Bactrian

An MA in something other than history will not derail your chances. That being said, you need to make sure that any program you do helps the kind of scholarship you want to do (US foreign policy and a religious studies degree seem like an odd mix to me, but if you think you can make it work then go for it) and helps position you as an applicant to PhD programs. For the study of the Middle East or broader Islamic world languages are a big thing. If you have the necessary language skills already or can figure out a way to get them during your time at UCSB then all is well. If you don't, or you can't, then you'll have a tough row to hoe when it comes to receiving admission. Many people who do MA's use their thesis as a writing sample for their PhD applications because it shows research skills and the ability to think independently. If you do this program you'll need to figure out a way to write a good sample some other way. I would suggest talking to your professor about the kind of training you'll receive in the program and how that maps to what you want for your future.

Dan Richter at Penn.

I'm sorry to say, but this is my exact sense too. Unless your adviser is one of the very, very few to have real cross-field fame, for many members of search committees the prestige of your department as a whole will mean far more than the prestige of your subfield.

UPenn History and History and Sociology of Science are separate departments. I don't, unfortunately, have any information regarding the latter.

I've mentioned this before on these forums, but if you decide make another run try taking a long look at your statement of purpose. The interests you express and the project you pitch are what really grab a committee's attention. You need to walk a fine line where you demonstrate that you have thought deeply about your field, enough to form a feasible and interesting project, while also not coming across as intellectually rigid (they want to be able to teach you). The letters and the tests and the impressive CV are all there to convince the committee that you are able to do what you say it is you want to do. But the project you articulate is what really sets you apart from the other applicants.

Work on your SoP. You've got a great list of accomplishments but even the best candidates will struggle if they don't articulate a feasible, clear, and above all interesting project that fits in with departmental strengths and priorities. Your proposed project is primary. Everything else--GPA, GRE, LoR, languages, pedigree, etc.--are used to convince the admissions committee that you can actually do what you say you want to do. But you have to want to do something cool for them to want to work with you.

I know someone who did this with a few of her options and it didn't hurt her at all. But her top choice was the same university she did her MA at and it had always been far and away her desire to remain there. If it were me though, I'd probably just promptly decline any such offers.

Penn was the traditional way to refer to the university but UPenn is currently being pushed to try and reduce confusion with Penn State among the general public. Most people still refer to it as Penn, but that's changing.

I don't have any inside knowledge but my rejection from UNC-CH was a long time coming last year. I just checked my email archive and I see I got my notification on April 11. While I'm not sure, I don't believe I was waitlisted as I got no official notification.

I don't think having an MA in LAS would hurt your chances at admission to a PhD program in history as long as your thesis (or whatever it is you use for a writing sample) clearly shows you off as a historian, you can get at least one or two historians to write letters for you, and you apply with a proposal that is clearly historical in nature. If I were in your shoes and would wait until the funding situation becomes more clear. If you can avoid taking on significant debt for your MA then I think that is something that should be taken seriously.

Sure.

I was. I got my MA and moved on to do my PhD elsewhere.

A 3.5 at Chicago is absolutely feasible. It's a tough place but the work load and difficulty is not unreasonable if you are committed to doing well. If you haven't been on the quarter system before, though, it takes some getting used to and will feel hectic.

If getting a PhD in history is something you really want, and you haven't been accepted anywhere, then I think you owe it to yourself to try at least once more. My applications improved a ton between my first and second round (with an intervening MA, though). If you've been accepted somewhere, but it's not where you want, then it becomes more tricky. I think asking yourself "Why did I apply here in the first place?" is the way to go. Did you apply because you felt you should, or someone pushed you to, or you wanted a "backup school" (no such thing, but I digress...) but you don't actually respect the school or want to go there? Then maybe you should try again. Did you apply because you want to get a PhD in history and you're truly willing to go anywhere for that? Then maybe you should just take the bird in the hand. I think you should also ask yourself how much your application can really improve in the intervening year. That doesn't mean you need to get another degree or a fancy fellowship or anything. You could work on improving your languages. Or maybe now that you know what you're doing you can write a much better SoP. Or maybe you can spend the year refining your interests and coming up with a more compelling topic. Improving any of these things by a meaningful degree might put you over the edge. There's obviously no right or wrong answer here. But that's how I would approach it.

I meant that too. To clarify: to my knowledge the set of people interviewed is substantially smaller than the applicant pool but also larger than the set of people ultimately given an offer. Also, and this was my real point, don't yet assume you've been rejected if you haven't been asked to interview. My interview came several weeks after people started posting theirs on the results forum.

Sorry, I meant everyone they were seriously considering extending offers to.

As far as I know they interview everyone. I don't know how typical my case was but I was contacted for an interview in early February, several weeks after I saw interviews go up on the results board.

I think your first step is to really try and figure out what it is you want to work on--any recommendations we could make would very much flow from that. Following telkanuru's advice would help in that regard. Since you said a faculty member has suggested you pursue a PhD in history he or she is probably your best resource at this moment. Is the professor a historian? If not, maybe you can ask to be put in touch with one.

You'll have to make the case in your SoP and show you know how to think like a historian but other than that I think you should be in good shape. People switching into history from other fields isn't all that uncommon. I assume since you have a minor in history you can get at least one letter writer who is a historian?

Disclaimer: I speak only of my impressions formed by conversations with faculty and fellow graduate students. I have not been part of any admissions committees. I think your biggest hurdle will be to show that you know what it means to "do history" and not just "talk about the past." That means showing you know, understand, and can deploy appropriate methodologies; know how to construct an appropriate and significant historical argument; can treat sources with a sensitivity grounded in historical context; and have at least some grasp of the historiography. Particular subfields may have more specific demands as well. You're fortunate that history is much more open than other fields like sociology or anthropology. Where you're unfortunate is that these issues are sometimes implicitly or explicitly reduced to talking about whether someone "has a historical mind"--a fuzzy and rather fraught phrasing that doesn't really illuminate anything. All of that is to say that this isn't really the kind of thing you can talk about explicitly and then be done with it. It comes out in your SoP when you discuss your interests, any current research activity, and what you see yourself working on in the future. It's also demonstrated in your writing sample. Is there someone in the field you can show your materials to and get some feedback? I don't have any sense about the training in religious studies compares to that in history and how similar or dissimilar they are. FWIW though, I think your language training will be a big bonus in your favor. Hope that helps.

A note to anyone worried about professors getting their letters in time: while all YOUR materials MUST be submitted by the deadline, most programs won't care if a letter of recommendation is a bit late. They know that this is something largely out of your control and likely won't hold it against you. In most cases the departmental staff spend weeks putting the files together for the faculty to read so if a letter is late the admissions committee might never even know about it. Feel free to remind people, repeatedly if necessary, but if it's the day of the deadline and your application is still missing a letter I wouldn't freak out. ETA: (I stressed so hard over this when I was applying only to later realize that it almost gave myself a coronary for nothing.)

It's not clear to me what it is you hope to do and this may be what prompted your professor's statement as well. 1) Are you hoping to explore the continuity or rupture of literacy in "dark-age" of ancient Greece and see what it says about the period? This is a historical project. 2) Are you hoping to explore how historians have treated literacy and illiteracy in their judgments of whether the period was a "dark-age" or not? This is also a historical project though quite different in that you'll be using secondary literature as your primary sources (a history of the writing of ancient Greek history). It doesn't sound like this is what you hope to do but I'm not quite sure. 3) Do you hope to explore whether, in general, the decline of literacy in a society indicates collapse using ancient Greece as a case study? This is not, I think, a historical question. This would be...sociology, maybe? 4) Something else? If the issue really is the archaeological aspect, while I don't do ancient history I know from friends and colleagues who do (having asked them), that the line between ancient history and archaeology can be very, very blurred. Is your professor familiar with what doing ancient history entails? Perhaps you need to sit down and have a discussion in office hours. I'm outside my depth here so I'm going to stop but I think, in all cases, what you first need to do is figure out exactly what it is that's giving your professor pause.

Talk to someone at those terminal MA programs (probably the DGS). You don't want to leave money on the table if you don't have to and getting financial support for a terminal MA can look good later. I would not assume that leaving those boxes blank would give your application a boost.

Are you applying for MA or PhD programs? Most MA students do not get financial aid so saying you require it may hurt your chances in a meaningful way. But for PhD students in the humanities and social sciences financial support is the norm. If a department actually likes you and the faculty actually want to work with you then they will offer you money. If they don't then either they don't really want you to be there (making it a bad place to attend) or they department/university is in a major financial crunch (making it a bad place to attend). If you offer to pay your own way then some places are more likely to accept you if only because you are offering to give them fat stacks of cash. But do you really want to spend 5-7 years working with people who primarily see you as a source of income? Edit: So, no, it is not rude to check those boxes.

I agree with the advice you've received. An SoP should be forward looking. ~30% for your MA work is fine but I would say you need to more or less double the amount of time you're spending on your research interests. If you can link your MA thesis and your future research that's even better.