LeSamourai

Thanks @psstein, incredibly helpful (and sobering) thoughts as always. Sorry for the confusing second question, you tackled the spirit of it, which is basically, is there any upside to a program with higher teaching expectations (my read of your answer is, no, and especially not when you factor in all the other stuff that tends to be correlated with). Your point on the challenges facing the demand side makes a ton of sense. Stepping back, the % of people with any kind of tertiary education in the US is so much higher than in most of the rest of the OECD . . . with seemingly little to show for it in social mobility, a more enlightened civic culture, or human fluorishing. So no argument from me that humanities enrollments (and therefore faculty FTEs) seem doomed to a long decline. Reading comments from more experienced folks on this forum always makes me think I should look into shoehorning my interests into a policy or urban studies SOP ? though a lot of us probably do need to be scared straight!

Hey @gsc these #s refer to cohort sizes, not the number of students admitted, but point well taken - I'm sure yield is hard to estimate in advance and for the programs where there is a lot of data available (Michigan, Wisconsin and a few others have very elaborate tableau dashboards for this kind of data across their programs) it does seem to vary a lot historically. FWIW, Michigan's program has gotten smaller, more selective, and better-yielding looking at '17-'20 vs. '15-'16 (based on the grad school's data site) but not sure what that trendline looks like zooming farther out. Your point on there basically not being any traditional academic jobs makes sense. I guess I'm just trying to dig deeper into the structure of the history job market (more out of curiosity than anything at this point, because as many older and wiser folks on this forum have pointed out, it's not a good idea to go to PhD school with the sole intent of getting a TT job, since it doesn't actually solve for that anymore). Does the "maybe 1 person gets a TT AP job" become "maybe 2" at, say, Harvard vs., say, Duke? Or does it stay "maybe 1" but at a public flagship rather than a regional school? Or is it all so flukey and field/advisor-dependent that it's impossible to prove/disprove any hypothesis about the job market (which, b/c it's so thin, maybe isn't much of a "market" at this point)?

Thanks to everyone who's responded to this thread. I really appreciate the engagement and the high-value comments from everyone. @TMP Do you think there are any programs that might be off my radar that are sneakily pretty good at placing candidates into teaching-centric R2s? I would think, given the state of the job market, that a TT job at an R2, even if 3-3, would be considered a great outcome by many of the applicants and early career folks on this forum; though I also know that there are plenty of people graduating from "top" programs who would also kill for those jobs, so maybe there are fewer stories of "lower ranking schools with good placement, just into less shiny jobs" than you hear about in other social sciences with healthier undergrad enrollment trends. Any particular reason why you bring up Albany, Kent State etc. in your post or just using them as examples of more regionally-oriented publics? @psstein Your point on larger grad programs proxying dependence on grad student labor makes a lot of sense. I guess one thing I'm trying to figure out is regardless of whether these programs are doing the right thing by the profession, is whether there is an independent effect on grad student experience/outcomes ... I could imagine a corner case where a student who has good funding, faculty mentorship etc. at a program like this might come out better prepared for jobs at, say, LACs ranked #50-150, than the candidate who cobbled together enough grant and fellowship money to largely avoid teaching. @TMP @psstein @AfricanusCrowther @dr. telkanuru Do you guys think that the pandemic has spurred larger programs to rethink what a "normal" cohort looks like? Setting aside the longer-term demand backdrop (which I think best case scenario gets back to ~2019-20 levels of maybe 500-600 full time openings, o/w probably less than 300 TT?) it seems like it would be very healthy for the profession for the supply of PhDs to take another leg down . . . I think we would all trade a ~50% lower chance of being admitted for ~50% less competition for jobs and postdocs 5-7 years down the road (though maybe I'm underrating how much people dislike what they would be doing if they hadn't gone to grad school!). As an aside, I put some cohort size #s together from looking at a few grad programs' sites. Yale and Princeton strike me as outliers on the high end and Duke surprised me to the low side w/ 8. Curious if anyone w/ intimate knowledge of those programs can comment on the internal thinking on this at any of them. @psstein you seem pessimistic about forecasting longer term supply and demand in the field - I think the harder data to gather and structure is probably faculty age and university/departmental retirement policies, but if someone could scrape that you could probably build a pretty robust model for at least the US, ofc importing your own assumptions about what % of tenure lines go away upon retirement . . . or maybe I'm just overthinking it ? Cohort sizes . . . Harvard … 12-15 Yale … “roughly 22” Princeton … “approximately 25” Columbia … 20-25 (may include HoS) Johns Hopkins … nd Michigan … “approximately 18” Wisconsin … 15 (2015-19 average) Northwestern … 12-15 Chicago … 15-20 UCB … ~20? (110 total students, admits ~30) UCLA … 14 (2013-17 average) Duke … 8 Vanderbilt … 8-10 Brown … 10-12

Hi TMP - this is a super helpful response, and I really like your second point, because I think it opens up a great line of questioning (for example, "how much of a community is there in field x vs. other fields in your department?") for conversations with current students at programs I'm doing due diligence on. Thanks.

Hi all, curious if people on this forum have any thoughts on a question I've been kicking around. By way of background, I applied to five programs last cycle (2020-21), got waitlisted at one and rejected at the others. My field, broadly, is 20th C. US History, with a focus on race, urban political economy, and institutions beyond the public sector (philanthropic foundations, community groups, businesses) as vectors for politics/policy. As I think about re-applying this year, with (potentially) more programs admitting new students at all and (potentially) cohort sizes closer to "normal," I've encountered two "types" of programs in my research. Really, these are more like stereotypes / ideal-typical examples and most programs probably have characteristics of both. The first type would be programs (often at very highly ranked institutions) that admit big cohorts (even 20+) of people in every specialty under the sun. The other would be programs that very clearly signal they admit a smaller (often < 10) cohort in a limited number of areas of excellence they are committed to graduate education in (Penn State and Vanderbilt strike me as examples closer to this model). Curious if there are other variables people think are as important in sorting programs as cohort size. (1) How many history PhD programs at "top" (I know this is a problematic label for graduate studies, but I think a relevant one since we'd probably all agree the job market is bad for graduates of ALL programs, but that in an environment of scarcity, pedigree/network/signaling, not to mention funding and access to other resources, stratifying programs is important) programs actually resemble the latter model? Are there other examples people would call out? (2) Are there any historical reasons these programs operate this way - e.g. readjusting for the post-2008 job market, or more idiosyncratic factors that vary by department? (3) Any thoughts on whether these programs tend to actually foster better professional development opportunities and career outcomes? If so, what is the best evidence for it, given that career outcomes can potentially be a 5-7 year lagging indicator (maybe longer if you're talking post-postdoc placement) of how a department is approaching first-year admissions? I know these are somewhat broad topics (and it's definitely on my to-do list to try and get student and faculty input directly) but since there are many knowledgeable people on this board who I'm betting have opinions on this, wanted to pose these questions to the forum. Thanks!

Hi all - long time listener / first time caller here. This has been a super helpful thread throughout the application process this year - thanks especially to all the more seasoned folks who take the time to engage with all us grad school noobs on the forum. Curious if people have any thoughts on the protocol for reaching out to programs after getting waitlisted. For context, I was waitlisted at my top choice program, and had a brief, polite e-mail exchange with the DGS right after getting that notification, in which he shared that they will be able to give a final yea/nay to waitlisted applicants by mid-April, but not much other color on the process (or the size of the waitlist). Basically, I want to know whether it's a good idea to reach out to POIs to (politely) try and get a better feel for the decision rules the department uses to make offers from the waitlist, given that I haven't talked to my POIs since November/December (i.e. haven't gotten any inbounds from would-be advisors). Additionally - for folks that have done a 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) application cycle, curious what parts of your "package" you think changed the most with each iteration. Was it mostly about fit (& communicating that better in the SOP)? A new writing sample that you were proud of? Recs or credentials from an MA/MPhil program? Maybe this second question is a separate discussion in which case, happy to start a new thread. Thanks!