TagRendar

I know one of my letters of rec told me that he ordinarily would have recommended that I look at SUNY Buffalo but that they weren't going to be taking history Ph.Ds this year so to not waste my time checking it out. I don't recall what his info source was (it might have been a contact there) but here's to hoping for your sake. I know I avoided even looking at the whole SUNY system due to the budget crunches they'd be facing. Also knocked Columbia off my shortlist because they at least announced that they weren't taking a cohort this year. Fingers crossed and good luck that he and I are mistaken though!

Out of curiosity, who was your POI at Northwestern? I know when I was deciding who I'd want to work with there that was actually taking students, I was kind of settling and wasn't the best fit for my research interests (policy and urban history). Thank you! It was ten years ago this April. My academic and non-academic career has been a trip but it eventually brought me back to where I probably should have been fifteen years ago when I graduated from my initial undergrad program. Fingers crossed for you in your apps as well! Hopefully you have more out there in the universe than I do (I only applied to four schools, down from the initial six that made my shortlist).

I will say, 100% getting a response (even if it's not really anything of substance beyond learning when I might expect a response and that their cohort is going to be around what it's been in past cycles) from another program that I'd applied to helped to take the sting out of the Northwestern rejection. A lot of professors themselves just weren't taking graduate students this cycle based on the guidance on the department website, so that might have been the source of what your POIs said in the first place. Definitely with you on the anxiety factor. I'm older than most traditional potential PhD candidates and I'm switching my research interests from what they were when I was getting my MA (which had some trauma attached to it in the first place, as my thesis advisor died literally in the middle of my project--too deep into research to change gears but not 100% done, either), in part because I've matured as a researcher and scholar since then. I'm worried that will be a point of difficulty but my professors have assured me that I've explained that in my SoP so it should be okay.

I legit just signed up for the forums based on the last reply after lurking for a little while. I, too, just got a dreaded rejection from Northwestern and it stings like mad. I'm going to be reaching out on Monday to see if I can get any insight into the reasons for the rejection, but I suspect that I already know the answers: smaller incoming cohort and no exact fit with professors currently available to mentor Ph.D students. That makes two rejections for me (I was the one that reached out to Loyola Chicago and found out that they were only taking two Ph.D students this year) with two still pending (UIC and U Chicago). Crossing fingers but trying to steel myself for the possibility of having to do this all again next year when this non-traditional student is a year older.