Hi all, just had my interview with Penn and wanted to outline how it went for anyone who's curious (for this or future seasons!).
It was a 30 minute interview with four professors, one of whom was the head of Latin American studies (my area) in the department, and the other three had thematic interests specifically overlapping with my own (mine are early modern and trans-Atlantic in scope, so there were specialists on early modern Europe there.) The professor whose research interests most closely overlapped with mine led the meeting, but all professors had a chance to ask me questions.
They first asked the basic questions pretty quickly about why I want a PhD, why at Penn, and how I arrived at my interests. I was also asked about my background with both primary and secondary sources in my field (e.g., "Have you read [X primary source]?" or "Can you tell me about the historians who have most influenced your approach and interests?"), as well as some of my plans for further study (I'm interested in Indigenous history & Indigenous language sources, so I was asked about how I would go about learning Nahuatl and Dzaha Dzavui, for example, and quickly asked if I was confident in my Spanish skills).
The thirty minutes went by FAST, and I didn't have really enough time to say everything I'd been prepared to or to ask all the questions I wanted to, though I was given about five minutes at the end to ask them some things. I'm not sure I did well on that last part -- I meant to ask about the future directions their research was heading in and how I & my research might fit into that, but I think it came off as me asking about their past research, which might've made it seem like I didn't do my research on them (not ideal!). The adrenaline is still getting to me, though, so I don't think I have the clearest retrospective view of it yet. Overall, though, everyone was friendly and I didn't get the sense I was being grilled or anything, though it could be hard to read people over my crummy Zoom connection. Wishing everyone luck with their future interviews & admissions!
