Assuming I get in somewhere, I'll be 29 when I start in the fall. I did an MA in international relations at U Chicago (history major in undergrad at a school in NC) and have been working for the past 5 years as a consultant for various offices in the Defense Department on counterinsurgency/irregular warfare policy and strategy. I am going for my PhD in what is essentially military history, focusing on the effect that the interaction of the Patriots/Whigs and local communities in the American Revolution had on the inability of the British to carry out their Southern Strategy in the Carolinas and Georgia. I hope to be able to get into the structure of the "resistance movement" in the colonies, how they interacted with the population, and the effect of British response.
I applied to UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, UVA, Texas A&M, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Yale, Harvard and Oxford. Just waiting to hear now! Good luck to all.
