remenis

Certainly, if you have recieved a FLAS award, you can list it on your CV under some kind of Fellowships/Awards heading

You shouldn't apply to a school where the person you really want to work with is an Assistant Professor. The fact is, you won't get into this situation where you're there for a few years and then your untenured advisor leaves because you are almost certainly not going to be accepted to such a program - untenured professors generally don't take on their own PhD students. They are often committee members or secondary resources for grad students, but grad schools generally don't accept students who want to work primarily with a person who is untenured and in most programs you are not even allowed to list an untenured professor as your primary advisor. When I was applying, I had been working as a research assistant for a professor at a great school whose work I really liked - I talked to her about the application process and she said outright, "You can't apply here, because I'm not tenured." At least at this school, applications to work with untenured profs are not even considered, and my understanding is that this is generally the same in most programs and that it is especially at the ivies, where assistant prof's only rarely earn tenure. Sorry to be so doom and gloom about this The second situation you brought up, going to grad school then having your advisor retire, is much more common. It's not that big of an issue if your advisor retires when you are close to being done with your dissertation - they generally stick around, and will still review dissertation chapters and write letters of recommendation. (My advisor, for example, told me that he is planning to retire in about five years, but if it takes me another six years to finish my dissertation, no problem). It's only an issue if they retire or are planning to retire while you would still need to take coursework with them. But, if you contacted these professors and they told you outright that they are planning to retire and then referred you to other people - this is their polite way of saying they are not interested in taking on new students and that you shouldn't apply to work with them. Professors (if they respond) are generally pretty up front, so if you contact an older professor and they do not tell you they are planning to retire, then you can assume it's safe to apply and that if they accept you, they will be committed to helping you complete the degree. I don't really know how the system works in the UK - but I can tell you that what you described is not true in all american schools. It tends to vary pretty widely depending on the way the school structures their grad admissions and the particular clout of the professor. At one school I applied to, two of the professors, my POI and another, contacted me to let me know they had chosen to accept me in the field and really wanted me to come there, but unfortunately, the graduate committee got to make the final say and in the end I was waitlisted - in that case the POI certainly did not get to make the decision. In reverse, my current advisor contacted me in January the year I had applied to tell me that he loved my application and wanted me to go there. He also told me not to worry about the committee, (which hadn't even met yet), becuase in 20 years of working there the commitee had never not just accepted the students his field had put forward for admission - meaning, that much like you described he essentially chooses the students he wants, and they get in as long as they fit the basic requirements. I hope this helps - PM me if you want more specific information.

It's important to get at least one (prefereably three) really great letter from a professor who knows you and your work really well. It certainly helps if that person is famous or is a personal friend of the people in your field at the department you are applying to. But don't overestimate the importance of prestige. A letter from a famous person who barely knows you and who writes a bland, formulaic and disinterested letter will hurt you a lot more than that person's fame will help you. The fact is that even if this person says they'll write you a positive letter, if the professor doesn't know you and your interests well, they just won't have that much of value to say and that will look bad on the application. Additionally, often personal relationships matter a lot more than straight prestige. Professors often repsond well to letters from other professors who they know, respect and trust, regardless of how famous that person is.

I agree that it is strange - I've never heard anything like this before. Have you confirmed with the department that you will definitely recieve that money back?

Obviously the importance of the GRE score depends heavily on the program. But, when I was applying I was told by one of my professors that certain minimum GRE scores are used as a cut-off point for funding at a lot of schools. (Not even necessarily because of the department, but because of the Graduate School). And getting no funded offers can really do you in.

Mine doesn't withold taxes from stipends even for international students - but of course this will be different for every university.

Even worse - they don't withhold taxes on stipends (only on wages, like for a TA or RA), so most people end up haveing to pay that all in a big lump sum in April. Make sure you keep it in mind when you do make your budget or you'll end up owing something like a couple thousand.

This is so true - my advisor, who did research on job placement rates for the AHA talked about this recently. He said in one year he'd looked at, 1070 phds were granted and only 270ish jobs were posted. But the competition for people in good programs isn't really that dire because some 600 people come from programs that are simply not competitive and whose students will never get jobs.

This is not accurate. An agreement was made by most (but not all) American universities that April 15th (at 5pm in the time-zone of the Univeristy) is the earliest they can require you to tell them whether or not you will be attending. But they all retain the right to allow you to take longer if you wish to. I encountered two programs last year who had reply-by dates after April 15.

There were more than just 3 medieval tenure jobs this year - I have some friends on the job market. But the issue isn't really bound up in the fact that professors are retiring - its that departments have started to realize how FEW medieval jobs there are out there - and thus not to accept students who they will never be able to place in solid jobs. In my program the last three years the department has accepted only 1 medieval student a year (and obviously, the one student they accept doesnt always choose to come here) - but just 5 years ago, they accepted way more than that and had 4 people who accepted (out of even more who were accepted) that year = in the last few years, this has been drastically cut down (not only here, but at a lot of places) because they've started to realize that there just aren't enough jobs for every phd program to be sending out 4-5 medievalists a year.

The issue with medieval is that these days many programs (especially the top programs) only accept 1 medievalist a year. It can make for pretty tough competition and you may have just been unlucky.

Czesc is right - it is what MAPSS stands for: Master of Arts in Social Sciences. Not History.

I got into a top 10 history program with a 3.7 GPA and I think you are obsessing way, way too much about a minor difference. Your GPA is a very tiny part of your application, considerably less important than your letters, writing sample and fit. That said, I had a 4.0 in the last year of schoolwork before I entered gradschool and, your grades in a MA program count for a lot more than undergrad level grades (I did not have an MA). While I think you are worried about entirely the wrong issue, I do think you may need to worry. (I say this not to scare or panic you, but only in the hope that it might be helpful). The following is a quote directly from Gregory Colon Semenza's book Graduate Study for the 21st Century (page 86): "In the institution in which I currently profess and the one in which I completed my Ph.D., grading breaks down in the following, undeniably strange way: an "A" means excellent, an "A-" means satisfactory or "B"; a "B+" means "C"; and a "B" means "F" (and, in the case that it is earned by an MA student, it also means "do not admit this student into our PhD program")." (If you have not read this book, I would strongly recommend that you pick a copy up.) This grading system may not be the case at your MA program, but it certainly seems to be the case in my graduate program and it may be considered that way at PhD programs you apply to. You should probably speak with some professors who you trust about the situation and how they think it will (or won't) impact your graduate applications.

UCLA has sent out both some acceptances and some rejections already.

CageFree is absolutely right here - for example, the UCLA history department just received a grant of 10 million dollars and are planning to fully fund all admits for the first year ever. The admit pool is lower at most UCs, but in keeping with the rest of the country honestly.

This may vary by school, but at my grad school FLAS grants are reviewed by a center within the university which is completely separate from my department.

I absolutely agree with TGC on this one. Apply to the PhD programs you want, and some MA programs that would also be a good option. If you get into a PhD program, then cool - if not, then clearly the MA will help. Also, just one thing I wanted to note - in my program all incoming PhD students are required to complete a MA here, regardless of whether they've already done one (or even two) at another university. The MA is just part of completing the PhD at this school, and since many people come in with an MA in hand, they often end up with two MA's on their CV. I don't think this is that common, but you might want to double check to see if your top-choice PhD programs function in the same way - just so you don't end up with 3 MAs.

I would wait. A lot of programs have deadlines on Dec 1 or Dec 15 and it just doesn't seem like enough time for you to put together a strong application. Most people spend months on their essays - for example, giving them to former professors to read and review etc, which can just take time because professors are busy. It doesn't seem like you would really have the time to put into getting really competitve essays done in the next few weeks. Further it can take several weeks to get your GRE writing score back - but you need to imput that information on your application. Would you even have enough time to take the GRE before the applications are due? Applications cost on average 100 dollars, so why waste your money? Most of the people entering my program were 26 at orientation their first year and many were older, so turning 25 really wouldn't be that old compared to most other grad students.

In my opinion - yes, doing an online masters will lower your chances of getting into a PhD program. Additionally, if you did want to enter a PhD program later on, you will almost certainly need to learn a foreign language (possibly several depending on the field) so if you have no foreign languages at present and you don't pick one up during the MA you may have some difficulty there as well. I certainly understand the appeal of the online MA, so I don't want to say outright you absolutely shouldn't do it. It might be the right choice depending on your career asperations - but ultimately, in my opinion, it would not be the best choice if your ultimate goal was to get a PhD and go into academia.

Also - how unrelated are the two interests? Are they something that would go together logically or wildly different?

I think SToF's advice is really excellent here, I just had one thing to add: What is this Ethnic Studies Professor's PhD in? Most professors in an " ethnic studies" field actually got their PhD in a standard field like History, Political Science, Anthropology, etc - very few, especially if they are older and more established (ie, going through grad school before Ethnic studies was a thing) have a PhD in something like Ethnic Studies. If this professor's PhD was in History, then I don't think it would be a problem for you to ask him because he would be able to speak to your skills as a historian and whether or not you have what is needed to succeed in a History PhD program.

Since this topic has kind of turned into one suggesting ways to find a good MA program - I just want to reiterate that you may very well not need an MA in history. I would recommend that you find a few MA programs you think are a good (using the advice posted above) then apply to your desired PhD programs and MA programs at the same time. If you get into Penn or Yale without the History MA - Awesome, you saved yourself time. If you don't get into any, then you can do the History MA and try again.

When I was applying, one professor told me that I'd need a 700 or higher in both categories (this was the old system - but yours would be lower than the equivalent in the new system) to be considered for funding - I believe this is because at some schools a lot of funding swards comes from graduate school level resources which have minimum GRE score cut-offs. Although I'm sure this varies at different programs so there's really no way to say definitively whether it will hurt all your applications. I'm not trying to be a downer by bringing that up - I just thought it might help you form your decision by hearing some of the advice that I received. I would say your verbal score will be low in comparison to your fellow applicants and that it's possible it would hurt your app (although it may not, you really never know). Do you have time to retake the exam next month and have them still get the scores into your programs? Because studying the vocabulary non-stop and then boosting your verbal score would be a real benefit. I would still recommend you apply this year if you've got your heart set on grad school, because you really never do know how a school with consider the GRE - and many do not consider it very important.

@washmeback The ones that come to my mind are Harvard, Yale and Columbia (take this with a grain of sale because it's going to vary a lot by field) - but I unfortunately don't know enough about the many good but non-"top-tier" programs to say which of those would also be really strong in these areas. The one program I would say you might want to avoid is the University of Chicago - because that department prides itself on cultural and intellectual history - not on social and economic history. But, also i would recommend that instead of trying to compile a list of programs strong in social and economic history (which is a surprisingly hard task) you compile a list of programs strong in your field or which have professors whose work is closely related to your interests and then thoroughly check out their department pages to see if they would be strong enough in social and economic. Read the titles and descriptions of the books all the professors (not just in your field) have written lately - do they look like they do a lot of social history? See if they offer seminars on economic history (and make sure they really offer them regularly, and don't just list them in the catalog). What kinds of dissertations are their current students writing? What type of history do they talk about and pride themselves on in their department introduction. If you're really interested in social and economic history (as I am) you want to see a lot of professors in the department who apply these frameworks to their work - regardless of what they study. I think it will be easier to find social historians as, at least as far as I can tell, social history is very popular and almost every major department has a few people who work on social history - economic history will be harder to find as this field is less common and (in my opinion) requires more specific training than social history - ie, you would be better off taking courses on economics and economic history before trying to attempt it on your own so you want to make sure there would be a framework in place that you could work with and learn from. hope this helps

I think the History MA program at UPenn might be a good one for you: http://www.history.upenn.edu/grad/ma.shtml as it says: The M.A. in History is designed for students with specific objectives such as community college or secondary school teaching, journalism, archival administration, library or public sector work, personal gratification, etc -- students who normally neither require nor desire a Ph. D. degree.