BJL2021

Hi! I wanted to jump in here and encourage you not to worry too much about what you do in the interim. (I'm a full-time paralegal myself, and was throughout my MA.) According to both of my supervisors, having a "regular" job can be an asset. It shows that you know how to work with people, can stick to something, and have a more varied skillset. I'm certainly no expert and I don't have a ton of standing - this is my first application cycle and, so far, I have been (somewhat) successful. I also stayed in contact with people from my undergrad and MA and took any history-related/writing experience I could get on the side; I gave a virtual talk at a community centre, did some editing for a history-related non-profit, etc. I know everyone is feeling super negative, but I think this year is just such an outlier that it should be considered a write-off. You may well have gotten in with this exact application package any other year. Also, so many of you haven't heard from schools that you may well still get into! I'm lucky in that I got my one acceptance early, simply because that school releases their results early. But I'll quite likely get rejected from every other school I applied to. If it had been the other way around, I'd be sitting here feeling the same way, not knowing that my one admit was just around the corner! It also shows that it's not "about you." My application was strong enough to get me into my top choice, but I just wasn't the right fit for another place that I (initially) thought of as a "safety" school. (Also, for what it's worth, I never reached out to POIs at any school I applied to.) I think it's more about fit/who's taking students that year than I realized. I guess this long post is all to say that nobody should lose heart yet. And, if you don't get in, consider this a write-off year and push on next cycle.

Thank you! It was my top pick, given my specific research area, so I'm thrilled. I'm waiting to hear back from Michigan, Chicago, Wisconsin-Madison, and Rutgers. I've been advised to hold off on accepting until I find out about those, but the only other one I think would consider at this point is Michigan. I'm a Europeanist, so I'm not sure about how many Americanists they took. Good luck to you! An MPhil from Cambridge, expense aside, is super exciting and something to be really proud of.

Hi everyone, I'm one of the Northwestern admits. I spoke with one of my POIs last week and was told that the department is expecting a cohort of 8-10 this year.