remenis

I completely agree with the above post. Just say that you would love to meet but you live quite far away. You can ask if he'll be coming to your area any time soon (probably very unlikely), and should definitely suggest skyping or talking on the phone instead. Congrats on getting a great response from a POI

I've heard about this as well and I am considering adding a supplemental course sheet to my applications. I don't know how common it is, but I was given some advice that it can help to explain somewhere in your application what your courses were about because they often have general titles which don't necessarily reveal what you specifically studied or how it relates to your stated research interests. I'd love to hear other peoples thoughts on this too.

Here is a thread you should look at in which they specifically discuss ADD/ADHD: There are definite upsides and downsides to mentioning it. It can show what you've been overcoming and help explain you're background and interests but, it's not strictly relevant and as one of the posters in the thread linked above mentions, not everyone will consider it a positive aspect to your application.

Since they don't say, I don't think they can penalize you for either choice, but I assumed they meant double spaced.

Usually no employers outside of academia would notice if you took a terminal masters instead of completing a PhD - employers in the business world often don't know the difference and won't bother to look it up - but if it would mean you would end up with two separate Masters degrees both in history that might seem a little bit unusual mainly because there's not many (if any?) situations where two masters degrees in the same field are necessary, but even then I don't think it would really hurt you.

I hate to bring up more bad news, but the fact that you did not receive funding from the department (if that is in fact the case) should have been a huge red flag to you when you first applied. Unfortunately many times, an offer which includes no funding is a sign that the department is not really that interested in working with you and that you will face problems finishing your degree there. I've heard that some departments accept students without funding into their PhD programs and then refuse to pass those students on to the dissertation stage. The fact is that while this practice is very hurtful, they are not doing anything illegal and that going over their heads is probably not going to help you. Talking to the president of your university is very unlikely to help your situation. I think that qbtacoma brings up a good idea about talking to your friends and fellow students. I also think you should strongly consider leaving this program and trying to transfer to a new one. Even if you manage to get one of these professors to supervise your dissertation, if they don't fully support you, you're going to have a hard time as an academic. Your dissertation advisor is often supposed to be instrumental in helping you get a job, so if you work with someone who doesn't like you - you're going to have a hard time getting a job. Based on your description of what has happened, you should probably leave this department. If you are dead-set on getting you PhD and want to transfer, you should probably talk to your professors about whether or not they would support that decision, and if they would write you letters of recommendation.

the Javits Fellowships are another good one - for graduate study in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the US, and only for applicants who have not yet completed their first year of study.

It is not uncommon to switch your field between undergrad and grad school - plenty of people do it and succeed. I know English majors who completed PhD programs in History and Art History, a Linguistics major who now has a PhD in Literature etc. Classics and Medieval Studies are somewhat connected so you're not going to be coming at them out of nowhere. You mentioned taking various assorted medieval classes and that is probably the best thing that you should do. The more medieval classes the better because it will show that you are preparing for the field seriously. I have two questions which I think might help get you better advice: What specifically do you want to study in grad school? (Medieval studies comprises such a broad range of time, area and even disciplines) And, why you want to do an interdisciplinary Medieval Studies program as opposed to a specific medieval field (ie, Medieval Literature, or Medieval History?) Not to knock the interdisciplinary programs (I majored in medieval studies as an undergrad) I've been handed a lot of advice from professors which says that an interdisciplinary PhD is often not as desirable (or hire-able) as someone with a PhD in one field with a medieval focus. I bring this up mainly because the question of how qualified you are is going to depend highly on what you specifically you want to work on in graduate school. One great thing is that no matter what the programs are going to consider your language preparations to be very useful. Serious research in any Medieval subject requires a really strong background in languages, especially in Latin, and that will really help you. But some of your languages will be less useful than others depending on what you want to work on. If you wanted to research medieval Byzantine history - Greek will be essential and Old English and Old Norse probably will not be very helpful. If you want to research Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian literature, the opposite will be true. (German and Latin are going to be very useful for the study of virtually anything medieval). And in either case you are unlikely to be considered a strong applicant without at least some courses relating to the type of work you want to do. Take some general courses on medieval subjects (a basic history of Medieval Europe, or a survey of Medieval art, etc) and try to also take courses relating to the subjects you think you'll want to work on. If you want to write about history - take history classes, if you want to write about medieval religion, take religion courses, etc.

I don't know that you have to be applying for outside fellowships - but it probably wouldn't hurt to apply to a few if you think you might qualify for one. Some, like the Liebmann Fellowships are for 3 years of funding for graduate study in a wide variety of fields in anywhere within the US - the catch is that you have to have demonstrated need of financial aid. It could be helpful to apply to these kinds of fellowships in case you're only accepted to programs with little funding, or to the types of programs which don't fund at all the first year.

It is not at all inappropriate to ask a person before they write the letter what kinds of things they are planning to say about you and in fact it's a really good idea to do so. But It is considered rude to ask them after they have already written and submitted a letter on your behalf because in addition to the fact that it seems that you do not trust them, this is a favor that the person has done for you and you are implying that it you might not appreciate it and that they wasted their time. It's very unlikely that the professor actually wrote damning, negative things, so you just have to decide how much it would hurt you if he wrote a weak letter saying you something like "he was an average, competent and pleasant student."

You should absolutely not open the letter or ask the school if you can see it. I think it would be perfectly okay for you to ask the office secretary if she thought it was a strong one or if you should ask someone else for a letter instead. You should not ask her to reveal anything he specifically said about you, but it is perfectly okay for her to give you a very general assessment of whether or not she thinks it is a strong letter of recommendation. I don't want to worry you, but the problem is that some professors do happily, write mediocre letters for their students. And depending on the competitiveness of your program, it could be a big problem. I was advised that when asking for letters I should specifically say, "Would you be willing to write me a strong letter of recommendation." Since it's too late for that you should do everything you can to get a sense of whether or not the letter is actually going to help you. You cannot read it yourself, because it breaks trust, and you probably should not ask the professor to tell you what he wrote, since this will likely seem rude. Does your school (whether current or alma mater) have a career services center? Because I know that one thing career centers do is read letters of recommendation and advise you on whether or not they are good. I think it would perfectly acceptable for you to ask him to send a copy to a career center (if you have access to one) so you can be better advised about your future plans, if you still stress that you will not be able to read the letter when he does so.

As maeisenb pointed out, it seems that you've asked professors from such a wide variety of subjects if you can help them with their research. It would probably help if you could identify the time-periods, regions or types of history that you are most interested in studying and focus more on finding research projects that directly relate to your interests and previous coursework. One thing I've noticed from experience is that a professor is more likely to want to help you and give you a research project if they know that you are specifically very interested in their field and that you have the background knowledge and skills needed to do serious work in that field. If you have only taken one survey or first-year course in some branch of history, say African history, and suddenly ask that professor if you can work with them it's likely that they will think you are not ready to primary source research in that field until you have completed upper level coursework and have a much more solid understanding of the relevant historiography. As maeisenb also pointed out: in many fields primary source work requires extensive language preparation and often requires random other skills. Medieval history research, for example, often requires training not only in the Latin language but in medieval Latin paleography as well. Depending on what field you want to go into, it might be more valuable for you to spend your extra time learning some languages as opposed to doing research in a field which is vastly different from the type of work you would want to do in graduate school. I don't know whether or not you've been doing this already, but if you haven't, another thing you should do before asking professors if they might be able to use you as a research assistant is read their published work (the more recent the better). Reading their actual work should be able to give you a really good idea of what they really research and what their primary sources might be. If you notice that all the primary sources are in a far away archive, or are written in a language you don't speak it is less likely that they are going to have a need for you. It still wouldn't necessarily hurt to ask them if they have other projects going on that are more accessible, and it will probably impress a professor more if they see that you are interested in their work and not just in finding research experience. And you are definitely not falling behind. Research experience is important for a graduate school application but it isn't the only important thing. It's more important to do one or two solid projects in a field you love than to do five or six in a bunch of random subjects you don't care for.

Oh man, this is a bummer. Thanks for posting it though.

One book on writing graduate apps that I read recommended describing specifically why you want to work with every professor you list - such as listing an article or book of theirs which you had read and which connects to the work you want to do or mentioning that you have seen them speak at a conference (if you have) etc. Given this advice, I think that listing five professors might be too many, since it might be hard to say something personal about each professor and not have it take up too much space in your SOP.

Hey there, I might be wrong about this but I am pretty sure that it takes about 6 weeks for the Analytical writing section of the GRE scores to be graded - so likely that wouldn't be enough time for you to get the scores to your schools.

Yeah I'm not surprised about the overlap - we have picked out a lot of the strong medieval programs

I'm thinking of applying to Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, UChicago, UC Santa Barbara, UMichegan, UMinnesota, UToronto, and Yale, although I may add or drop some from that list as I work my way through the apps. There aren't a huge number of medieval economic historians but there are a few. I have read some of McCormick's work and I definitely find it interesting even if my primary focus is a bit later. What are your main research interests and where are you thinking about applying?

I do medieval history. I'm primarily interested in the social and economic history of the medieval Mediterranean. Most of my research thus far has been in the late medieval 12th-13th centuries range, with a focus on Catalan and Genoese notarial cartularies, but I'm also interested in studying the earlier middle ages as well.