not your indie girlfriend

good idea about contacting the professor .... i'll definitely try that. again, i really appreciate you guys taking the time to "school" (augh! more bad puns!) an application newbie like me -- i definitely see how annoying it can be to run across someone who's overly naive and has decided she's going to get in wherever she applies based on, i don't know, her sparkling wit and ambition. i view these boards as a way of maximizing my chances to reach my goal: going to school for my phd next fall. if that means i should amend my list, then that's definitely something i'm willing to do. it's just difficult to assess my own value as a candidate and know what sort of programs i have a shot at getting into.

oh, crap - you're totally right about dearborn, which is a shame, since there's a professor i really like there. i know it's kind of a crazy list, which is spooking me, but i'm having trouble finding less competitive schools with programs matching my specific interests. honestly, i think my credentials are very strong, besides the lack of a master's degree -- i'm not sure how much i should say without coming across as a tool. this board is definitely good for making me realistically assess my candidacy, though!

thanks for all the great advice so far, everyone!i'm actually increasingly comfortable in my decision to dive right in for the PhD program -- i spoke to a professor at my institution, who flat-out advised me that if you come from a strong program, a master's is pretty unnecessary. plus, i think that having spent two years in the "outside world" has helped me better shape what i'm specifically interested in, to the point where i've been able to really whittle down my list of applications to those programs that have the specific scholarly support i'd need. as for more specifics: i'm really interested in world war one and the period leading up to it, especially the experiences of those africans who served in the french army on the western front. i'm interested in how their presence affected the racialized propaganda of the war, from both a french and german perspective. schoolwise, i'm thinking about columbia, stanford, OSU, nyu, michigan-dearborn, toronto and possibly also harvard. i guess my biggest concern has been a generalized anxiety about not being considered "serious" without a master's degree -- which is more a psychological hangup on my part than anything else. besides, the adcoms of those schools will be more than happy to judge my worthiness; my responsibility is to show them why i think i make the grade. (awful puns aside, that is!)

ugh, i feel so behind! i just took the GRE last week, and i'm in the process of trying to convince myself my scores are good enough, pick which programs to apply to, pick how many to apply to, and THEN try and craft something interesting to say in my letters to potential advisors. it's a strange process -- i remember being in high school, and it felt like everyone i knew was going through the same steps and sharing the same angst. now, i'm the only person i know applying to school, and it's hard to know where i'm supposed to be at in the process, and what i should have done by now. i guess that's why a place like this exists!

hey all! brand new poster here -- my roommate just started her PhD in art history, and when i was pumping her for information about helpful tactics, she suggested this place as a good font of ideas. i've been browsing the message threads recently, and it seems to me as though most of the posters have already gotten a masters in history before applying to PhD programs...is this the standard in the field? i was a history major at a very strong private university, and my topic of interest for my PhD (modern france and francophone africa) is reasonably close to my undergraduate focus. i've taken a few years off since then, dipped my toes in the job market, and now i'm even more certain that academia is the place for me. do i really need to have an MA to be considered a strong candidate, or can i apply to PhD programs at the outset? any relevant experience or advice would be greatly appreciated!