes you feel better, my GRE math scores were...sad, to say the least, yet I still got into good programs. I know with some programs GRE scores can impact funding from the overall graduate school but it didn't with mine (though I did compensate with high verbal and writing scores). I recommend Magoosh, reading things like Scientific America, Arts & Letters Daily, writing summaries of the articles you read, vocab flashcards and putting to use the new vocab. For me, with dyscalculia, there was only so much I could do with my math score, so I just tried hard to get really really good verbal/writing scores and then reviewed some math so I could get a better-than-130 (0) score. That being said, if any of your schools have the total GRE score tied to funding, more math study would probably be good.

I took am someone more inclined to a non-academic career -- though as I'm only starting grad school this fall, I don't have any huge insights. However, I did a lot of public history in undergrad in additional to research. That helped me realize while I wanted to go for a research degree, not a public history one, I did want to go to a school that did public history. UBC has a fair amount of professors that do public history work, including one of my two advisers. I think a program that has public history components is a good sign they might be more willing to help with a non-academic career path and it could be worthwhile reaching out to those profs, even if they aren't strictly in your field of interest. I'm also continuing working remotely at the history related nonprofit I've worked at for the past four years, so I'll have that tie into the non-academic world. That all being said, a lot of non academic history work may be tenuous in the future...it's going to be very difficult for musuems, though hopefully they'll adapt. I imagine gaining skills in online work (interactive websites, online tours, even social media) could be vastly helpful for what the future looks like.

I'm curious, has anyone heard if their programs will be online in the fall? UBC has announced all undergrad classes will be online, though they are still deciding on graduate classes.

I did it in undergrad. I was the president for two years -- which was mostly due to me and one other (who became the VP) showing up to the recruitment meeting! We were a pretty small chapter -- the actual membership at my university was fairly robust, but the people that showed up to meetings was a much smaller number. I enjoyed it - I gained leadership and public speaking skills, skills in organizing events, and got to know more the faculty members through event organizing. The events we put on were faculty panels, workshops, networking/mingling events (such as cider and donuts at the department lounge) and field trips to local archives, museums and so on. I enjoyed the conferences and our faculty adviser would always really seriously edit our conference papers so that was always valuable. I also got the chance to go the National Conference as well as the local ones. The department always found funding for traveling to these conferences. In general, the undergrads were more involved than the grad students because they were so busy with TAing and other duties. My own grad school doesn't have a chapter, they have a history graduate student society instead. I'll probably join that for networking and getting to know my fellow students. I think it does really depend on what you gain from it -- if the chapter isn't at all active, that has much less benefit- you're basically paying for the ability to submit journal articles and apply for scholarships (helpful, but not hugely). I suppose it might be worth asking if there is funding to send you to conferences despite there being no active chapter and asking in general what benefits students at your uni get from it. To summarize, it was great for an undergrad, but I can't really say if it would be helpful or not for a grad student. Let me know if you have specific questions because I was pretty immersed in it for two years!