modern

Of course it's great advice to tell people to do what motivates them, to let them know that trends change, and that perhaps they shouldn't get into history at all if they are primarily concerned about getting a job. However, if someone asks what are the most in demand fields in history in a grad student history online forum, there's a chance that they might also want answers to that particular question from the perspective of grad students, or access to the kind of data that posters here have added. While the approach to studying history and getting a job in history that OP is seemingly adopting is not necessarily one that I have taken (or one I would recommend), I don't doubt that, like in any line of work, it might be useful to try to get a grasp of different perspectives about what is "in demand".

Thanks for the correction.

It's pretty funny how it seems so hard to get an answer a question like this without having colleagues feeling compelled to give advice such as "you shouldn't care about it". It's something everyone thinks about and cares about. Doesn't mean anyone will decide their fates based on it. And it's interesting, and could generate interesting discussions. Besides the regional "hot" fields, there's of course also thematic ones, like fellow forum momeber I'm-ina-control suggested: Some hot fields (in nor particular order and without necessarily meaning I appreciate all of them or even really find them to be meaningful as fields -- but some people clearly do), or buzz terms: - History of Capitalism - Science and Technology Studies-related approaches, histories of knowledge - Environmental History, including animals, climate change - Transnational/"Global" Topics and Approaches - Spatial History - Digital Approaches/Methods - Drugs - Memory stuff (though less than a few years ago) - Big Data- related (both as topic and as method) - Not-Only-Female Gender Topics

I'm pretty sure all graduate students in Yale's History Department, including those in terminal masters (who are indeed very few, and often in dual degree masters such as "History and European Studies", "History and Renaissance Studies", etc.) are fully funded. No cash cow in this case, although I generally agree with the advice that you're giving.

Yale's stipend is about 30,000 now as the standard minimum funding package for all PhD students in the Graduate School, and as of this year they also offer a guaranteed 6th year of funding (Teaching Fellowship) for students in good standing (essentially, if your advisor/DGS signs). Hopefully the 6th year (which of course was already relatively common practice in many places, but not guaranteed) will become more common.

One specific thing about funding is whether they have funds that you can use for your research, especially if your project implies traveling. You'll be applying for all kinds of grants, but even some of the most amazing projects sometimes don't get those. Having a safety net of potential internal funding for that (competitive but relatively accessible or, even better, not competitive) can make a huge difference for the quality of your dissertation research if it comes to that. Another caveat of your case is that, not knowing your subfield at least, and in a very impressionistic way, I don't think you need to look at rankings. The schools that admitted you, at least UCD, Maryland and Minnesota, are all very good and seem to be roughly on similar levels. I doubt rankings really mean much in this case. Having said that, by all means do pros and cons lists, listen to the advice of your professors and people whose opinion you respect, listen to what current and former grad students have to say, talk to potential advisors, look at placement records, the structure of the programs... but ultimately follow your gut. The relative weight of each pro and the con really depends on your own priorities.

Not true. More generally, good luck with getting away with skipping 80 years of "progress" (for lack of a better word) in any discipline and expecting people within that discipline to let you get away with it and even to support you and fund you. And I mean especially outside of the humanities and of academia.

They don't offer funding to every admitted student, but they do if they really want you and if the professors that want you are powerful enough within the department. This is probably a bad year for applying there though. Their history program is brilliant, but, as you may know, the university has been in deep trouble lately. They are cutting funds for the humanities, there have been protests, the republicans were even stalking William Cronon... they are cutting health ensurance in summers and things like that. And all those things probably have an effect on the general ambiance of the deparment, as people have to compete for funds, etc. That said, as TMP and Strangelight suggest, do apply if it is your first choice and contact the department to ask all sort of questions regarding funding and all that. It really has wonderful professors (arguably among the very best for some subfields) and a tradition of great scholarship. I've heard that Madison is a lovely city too.

I don't know of programs on history of psychology, but I do know that there are grad students working in the history of psychiatry and stuff like that in many places. You should: 1) Think about the historians of psychology that you think write great stuff and see where they teach. 2) Look for the faculty profiles on history and history of science programs in as much universities as you can, and see who works on what. They don't need to specifically work on your research topic, but stuff related with it in different ways (ie. history of medicine in the region / period that you are interested on doing research about, history of trauma, history of the relationship between medical practice and identity, etc.) There are many extremely strong programs in the history of science / medicine. Among them are the universities that are usually considered top in everything, those that are especially distinguished in history (like Michigan), and those are especially strong in the sciences.

If they don't specify, you can do as you wish.

I know that people has been admitted to Yale with reviews of very new books, very old classic books, books from current and former Yale faculty, and even with books that clearly oppose the views of some of the faculty that they end up working with (of course the latter seems a risky choice and I'm sure many professors certainly won't like it, but the fact is that some do). In all honestly, the most important things are that you pick a very good book and write a very good review, and that both the book and the review clearly relate to the reserach interests stated in your Statement of Purpose. Only after reading the book from start to end start reading reviews written about it. But definitely read these reviews, see if you are missing something extremely important, and try to say something they have not addressed some point. Also, if you really don't know what to pick, a safe choice could be chosing a first book from a relatively recent graduate of that program (Yale), or from a former student of one of the professors that you want to work with (maybe even from before they started teaching at Yale).

The worst thing you could do would be not to try.

For a PhD, you may also think about Yale:Joanne Meyerowitz (http://www.yale.edu/history/faculty/meyerowitz.html) and George Chauncey (http://www.yale.edu/history/faculty/chauncey.html) are both great. And the university as a whole has a lot of focus on woman's studies, gender, history of sexuality, etc.

That said, I had the same concern before applying last year. I was also looking for those universities that don't ask for GRE, just in case. In the end, I decided to ignore that and just apply to my top choices. I ended with a very, very bad Quantitative score, a very good Verbal one, and admitted to my two first choices, which have insanely competitive admission processes. So do it as good as you can and don't base your choices on that, at least don't let it be the most important factor!

I think University of Michigan and University of California at Berkeley don't require the GRE. As far as I remember, Berkeley required either the TOEFL or the GRE for foreign-speaking candidates, so I don't know how it would be for a Canadian.