history_PhD

Hmm, I'm reading several books right now: Graduate Study for the 21st Century, Education of Historians for the 21st Century, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Arc of Justice, and American Colonies. The last one is for a class; the other four are for fun.

I was likewise surprised at the hostility/ controversy. This was a specific school in a specific department; this experience should not necessarily be applied to any or all other schools. Boulder's website also notes that applicants will be alerted if they are missing application materials. Regardless, I'm happy that they let me know and that my professor and I were able to resolve the situation.

In my instance, it was both. I contacted the school about a week prior to this encounter to see if my materials had arrived. I was told that if anything was missing, they would contact me.

Just thought that I would let others know; Boulder did not receive one of my recommendation letters. The grad coordinator contacted me to alert me to this problem. I contacted my professor who resubmitted the letter-- hopefully no more issues.

This happened to me actually. My professor even received confirmation that he submitted the letter via the online application system, but something went awry and the school did not get the letter. He really thought that he had submitted it too. Thankfully, he was willing to acknowledge that something was amiss and resubmitted the letter.

Self-deprication can be comforting and is a good defense mechanism. This process is too time consuming and expensive to apply when you absolutely don't have a chance!

I was wondering if anyone attending the AHA Conference in Boston. I saw a post someone (StrangeLight?) posted regarding friends who attended and interviewed. A few of my professors were there, and I briefly chatted with them about the proceedings. On a slightly unrelated topic, are any of you members of the AHA? I know I will join once I am in grad school, but I was curious to see if there were any undergraduate members. Also out of curiosity, do departments ever pay the membership fee, or is incumbent upon the student to pay his or her own way? I think this would best be answered via a poll.

Were most of your applications mailed in rather than submitted online? I only had one that required me to mail materials in; it was a pain!

How did their interviews go? I was hoping there would be more coverage of the AHA in the Chronicle.

Interesting! Mormons have always been teetotalers, right?

And, it is important to recall that academia is not about agreement. Historiography's purpose is to identify the different (sometimes radically so!) interpretations of historical events. This of course does not mean that academics are unable to get along with those that hold opposing viewpoints!

There are computer applications that allow you to run Windows on a Mac. I have VMware Fusion; you do have to have a version of Windows though. It might be too late for you to deal with this now, but for future reference, it is nice to have access to a Windows OS on your Mac.

Neutral Milk Hotel is great! Are you familiar with Apples in Stereo or New Pornographers?

I really ran out of time. I didn't have a clear picture of what schools I wanted to apply to until mid-October. By then, it seemed like it was too late to contact professors. I was still solidifying research interests and did not have specific questions that I wanted to ask. I could have introduced myself, at least, but did not. Also, my professors weren't that supportive of the idea of my contacting potential advisors. Like I said, if I could do it again, I would definitely change this part of the application. Oh well; it is definitely too late now!

Hmm, my advisor/ professor/ LoR writer specifically mentioned that the prestige (or lack thereof) of undergrad institutions can hurt applicants. Coming from a relatively unknown SLAC, according to him, can be detrimental to an otherwise strong applicant. Of course, another professor said that students at SLACs have the benefit of more intimate relationships with their professors. Obviously, I hope that the institution's brand does not diminish a prospective student's chances. We shall see. . . .

Pros: Great writing sample (according to my professor) 3.94 overall GPA, 4.0 in my major 730 verbal Cons: Bad AW score-- 5.0 the first time and 4.0 the second I didn't contact professors prior to applying to schools, which is something I would change if I could

I use both Pages and Word on my Mac. You can easily open .doc and .docx files in Pages and save documents as .doc and .docx. On preview, inserting footnotes or endnotes is easy with Pages. It also appears to be easier to convert footnotes to endnotes and especially to format endnotes correctly. In Word, the default for endnotes is roman and not arabic numerals, which is a pain to change. Disclosure: I've never written any term papers with Pages. If you want to be safe, I would probably use Word; if you have the money, I might recommend buying both of them. Apple also has a trial version of iWork that you could use. Since there tends to be a learning curve with switching to a new OS, it might be better to stick with Word for now?

Perhaps I should have stated this in the negative: men do not tend to be historians of women, non-Jews do not tend to study Jewish history. Several professors of mine have generally said the same thing, making the argument that historians like to research events and people that have personal meaning to them. It obviously does not have to caused by identity; it could be that it is just the effect of minority histories being overlooked for so long. I do think there is a correlation between history becoming a more diverse profession and minority histories (i.e., non-European white history) becoming more emphasized. Personally, I think it is better if historians branch out in subject-matter. This whole thread has been quite interesting!

The email with the letter attached should not come from your email address, I would think. Also, from my experience, professors upload the letters to the online application website. They probably are not supposed to email the letters to the schools. It should not matter if the letter is not on a letterhead. It's nice if it is, but it is not necessary, I think.

I agree with all of these. I'm not sure if this will be an emerging field, but taking a more global approach, say, how Europe viewed events happening in the US, or vice versa would be enlightening. The new term in business (been around a few years actually) is globalism. This assumes that this is a new phenomenon though. I would submit to you that there has always been globalism in that events in one area of the world have always affected other areas. Events such as famines and shortages (surpluses) in one continent have affected other areas of the world for at least the last 300 years: cotton prices in the South, Irish Potato Famine, pogroms in Eastern Europe, etc. In short, I would like to see more application of the idea of a global (not international) world to events in the past.

It doesn't always happen that way, but I would say it is a safe generalization to argue that people usually study the group with which they identify with; i.e., women often study women's history, Jews often study Jewish history, African Americans tend to study African American history, etc. I don't know that this applies to other countries though?

I want to counter the negativity about being a historian in the digital age. I think it will be easier to do primary source research. This is due in large part to Google Books. I can find several books written in the 1800s that are downloadable and fully searchable. About a month ago, I located a book that a Chicago Tribune journalist wrote during Reconstruction. Because these used to be (still are, in a sense) rare books, you would have to travel to access them. Interlibrary loan, in my experience, is reluctant to send these kinds of books. I also don't think you can overstate the importance of these books being digitized and fully searchable. Dissertations should actually be getting better/ more comprehensive because the access to sources has increased so dramatically.

i took the exam in October and November. I did not have any of the new questions, just identified experimental sections.

Good Lord! What program are you applying to? I know the medical ones tend to be more expensive. My most expensive was $100.

Have you asked your registrar's office? This would probably be faster and less problematic than contacting the graduate schools. They should have a record of whether they have mailed them or not.