sciencehistorian

I won't be able to help you; my application to UCI was not coordinated by the graduate school.

I can't think of a single POI who has ever indicated that they want an applicant to have a determined topic already selected. You should be able to articulate questions you're interested in, yes, as well as things like time period and approach. And you should be able to speak about projects you *could* imagine doing at an institution. But from the conversations I've had, professors seem to recoil at the idea that applicants have a prefigured sense of what exact singular thing they'd like to study in the PhD, for at least two reasons — 1) if the applicant already has everything figured out, why do they need to obtain the PhD? and 2) the majority of students will change and mature their interests over the course of the pre-quals years; some programs even almost have an expectation for their students' interests to change between application and the dissertation prospectus. Recognition of this latter fact is itself, I imagine, one of those more subtle indicators that an applicant has a realistic understanding of what graduate school is like, and is not entering without false impressions.

I am applying through a dual-degree program in which my applications are not centrally coordinated by the graduate program, so I'm afraid my experience won't be helpful. Chicago is the only place where I submitted a full parallel graduate application.

Rejection from Chicago History on my portal (strangely without an email), although I'm still in contention for CHSS.

There are others who can give you more helpful information, but I've found Berkeley's website to be particularly helpful in spelling out the general profile of a PhD applicant in history. My understanding is that a standalone master's is particularly helpful if you lack any of these components, like an academic background in history, or research interests sufficiently focused such that you can clearly articulate your time period, location, methodology, and topic of interest, as well as the broader historiographical inquiries driving your future work.

Would any of the lurking graduate students / faculty be willing to look at a (very provisional) SOP?

Thanks for the advice, @AP. So... it's August now. It seems like this forum is a lot less active than it was in previous years, but there's still plenty of time until the cycle picks up. How is application writing going for everyone? On my end, I had the pleasure of talking to a POI a little bit ago who gave me some much-needed advice on narrowing my research interests. I suspect I'm going to need to continue revising that heavily over the next few weeks at least, if not longer. I think my personal statement is in better shape. I have a ~25-page writing sample in mind (the introduction and part of a chapter of my thesis), but that needs revision, too.

What level of detail would you all suggest should be included on a CV? My minimal-detail CV currently includes: Education (Institution, degrees, and date). Research Experiences (Affiliation, position, and date). Publications and Scholarship (Citations). Conference Presentations (Name(s), title, venue, format). Awards and Funding (Title, source, amount, and date). Extracurricular Activities (Group, positions, date). Service (Role, event/group, date). Teaching Experience (Group, position, date). This puts me at slightly over 2 pages, and seems commensurate with the level of detail CVs normally contain at the faculty level. According to my perusal of the forums, some people suggest including resume-esque information that contains more specific details on the activities and tasks completed during certain experiences. I could add more detail to the research, extracurricular, and teaching sections, although for the extracurricular section I'd likely restrict detail-addition to the roles with skills relevant for a graduate student. I would estimate that addition of such details would be push me to 3 or 3.5 pages. Would such information be helpful to an admissions committee or be viewed as extraneous?

Sounds good. Appreciate the advice from you both. (And I certainly don't mind filling out one fewer application).

I'm currently building a school list of doctoral programs to apply to this fall. Broadly, I'm interested in the social history of American public health and medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries. My research has focused on a specific public health measure, its relation to the law, and opposition to the measure during this time period. It's been relatively easy determining whether some programs are potential good fits for my research interests because they have dedicated departments of history of science or medicine, or because their general history program indicates that they have a thematic focus (official or unofficial) in historical studies of science and medicine. Yale, for example, has a track in the History department called the History of Science and Medicine and even a cursory glance at their faculty page shows that they have many faculty members who would be able to support my research interests. Other schools, however, have faculty with geographic specializations in American history and methodological specializations in social history, but may lack people who study the history of science and medicine entirely. If they do have such faculty, those faculty sometimes have their primary appointment in other departments (Public Health, Nursing, etc.), with a secondary appointment in History. UNC Chapel Hill, for example, has both American and social historians, but lacks anyone who seems like they would identify as a historian of medicine. (This is reflected, I'll note, in their course offerings, which lack instruction in the history of medicine entirely). UNC does have a Department of Social Medicine with a historian of Latin American medicine and a historian in their Department of Medicine, but I've been advised that one should not apply to a school that has only one or two faculty members who could supervise a graduate student (because people retire, change schools, don't have funding, go on leave, etc.). I would imagine the same rings even truer for schools in which said faculty members do not have primary appointments in History. As an applicant interested specifically in the history of medicine, is it worth applying to schools like UNC that lack historians of medicine in their History department? Would I be able to assemble a committee based on regional and methodological focus alone? Should I try reaching out to faculty and asking whether their program could support someone with my interests or call it a bust?

https://www.marshallscholarship.org/apply/regional-committees

San Francisco region began sending out interview invites as early as 2 weeks ago.

For anyone curious, it appears 2 out of 2,000 awards last year were for topics under the history and philosophy of science (search here). Another 3 were for medical anthropology. If you like taking long shots, here's your chance (although I suppose we don't know how many HPS applicants they receive)!

The NSF GRFP specifically permits applications from individuals interested in pursuing graduate degrees in the history of science (as opposed to history broadly, or other specializations). I am still 1 to 2 years out from applying to any post-undergraduate program, but as a student interested in the history of medicine, has anyone here had any success with getting the NSF to fund a Master's or PhD in the history of science? Or even an adjacent field, like medical anthropology? I am curious as to whether this funding source is actually viable for social sciences / humanities folks.

UPenn has closed all Arts & Sciences PhD admissions this year (picture from reddit). Unless you want to pay for a PhD, I guess.