misterpat

She will absolutely get caught. I can't believe anyone that stupid would actually be applying to graduate school. What you really should do is act cool about it, and ask her if she saved any copies on her computer. Ask for one and post it on here. Those letters are probably hysterical.

It seems to me that schools that have better success placing PhDs at desirable schools have the most detailed info on their websites. Schools with decent but not great placement seem to more often just have a section like "Our students have gone on to positions at schools like..." and then they list a few major R1 schools but with no info as to when this happened or how often students end up at places like those. Someone correct me about this if I am wrong, but a good person to e-mail might be a potential advisor you are looking at for that school. I've heard that your advisor plays a role in your job search, so that individuals placement record might prove useful if the website has a dearth of placement information. Some professors even have this information in their faculty profile.

A lot of departments say that it is ok to submit beyond their limit, but please specify which parts you would like them to read. I'm generalizing off of the History department pages I have looked at, so it could be a different culture in whatever you are pursuing. But I really haven't seen many departments advertising the "26 Pages?!?! DENIED!!" approach to their 25 page limit. Hunt out the FAQ section of their website (it's almost always in there), and if that fails, e-mail the director of graduate studies.

Is the Temple area substantially more dangerous than the rest of Philly? Are there areas nearby that are a bit nicer where one could live and easily commute to Temple? Is the public transportation good/bad?

Probably no less than 6 programs. I always think that people who apply to more than 12-14 are totally overdoing it. They could have probably saved some money by picking schools where they fit a little bit better. Just remember to apply to a few tiers of schools. If you apply to Chicago, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, Michigan, Columbia, Northwestern and Wisconsin and Yale, then you can't justifiably say "10 schools should have been enough to get in somewhere!" if you go 0/10. I've heard that Georgia is a great second tier school, and that it's underrated so maybe admissions won't be too bad.

It's my understanding that non-native English speakers are given the benefit of the doubt in situations like this. I would definitely try to call attention to that though, because if you were a native Englisher speaker, I believe they would look at your AW score as a serious red flag. Many departments specify in their FAQ or Admissions pages of their sites that people in your situation might get a break. You might even want to e-mail someone and tell them ahead of time so they know there's going to be an otherwise really solid applicant with a miserable AW score they should be on the lookout for.

Yeah, just discuss the program. Not that it's a good reason to choose a program anyway, but in the unlikely event that he does corner you with such a question and you hate lying, you can always tell him the location of the school helps make it more favorable to you than the school that's ranked slightly higher. He probably won't discern from you saying this that location means where your girlfriend is located. 8)

I mean, with your numbers shouldn't you consider Pittsburgh and Syracuse your safeties? Unless your writing sample is awful and your letter writers hated you, I'd say you might want to apply to a few more school that are ranked a little higher. Especially since I've heard going top 25 is of utmost importance in Poli Sci (I'm applying for History, but I looked at Poli Sci schools for the possibiltiy of doing Political Theory earlier this year, so I'm not totally talking out of my ass here). I don't know, I'd throw University of Chicago or something equally cool on there just out of optimism related to your numbers.

Also, I have looked at Tufts before. They don't have too many faculty members for US history.

Thanks for dispelling those myths. But I definitely have decided that I want to pursue History. The other options were brought up primarily under the assumption that a History MA was a bad idea. And the possibility of doing another discipline has been in my mind mostly because I worry whether I'm going to get into a program with a decent placement record. I want to end up with a job at a research university, and not end up living in rural Montana working at a small liberal arts college.

We read a few geography articles in the graduate level sociology class I took. You should have no problems switching. I've heard that sociology departments love converting people from other disciplines.

Very helpful advice, I appreciate it. My writing sample is quite good, though it is on Stalinism and I am applying for Modern US. I have a shorter paper on the Old South that shows that I can write very well, but my professor in the class really did me a disservice in not allowing the use of primary sources (in a senior level class!). In my contact with a professor at one of the lower-ranked schools I've been considering, he told me to send the Stalinism paper since it uses primary sources but to also include the American History paper. I don't know if this will fly at a lot of departments or not. I also majored in Sociology, and had a minor in Philosophy. Would either of those disciplines be as good to get an MA in for US History as American Studies? I was considering applying to Berkeley Sociology anyway. Since I'm probably going to focus on US politics, would an MPA be an idea?

They're pretty good, 680 Verbal 710 Quantitative. Just took it so I haven't gotten the Writing score, but I'm predicting a 5.5. I mean, I'm definitely going to apply to good PhD programs, but it'd be nice to have a good MA program or two just to be safe.

Let me preface by saying I am aware that most departments are focused primarily on their PhD programs, and that the ones that do offer MAs frequently do not fund their students. Is anyone aware of programs comparable to this for History? My grades somewhat worry me, since my History GPA is actually kind of crappy (3.3) and my cumulative is nothing special (3.56). I have around a 3.8 in my last 60 hours, and I have excellent grades in all my classes in disciplines that are considered 'related' to History. I just happened to take a few History classes I found quite boring, and ended up blowing them off to, well, be an undergraduate. ? Thanks to anybody for responding.

I don't think USC or Michigan will fund (or possibly even accept) Masters students, so look into that. You might want to apply to some PhD programs that aren't as high as those you have listed. Your decent verbal score and admittedly awful Analytics score (though I've heard some schools don't care about them too much since you are providing a writing sample) might get your application tossed at Chicago and Princeton, but who knows. If your GPA is good (I have no idea what an 85 would be comparably to on a 4.0 scale) you might get by since your Quant score is superb. Given your interests, you should probably check out University of Illinois. I'm pretty sure their department is specialized in exactly what you're looking to study.

Don't take this as the final word, since I haven't been to any of these grad schools, but I am pretty sure that big programs like Columbia don't fund their MA students. Tufts has the best placement record of all the stand-alone MA programs. If you go to a school that doesn't have a PhD program, you are far more likely to get funding. Check out Tufts, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois, Western Michigan, and UW-Milwaukee. There's a few other good ones, I think Texas Tech and possibly Texas A&M, but I am not sure. Philosophicalgourmet.com has an excellent section on this topic.