Dirt

Hm. I'm not terribly familiar with Vernon, but my place in Manchester is less than a half-mile from a corner store, a Dunkin' Donuts, a park, *and* a hiking trail. The commute to campus isn't terribly fun, but it's no longer than the drive from Vernon. The bottom line is that there really are more options around UConn than people imagine, especially if you have a car. I think the choice is really between driving to campus (maybe three days per week?) and driving to everywhere else.

Oh, and there's already a (pretty quiet) thread for UConn/Storrs: Some of the info there might be helpful for you.

Manchester's nice for precisely the reasons you've given. Vernon/Rockville is a bit cheaper--about the same distance to campus, but farther from Hartford. I know a number of people who live in Stafford Springs, but there's not much "stuff" there. You might look around Coventry, which is about halfway between Storrs and Manchester. Closer to campus there's Willimantic, which seems like a love-it-or-hate-it kind of place. PM me if you want more specific suggestions.

Here's the story I was referring to: http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-Up-Doc-German-Law-/40636/ While The Chronicle says that the law was changed only for "holders of degrees from designated American universities," the following article doesn't seem to include that restriction: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,540459,00.html

First of all, two years is a long time to pass exams. While things vary somewhat from place to place, normally qualifying exams are done in the third year of a doctoral program. If you're really interested in a "fast track," I think it's often technically allowed to do these while still taking coursework. But that's a lot to take on at once, and you don't want one to suffer at the expense of the other. Second of all, ten years is a long time to complete a Ph.D. in history. It happens sometimes, especially with people who don't need to worry about funding for whatever reason, but I would be wary of any program where this is considered normal or even acceptable. Often this means that they are overworking their students or simply not giving them proper guidance. My department, like others, has recently put in place a firm time limit for completion of the degree. If you go beyond seven years, you may well have to start over under whatever new regulations have been put in place since you started. I would suggest that five or six years is really the standard, particularly if you already have an M.A. in the field. If it goes longer, it's usually because of the dissertation--which is on the student, not the institution. In theory it might be possible to trim a year or two off of that, but I think this often sacrifices quality of work. Unless you can't get funding--in which case you might want to re-evaluate whether you want to do the degree at all--then I don't think there's any point to rushing things. Best to do it right and make yourself more competitive in an extremely competitive job market. The reason that British universities have a three-year Ph.D. is that they don't require coursework or exams, and they don't offer teaching assistantships--which is why it's extremely difficult for British Ph.D.'s to find employment in the U.S. They've spent all their time writing what can be a very narrowly-focused dissertation. The process takes much longer in Germany, where you have to write two substantial dissertations in order to qualify for a university-level teaching position. (It's actually illegal in Germany to refer to an American Ph.D. recipient as "doctor.") I can't speak to the French or other systems as they stand at present, but the Bologna process means that five years of graduate study is increasingly the norm for a doctoral degree in Europe as well.

Frowned upon by whom? Look, New School wants to give you money to study things that you find interesting. That's a rare thing, and I'd jump on it. Especially if the alternative is paying a ridiculous amount of money--Fordham's a good school, but in my view no M.A. program is worth $30,000 in loans. Heck, it's questionable whether any Ph.D. program is worth that. I have no doubt that you missed out on some things as an undergrad. So did I, and so did everyone else on this board. That's not something unique to "non-traditional" programs. History is an unimaginably large field, and it's literally impossible to cover everything. What you ought to do, in my opinion, is the following: figure out what you missed that is important to you, and study it. Have I mentioned the benefits of being given money to do this?

UConn's Welcome Weekend is in two days. If you haven't heard anything yet, you might want to contact the department.

Rockchalk and others who take USNR seriously--look at their methodology: "Questionnaires were sent to department heads and directors of graduate studies (or, alternatively, a senior faculty member who teaches graduate students) at schools that had granted a total of five or more doctorates in each discipline during the five-year period from 2001 through 2005, as indicated by the 2006 Survey of Earned Doctorates." The response rate? 23 percent. I for one am glad that so many people realized what a sham this popularity contest is and refused to participate. As for your question about a "bottom-top-15" degree being "acceptable" for a job at a "top 50" university: There's really no way to answer this. People from unranked programs find employment at top schools. People from top schools regularly fail to find academic employment at all. Basically the idea of an "overall" ranking is a joke, unless you're only talking about something like financial aid (Yale has a lot of money to throw around, but so do some other places that might surprise you). Are there some places that have wide-ranging strengths, where you'd love to just hang out and talk with every other faculty member? Sure, but that's not necessarily going to help you in terms of an academic career. You're infinitely better off looking at your own subfield. If you're interested in Middle Eastern history, Johns Hopkins and Duke aren't even on the radar. Georgetown, on the other hand, is one of the best. I would say that medieval history is stronger at Notre Dame than at most of the programs named here. Indiana is tops for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The list could go on and on. Know your field, find someplace that will be good for the work you want to do, and work your tail off to distinguish yourself there. That's a recipe for success.

Speaking with faculty is a crucial part of visiting a campus. There's nothing wrong with getting to know an area, but you also need to get to know the people you could be working with for the next five years (or more) of your life. I know the admissions process can make you feel entirely powerless, but you're not: you decide where you apply, and if you get an offer you'll decide whether or not to accept it. If you're lucky and/or really good, you may even get to choose between offers! So don't cut yourself out of the process here. Make informed decisions. That's impossible without some familiarity with the people who will become vitally important to your career--both in graduate school and later when you go on the job market. This is perhaps the biggest component of the all-important "fit" factor.

I can't imagine that it would favorably influence the admissions process at this late date. Many programs will make initial decisions in the next six weeks, and I think it's a bit tacky to lobby people while they're reviewing applications. However, you should definitely visit a school before you decide to attend there. When I did this last cycle, I visited the ones I could in the fall, then waited to see where else I got in before making a cross-country trip. Bottom line: unless there's a program near you with a late application deadline, I would recommend waiting it out until you start to hear about decisions.

I can't imagine that not having a thesis is itself a deal-breaker. A thesis is good because it shows that you can do research, and it can also be very helpful in helping you to think through the kind of things that you would want to do in a doctoral program. If you can do these things without writing one, I think you're OK--lots of people come into Ph.D. programs straight from undergrad. Usually, I would say that doing a second master's seems a bit redundant. However, since your field requires much more extensive language training than others, I think you might look at something like an M.A. in Japanese Studies (unless you're already very strong in the language). That would benefit you much more in the application process than teaching experience would. The other benefit would be to bring up your graduate GPA. I'm not sure what you mean by "good but not great GPA," but anything under, let's say, 3.5 is going to raise some eyebrows. Remember that graduate grading scales are very compressed--basically A, B, and not-doing-well-at-all. You want to be in the upper bracket of that.

You've mentioned a cap, but are you looking at schools that require a minimum page count? Fifteen pages is a substantial writing sample. I doubt that any program would ask for more that that. I absolutely would not combine (and thus weaken) the two papers just to have a certain number of pages. A writing sample demonstrates your ability to do serious scholarly research and writing, not your ability to count pieces of paper.

UConn's funding is quite generous, even for MA students--certainly much higher than any other public university that I'm aware of. The insurance plan is good and, unlike some programs that promise a generous stipend, tuition is waived if you have an assistantship. I'm in history, not English, but the few people I've met from that program seem both friendly and sharp. If you're interested in teaching at the secondary level, UConn's Neag School of Education is considered one of the best in the country (#24 in the USNews rankings, if you get off on that sort of thing). I applied to GWU last year--again for history--and I seem to recall some drama regarding their funding of lit students. I would look back over last year's threads to see if you can find more info on that. This might be helpful for general information on funding: http://chronicle.com/stats/stipends/?inst=

I disagree. If the paper has already been accepted, I think it's perfectly acceptable to include it on your CV.

Galka, I love UConn and its beautiful campus, but I'm not gonna lie: it's pretty isolated and very few grad students live there. And by "very few," I mean that I know like one grad student who lives on campus. It is completely dominated by undergrads; the thought of being stuck there all weekend with no car does make my head hurt. Keep in mind that "Storrs" is not actually a town, but really just a postal designation for the campus and a small number of houses and businesses in its immediate area. On the plus side, lots of people use the buses, and I've never heard a bad word about that service. There is a shuttle to Union Station in Hartford, where you can catch a train or a long-distance bus. The shuttle itself costs something like $50,though, so he'll probably be better off if he can catch a ride from you or another friend. The campus itself is very nice--there's even a movie theater in the Student Union--but living there will mean being surrounded by kids 24-7. I'm sure he'll be fine, but my advice to him would be to make some friends with cars.

While it doesn't exactly fit into the "concise history" mold, you should check out Roy Mottahedeh's The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran. It's a sort of fictionalized biography that very effectively brings out many of the themes of recent Iranian history.

I would caution against thinking in terms of "reaches/matches/safeties." While that might be reasonable when you're applying to undergraduate institutions, you're only applying to one department now. An admissions committee will be less concerned with metrics like GPA and test scores than with your ability to articulate historical questions that they find interesting and to carry out a successful research program in the context of their department. I'm pretty sure that most of the schools that rejected me did so because either A) I did not sufficiently demonstrate that I wanted to do work that fit with the interests of their faculty or they had other applicants that they believed would be more successful than I. While there are certainly exceptions, I would thus suggest that your primary focus should be on finding "matches." Rankings are not, I think, the #1 thing to look at when making that decision (i.e., "I'm a middlin' kinda student, so I'll look at middlin' kinda schools"). If the faculty at Yale or Stanford think you have interesting things to say and the ability to follow through, they'll consider you--if not, they won't. The problem from our perspective is that these places get *so many* applications that they really get to pick and choose (based in part on those metrics but even more, I suspect, on faculty recommendations and the clarity of SOPs). So be sure to apply to schools outside of the Top Ten as well; there will likely be fewer applicants, so you may be more competitive *if you are otherwise a good fit*. Conversely, "safeties" are a really bad idea. Let's say that you apply to University of Nowhere-anyone's-ever-heard-of, ranked #500 by USNWR. It's a sure thing, right? Wrong! First of all, U of N probably has very little money. Either they'll only admit a very small cohort of students who are a perfect match for their faculty's interests (probably not your priority if you're looking for a safety), or else they'll just admit everyone and their mother and give them $20/year to live on. Second of all, how much is a degree from U of N going to be worth when you graduate? No one wants to hire from a place they've never heard of--not when there are so many other options out there. To review: safety = really bad idea. (This does not mean that you shouldn't apply to places ranked below #X on USNWR; there are plenty of schools that don't rank very highly overall but are nevertheless tops in a particular subfield--for example, Georgetown for the Middle East and Notre Dame for medieval history.)

OK, I have to say something(s). Does anyone else find it ridiculous that Rochester is ranked #64? It was #27 in the last NRC rankings, and I don't think it's gone over the edge in the last 15 years. Rochester may have a small program, but I've always considered it to be one of very high quality. Other programs have been wronged here, no doubt, but this one jumped out and smacked me across the face. Also, has anyone ever met/read a book by someone who received a Ph.D. in history from #28 MIT? Really, I thought this was a typo. MIT has a history doctoral program? And it's of equivalent quality with the doctoral program at UC Davis? Better than Iowa or UCSB? Really?

I would be very wary of committing the next several years of my life to a place I'd never visited, even briefly. If Michigan State seems like a good fit, I'd lean that way.

Well, it's official: I'm going to UConn for a Ph.D. in modern European history! Who else is going, and for what?

Having just returned from my first visit to UConn, I thought I might share my impressions. While the campus is certainly isolated--there is no town to walk into, for example--it's hardly "rural" in the sense I'm accustomed to in the Midwest. I stayed in Manchester, a rather nice suburb of Hartford and only a 30 minute drive to campus (albeit mostly on winding two-lane roads). There were houses and some smaller businesses along the road basically the whole way there. There is bus service between the Storrs and the nearby town of Willimantic--closer to 45 minutes from Hartford, but with a Wal-Mart, gorcery stores, etc. Where I'm from, "rural" connotes driving for at least 15 minutes--frequently much more--without seeing anything but farmland. This is not that kind of rural. We liked Manchester quite a bit--lots of shopping and nice apartments--but are leaning toward renting in neighboring Vernon, which seems a bit sleepier but has lower rents. Both are easily accessible with a car (traffic doesn't seem to be much of an issue). I also visited with some faculty and students who live in more isolated areas north of campus, and they seemed quite content with their situations. Willimantic, while it does have the benefit of public transportation, seems to appeal to those accustomed to smaller towns. Some people do commute from farther afield, including the western suburbs of Hartford, but traffic in that area is a consideration. In addition to Hartford, Storrs is only about an hour from Providence, 90 minutes from Boston, and less than three hours from New York (it's an hour to the commuter line in Waterbury--$40 round trip to Grand Central). I can see how this could be infuriating to an undergrad without a car, but to me it seems very promising.

I've asked to be removed from the waitlist at Indiana. I applied to the British field.

I just accepted a nicely funded offer from the University of Connecticut. My field is modern Europe. I'm thrilled--UConn seems like a great place.

Champaign-Urbana is pretty cheap even by Midwestern standards. I think you could find a room for $200-300/month and get by pretty easily on $18,000/year. And you'd only be 2.5 or 3 hours from Chicago or Saint Louis, so it's not really as isolated as people tend to think. I don't know as much about Stony Brook. I know someone who went there and disliked how isolated it was--not isolated enough to bring down the cost of living, though. (That's isolated by New York standards of course, not by the Midwestern standards I applied above.) Still, $29,000 is quite a bit of money for a grad student anywhere. I would agree that these offers are basically comparable.

I e-mailed GW a couple weeks ago. I was told that they'd already sent out their acceptances (all *six* of them) and put nine on a waitlist (apparently not me). They will not, however, formally reject anyone until they know that all available slots will be filled from this initial list of fifteen. On the off chance that I do get un-rejected, I'd personally rather go somewhere that (A) actually wants me and ( didn't lose my transcript. I'm not just looking to fill a slot here. (Indiana, if you're reading this--you're the exception!)