Any grads have advice for older applicants? I'm 28 and I got my masters right out of undergrad so I've been working for 5 years. My masters is from my country of focus. I'm currently feeling on the fence about the program I was accepted to and thinking of postponing the PhD another year. I work for a post-conflict non-profit, and by the time I would apply this fall, I would be 29 and 6 years out from my masters. I did do conference presentations in 2019 and 2021 to try to keep the wheels spinning.
This is my third cycle, but I have only applied to 4 schools total (1, then 2, now 3) and I was accepted to a state school, ranked in the 60s overall (but I think better in grad studies), and waitlisted at Michigan (after being waitlisted last year, too). I think I applied when I was feeling more desperate to get out of my job but I don't feel that way anymore. And I think if I take the time away from the professional world, I want the best shot at a successful academic run as I can get. The school I got into has a robust history dept and my advisor is well-known in the field, has a lot of connections, has edited a lot of journals, etc, and she has helped most of her advisees get academic jobs. I'm just not excited about it and wondering if I should have tried harder to get into higher-ranked schools. My undergrad GPA is 3.6 and my grad GPA is 3.3 (unfortunately it's rare to break the 3.5 threshold at my masters institution) and I wrote theses for both. Any thoughts on how much waiting after the masters is TOO much? I appreciate it.
