darkhorse

While this may not be the optimum trajectory for a PhD, in the worst case scenario this person will be well positioned to get a job. It is much better to do a professional masters degree and bemoan how it didn't prepare you for the PhD than to get into a rigorous PhD program and spend four years before you figure out that a PhD is not for you.

Its not enough funding to complete the PhD, if you don't get a university fellowship or external funding you will need to borrow money to finish the program. Its almost unheard of for PhDs in the US to be completed in under 5 years. Four years of funding is decent, but you need to strategize to maximize your chances of getting funding afterwards or you will be adjuncting for a couple of years trying to find time to work on your dissertation.

Do a terminal MA if you can, many people that drop out or get culled don't have a masters degree. Plus you can re-evaluate whether you really want to do a PhD or not, which is difficult to know as an undergrad.

You guys that didn't get funding should consider your options. Its not a good idea to proceed without funding. I was informed when I began this process that if you didn't get funding than it means you were rejected. But to avoid killing all hope, many people are evaluating their options and some will get admitted to several schools. As those people notify the schools they will not attend, the funding trickles down the list. So if you don't get in initially, it may be the case that you will get an offer a bit later. You should also pay attention to how many years of funding are offered. It is a very good idea to have a masters degree in the current funding environment so that you can hit the ground running on external funding in the first year. Four years of funding is not enough.

Then one of my reviewers hosed me, he claimed that I didn't address literature from my area and was weak on coursework in that area even though I had done a FLAS in country. If I had squeezed an extra 5 points from each that would have put me in plus 100 land. Fucker.

"tends to suggest that nobody from my University was passed on.' No reason for that assumption until next week. Few more days of the glass is half full won't kill us.

My review was stamped June 20th. If it took until today for it to trickle down to us, then the recent news about the Mellon Foundation may be still in the pipe.

I got the reviewers comments today. 89/97. I think I would have gotten funded...

I know this is late, but given what you are interested in you should just go ahead with the geography PhD.

Funding is only for 3 years, 18,000 for a year round TAship. They have other fellowships to help you complete your dissertation after that but they are hard to get, leaving you to apply to everything the rest of world is applying to. GSS is probably the better department if you are interested in geography, but they don't have anything to do with the military really.