StrangeLight

HAHAHAHAHA! you'll understand soon enough. as an undergrad, i was working 20 hours a week on a research/writing job while taking 5 classes a semester in intensive seminars. graduate school is more work. you already took grad courses? were you reading a 400 page book and a 30 page article on a weekly basis and writing response papers for them in those classes? if so, then you have an idea of what you're in for. if not, then you don't. i'm a graduate student in a history program. the "minimum" courseload is 9 credits a semester, or 3 courses. that is also the unofficial maximum. in my first semester, i didn't have any teaching requirements, so i took 3 graduate seminars (9 credits) and a "one credit" independent seminar that met every other week. "one credit" in quotation marks because, due to the length of the books assigned (often over 450 pages) it may as well have been a book a week and considered an additional full course. that semester sucked. i barely slept. i had well over 70 hours worth of work to do every week (reading and writing papers for coursework plus the occasional paper/research time devoted to my masters thesis). seventy fucking hours. i'd pull at least one all nighter every week just to stay on top of it. yeah, you took 5 courses a semester in undergrad and that wasn't such a big deal, but you weren't reading three or four 300+ page books a week and being expected to write papers on them every single week. to the OP: DO NOT take 3 graduate seminars plus a language course in a single semester. YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME IN THE WEEK TO DO ALL OF THAT WORK. history in particular is a discipline that is heavy on reading. odds are you'll read one book and one 30-page article per class every week. 3 seminars in and of themselves will be incredibly time-consuming (because, guess what, beyond the material being long, it's also difficult, so you'll have to read things more than once or think them over for a few hours before you can begin response papers). adding a language class on top of that will bring the quality of your work down (and your ability to actually acquire that new language) in all of your classes. do you have to TA? if so, you either will fall really far behind in your work or you will burn out FAST (TAing is supposed to take 20 hours a week, but when you're grading papers, it's more like 30-40 hrs, and that's on top of however long it takes you to complete your coursework). again. DO NOT DO IT. you're in a difficult position because you need to get at least one language under your belt before you complete your masters. that's a requirement you can't afford to put off. my recommendation would be to take two graduate seminars and one language class each semester. that's it. most masters programs don't require 36 hours of graduate level coursework (that would be 2 years at 9 credits a semester). take 6 credits of grad classes a semester and then however many credits the language class happens to be (that doesn't really matter unless your total number of credits exceeds the maximum the school is willing to cover as part of your tuition remission). find a polite way to tell your advisor that you'd rather start with two graduate courses than three, and if you find the workload more than manageable (you won't), you'll happily increase to 3 grad classes + 1 language in the following semester. please, please, please, please, please, please, please for your own sake, listen to me. three grad seminars, with no other responsibilities (TAing, language training, etc.), is very time consuming. i didn't believe it either when i was in your position last year, so 3.5 seminars in one semester didn't seem unreasonable to me. it is. learn from my mistake.

i would not mention a co-advisor before you actually get to class in september. it's possible some professors could read it as insulting that a student who hasn't even begun is already thinking about "getting in" with another advisor. you don't know professor X or professor Y well enough yet to truly judge that dynamic. i think, in general, professors are very much okay with being co-advisors, but it also depends on how well X and Y can work together. to a certain degree, they need to be satisfied with your final work as well. once you get to town and start your classes, you can talk to both profs about your research. it's early in the process, you don't need to declare co-advisors formally yet. just bounce ideas off of both of them (make sure that both know you're talking to the other prof about your work). if it makes sense to take them on as co-advisors and they're both on board, it will happen easily. but to email now? that's not good form. just hold your horses.

congrats. be sure to fawn over rebecca scott and julian scott (no relation) for me.

oh man, this thread has already stressed me out, and i haven't even applied for the SSHRC yet. i'm at a US school doing a combined MA/PhD, so i'll apply in the fall of 2010 to (hopefully) use the award in the first year of my PhD (fall 2011). the other lone canadian in my program (with the same regional focus and advisor, from the same undergraduate institution) won the SSHRC (the $80K one), and now there are heavy expectations that i will repeat the feat. nervous! any advice on SOP writing? by the time i apply, i will have completed a first round of archival research and 3 conference presentations, and i've been working on my SOP since january. i'm fairly certain i can secure two solid LORs, but my project is... a little unconventional. for those who were forwarded on, would you recommend playing that up ("a new approach, a cutting-edge methodology, lots of buzzwords!") or playing it safer and altering the SOP to make the project design more conventional?

i wouldn't say "don't bother going," since an MA in and of itself is an aid to PhD admissions later on. but chiba is right, go to the school with the stronger and more well known faculty overall. you will want three LORs from people known in their fields.

the new school does have a good reputation for history. certainly no better or worse than fordham's reputation. and the loans you're taking out will only cover tuition. you still need to meet living expenses, and unless you're living with family for free, that will add to your costs. you won't have the time to take a part-time job to meet your expenses. also, most history MA programs require methodological training, one language proficiency, and the completion of a thesis. that's not something unique to fordham. my sense is that fordham's not really on a higher level than the new school. doing your BA and MA at the same institution is fine as long as you do the PhD elsewhere. if it were me, i'd jump on the new school's offer.

man... i miss surfing. and the pacific. a lot. it hurts my heart. i wasn't expecting to feel this way when i moved out to the rust belt. i also miss weekends. stopping work at 5 pm. not making notes in the margins of everything i read. i totally empathize with your situation. the feeling you're having now is the exact reason i walked away from a masters in journalism a few years ago. i applied for a PhD not completely realizing that the job market and the hours, even as a professor, are pretty much identical.

if you have a ton of research experience, this will look good. i'd still be sure to mention it explicitly, but not necessarily at length, in your SOP. i will stress, though... at the MA level, you are doing a lot of coursework and it's a struggle to find time to get to your own research, which can be very frustrating. prepare yourself for at least 2 years of very intensive coursework. maintaining sanity can be difficult even for those that love seminars and secondary readings.

but it's not just this year. this is how NYU operates. they're not being ruder or more inconsiderate now. it's the same story and will be until they find a way to cut out some of the red tape.

while NYU has some incredibly talented scholars who are also often quite lovely human beings, dealing with the giant horrible machine that is the school of graduate studies is a nightmare. they will wait a long time to reject you, when they send out their UNSEALED envelope in the mail. yes, $90 can't even buy you the saliva to seal your rejection letter. i remember last year someone heard on april 13 or 14 (yes, that late) that they got into NYU. everyone else still waiting at this point was rejected. if you have other plans, i say enjoy your spring and save yourself the heart ache and accept your other offer. you can't live comfortably off of $22,000 before tax in manhattan anyway, and the city is too distracting to get your work done, and blah blah blah. those are my two cents. i still wish i had the chance to work with some historians at NYU, and i'd love to live in manhattan, even if it was in a shoebox up in harlem, but NYU will drag this out to the last possible second.

they won't care about a less than full courseload if they see you were busy with research. if your internships were at museums or historical societies or something, then programs that value public history (surprisingly, not that many do) will find that important. others may not. if most of your internships and ECs were somehow historical in nature, then that won't hurt you any. if the connection to historical/archival/research work is less obvious, some programs may wonder about your dedication to academic work. they'll certainly see the commitment to your topic of interest, but grad school is rigorous. if you thought a full courseload at the undergraduate level was going to make you lose it, then the grad courseload definitely will. you're looking at 60-hr work weeks for a history degree (they're heavy on reading, moreso than other disciplines, and that just takes time to do properly). your outside life will rapidly evaporate. do you want that? can you handle it? you may need to convince potential schools of that in your SOP.

i agree with breakfast, who you work with is much more important than the school you come from. when i was building a list of schools to apply to, my very well-known undergrad advisor would recommend schools to me based on where the best professors were teaching. i'd look at the USNWR list and say, "well, what about X school?" her response would often be, "who is there? .... oh, yeah i guess" or "there's not really anyone good there now" or "they take on a lot of students and churn them out fast. it's more of a factory than graduate training and you'll pretty much be on your own there." it's interesting to think that my award-winning, ivy league-trained advisor's top 10 list of her own subfield would look dramatically different from anything the USNWR puts out. the prestige and peer recognition your advisor receives IS important. program ranking as determined by the USNWR is not. that said, you've already stated that all three programs have well-known professors in your field and all three would be strong places to carry out your research. lucky you! i would recommend talking to your undergraduate profs now and getting their opinions on where you should go. they'll know better than us the specifics of your situation and can offer you more informed advice. then i'd also check out where students in your sub-sub-field are being hired, if at all. are they all getting tenure-track jobs? either they are 1) at universities you've heard of, or 2) in places you'd like to live long-term. it's rare to find both. if the department websites don't publish their placement statistics, ask the DGS for specific stats on placement rates. i noticed a lot of top 10/ivy league places just give a list of prestigious schools where past graduates teach, but there's no way of knowing if those students graduated 3 or 30 years ago. a program unwilling to provide you with this info may be a red flag. sure it's school X, and everyone knows school X, but if their PhDs aren't getting hired, back away slowly. finally, look at where the schools are located. where do you want to live for the next 6 years? since your research is easily doable at all three schools and your potential advisors are "names" at all three schools, you're in a good position to make this decision based on something other than academics. where would you be happy?

nytusse, i'd send them an email rejection in any case. send it to the DGS, your potential advisor, and the grad secretary. it won't take long but it's more polite than just never responding. these are people you are going to see at conferences for the next forever years, so it's best to be exceedingly polite. yes the fellowships are important. at my undergraduate institution, my thesis advisor told me that i should not accept any offer that came without a fellowship. she told me that there is a definite hierarchy that comes from holding fellowships. i know that in my program now, the students that entered with the best fellowships are the ones winning (year after year) the top dissertation research or dissertation writing fellowships. the students that started off as TAs are, for the most part, remaining TAs. why? well, how else can you compare students? almost everyone in graduate school has an A-/A average (otherwise they're in a bit of trouble). so what on their CV will stand out? the only MA students with enough time to actually publish their theses are the ones on fellowships. teaching takes far longer than the 20 hours they claim (especially if you have a heavy grading load) so you're working hard just to finish your thesis and coursework, never mind polishing that thesis for publication before you start your comps and dissertation prospectus. and that's right around the time you're applying for these other fellowships anyway. what else could set you apart? conferences. but conference papers take time to write, too, and in general (there are always exceptions), i see people with TAships going to far fewer conferences than those without, due almost entirely to the amount of time they have. the GPAs are the same. the LORs will either be good or glowing (and again, you're in trouble if they're neither). unless you're applying for a teaching award, they don't care if you're a good teacher or not. so what makes the difference? existing fellowships on the CV, publications, conference presentations. so no, holding a fellowship isn't the sole determinant for future fellowships, but it's about 1/3. more, when you consider that fellows have more time to work on publications and conference papers. there's not really any other way to compare students, unfortunately. as for getting a job... holding some incoming first-year fellowship isn't that important, other than adding a line to your CV. but holding the dissertation research and dissertation writing fellowships do matter, because it attests to your ability to secure future fellowships and grants, which departments want their faculties to be able to do, even at teaching-oriented LACs. i don't mean to discourage anyone with TAships only. it's definitely possible to secure fellowships throughout your graduate career, but you'll have more difficulty getting the best ones. every single professor i have ever heard talk about funding (at my grad school, undergrad, some prospective grad schools, and the mysterious realm of teh internetz) has said incoming fellowships are important for securing future fellowships which are important to have on CV when you apply for jobs anywhere, even LACs.

since we're talking about top 50 vs top 70, the reputation of your potential advisor at each school becomes important. the name alone won't carry you, so you need your advisor (especially in the PhD program) to be a known, respected, and well-connected scholar. if the PhD advisor is a big shot, i'd consider it, otherwise i'd say you should definitely go into an MA and reapply for PhD programs later.

prof. rediker is currently at pitt, not penn, but he'll be moving to brown next year, so if you do want to work with him, brown's where you should look. he doesn't exactly do comparative slavery. he studies slave ships and is currently working on a book on the amistad rebellion. all of his advisees at pitt have worked on seafaring (pirates, merchant sailors, navies, etc.) but that isn't to say he would be unwilling to advise on comparative slavery.

ResPublica is entirely right about funding tiers at schools. you want to start with the best possible package because the most prestigious awards throughout grad school from your own department and your own institution will fall to you first. having a number of fellowships, rather than fully-funded TAships, on your CV are also necessary to be competitive for external grants and fellowships, both during and after your PhD. you don't merely want to go to a good program. you want to be (perceived as) the best student in your cohort at your good program. and that means securing the best fellowships on offer. and THAT can mean waiting for other admits to reject their acceptances so their incoming fellowships can fall to you.

congratulations, tickle! i hope a spot falls to you at indiana, you really deserve it. that's awesome, it's a great program.

i'd imagine the no funding for MAs is for anyone kicked down to the MA program, whether they applied for the PhD originally or not. no funding for terminal degrees is fairly standard and, no, it's not worth the price tag. no need to be enraged at GW, though, this is how it works at most schools. funding for stand-alone MAs is pretty rare.

man... this thread is depressing. so many of these posters were so positive back in january. i know this is a hard time for people, but i do have to smirk a bit at the accusations by a few people (none in this thread, mind you) that all the people who were rejected or bumped to MAs last year were simply unprepared slackers. anyway, let me assure the OP... admissions will be very tough next year. FIT, as others have said, is most important. if you want to study comparative slavery, i suggest applying to programs where you have someone that specializes in the southern US, someone who specializes in african (preferably west african) history, AND someone who studies slavery in latin america or the caribbean (look for cubanists, brazilianists, or specialists of the french or english caribbean). with three people on the faculty, all from different regional specialties but with a similar thematic concentration, you will be a very attractive candidate. it can be difficult to find schools with that mix of professors in the faculty. that's how you'll narrow down your list of places to apply to. don't just apply to "top programs" unless the fit is perfect, you'll be throwing your money away. apply to places where it seems glaringly obvious that your interests are ideal for their program. michigan might be some place to look into (they have rebecca scott, who does comparative history of slavery in cuba and louisiana, among other things, and she's both an amazing scholar and a lovely, genuine person). there are other places that fit, i'm sure, and you'll find them. but be picky. with the way admissions have been going, you'll need at least 2 or 3 people on staff to fight for you to get one of the very few funded spots. i'd probably refrain from applying to places that are strong only in african-american history. if you want to do comparative slavery, you'll need a school that also has strength in the caribbean, in africa, and (even better!) in atlantic/maritime history. also, as others have noted, funding is scarce and there's no telling if next year will be better or worse than this year. this doesn't mean you have to go unfunded. look for external sources for funding. fulbrights, FLAS, mellons. i don't know the list of external fellowships well myself because i'm canadian and not eligible for most of the ones you'd be applying for, but you can definitely find your own funding. and if you're applying to schools with some funding (1 year, 4 years, 5 years, whatever) already secured, then you will be a VERY attractive candidate. if they don't have to give you a stipend and only need to cover your tuition, many places will be willing to take you on.

my family lives in another country and i just talk to them on skype. if there's an emergency, i'll use my cell and pay out the butt for it, but that's rare. also, you can put money onto skype and phone them directly, for cheaper than a good long distance landline plan, if they don't have a computer or don't want to sit on the internet to talk to you. <3 skype.

wow, are people really going to pay X dollars a month for a landline in case they have to phone 911 once and their cell phone drops the call? i think that's really excessive and unnecessary. how often are you phoning 911? how often do you lose reception? that's being more than a little paranoid, in my opinion. i got satellite tv because, where i live, it's cheaper than cable. it was $30/month for the first 6 months, now it's just over $40/month. i watch a lot of sports (march madness!) and a lot of news/politics (especially c-span... it's a sickness). i pay $10/month to split cable internet with my neighbours downstairs. then i've got my cell bill, which varies each month. all pretty manageable.

filing cabinets are good. any sort of filing system. corkboard and coloured notecards. especially helpful for visually mapping out a long-term research project. a calendar of some sort. do you write in an agenda? use your computer's calendar? want something on the wall? time management will be key in your life and you'll need this. badly. external hard-drives and thumb drives. back up everything. save it on your computer and your thumb drive at all times. back it all up on the external HD once every two weeks or whenever you remember. keep updated copies of your work in two or three places. i had a friend who left everything on a thumb drive, and HE LOST IT (he luckily had a month-old version of his work saved in his email). i had another friend who used his laptop and his external HD only, and spilled coffee on both while he was doing a back-up. he promptly quit graduate school and he was ABD. (he claims the decision to quit came two days before the terrible spill, but i don't believe him). a laptop. if you've already got a desktop, then get one of those little netbooks. they're light and they have long battery life. several different comfy chairs. you will spend most of your time sitting down. get a variety of "feels" with your chairs. hard and upright, soft and sunken in, good for stretching your legs out straight, something that reclines, an ergonomically correct stool. trust me.

ever wonder if this is worth it? how long it will take the hard work for graduate school to pay off? the answer is 8 months. this summer, i'll be presenting at conferences in nicaragua, montreal, and barbados. open bar at the barbados conference. don't worry, people, you'll be sipping alcoholic slushies on a hammock on the beach in no time.

for hiring. not enough professors to take on advisees at the grad level. don't worry, tickle, you'll feel the squeeze when you hit the job market. sorry to hear that coop.

i'm inclined to agree with an above poster that said the kick-back to the MA was probably because this poster rejected the PhD offer the previous year. the larger programs only take 20 students a year, the smaller ones anywhere from 5 to 10. they remember who they accepted and probably saw the rejection plus yet another application the following year as a sign that the student was unsure of whether or not s/he wanted to go to grad school. i'm not saying the poster IS waffling, and probably has a good reason (which s/he does not need to share) for turning down a PhD spot and then reapplying the following year, but it's very likely that GW saw it that way.