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jbeld

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  • Gender
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  • Location
    Boston, MA
  • Application Season
    2015 Fall
  • Program
    History -- Middle East

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  1. I work at a high school, and this afternoon I was told we're having a snow day for the third day in a row--ANY other week this would be cause for celebration, but now I'll just be vaguely nauseous and on GradCafe all day adlgkjhdflgkjhdlfkg. (pssst if the Columbia admit is here and wants to let us know what their field is and who emailed them... I for one would LOVE to know!)
  2. Hi litthelife! What you are describing seems like more typical of the Comparative Literature field in the US, but you might also find a Middle East Studies department that is right for you! I would advise you to focus on finding professors whose work you think is similar to what you want to do, then finding out where they work and applying there. Not every Comp Lit department will have a specialist in Persian and Turkish literature, so you want to focus your applications on universities where there will be someone to mentor you. Good luck!
  3. Thank you!! EDIT: Okay, that's not the error message I'm getting... I got: Google Chrome could not load the webpage because www.gsas.harvard.edutook too long to respond. The website may be down, or you may be experiencing issues with your Internet connection. Check your Internet connection Check any cables and reboot any routers, modems, or other network devices you may be using. Allow Chrome to access the network in your firewall or antivirus settings. If it is already listed as a program allowed to access the network, try removing it from the list and adding it again. If you use a proxy server... Check your proxy settings or contact your network administrator to make sure the proxy server is working. If you don't believe you should be using a proxy server: Go to Applications > System Preferences > Network > Advanced > Proxies and deselect any proxies that have been selected. Error code: ERR_TIMED_OUT
  4. The WHOLE Harvard GSAS page is DOWN, my deadline is TOMORROW and I need to check their transcript requirements AHHHHH
  5. Hi pals! I'm jumping into the forum game late, but I'm applying to history programs this cycle, with a concentration in the Middle East. My job is very time-intensive, so unfortunately I have to push myself hard over the holiday to get my SOP and writing sample into top shape. So hopefully you won't see me around much! Because I'll be working! (Haha... ha.) Anyway, hi! Take care!
  6. Yes, there can be a place for you in women's studies. What you have to understand is that the whole academy is your place by default, and that the creation of spaces that don't devalue voices unlike yours is an incredibly important function of women's studies departments. If you don't understand why that is, I imagine you don't really get what the discipline is about and don't have much of a future in it.
  7. Hey y'all, So, as an MA applicant, I was talking with other grad school applicants pretty early in the process, and the consensus seemed to be that blindly emailing professors you would like to work with just for an MA program was sort of unnecessary. So, I didn't. I talked about some professors I would want to work with in my SOP but didn't reach out to them specifically. This week, I'm perusing a department website and it says something like "applicants are strongly encouraged to reach out to professors they are interested in working with shortly before they apply." WHOOPS. I feel like this was a pretty big mistake in my application for a school I actually really care about, and I'm sort of freaking out about it. The question: is it worth attempting to make contact at this point? I'm not even sure how I would frame a question posed to them at this time, given that I'm neither a prospective applicant looking for more info or an admitted student looking for details. Is there anything I can do to make this better this late in the game? (App was submitted mid-December.) If it helps at all, the decisions for this program seem to go out late February.
  8. Thanks, all, for your words of wisdom! @asleepawake, unfortunately my university doesn't do minors... I will definitely have enough courses to be the equivalent of a minor, though. @ADMITedlylucky and @Sigaba: yeah, it makes sense that more time outside of the ivory tower might make me a little less eager to jump straight into a PhD program. But many thanks for your comforting words--the over-achiever-ness of my academic peers makes it easy to get tunnel vision and see myself as un-rigorous, lacking in intellectual and moral worth, &c.
  9. Hi guys, I'm currently a junior at a fairly prestigious university, 3.77 GPA, interested in early modern to modern Middle East history (Levant and North Africa). Though I'm determined to take a few years off after I graduate to travel/buff up my languages/have a "real" job for a while, the more I think about the overall path I want my life to take, the more a PhD in history makes the most sense. Here is what I'm worried about: I'm not a history major. My major is Modern Middle East Studies. There were a lot of reasons I chose my major, in spite of the fact that my university's history department is highly respected; I knew I was interested in the Middle East but wasn't sure if I was interested in history, the requirements for our history major are heavily Western-centric, it has a reputation for being a huge and impersonal department for undergrads to navigate, etc. (These are also the reasons I don't want to switch my major now.) By the end of this year I'll have taken four history seminars and three history lectures. I will be writing a historical senior thesis next year, with a history professor as my advisor. By the time I graduate, I'll have reading knowledge of at least Arabic and Hebrew, and maybe French or Turkish. Basically, I want to know: how un-rigorous does area studies look as a major? Should I plan to go for a history MA before I even think about applying for history PhD programs? (I really would rather not do this.) Is there anything I can do now to make my chances for getting into a good history PhD program better? Your patience in dealing with this freaked-out undergrad is highly appreciated.
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