synthla

What I don't understand about that is, at the graduate level, who doesn't want to read?? Sometimes I feel like that's half the reason I'm going in the first place - I'm obsessed with learning as much as I can about my area.

When they shift to using my first name in their emails, I have made the same transition. I still use "Dear" though, which is sort of amusing.

Make sure you get a place with off-street parking. It's not necessarily a given in L.A. and if you're in a dense neighborhood with a lot of apartment buildings, finding street parking daily will drive you crazy. And random car vandalization does happen on occasion. Finding a place with one assigned spot probably won't be tough but if your boyfriend will also have a car, finding a place with 2 is sometimes trickier.

I find the old adage about birds in hand being worth more than the ones in the bush to be pretty apt in a lot of situations. I'd be wary of going through the admissions process again next year with an offer in hand this year, when it seems pretty unlikely the economy will have improved much, and may even be worse, programs will have fully assessed the impact on their budgets and may cut numbers again, and a lot of un- and under-employed people will have had much more lead time to prepare applications. Just as one, admittedly personal example, I finally decided to do this last summer before things got bad, so I had enough time to put together a decent application and get it in for this cycle; in the meantime high-paid professionals in my industry are being laid off left and right (one big law firm based in California just announced 440 layoffs today, including 190 attorneys, the largest ever by a US law firm)... I can't help but think when they can't immediately find jobs, at least a few of these well-qualified people might decide to follow the dreams they had before being sucked into the legal profession. And the same might be true in other industries. Now I'm not saying that means we're all still not going to be competitive next year, but holdings offers now means we have the choice, but we can't be guaranteed we'll have the same or better options next year. Just my $.02. :wink:

If you have a really good fit with a professor, then I'd think you might be able to overcome some of the disadvantages of a large department - you'll have an easier time getting the mentoring relationship you want if it's easy to make a close connection over shared research interests. I'd probably be more at risk at UCLA - there are people doing work in the same general area, but no one with a professed set of interests that really matches up perfectly. I actually didn't think my odds of getting in were all that high because of that. I'm afraid I'd have a higher chance of falling through the cracks because of it though.

Re UCLA, I get the exact same impression sra08; not that it would necessarily stop me from going if that was my top or only choice, because otherwise I wouldn't have applied, but it seems like a department where you have to forge your own way even more than in most Ph.D programs. It is the biggest program in the country so probably a bit crazy like that, but 60 openings doesn't sound like a lot compared to the fact that I think they had 270 grad students in Fall of 2005 according to the AHA website, and 47 students started in Fall 2004... these figures are several years old, but I have to think that more than 60 people out of 200+ would be wanting funding. And on your point re recruitment, I also agree - but I value feeling wanted, at least during the admissions phase - one of my other schools (also a state school) is covering airfare and a couple nights hotel so I can visit, though they don't have an official admitted students weekend.

Well put, and congratulations!

I think the danger the UCLA method creates is that you wind up with a bunch of people who are willing to finance themselves for a year and take the risk thereafter because UCLA is the best school they got into; now, that doesn't mean UCLA students are not still among the brightest out there, but I don't see how UCLA competes with its peer institutions (at least per the much maligned USNWR rankings, which put it in the top 10), when most of those peers (and even some "lesser" schools) guarantee funding for 5 years as a matter of course.

Yeah, from what I understand it's not that different from past years though... but I'm happy to have someone correct me on that.

I think maybe you visit the schools you're admitted to, if it's financially possible, and see if you don't feel differently after interacting with the people and department on a personal level? Clearly you applied to those backup schools for a reason other than just to make a charitable donation in the form of an application fee, so you probably owe it to yourself to see. There are no guarantees on next year either, unfortunately, so you don't want to regret not at least checking them out. And unless the economy picks up in the next year (somewhat doubtful at best), admissions/funding could be even tougher next year.

Still waiting on the funding info, unfortunately! But if it makes you feel any better, I was still waiting to be officially admitted when I visited. It came a couple days after and I don't think the admission was contingent on the visit, but if anything was going to cause anxiety, that was it. So I think you'll be fine, although I understand the nervousness. Be sure to let me (and everyone else who reads this) know how it goes. I'm visiting a second school next weekend, so I'm interested to compare experiences.

That is good to know that assistantships are generally available after the first year, but that first year is still a big problem for me. I already live in L.A., and though my lifestyle will be downgraded a bit wherever I end up as I've been working for a few years, I would have to really downgrade to stay in L.A. with no funding, even assuming taking out a decent amount of loans to cover living expenses. It would be tough to move from my nice place to a less-desirable place, etc., in the same area. That probably sounds odd, but for whatever reason it's not as psychologically big an issue when the downgrade also involves a change in city... it's not as obvious, I guess.

Interesting. UCLA seems to be particularly bad about funding people, which is ironic given the expense associated with living in L.A. I don't know whether their assumption is that people will pay their own way for the name/prestige or what. I'm not American History but was admitted without funding; with funding already guaranteed elsewhere, it seems unlikely I'll go.

That's a good point - I think the necessary language background is probably the most ... deceptive, for lack of a better word,part of the history doctorate application process. Now obviously a lot of people going into history professionally are going to have acquired some decent language skills along the way and so it doesn't necessarily turn out to be a big issue for most applicants, but I agree - you look at the websites and most of the big programs make it sound like you could walk in with minimal preparation and you just need to get up to snuff within a year or two. Compounding this is that technically meeting the language requirement is usually not that tough - for example, you can make multiple attempts at translation (sometimes of selections from works you choose yourself), or satisfy it with coursework (that doesn't usually count toward your doctoral coursework requirements). But while making it sound so innocuous, departments then really seem to focus on adequate language prep having already been achieved going in to school when they're actually making decisions.

I've heard of people doing this and getting useful feedback. And hey, even if your fear becomes reality, at least you know not to waste time with that school next year if you know that there's nothing you can do to make that professor interested in you. And on the flip side, it shows your continued interest and dedication to learning/improving yourself. Plus I don't know too many people who don't like being reassured that someone finds their advice/opinion valuable, even if just a grad school applicant.

Maybe, but regardless, I had one professor tell me that they didn't feel it would be appropriate to converse while admissions deliberations were actively under way, and I can see their point.

Good point; I don't want to upset the results of this current poll so I'll do that next time... which probably makes more sense anyway because I think there are more than a few schools that haven't yet made funding determinations even if they've made admissions decisions, so there will be more specific data on the funding in a week or two.

[quote name="Louiselab

I think you should look at it another way - the last couple days of discussion have made it pretty clear that there's no predicting what's going on; for every example someone gives, another person has a counter-example that supports the opposite conclusion. Keep positive!

From the discussion on the main History thread it seems like this has been a very bad year for admissions; in an attempt to quantify it in an unscientific manner so we can get an idea of how bad (or not) it really is, I created this poll. Obviously things may change by a month from now, which is why I put a date on this thread and capped it at 5 days so that the results are not skewed by later admission decisions. But at least this should give us a better picture of what's going on out there right now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html

I had/have some of the same credential issues (especially when it comes to a relevant writing sample), but stressed in my SoP all of the positives (wide reading in my field, independent language work, etc.) in terms of what I'd been able to accomplish despite having a pretty hard core full-time job for the past few years. Even if my purely academic credentials aren't as impressive as many other applicants, I tried to basically say look, I've actually done quite a bit relative to how much free time I [don't] have, and it shows my dedication to the field that I've spent so much of that limited free time independently pursuing my historical interests. Who knows whether that argument, in particular, resonated with anyone, but that was my thought process.

Not that it's ideal, but at least in the worst case scenario, you can save money like crazy for a year if you have to reapply. I have never really enjoyed my legal job, but I'm pretty excited to be cashing in on it by hopefully moving someplace with a lower cost of living where I can just buy a house using some of my savings. Finally, I'll have something to show for losing years of my life to the law. (And there's some enjoyable irony to quitting my job to go back to school and also buying a house, when I have so many friends locked into $700K+ mortgages for condos and townhouses here in a sinking real estate market who can't afford not to keep killing themselves at work.) So this goes to misterpat's comment too - I'd hope that would be clear to schools too, but as we're all concluding, the process is just very random/chaotic overall.

I should forward this to some of my schools; I'm giving up a six-figure salary and thought that would make a bigger impact in terms of perceived dedication, but, alhough I didn't exactly put numbers in my application, I wonder if this has made some schools actually more skeptical that at the end of the day I will actually pull the trigger and do it. (In fact I had one professor ask me that - "are you 100% certain you'll be in grad school this fall?").

Plisar, plisar, plisar... don't you realize, this is just another example of how much smarter and better international applicants are. You have to be truly gifted to cheat in such elaborate manners.