misterpat

Yeah, it would be really narcissistic to say that. It's certainly been a rough cycle, but there's no way any one can know they would have been accepted in a different year. And I feel like if you wrote an e-mail to this guy explaining that, he'd just clip out the little sentence where you acknowledge the economy and leave out all the stuff that makes you seem modest. Especially since the NY Post is such a shitty, borderline-tabloid publication.

I was interested in that department when I was considering applying to sociology programs (instead of history). I really like James Davison Hunter. On the other hand, they also have Donald Black. I've read a bunch of his articles, and I think his whole "pure sociology" concept is a gimmick and probably a bunch of non-sense. Maybe I just don't get it, but to me it seems terribly pretentious and mostly useless.

UNC is reputed to have prettier girls.

It annoys you that much? And I thought I was irritable... Personally, I think when you're getting information from an unreliable source like an internet forum, it helps to have a number of people agree with the advice you are receiving. It helps affirm that what you are reading isn't just the opinion of one idiot who has no idea what he's talking about.

NC State was the MA program she was talking about, Chapel Hill and Duke the PhDs.

I was going to insult you for your post count, since you've been here about 3 weeks. But then I checked my Feb count and decided not to. But while I'm on the topic of post counts, when will I finally get to transcend Mocha? If I hit 400 and it doesn't change I'm going to be disheartened.

I definitely agree with the MA idea. You'll be able to focus your interests a bit more and learn languages while you're at it. Even if you don't go with the Ancient History option, and instead go the Renaissance Europe route, you're still going to have to know Latin. So that's something you might want to get a start on.

You said you know these programs are tough to get into, but be advised that Duke only accepted 8 students out of over 200 applicants this year. You'll really have to make yourself stand out and demonstrate that you fit perfectly with their program. Chapel Hill has a bigger faculty and more graduate students from what I can tell, but it's still a very competitive program. One worry I would have about your chances are that you are interested in Ancient Mediterranean/Hellenistic Era, and your foreign language is Spanish. If Duke takes 1, possibly 2, people in your field, why wouldn't they go with an applicant who already knows Greek and Latin? Chapel Hill might take a few more than Duke, so the problem is the same.

I wonder if it was a mistake, like UCSD's recent boner of sending all undergrad applicants "Congratulations!" e-mails, including the 29,000 kids who had been rejected. Do tell us, though. That's totally shameless.

Someone in another thread mentioned Delaware as being a well-funded MA option. Maybe check out Tufts, if they have faculty with interests similar to yours.

My neighbor is a UIC Soc Phd student and she likes the department a lot. The only complaint she mentioned was that her theory teacher was a Structural Functionalist. The neighborhood is pretty cool, and relatively affordable for Chicago. Taylor Street is a lot of fun.

Talk about 3 totally different locations to go to school in.

Many schools have agreed to the April 15th rule, but I believe some aren't on that list. There's a link in the H/A/2009 thread in one of the last 3 pages or so to the site with all the info. I don't think it's a law, though, just an agreed-upon policy. What I would do in your situation is to contact your school-of-choice, and explain your situation to them. See if they can bump you up on the list or something. Maybe they've had people turn down their offers but they are busy or have delayed telling you for some reason. Might not make any difference, but it's worth a shot. You might want to hold your cards a little closer to your chest on the school with the earlier deadline.

I wonder if the UC system would try to keep Berkeley in good shape before all of its other campuses, since it's such a big name.

[quote name="Louiselab

I'm basically on that *Contingent Upon Funding* list at Missouri. I e-mailed the DGS to ask him whether he received my postal-reply (my mailcarrier is kind of nuts, I tried to mail two letters that day and she only took my reply to Missouri, inexplicably leaving the other one in the box) but he hasn't gotten back to me. I'm hoping his reply will update me on how the funding wait-list is going. I am in the "no funding = no go" camp, despite your reasonable arguments against it. I can't predict the future and don't want to take on $30,000 worth of debt knowing that the job market is kind of shitty and that a substantial amount of people that start PhD programs don't finish them. While I'm pretty sure I will finish mine, I imagine that most of the people who didn't finish their PhDs thought the very same thing. I suppose I'll e-mail Petra again. I sent one to Sinyan Whitfield, whom they instructed us to send our questions to, but I've never received a reply from her at any point throughout this whole process, so we'll see how that turns out.

Were you funded right away, gimlet? Or funding wait-listed? I'm trying to figure out what I should do for this April 1 deadline, since I can't attend if they don't award me funding. (I'm on the wait-list, obviously)

Ha. "Transparent" does seem to be the media/political buzzword of the moment.

I think #2 is tacky, and not very similar to sending a thank you card. People in science may dislike redundancy, but I think it's better to risk sending an un-needed thank you card than to silently protest all the over-thanking of polite society by not sending one. Remember the Seinfeld episode when Jerry refused to call the guy who gave him hockey tickets the day after, because he had, in his opinion, thanked him enough times already beforehand? And what happened to him? He ended up having to paint his chest with Puddy in order to attend the next game. Send a thank you card. Especially if they paid to bring you out there.

Well put. Your GPA is surprisingly low for someone with your other, more achievatron-like credentials. (I'm not knocking your GPA, mine is almost identical.) I would say you might want to take a chance on at least a couple top-ranked programs, but if you follow the advice of the previous posters and check out Chapel Hill and UCLA, you'll have that covered.

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations

What reason did you reject for number 1 for? Mo' money at number 2?

Iowa.

:? You mis-attributed ewurgler's quote to me. Not that I mind, really. Though I do find the Intelligent Design debate extremely fascinating.