my future is history

Try not to despair too much. There's a big difference between accepting 14 applicants and aiming for an incoming cohort of 14, and I suspect that these are being conflated here. My guess would be that accepting 14 applicants would yield a cohort of 5, which seems too small...

One Stanford and one Harvard posted now...... ahhhhhhhh

I know! I would insist on seeing their accreditation before going to this "Yale" you speak of.

Congrats to the Yale interviewee~

Heh, I supposedly come from the lineage of a general who cooperated with the Tang Dynasty to unify the Korean peninsula. Maybe putting this on my CV would have helped? I need all the help I can get after all >_<

Don't forget the oracle bones! I think those Shang knew something that we don't know... I would use turtles, you get more bang for the buck than oxen. (Oxen are too expensive).

Actually you might be on to something here. Well good luck with Princeton! (And I mean this earnestly, since it seems we overlap on Stanford and Harvard lol).

One of my cohort is brilliant, was invited to and interviewed at Princeton, and received a rejection letter. This is why I believe that it was part of the acceptance process, but I could very well be wrong. Although I did not apply, it don't think it would be a bad idea to go prepared either way... Anyways good luck Princeton hopefuls!

There are three categories: A. guaranteed funding (3-5 year packages) B. guaranteed funding first year with subsequent years likely C. no funding first year, subsequent years probable In a cohort of 20ish, I would say in any given year there may be 0-3 As, 2-5 Bs, and the rest Cs. The As usually have very competitive applications and several options at other schools. Usually the As come from Ivy tier undergrad or have MAs from elsewhere already. Of the Cs that continue into their second year, I would guess that very roughly 75% are able to get funding through TAships. First year funding seems to be the biggest hurdle. Outside of the rare packages, first year funding usually comes from FLAS or PAship (project assistant). Fluency in difficult languages may help with PAships, as some of them require translation work. Wisconsin just got a Mellon Foundation grant (11 million, I believe?) which should help out quite a bit. These are based on very very nebulous impressions. Please assume a margin of error of like, 40% for any given figure.

Princeton's student invites are a part of the application process, and you should think of it as a competitive interview. Don't approach it as "I'm in already, now let's meet the faculty." The interviews are grueling.

I received an email recruiting mentors for potential admits which mentioned the recruitment stats for this year. I sent a PM with details if it helps.

No news from Chicago here either. For Wisconsin applicants, apparently the History Department recommended 66 individuals to be admitted this year, which is a third less than previous years. They are hoping for a smaller incoming class.

I am envious of bears and their ability called "hibernation." I wish I could hibernate until Feb 15 or so.

Just a heads up: The use of the term "Jap," even as an abbreviation, is generally taboo. While not as egregious as "gook" it is still considered an ethnic slur by many (myself included, although I am not Japanese). A more PC abbreviation for Japanese is Jpn. For details: http://www.jref.com/nikkeiview/jap.shtml

This is probably the best advice that's been posted in the history of this forum. The worst place to be, as a high-strung nervous wreck, is a forum full of other high-strung nervous wrecks. It's like a runaway reaction of hysterical resonance. That being said, I'm a masochist so I'm here lol.

My username reflects my incredible confidence and high self-esteem. My avatar reflects my originality.

Wow, what a small world. I'm an IUC grad, Summer 2010. Do you happen to know 秋澤先生？できれば「推薦状を書いて下さいましてありがとうございます」と伝えてくれませんでしょうか？（笑 He would know who it was from ^^ Anyways, good luck with the other schools. The East Asian History world is small, I'm sure I'll run into you in RL sometime...

Kyjin, I can't help but be curious about your location (Yokahama). If you don't mind me asking, are you doing Stanford's IUC program there? It's strange that they would mention additional language practice to someone at IUC...

Just got an email from DGS at one of the schools I applied for, which states that the school was missing one of my letters of recommendation. The system confirmed that they received all my letters though. It looks like mixups do happen. I'm just grateful that the DGS went through the trouble to notify me... But anyways, I can see why it would be a good idea to confirm, even if the online system okays your application. Seeing an email with the subject: Grad Admissions sent my heart rate to 300 bpm for five minutes...

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/on_the_fence/woolf2 Cheesy and romantic? Probably. But if I were a realist I would be in the engineering forum. (Having read this article, I'm hoping that my persistent nightmares about rejections letters will drop in frequency to a more manageable... two a week or so.)

Japanese & Korean discourses of gender in Korea during the colonial period (1910-1945). I ended up applying to two programs in Japanese history and one in Korean history. My topic fits either way, I think...

Oh, weird, the web site says on 关于分数等级的说明 section, 中国汉语水平考试（HSK）的分数等级共分11级，3-5 级为初等水平； 6-8 级为中等水平； 9-11 级为高等水平。I heard otherwise but I guess I heard wrong... For second or third research languages, the emphasis seems to be on reading over listening and speaking. I forgot that the JLPT had listening, you might not want to bother then <.< JLPT grammar books are pretty helpful for reading, but the listening on the JLPT is actually pretty tricky. As for your main research language, you'll probably have to give presentations in the language at some point, so speaking and listening are obviously necessary. You will have chances to learn more once you're accepted though. I think the main thing is showing that you have a solid foundation. The more the better, esp. if you can pick up the little annoyances (classical/traditional/cursive/calligraphy etc). As far as the European language goes, I wouldn't stress over it. Compared to the ridiculousness of trying to learn the CJK languages, any of the Romance series are so easy that most students pick it up in a summer. Carol Gluck (Columbia) noted that her students usually took a summer of French and that would be enough to use it as a research language. I'm not sure about Russian though.

About language: With East Asian history, the language barrier is so high that I think having the language experience will help a lot. One of the students at Wisc that's doing pretty well spent four years in Japan teaching English, and this experience really put him at an advantage. As far as language exams go, HSK doesn't have a level 8 anymore. Advanced starts at HSK-V now. How is your fantizi and classical? Even in modern history, most schools will want you to know some classical, and every school will expect familiarity with fantizi. If you do take and pass HSK-V or VI, I would definitely include that on your app. Depending on how serious about Japanese you are, fantizi overlaps with Japanese kyujitai, so you could study both at once. You might want to look into taking a JLPT too. Stanford runs an advanced Japanese language school in Yokohama, and a ton of the students were Chinese hist or lit majors from Harvard -- I get the sense they really stress knowing Japanese. I also heard the best secondary scholarship on Chinese history is written in Japanese, and the flood of neologisms from the West via Japan 1870-1950 is hard to ignore. About hiring: During my first year, I was on the hiring committee for a new Chinese history prof here at Wisc. I have to remain vague because of confidentiality considerations, but in the end the person who got the job was from a flagship state school, and the person was chosen over a few Ivy Leaguers. I ended up TAing for said professor, really nice person, and I don't regret the hire. Because of the stringent guidelines associated with equal opportunity employment, the selection committee ended up reading the potential hires' materials without a first or last name, much less a school name. I'm sure a brand name plays some part earlier in the process though.

Not sure if I'm leaving, but I am applying <.< My target schools are pretty tough so we'll see...