misterpat

Little late to contact them to check your fit anyway, assuming you've applied by now. Didn't mean to worry you too much, one non-response seems more likely to be because the professor forgot/was busy/etc. Two might have indicated you had no idea what you were talking about, sounded naive, groveled, or annoyed them in some other way. Also, based on your interests, was one Jeff Goodwin? I e-mailed him last fall, and he wasn't very friendly. But he did respond to me, at least.

Uh... You got snubbed by both professors and then still applied? And mentioned them in your SOP? Having a PoliSci background is fine for sociology; I'd be more worried about the faculty not giving a shit about you and your research interests.

So, the 4.5 is the best part of your score? I almost didn't believe that your score was bad, since the rest of your post is kind of dramatic. I've become desensitized to reading new people over-dramatize their situations on this board: "OMG OMG I WONT GET INTO PRINCETON WITH MY 780 V 800 Q AND THREE YEARS RESEARCH EXPERIENCE! PLEASE REAFFIRM MY BELIEF IN MYSELF, EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVENT READ MY PERSONAL STATEMENT OR WRITING SAMPLE, INTERNET STRANGERS!" But if the 4.5 is the highlight of your score, then you might have a legit concern. Retake it. (I don't mean to insult you here, I scored a 4.5 both times I took the test. The questions are just so stupid. But I consider it a blemish, and not the only part of my score worth mentioning). About cancelling scores, however: don't do it. Unless you got into a car accident on the way there and were distracted/freaking out about the conseqeuences, etc. On just about every standardized test I've ever taken, I thought I did worse than the score I received. This could reflect my cynical/pessimistic worldview, or it might go to show that standardized testing involves a lot of educated guessing. You can't be exactly sure of how many you got right or wrong (the remarkable exception being a lot of LSAT takers who post on the top-law-school.com forums, but I think the LSAT is less of a crapshoot than the GRE verbal section). PLUS if you were getting hard question on the GRE, that likely means you were getting a lot of questions correct. So, if you were struggling, you might misjudge a good score for a bad one. You paid for the score, you might as well take the four free score reports from the test. And you probably did better than you think you did, so relax, and see how you did. All the books I read said not to cancel your scores, and I am in full agreement with that.

I read somewhere that at least half of all applications submitted come in during the last week. Could be exaggerated, but I'm pretty sure a LOT of people use all of the time that they have given to them. Perhaps my belief in the above statement reflects motivated reasoning on my part, since I submitted all my apps in the final week. But I highly doubt turning your application in BEFORE THE DEADLINE (even if its the day before!) is somehow going to affect your chances. Take a Xanax, dude.

Your overall GPA is more important, but I don't think your app wil get tossed because of a 3.3. You're applying to History MA programs, which likely means the schools you are applying to aren't uber-competitive (since all the top ones are PhD only. I wouldn't worry too much, especially if your GREs are good.

Yeah, sounds like policy school might be the right place for you. Hopefully somewhere you apply to agrees. That Princeton program looks really cool.

I've never even heard that term before, "practical history." Good luck.

Michigan. Their applicaton is a pain in the ass.

Just write about how you want to save the world and Santa Cruz will let you in.

Stanley Fish disagrees with this idea in Save the World on Your Own Time. And he might have a point. If you are applying for education programs, they might want to hear stuff like that. But it just sounds so cliche to me.

Hahaha. I'll bet the person reading that laughed out loud.

No programs require the GRE Subject test, but the GRE General Test is quite important. You will hear a number of opinions on the relative merits of GREs (both from faculty members and past applicants), and this reflects how they are viewed by history departments. It all depends. It depends on the program, on the faculty members reviewing your app, how strong your application is otherwise, etc. However, if you are going for a top program in History (one of the most over-crowded disciplines in academia), you should consider your Verbal score to be an essential part of your application. A high score will not get you in, by any means. But some schools are rumored to use the GRE as a first-round cutoff, to weed out the pile. Also, when it comes down to a number of qualified applicants for a fewer number of spots, low GREs are one easy way to weed people out. Ad-coms are looking for any reason to thin out the pile of apps, and they might not always be good ones (if you consider the GRE a modern form of torture). To be competitive, I was told that one should try to get a Verbal score that is as close to 700 as possible. Definitely study for a few months for the test. If you have no experience with the GRE, it will seem very difficult at first. I took a free practice exam that Kaplan offered when I had no idea what the question types were, and I think I scored somewhere in the 400s for Verbal and somewhere in the 500s for the Quantitative (if didn't help that I was trying to pick synonyms for the antonyms questions, but my score was all around horrible and cannot be singularly attributed to that mistake). But if you keep at it, you will improve. Just keep a positive attitude, take a lot of practice tests, make flash cards, learn word roots, and utilize this forum. Kaplan has an amusing quote in their GRE prep book: "Too many people think of standardized tests as cruel exercises in futility, as the oppressive instruments of a faceless societal machine. People who think this way usually don't do very well on these tests." I ended up with a 680 Verbal 710 Quantitative. Not the highest scores ever, but they are high enough to get me past any GRE weed-out threshold a program might have. At least for the programs I applied to.

Wouldn't you have needed to bribe them before they wrote about you? That said, I'm not sending gifts either. I'm sending snail mail thank you cards. I feel like a dork though, since my cursive is terrible and I am using my standard printed-handwriting. I blame using word processors all my life. Whenever I take standardized tests and you have to handwrite the I Will Not Cheat paragraph, I laugh at myself because I imagine someone looking at my score sheet and wondering why a third grader is taking the LSAT.

That is a pretty minor mistake. It is possible that someone could even miss that when reading, but even if they don't, one mistake is supposedly pretty forgivable.

US News Subfield Rankings for Colonial History: 1 Harvard University Cambridge, MA Yale University New Haven, CT 3 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 4 College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 6 Princeton University Princeton, NJ 7 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 8 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI 9 University of California--Berkeley Berkeley, CA 10 Cornell University Ithaca, NY University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC You typically send one paper as your writing sample. The only program I saw that asked for 2 is Arizona, and I would bet that they don't read 2 papers for every applicant anyway. I applied for Modern US, but while I was looking at their faculty, Virginia seemed pretty impressive for your chronological focus.

Yeah, I forgot to add that. Do as many tests as possible. I did like, all the tests my Kaplan book had, all of the Powerprep tests and exercises, and some tests from a Peterson's book I got at the library. Which was terrible, by the way. Did anyone else use Peterson's? I found the words used were substantially more difficult than those on the test. I think Kaplan might have been closer to the actual difficulty of the test, if not slightly easier.

Dragynally spits mad truth.

Ha. "[i have erased eight pages documenting my academic greatness and strength of character to comply with the length requirement. Take my word on it. :wink: ]" When I was looking at history programs, UArizona asked for a SOP that was between 2-10 pages. I thought was absurd; I felt emasculated with my measely 2 page Statement.

3.2 beer.

I read a book on Personal Statements by Douglas Asher, or Dennis Asher, or some other D name. Anyway, you do not capitalize the discipline.

I used Princeton Review's WordSmart for the GRE. I read about 20 words a day and did the exercises, then the next day (on top of reading 20 more), made flashcards for all the words that I didn't know prior to reading the book from the previous day. I kept sets of flashcards handy while I watched TV and flipped through them during commercials, or did them during down time at work. I improved from a 600 to a 680. Word roots are a good idea, but they can only take you so far. The GRE puts a lot of double prefixes and all kinds of annoying stuff in the words to distort the word away from the root's definition. Since your score was pretty low to begin with, the roots might help you a bit. But if you're aiming for 90th+ percentile, it isn't enough on its own. Also, make sure you consult lists of the words that appear most commonly on the GRE. My Verbal section was FILLED with the GRE Verbal's "Greatest Hits," if you want to call them that. Good luck. That test is evil.

1. Extracurriculars are unimportant, unless you consider research experience an extracurriclar. Scores required for top sociology programs are supposedly lower than other disciplines (since fewer people study it). You are correct, Law School admissions are based more directly on numbers. Sociology departments go with a student's fit. If you score a 1600, you might be on the fast track to getting admitted, but if your personal statement conveys the impression that you don't even know what Sociology is, there are no guaruntees. 2. Isn't this the same question?

There are probably areas of Detroit where you will be safe, but it's reputation as a shithole is warranted. I have never heard a positive review of a Detroit visit, either. I've never personally been there (because I value my life), but my brother went this year. He was optimistic, that at least downtown Detroit had to be kind of cool. He was unimpressed.

Not quite that crazy. Thank you for making me feel less neurotic. Cheers.

I also spaced b/t paragraphs and didn't indent. I figured this was acceptable because the word processor they give you for your response is so terrible, and they don't allow you to use the TAB key. While I don't attribute my score to this fact, you all have made me pissed at myself in retrospect for not putting a few spaces before my paragraphs. C'est la vie.