StrangeLight

i sympathize with the OP, and i've had some disappointment with my cohort, but for different reasons. i didn't meet anyone until the first week of classes. there was an informal party the week before but i couldn't make it. when classes started, a few people were immediately friendly, so they became my immediate friends. fun to talk to, we'd grab lunch on campus, have bitch sessions together in the grad lounge. they also, by coincidence, happened to be in all of my first semester classes. made it seem obvious to be friends with them. and they're all (well, minus one) lovely people. really. but jesus h. christ they are boring! they party like 40-something divorcees on their one weekend out without the kids even though they're all women in their early-mid 20s. favourite lunch spot? chili's. favourite afternoon hangout? shopping at target or going to the mall. favourite night out? a yuppie club with overpriced cosmos, top 40 hip hop from 1997-2002, and a bunch of 50+ year old men hanging out by the dance floor photographing all of us. every club they went to, the music was something out of a late 90s bar mitzvah. holy shit. we only had time enough in our schedules to spend a night out maybe once every month or two. and because everyone else loves that junk, that's what we would always do. always. i realized about 4 months in that i was spending all my free time doing stuff i HATED just because the people i hang out with like to do it. let's all drive out of the city to the big suburban mall, eat at a chain restaurant, and then dance to ja rule with a bunch of orange people wearing too much self tanner! awesome time, guys!!! it's my own fault. i shouldn't mad at them for all loving to do stuff i hate. i've tried to integrate myself into other groups of friends within the department. i've found a few people who i have more in common with but they're less willing to go out and actually do something than the future soccer mom divorcees. i'm hoping for a better contingent of people in the fall. in the meantime, i just do fun stuff alone now. i try to meet people while i'm out, but i'm a little too shy to do anything other than small talk and still part ways at the end of the evening. to the OP, i'd recommend trying to make friends outside of your cohort. you'll find, when they ARE willing to engage in small talk, it will always be shop-talk. that gets old after a while.

lots of students end up in this situation. "reading proficiency" can be achieved by the end of 4 semesters of college-level coursework. so if you start over with french, you'll just take classes in your first and second year and write the exam at the end of the second year. also, a lot of schools offer "for reading" language classes. they're taught entirely in english, and all you do is learn to translate from the chosen language into english. they're designed for graduate students to meet their language requirements for the degree. you may be able to get through the proficiency exam after just one year of "for reading" courses. check to see if your university offers these, it's the easiest and fastest way to get through the exams.

in a history course, you will have 14-15 weeks of class. you will read one book per class per week. if the books are new, they're anywhere from $30-60 each. if they're used, you'll get 'em closer to $20 each. that's at your campus bookstore. but don't buy your books there. go on amazon and find used copies for $3 or $11 each. sometimes amazon itself has great deals, and then your shipping will be free. other times, the good prices are from third party bookstores and you'll have to pay $4 in shipping per store. even then, the added cost still saves you a lot compared to getting it all from the bookstore. in my first semester, for two book-heavy seminars (my third class was all journal articles and book chapters), i spent $425 on books. that's with using amazon to get a $25 book for $5. so i'd say, even with the most resourceful shopping, you'll spend $200 on books per history course. other fields read a lot less. history's known for being particularly reading-intensive. if you're taking poli sci or public policy courses, expect the reading load (and therefore the cost spent on books) to be a lot less. but you don't want to buy your books anyway. don't do it. wait for the first week of class. the second you have that syllabus in your hot little hand, order all of the books through interlibrary loans. if you can only get the ILL for two weeks, then obviously just order each book two weeks before the discussion date. not only will you save yourself hundreds of dollars, because these books won't be collecting dust on your shelves, you'll force yourself to take really good notes. you can't just go pick up the book again in 3 weeks when you want to reference something, so you'll have to take detailed, useful notes on each reading. which will be perfect for your comps exams. start off doing it this way (ILLs, detailed notes) and you'll be cruising when you study for comps. also, i don't know of anyone that takes out loans to buy books. usually just winds up on the credit card until you can afford to pay it down with your stipend. and amazon can be as evil as it wants. if i get free shipping in 2 days, then i'll take it.

i don't know about your chances exactly, but the most common reason people reject the CGS in favour of the "regular" SSHRC is because they're studying in the US and are ineligible for the CGS. my sense is that, at the PhD level, many canadians go to the states to get their degrees unless they fall within a certain subcategory that's strong in canada (canadian history, first nations history, medieval history, etc.). i don't know if that means your chances are really good or not, but if those two CGS students are at american schools, then you'll be set.

avoid any and all technical language/jargon. even if the committee reading your proposal is field-specific, there's enough diversity within the field that you don't want to get caught up in -isms. depending on how many applications they get, the committee may not make it past your first paragraph. the first paragraph needs to catch their attention, stick in their mind, AND tell them what your project is. never, ever, ever, ever say that the scholarship that has come before you is wrong, needs to be corrected, is misguided, etc. they hate that. even if it's true. even if your entire project is proving that X school of thought was wrong, none of the committees like hearing some upstart 1st year PhD student who hasn't even passed comps declare an established academic to be incorrect. talk about building on existing scholarship, augmenting it, reinterpreting it, but never say it's wrong. all proposals need three things: 1) your specific, precise research question, 2) a literature review and your project's original contribution the field, 3) methodology and sources. the lit review section. it needs to be good. you need to demonstrate clearly that you have a command over the existing work on your topic and you know exactly how your project will contribute to that body of scholarship. this, apparently, is the weak link in almost every social sciences/humanities proposal, so if yours is good, it'll stand out. you need to do more than say "it's worth knowing because no one's done it yet." that's the default answer. as much as it may pain some historians, it helps to be a presentist and explain why your project is worth doing. the methodology section. simple enough for the social sciences, but humanities students have a hard time explaining what their methodology is. with such little space to go around, it's easy to just skip this, but you shouldn't. if you do archival work, for example, and have already visited some archives and checked some collections, then state specifically that you went to X on Y date and are familiar with the sources necessary for your project. you need to prove that your project is doable. that's all i've got for general stuff. i was told to start working on the proposal 6 months minimum before it's due. to go through multiple revisions with a variety of professors giving edits.

it definitely sucks to not get funded, so my sympathies. i haven't applied for the SSHRC yet myself but a professor in my department spent the first five years or so working for the SSRC in the states. his job was to sort through the applications, pick out the top tier of applicants, and pass them on to whatever selection committee they had that year. in effect, he was the gatekeeper. fortunately for me, he leads grant-writing workshops every year and tells us exactly how to (and how not to) write our proposals. you'd be surprised at what little things can apparently really turn off a selection committee that reads hundreds of proposals. the SSRC is obviously different from the SSHRC, but i think the easiest way to explain the discrepancies between stats (GPAs, pubs, conferences) and scores is to assume that selection committees put a greater focus on the proposals themselves than we all may think they do. i think what goes on those two pages actually matters to them, which is why better profiles go unfunded while worse ones get the CGS. perhaps look back at your successful MA proposal and read it next to your PhD one, see if there is any difference there in your writing style or the way you present your project. good luck next time around, if you decide to reapply.

when i moved across the continent to start my MA, i donated about 100 or 150 books. i've got around 100 or 150 left. piece of advice: don't buy your coursebooks. buy the ones you'll need for your dissertation or that you think you'll reference constantly, but don't buy the seminar books. get them through interlibrary loan and take strong, detailed notes on the reading (4-6 pages single-spaced, divided by chapter, key concepts in bold). you'll save $400-600 a semester and those notes will be perfect for studying for your comps. i bought books and wrote right in them and i now realize that when i do my comps in two years, i'll have to re-read most of the books from my first year. getting the book through the library forces you to make really high-quality notes because you won't be able to consult the book on your shelf when you want to reference an idea or a model a few months later.

if i take: 1 notebook, 1 book-book (not a textbook), my laptop, then i use a tote. if i'm taking more books, my laptop AC cord, a packed lunch, or gym clothes, then i take a backpack. if you're looking to buy, i'd recommend getting something made of leather and metal hardware. you'd be surprised how easily you can destroy a cute vinyl tote with a plastic zipper.

yeah, but lit students don't have to stand for 40+ hours a week. they sit for 60+ hours instead.

do you hang out with this prof outside of class? go to coffee? have lunch? then it's probably okay to ask. if you just take a class with them... i'd think it's a little weird. i'd stick to asking the grad students who travel to conferences to pick 'em up for you.

if there's a well-known professor you'd be working with, i'd follow the funding.

the rankings are meaningless. example: the USNWR ranks harvard as the #9 school for latin american history. they don't have a latin american history program. they have one person on their faculty, who for all i know may be a very talented scholar but who has zero name recognition in the field. they don't take on latin americanist masters students because they never offer seminars for that field. the small handful of latin americanists there received their MAs elsewhere and are attending harvard to work with that lone professor in particular. how is that a top 10 program? these rankings are based in large part on surveys of professors. to formulate the subfield rankings, they don't just survey the professors of that subfield; they ask every prof in the profession. the many historians that don't know anything about latin american history but know that harvard's supposed to be good at everything put the school into their top 10. the profs that do know a bit ("professor X is great and he's at school Y") don't necessarily know enough to realize that professor X moved to a different school half a decade ago. they don't keep up with the field enough to know which professors moved or retired, so their rankings are often based on former reputations that may or may not still hold true. here is my advice for future and current applicants: THE RANKINGS DON'T MATTER. leave the confines of this website and no one talks about rankings. you look for the best academics in your field. you find out where they're teaching and (if they're young) where they went to school. those are the places you apply to. noticing a pattern based on biased data is not evidence of a causal relationship. if the rankings actually reflected the quality of the faculty and the placement rates of graduate students, then you might have something. but they don't. i also don't understand how this thread is supposed to "help" future applicants. to me, it came off like you wanted someone to validate your rejections from lower-ranked schools based on you being too good, rather than programs which are beneath you somehow deeming you unworthy.

1) the ranking systems are pretty much meaningless. when you talk to any professor about school X's program, they know it only by the current faculty there and those individuals' reputations, not as being "top 10" or "top 20" or "outside the top 50." the only people that pay attention to the rankings are grad students and people trying to get the alumni to donate. 2) everyone mentions 3 or 4 professors at each program in their SOPs. everyone tailors their SOP to fit specifically with whatever school they're applying to. everyone writes sincere applications. so, to that extent, nothing you did in your applications to these top 50/60 schools is unique. all the applications they received, or almost all of them, were carefully considered, thoughtfully written, and tailored to the department and the faculty within it. 3) you were rejected by those schools because they didn't have space for you, your potential advisors weren't taking on new graduate students, a different professor won the battle over whose potential advisee got "the last spot," they couldn't find funding for you, or they just didn't think your work was that interesting. you may have seen more of a "fit" in your application than they did. you might have bored them. just because "school #17" validated your potential as an academic doesn't mean schools 18-100 have to do the same. don't over-analyze it. just be happy that you have a few acceptances to choose from.

take whatever courseload is recommended by your graduate director and your advisor. nothing more. my first semester, i took three graduate seminars AND a "one credit" independent study with my advisor and another student, where we'd meet every other week to discuss one book, no writing involved. i barely slept that semester. i pulled all nighters constantly. that extra class doesn't sound like much, but the other student in there didn't contribute very much and rarely read all the material (if s/he even read the correct book for that week, which didn't always happen). i had cover the readings really well because there was no where to hide in that class. on any given week, i'd have 1100-1200 pages to read. i thought i read slowly (20 pages an hour), but i've heard that's about average. that's 55-60 hrs a week of reading. already more than a full-time job, and that's just to make sure you cover the material. then you've got term papers (10-20 pages), weekly/monthly response papers (2-4 pages), and whatever you're doing for your own research. if you stay on top of your stuff, that's already pushing you to 70 hrs a week. take the two courses. it'll take you 40 hours a week just to complete the readings for those two courses. throw in a language class, which is not mentally taxing but is definitely time-consuming, and you're already around 45 hrs a week. if you're TAing as well, then there goes your whole week. if not, take that little bit of extra breathing room to make some real progress on your own research. trust me, even with two classes, you'll still feel like you're putting in more than a full workweek. on a semi-related note, in the fall of my second year, i'll be finished all the course requirements for my MA. i had a blissfully lax schedule set up so that i could really focus on my thesis and wrap it up early in the spring. took my schedule to my advisor: one reading seminar (long books, lots of papers), one teaching seminar (really easy), a french class (mid-level, so somewhat challenging), and TAing. and working on my thesis. my advisor decided this wasn't enough work, so she signed me up for an independent seminar. "only 2 credits."

tickle, i'm really sorry to hear that you didn't get off the waitlist. you definitely deserve to be in a PhD program. i'm sure you've thought this many times, but you're really a square peg/round hole sort of student. as much as the cutting edge departments like to say they love transnational work, when they're building their cohorts, they still lump people as americanists, europeanists, africanists, asianists, and latin americanists. if i recall correctly, i think you applied to most programs as technically a US historian, even though you're working on the US, latin america, and europe. it reminds me of a friend of mine (currently in an MA program) that got shut out of PhD admissions a year ago. she studies asian migration to the US, applied as a US historian to work with the specialists that study asian migration (they were classified as US historians as well). she applied to 1 school out of 10 as an asianist and got the strongest response from them. i tend to believe that, had she applied everywhere as an asianist, an offer would've come through. US history and western european history are really saturated fields, and regardless of your profile, if they can find a reason to cut an applicant, such as "well, this isn't really US history proper," then they will. migration and transnational history seem to get a stronger reception in world, altantic, african diaspora, and caribbean history. outside of those fields, the embrace of the transnational really seems to vary with individual scholars. i hope you have better luck in the next round.

she has a good sense of humour about it. she even left it all up for a day so some of the professors could see it. the part she hated the most was when we covered up her last name on her nameplate and wrote "ochocinco" instead. she is plotting her revenge, though.

cool. see you in the fall. and be prepared to see stillers stuff on every inch of free space in the main office and on professors' doors. but don't worry, there are enough grad students that hate the steelers love, so you'll be fine. one of the secretaries here has the largest steelers shrine on and around her desk i've ever seen. for april fools, me and two other students covered every steelers sign with either browns and bengals gear and pictures of chad ochocinco. it was pretty great.

no, you're right. north american grad schools do not care AT ALL about extra curriculars. there's not even a space to list 'em in the applications and they don't belong on an academic CV.

on your way out of this program, you might want to publish this little story in your student newspaper. i think just leaving without causing too much trouble for these students and your department sort of validates the way they squeeze certain students out with harassment.

i net just under $1300/month after taxes. i pay $600 in rent (including utilities, not including phone, cable, internet). for my cell phone, tv, and 'net, i pay another $100/month. that leaves me with $600/month to live off of. my cat enjoys chewing through the cords that charge my computer and phone. so far he's done $140 in damage. he's a sneaky little jerk and every time i think i've foiled him by placing cords in hard to reach places, he eventually finds a way to happily chew through them. it may not sound like much, but when he does $100 of that $140 damage in one month, it sucks. books kill me too. i thought i was being smart about ordering them for $7 each off of amazon, but that still adds up to over $400 in books per semester. if i spread my book purchases out over the 3 months of class, only buying them on the week i need to read them, that's still $130/month (or more) on books. i've learned my lesson and will now make good use of ILLs for course books. it's better that way. if i can't keep the book, i force myself to make really detailed notes instead, which will come in handy for my comps. conference fees have hurt me a bit in the last month or so. i'm going to three conferences this summer and registration/membership alone has cost me around $250. if that was spread out over the year, it would be fine, but all those payments were made at the end of march/beginning of april. i'm supposed to get funding from the school to attend the conferences themselves, but there are rumours that this multimillion dollar institution has "ran out" of money for graduate conference travel. most of my budget goes to food. i figure i should be able to spend $100/week on food and still have $200 left over for incidentals, but between paying off credit card bills ($150/month), putting gas in my car ($40/month), paying for campus parking if i'm late or lazy ($40/month on average), and eating out (i'm afraid to add this one up), once i get to the end of the month i've got $26 in my bank account. i guess, by that metric, i'm still spending less than $100/week in food. i should try to actually save something, though. my bank balance at the end of the month is scary. shit, it's scary right now!

if you enter an american PhD program straight from your BA: you will complete three years of coursework. after year 1 or 2 (varies by school) you will be awarded an MA. you may have to write a thesis for the MA or you may not, that also varies by school, but my understanding is that most programs require the thesis or research paper. at the end of year 3, you will write your comps. you will also prepare your dissertation overview, which you may write at the end of year 3 or during the summer between 3 and 4. you then spend the next however many years just working on your dissertation. year 4 is archival research abroad, year 5-? is writing your dissertation. how long this process takes depends upon you and your dissertation committee. most combined MA/PhD programs offer 4 or 5 years of guaranteed funding. if you go past year 5, it's up to you to find those funds on a yearly basis. you can probably convince your department to let you teach a stand-alone course or do another TAship after year 5, but that varies by department. the language requirements? you usually have to prove proficiency in your first language by the end of year 2 and your second language by the end of year 3. you do this while doing your coursework, meeting your TA responsibilities, writing your masters thesis, writing your dissertation prospectus, and writing your comps exams. sounds like a lot of work, right? that's why a lot of programs want students to already have one language proficiency in the can before arriving so they've only got to get one more language under their belt while they work through the program. a lot of the top programs also want to see that you've begun the second language, in addition to knowing the first. "getting your languages" is, ideally, something you did before graduate school, not during. if you enter an american PhD program with an MA in hand: many programs will recognize your MA and then give you 4 years to completion of the PhD instead of 5. you may have to re-sit your MA thesis defense at your new school or jump through some other administrative hoops, but that varies widely by school. you will have 2 years of coursework (comps and overview at the end of year 2), one year of research, one year (or more, that's on you) of writing. since most MAs take 2 years, this puts you at a minimum of 6 years to degree instead of 5. what's more, a handful of ivy league schools (because they're special!!) will not recognize your MA, so you'll have to write a new one at their school. they also will not transfer most (or any) of your existing completed graduate credits, meaning you're starting over on coursework as though you had entered straight from a BA. but, often, you can't really gain entrance to these ivy league schools without already having an MA. so they make you get a degree they will then pretend you don't have. bullshit? maybe. but there are a handful of schools, some in the top 10, that operate on this principle, so if you're coming in with an MA degree, check their graduate handbooks carefully. the UK degree takes 3 years because, quite frankly, their requirements for the degree are much lower. american schools know this, so if you want to teach in the states, you'll have a harder time finding employment. even oxbridge graduates are underrepresented in history departments in the US. you'll need to come from the TOP UK schools, under a very well known advisor, and with some great research to your name. also, at UK schools you're paying for the degree yourself. at US ones, they (usually/used to) fund you fully for 5+ years. it makes less sense to rush through a degree when you're already earning a salary for your work.

it is not unusual for some advisors to be very intimidating. it is not unusual for them to have exceedingly high expectations and to overwork you. those are all real things that happen with some frequency (though certainly not to every student). as others have said, contact the prof's current advisees and ask them to be completely honest with you, and assure them that nothing they tell you will make it to any other professor or student. i really do believe that a good working relationship with your advisor is paramount to your success in grad school (success meaning actually finishing the PhD). if the intimidation will cripple you rather than motivate you, that's a bad combination for you regardless of how well known the prof or program is. here are some real life examples: advisor X is ridiculously strict, works her students to the bone, has NEVER ONCE passed a female student (those decisions have always had to go before the entire faculty in an appeal), routinely fails her students on their theses or overviews (after deciding they were ready to sit them!), and despite being THE scholar in her field, most of her advisees jump ship to work with someone else in the department before they finish the PhD. she has anywhere from 3-6 students at a time, but few (if any?) have ever finished the PhD under her supervision. one of her MA students is actually leaving graduate school and abandoning the field altogether, despite having tremendous promise as a scholar, because of how poisonous this advisor is. advisor Y is also the top guy of his field. a real big name. he's very laid back. he prefers to do all his advising in single sentences through email only. he lets his advisees get through a year and a half of a two year program before saying, "hey maybe you want to think of a thesis topic that you could finish in 4 months." he then refuses to see ANY drafts until you've got a full version. he meets with his advisees in person MAYBE once a semester. he's actually unaware of the research topic of one of his students who is going to sit her MA defense in two weeks. he had 6 grad students at the beginning of this year and 3 of them have since quit the program. when he does successfully get a student through the program, they've spent 3 years getting a 2 year MA or 8 years getting a 4 year PhD. he's negligent, and without any guidance, his students either sink or swim on their own. great scholar. terrible advisor. so yeah. avoid these two types of advisors like the plague. advisor Z is a very intense young scholar with a strong (and growing) reputation. she has 5 graduate students, three that are moving along nicely, one that's a bit of a floater, and one that was extremely timid and got pushed out. this timid student could barely speak without nerves overtaking every sentence. writing is solid but the ideas aren't as cutting edge or groundbreaking as the advisor would like. when you say something dumb to this advisor, she just stares at you like you're a total moron. doesn't help you through, just glares and lets you hang yourself with your words. she's nice, she's friendly, she keeps up on her students and makes sure they progress through the program. but if you're drowning she's not going to help you to shore. she works you hard, and while other professors will love your work, she'll tell you it was conceptually incoherent and "what may be good enough for other people really just isn't good enough at all." if you can handle that, she's a great advisor. if you can't, you end up leaving. if THAT'S the vibe you're getting from this potential advisor, i'd think long and hard before signing up with him/her. are there other profs at this school you could work with, if this advisor doesn't pan out? what is your interaction like with the prof at your #2 choice? i really do believe you need to be able to work well with your advisor if you're going to do research you're happy with, so at this point in the game, i'd forget about ranking and reputation and think about the best environment for you to excel.

yeah, withdrawal dates are different at every school. at my school, not only do you need to drop before the second class, you can't return any textbooks to the bookstore after the second class. so you've got to know whether or not it's too much work before you even start your first full post-talk through the syllabus class or you get stuck with Ws. i'd definitely advise asking other current students (and other professors you may already know) if the courseload is manageable. when i took 4 courses (all seminars, none of them languages) in a single semester, my advisor thought it was perfectly reasonable because i wasn't teaching, wasn't working a regular job, wasn't into the meat of my masters research yet, and she only sleeps 4-5 hours a night so why should i need more? when other professors (including the current and future heads of the department) asked me casually what my courseload was like, their eyebrows shot up. they usually give their advisees two seminars and a language class or three seminars, period. even though i said "well, i'm not teaching," they replied, "yeah, but four is still a lot." i made it through with a near-perfect GPA, so it's not like i struggled or it was impossible. but it was extremely unpleasant. don't do that to yourself if you don't have to, you don't get extra points for torturing yourself. if you can read fast and take good notes quickly then 3 + a language may not take over your life. if i skim, i don't absorb what i'm reading very well. if i don't skim and i take strong notes (ones that will be useful for comps in a few years so i don't have to re-read the whole book), then i can get through 20 pages in an hour. in the four-course semester, that was roughly 1200 pages a week, or 60 hours just for readings. then add on the time it took me to write the response papers plus the 15-20 page paper my advisor had me writing every few weeks based on additional secondary research, and that's already over 70 hrs a week. and that's just because i write quickly (20-30 minutes per page). if you can tear through books quickly and still take in the arguments and type up useful notes, then that's awesome and you probably won't feel such a crunch. i'd still run this by other profs and other students in the program.

write at least two pages of your thesis every single day. it doesn't matter if they're good pages or bad pages. just write them. once you have everything you want to say down on paper, then give it to your advisor and have him/her recommend where you should re-write/re-draft. i don't think it's wise to wait until you've got your final final draft to show it to your advisor. as soon as you have one full draft (good or not), show it to your prof. you don't want to be in the position where your advisor recommends significant rewrites and you don't have the time to get them done.

not too bad. my first semester was stressful, i worried too much about coursework and not enough about research, but managed a 3.9somethingsomething. i don't really know how the second semester will play out grades-wise (i'm guessing a mix of As and A-s), but i've got three conference presentations (based on two papers) lined up for the summer and just won a shnazzy summer fellowship to cover my research trip to central america. i'm finally actually making progress on my own research, which is really nice. my fall course schedule is looking rather relaxed (one heavy-reading seminar, one "how to teach" fluff seminar, a language class, and a TAship for a prof who doesn't give his undergrads many assignments, which means less marking for me to do). i'm excited about the possibility of spending more than 5 hours a week on my own research. can't wait.