synthla

Haha - not that my odds would have been great there anyway, but one look at the application and I decided against applying. I forget the details, but my first take was that the brain damage from that one application would approach that of all my other applications combined.

And so it begins; and to think I'm going to be out of town and away from my computer most of the weekend. How will I satisfy my compulsion?? Congrats to the first admit!

I don't think it's possible to overestimate the importance of this factor. And I think your perception of the people you'd be working with at either option probably plays into this feeling of "homeness" - that is, it partly comes from the fact that you would be at home not only in the location of Option A, but also in the department. I don't mean to be too simplistic about it, but I went from an undergraduate experience in a place I loved to my first graduate experience in a place very similar to your option B - renowned school, cutting edge scholars, but it left me cold at the end of the day, and to make matters worse, I didn't really like the physical environment either. I made my peace with it, but left almost immediately after graduating. I don't regret my decision, necessarily, but I do not doubt that I would have gotten more out of my own Option A, where even if it didn't have the same level of "prestige", I would probably have been closer with my profs and been happier overall, than I did from my Option B. I mean let's face it, if you're miserable for any reason, you're not going to be nearly as productive a scholar, regardless of the faculty and other attributes of the school. Just my perspective.

I haven't heard anything, and I can tell you that I would give just about anything to have the first one be an acceptance, just to keep morale up, but I'd say it's too early to start worrying. Don't put the back up plan in motion quite yet!

I will agree, that is strange - although I have interacted with a number of graduate assistants who I doubt would score as well on the GRE AW section as some of the posters on these forums, and haven't been entirely clear in responses. It almost sounds like she was cut and pasting from old emails that didn't quite fit together. I like how you're asked to explain why the coversheet wasn't complete, but it's not as if you were the one who failed to fill in the blanks - um, guess the prof flubbed it? Do you know what data was omitted?

[quote name="Louiselab

Well put. I feel the same way.

Nothing related to Modern US, so nothing to worry about for you. Actually, you probably wouldn't need to worry anyway. I've gone back and forth on the potential impact of a law degree on admissions decisions. Ultimately I think the biggest positive is that it shows that I've at least gotten through a previous graduate program, but at the end of the day, it's not necessarily that relevant to history. Plus people sometimes have preconceptions about people who went to law school. And those forums you pointed out don't help in that respect... :wink:

That actually helps. I can tell you from experience that they aren't any less crazy when they actually get to law school. That's probably why I never felt like I belonged there. You don't have to worry about a law student stabbing you in the back; most have no compunction about stabbing you in the front. Uber-competitive.

I also happen to be applying to UCSB (a more popular choice than I realized apparently), but more than anything, I'm just looking forward to the first indication that anyone has heard anything from a history program. At least knowing that decisions are actually coming out, I won't feel quite so ridiculous with my status checking and gradcafe results watching.

And you're probably wishing you had never asked, what with all the advice, but I'd recommend getting Microsoft Money or Quicken or some other personal finance software to keep track of your spending. When I was in college and first using credit cards, I used to literally be kept awake at night worrying about how much I owed. Then I got Microsoft Money and kept track of all of my credit cards and bank accounts through that. It made it much easier to keep my spending under control because it was always right there in front of me. There's probably free software out there that does the same thing, but I still use it today.

Both in a way. Went to a professional graduate school straight from undergrad. Now trying to go back for Ph.D after a few years.

I think the issue the OP sees is encapsulated in this statement: "Invariably, the people who make that list [of people Brooks most admires] have subjugated themselves to their profession, social function or institution." Although Brooks goes on to admit that institutional thinking does have it's bad side, it ultimately, among other things, "give meaning to life." Having spent years working in a profession (law) where many practitioners do subjugate themselves to their work - in the process often denying their deeper desires, dreams and needs for the sake of a stable and relatively large paycheck - I can see OP's point. I think most of us in these forums, although now determined to spend the next few years of our lives within a very institutionalized setting, intend therein to find the tools and opportunities with which we will strike out on our own in a intellectual sense - challenging existing assumptions, positing new theories, etc. I read Brooks to be more or less explicitly attacking that approach - indeed his first paragraph sets forth a definition of a liberal arts education that places value on "unsettling presumptions" and then proceeds in the rest of the piece to undermine the worth of such an approach to life and learning. But isn't that what we sort of hope to do in academia? Unsettle presumptions by digging deeper than those who have come before us, maybe achieving some new insight that runs counter to the institutionalized, conventional wisdom? Maybe that's just me. Yet I certainly don't think my current job is giving the type of meaning to my life that I want, but that Brooks seems to think is more valuable than a liberal education.

I'm in the same place, except I've been out of school for almost six years, working in an occupation that, at least for me, has been completely unsatisfying. Of course I started looking at doctoral programs right after I graduated, but for a number of reasons decided that I needed to make some (real) money instead. But I'm happy knowing I'll (hopefully) be back on course this fall. Can't wait to be in an academic environment again.

Unfortunately there will always be those with fragile senses of self-worth, which can only be supported by repeated attempts to distinguish themselves as somehow better than others.

Although we are all thankful for your wisdom, I highly doubt that your voice of rationality (albeit couched in sarcasm) is going to suddenly change anyone's approach to the waiting game. To the extent that your finely tuned sensibilities are offended by expressions of anxiety, might I suggest that you avoid reading threads titled with such names as "Good sign?"

Other than the area code list, I'm pretty much in the same spot, even though realistically I won't hear anything for a couple of weeks. It helps that work is really slow right now. Or doesn't help at all, depending on how you look at it. I'd feel worse about it if I had anything else to take up my time, but that's not really the case at this point.

Me too. I got an informal email from a professor that he and his colleagues in my subject area were supporting my application, but who knows what that means vis-a-vis internal departmental politics. But it's better than hearing the opposite!

I'm in a similar situation. It's amazing how a school that takes more than 3 weeks to respond to a simple yes/no factual inquiry can really hurt their image; not that they care I'm sure.

I went to one of those small liberal arts schools; I don't think I ever had a class with even 30 students - lower division classes averaged 20-25; upper division, more like 8-10. I loved the one-on-one interaction with my professors, but of course there were no graduate programs from which to take classes. I think the mpact on my graduate school applications is probably a toss-up. None of my LoR writers are probably going to be regarded as the hot-shots in my field, but I got the chance to know them all very well, which will hopefully come through in their letters.

Can't blame either of you for that; I was just at UCSB on Sunday for other reasons. The beauty of that campus blows me away everytime.

Given that I know there are people far better qualified than me, it's hard to hate them for being admitted because they worked harder or prepared more. I certainly could have worked harder in the past.

Congrats - I know where and for what I'm applying next year, if this year doesn't work out. :wink: You seem to have picked places that act fast and what a stress relief that must be...

The job market is frightening, but I think most people know that going in. We just take it on faith that it will all work out, while trying to keep eyes as wide open as possible. As someone who's hoping to return to academia after several years in the professional world, I'm just excited to (hopefully) spend several years focused on something I'm truly passionate about. It may be hard work, but no harder than what I've been doing (from a time-consumption perspective), and at least I'll care about it (theoretically). That's a reward in itself. I'll hold off worrying about the TT job market at least until I'm done worrying about admissions.

I withdrew a law school application a few years ago. The school was taking forever to make a decision, I'd been admitted to a top program already, which made me even more irritated that the school was taking forever. So I withdrew and specifically noted where I would be attending and that therefore there was no need for them to further consider my application. But looking back, I probably would have been more circumspect.