StrangeLight

congrats to everyone that received good news! kelkel, a funded MA is a GREAT position to be in, and not a plan B at all. a lot of more sought-after programs have begun to take mostly students with MAs in hand rather than straight out of the BA since the financial crisis because it saves them on a few years of funding. the process of doing an MA will change you as a scholar. i know, for me, since getting through my MA, i saw with great clarity the 10,000,000 mistakes i made on my grad applications so long ago. being in a program allows you to learn the language of academia and to have a better sense of what an adcom is looking for. guaranteed, your applications to PhD programs will be stronger and more successful after the MA than during this cycle (even if you get into PhD programs this cycle, you'll still be a better candidate once you complete an MA at any institution, even if you never apply anywhere else). people discourage others from getting the MA first only because MAs aren't usually fully funded. but, with a fully funded offer, if you do the MA, you will be a MUCH stronger candidate for PhD programs two years from now. a funded MA is a great opportunity to open doors into top programs that may be out of reach right out of the BA. this is a very good acceptance and opens FAR more doors than it closes. congratulations! a few pages back, i was accused of posting "the worst" stories about the lives of graduate students in my program. they were actually examples of some of the strongest students in my program, not ones who regularly falter or struggle. but i left it at that, because it didn't seem worth bringing up again. except now: the PhD student on the job market, with a baby and only one job interview and a mock job talk that went not-well, GOT THE JOB. tenure-track, 3/2 teaching load, a graduate program with advisees, close proximity to some of his family. he liked the campus and the faculty, and other than one year-long survey he has to teach, he can teach absolutely any courses his heart desires. he's not stuck doing the surveys of regions outside his specialization. he could teach a class on jazz or the cocaine trade or bob dylan if he wanted to. i'm kind of hung over from celebrating... of course, this good news was relayed to me by his advisor, who then said (because we're in the same subfield) that "this is a challenge to you, because right now the latin americanists have a 100% employment rate." ugh. thanks. anyway, i share that to say, hey, people get jobs at schools you've heard of with reasonable teaching loads and they don't need to come from harvard or yale!! light at the end of the tunnel and all that.

oseirus is funny. all i'm doing is giving the advice i wish someone had given me (or that i had asked for) when i was applying. oh, and procrastinating on my comps work. but NE Nat is right. just wait before grabbing the phone. you guys, it's february 2. yes, lots of people are getting news already (and congratulations to those with good news!), but there's 1-2 months left of this. try to resist picking up the phone, otherwise you'll be that person that texts someone 20 times after a date and never hears back.

regarding people being surprised at the timing of UT's notifications, given previous years' patterns: the faculty are human beings. they are busy and they have a lot of responsibility. you know what else happens during a spring semester? job searches (incredibly time-consuming for a whole department, even more so for those on the job committees), MA and PhD defenses, comps exams, budgetary planning and new-hire planning for the following year, fellowship distribution, on top of the usual research/teaching/service duties that last all year long. a department may be hiring 2 or 3 new professors in a single year and choose to push up or push back their timetable for reviewing grad student applications. while it can be helpful to deduce a pattern of when school X might notify you based on previous years' data, things are a little different every year. there is no need to lose sleep over hearing nothing from a school when your estimated date of their notification has come and gone. there's also no need to assume that you're rejected until you get actual notification that you are. many schools do rolling admissions, admitting the clear yes's and rejecting the clear no's in the first round, then working on the fuzzy group in between at later dates. also, try not to totally bombard graduate secretaries with phone calls. small programs get over 100 applicants, ones with larger incoming classes get closer to 400-500 applicants, and there's usually only one graduate secretary. if you have to call to avoid a nervous breakdown, be really nice and patient and grateful with them. these people will be very important to your survival in whatever program you ultimately attend, don't be the one that calls every week or two.

because i never get tired of talking about this... walking around anywhere, i carry the following: bottle of water. tyvek mighty wallet with cards and cash. iphone 3GS and headphones. handkerchief. a true utility key system (yes, it's a system!) with the following: - leatherman squirt ps4 multi-tool (with knife, scissors, pliers, nail file, bottle opener, two screwdrivers) - fisher trekker space pen (for writing in the margins while lying upside down on the couch) - 4sevens quark mini 123 flashlight (come in handy more than you'd think) - 1/2-inch-thick roll of duct tape (also used more than you'd think) - keys if i'm heading to campus, i'll also take my macbook. possibly my charger, if i know i'll be there for more than 3 hours.

i agree with barricades, with a small caveat. some schools have limited numbers of TAships to give to incoming students. say 5 applicants are being considered for university-wide fellowships and the department has another 3 TAships to hand out. if all 5 win the fellowships, then the department can extend offers to another 3 students with TAships. if 2 of 5 win fellowships, the other 3 considered will almost certainly get the TAships, and that'll be it. but if only 1 of 5 wins the incoming fellowship, then 3 of the 4 remaining will get TAships and 1 person considered for a fellowship may end up with a rejection. the math may seem unlikely, but in small programs or programs that had higher yields than expected in previous years, this sort of situation is not unheard of. to anyone being considered for a fellowship, i'd say to be cautiously (very) optimistic. it looks good, but the math may not ultimately work in your favour.

first off, hi! second, congratulations on the interview. third, it depends on whether you already have an MA or not. if you don't have an MA yet and are applying to combined MA/PhD programs, then you can talk as broadly about your academic interests as you want. you definitely don't need a dissertation project yet, but you should spend some time talking about the project you proposed in your statement of purpose. i think at your stage it's most helpful to talk about the kind of history you want to do (social? political? cultural? environmental?) and the kind of questions you want to ask (ones that draw a big picture, ones that complicate someone else's big picture, ones about historical memory, people's experiences, economic systems, state formation, pirates). you don't want to sound too erratic, so if you're applying to be a chinese historian, then make sure you always mention china. have questions for the people you speak with. ones that you wouldn't be able to answer simply by reading the department website. if you know who you're going to meet with ahead of your visit, then look at their bios on the website to get some feel for what they're into. if possible, try to read the introductions of their most recent books. you don't want to ask them questions about their work (unless they're your potential advisor), but if you're interested in women's history in africa and you're talking to someone that does women's history in latin america, mention your interest in women's history. they'll notice if you show up already knowing a bit about how the place works and who you're speaking to, and they'll read that as your interest in being there. don't walk in clueless, basically. do a bit of research first. we are, after all, trying to become professional researchers. if you already have an MA, then you should have a dissertation topic. you don't need a research question yet (the exact question you'll be asking) but you should have "i want to look at tourism in interwar US and its effects on conceptions of race and gender." you should be able to talk concretely about some of the books that have been written on your topic. you'll want to do a little more investigating of the department website, to see if maybe one of the asianist historians also works on tourism, so that you can connect your interests to the department not just by region ("you have lots of africanists here") but by theme ("you have lots of people that work on transnational history here"). good luck! as long as you don't walk in completely blind, you'll be fine.

my monthly paycheck is less than the cost of your peptides. put it on a credit card. pay it off slowly, even if it's only $50 at a time. i mean, if you NEED this for your research, and your advisor WON'T pay, you'll just have to make that sacrifice. credit cards are for emergencies, and this sure sounds like one to me.

the admissions process works differently at all schools. at some, there's an admissions committee (adcom) that makes all the decisions. these are generally small groups (4-6 professors) who may be randomly selected for that year, or may each represent a regional group in the department (one americanist, one europeanist, etc.). at others, the adcom will whittle down the applicants somewhat and then have the prospective advisor read the files for any potential advisees. the prospective advisor then whittles down that batch, and they all go back to the adcom for final decisions (that's how it works at my school, but we're bizarrely egalitarian about things). at other places, the entire faculty reads all of the applications and votes on admissions (i know that at cornell, the entire faculty used to read every application. not sure if that still holds 3+ years later). so... as detailed as any one person's explanation of this process is, that doesn't mean this is how it works at every school. some programs will use GRE scores to cut out half of the applicants right away. others will throw out GRE scores and not even consider them. it all differs. regarding the nightmare that is NYU, let me add: it's not that they leave people on the waitlist hanging. they leave the outright rejections hanging too. if you apply to NYU and you're rejected, you will not hear about it until april 10. but, judging previous cycles, you will note that while much of the late news on NYU is negative (rejections, unfunded MAs in the draper interdisciplinary program), there's always a few people who get admitted in late april. if NYU is where you really want to be, you will hold out hope until the last minute, praying that you're one of the lucky few to get a late offer of admission. you will hold up accepting offers from other programs, you will delay your happiness over your other admits, all because NYU might possibly still accept you in mid-april. you cannot call NYU on, say, march 30 and ask outright, "look, i want to get on with my life, so if i'm definitely out of the running, can you just tell me?" they won't. they didn't even email the decisions back when i applied. you had to wait for the snail mail to let you know you're not the one. it's such a huge mess of a bureaucracy there that if some part of your application is missing, the history department probably won't even know it because the application won't make it out of the graduate school of arts and sciences. applying to NYU is, to put it mildly, a clusterfuck. there are wonderful scholars at NYU. i still read their work and fall in love with every page. and who wouldn't want to live in new york? but holy hell, dealing with the graduate school of arts and sciences there is a nightmare. it's like talking to the borg.

sometimes they're offended. especially if their email is straight forward and not asking for a fundamental rethinking of your research. conversely, i've always found that professors explicitly tell me they appreciate it when i get back to them promptly. people (any people) get sick of waiting for responses to fairly simple questions.

i usually return emails within an hour, unless i'm asleep. if it's an email that calls for some thought (i.e. an advisor asking fundamental questions about my work) i take a couple hours to breathe and think before responding. if i get one of those earth-shattering emails on a weekend, i'll give myself a grace period until monday to reply. but anything that's simply procedural, i respond as soon as i see it otherwise i'll forget about it. i've found that in the process of attempting to declutter my life, dealing with easy emails ("it's okay if we move our meeting to 10") as soon as you see them has lowered my stress levels and made my life a lot simpler. if i get an email that requires a lot of thought AND a quick reply, i reply right away that i'll think on it and get back to the person. people don't really like to be left hanging and if they're expecting an answer, i find it's helpful to let them know you're working on it. i am chained to a laptop or smartphone at all times, though, and i don't actually think this is the best thing for productivity or getting regular human contact. i don't think people need to reply within the hour and constantly check their emails, but i do think replying to the easy stuff as soon as you see it is a good habit.

the basics: at most programs, a thesis (even an MA thesis) needs to be a piece of original research. that means you need to use primary sources and do an analysis of them. it also (usually) needs to be an argument that no one has made before about your case. you can take someone else's argument and apply it to a new situation. or you can take a heavily-covered topic and try to put a new slant on it. or you can use sources that no one's used before to strengthen or take apart existing arguments. but there are two things you'll always need to do: have primary sources, and talk about how your argument relates to the other historiographical stuff that's been written already. there are two main ways to start: 1) find a set of primary sources. any at all. plantation records from a single plantation. whatever. start there, read the sources, and see what they tell you. see if you can pull an argument out of it. then consult the secondary literature, see if anyone's written on that idea before. if so, keep looking for a different idea. if not, there's your thesis. start writing. 2) read a lot of the secondary literature. read the books on topics that interest you. as you read, look for "gaps." places where they mention they're unsure, or someone needs to do further research. then, once you've found your gap in the historiography, start looking for sources (probably published sources available at the closest university library to you) that relate to your topic. then start writing your thesis. the least complicated approach is to start with the set of sources and see if an argument or idea jumps out at you after reading them. i will tell you, it is extremely difficult to navigate the process of writing a masters thesis without the help of a professor. you could end up going down the rabbit hole and working for a very long time only to be told that you're not on the right track and need to start over. if this means waiting for your advisor to get off their sabbatical, i suggest you do that. in the meantime, try reading some books related to your field (i.e. if you're doing plantation slavery history, read the books on that topic, even if they're about different states or regions). also consider emailing the director of graduate studies (who probably isn't the same person as the department chair) and telling him/her you want to finish your masters. the DGS will be able to tell you the specific requirements of your thesis. don't feel silly for asking these questions. the history profession hasn't actually figured out a good way to teach people how to DO history yet. they just assume that if we read enough of it and try a few times (writing masters theses, dissertation chapters, book chapters) that eventually we'll get the hang of it. most people writing MAs have these sorts of questions at some point, even/especially when they already thought they knew what to do. /testifying

grad students in my department have a wall of shame in the grad lounge, featuring all of the hilariously ridiculous answers that students (names redacted) have put in papers and exams. one of my favourites is insisting that computers were invented in the 1800s and helped end the civil war. i had one student define the nation of islam (in addition to the correct information i was looking for) as "those dudes with the bitchin' fedoras." he made me laugh so i gave him bonus points. my experience at a very large semi-private institution with a huge sports program and most students from the local area is that the kids are unsurprisingly average. not that many brilliant ones, but not that many who really struggle with the basics either. the only times i've been really worried about students' abilities to read and write, they had either already been flagged by the school as "at risk" kids that got extra assistance and monitoring or they were athletes. (i've also had brilliant athletes and at-risk students.) one kid that absolutely broke my heart would just never speak in class. and it was a small room, only 8 students. he could barely bring himself to say hello to me and never spoke to other students. he really struggled with the material all year long, but when it came to this special creative writing assignment (writing historical fiction using information from their readings and lectures), he really ran with it. granted, he didn't actually use any of the material from his texts , but he did have a real narrative voice and great imagination. he was finally expressing himself. he told me as he handed it in that he loved that assignment because he wants to be a writer. ugh. that kid is heartbreaking.

you guys are nuts. you're all panicking about what is the easiest part of grad school: getting in. not to say that getting in is easy (it isn't), but the rest is harder. one girl in my program broke down sobbing and stopped eating for days when she thought she wasn't going to get a summer fellowship to do research abroad because other people in our department heard they had won the fellowships before she did. her parents were on the verge of flying out here to take care of her because, literally, she had stopped eating. and only maybe 2 days after others had learned they won fellowships, she found out that she had won 2 or 3 and would have more money than anyone to do summer research. another colleague in my program was having panic attacks because, after being held up for a full year by her dissertation committee who wouldn't approve her dissertation proposal because some of the formatting in her footnotes was wrong (i shit you not), her advisor quit her and no one else would work with her. they believed that these delays to be her fault rather than her committee's (in truth: it was a little of both, but 75% committee politics and maybe 25% of a weak proposal). eventually, she scraped together a committee, and will finally be leaving to do her dissertation research after an 18-month delay. yet another colleague has just had a baby and has no fellowship for his research year, which should be happening next year. he can't even make progress on his fellowship applications because his advisor will not certify that he has proficiency in his research language, despite taking several certification tests (and passing all of them) in that language. because she is the only person in our city that has the credentials to approve his language training, he's stuck until she's satisfied he can translate the language (he's damn near fluent in it, by the way, coming from other grad students who are native in that language). so, next year, he's faced with no fellowship, potentially being thrown out of the program for failing to meet the language requirement on time, AND he has a newborn to care for. yet another new daddy is on the job market this year. he was on it last year and got a lot of interest but no campus visit invitations, so he added a chapter to his dissertation just so he'd have employment as a TA this year. it's better to spend 1 more year in grad school than 1 year outside of academia all together if you're looking for a job. getting that TAship was dependent on new students turning our school's offer down, so just getting that funding was a nightmare for him. now, his second year on the job market, he had only 2 top 10 interviews (less interest than his first year, when he had fewer publications and a less clear project). only one resulted in a campus visit, which he just completed today. last week he did a mock job talk in our department and was ripped apart by the faculty because it just... wasn't good. if he doesn't get this job, he will be unemployed next year, because there is no way to squeeze one last year of funding from our school. he will have his PhD in hand but have no job. and a baby. and a self-employed wife whose income ebbs and flows. these are all the problems you'll face once you're actually IN graduate school. so... build your coping skills now by still having your life and your sanity as you wait until february for these acceptances to come in. professors and departments are very busy and adcoms don't meet as often as you all think they do. just because schools may be talking to people in january doesn't mean they won't actually meet and decide on admissions until mid-february. calm the eff down, people.

i think that every student in the "applying" sections of these forums should read your post. this, to me, sounds like a normal advising situation. normal. not good, not ideal, not as it should be, but rather, as it tends to be. i'm not a science student, but i'll try to break down what i understand to be the core of your conflict: you are not running his experiments as he would like, or giving up on them when they're not panning out, because (as you yourself admitted) you don't really care about the results. you don't see the point in doing them, so why spend hours tinkering with them if they're not working? a fair decision for a professor to make about his/her own work, but maybe not a fair one for a PhD student to make about a professor's work. at the same time, as you attempt to progress in your own research, you're criticized for your approach. running an experiment three times, instead of once, on a project you care about (but one that your advisor does not), is a completely legitimate thing for you to do. it's your work, not his, and you need to get it done properly, not him. in that instance, he was wrong to criticize you for being thorough in your experiment. in essence, it sounds like neither of you are particularly invested in each other. not him in your work (which is a big problem, objectively speaking), and not you in his (which he sees as a big problem, which makes it a big problem). if you weren't so far along in your program, i'd tell you to consider switching labs or getting a co-advisor. now, you're so far along that to even get a co-advisor will seem antagonistic to your current advisor. what you CAN do (and i recommend you do), however, is get a MENTOR. find a professor in your department whose career trajectory you wish to emulate. find someone you respect, whose work ethic you admire, who approaches your discipline with the same ethics and sense of importance that you do. find that person and go talk to him or her. tell this person that you're really happy with the work you're doing with your advisor (even if it's not true), but that you value this person's input on the professional and administrative aspects of your field. ask him or her who to network with other scientists. how to find the time to make progress on your research project, not some tangent of it, but the real project. and, after a couple meetings of building rapport with this prof, then approach your dilemma regarding your working relationship with your advisor. DON'T frame it as wanting to leave (because, at this point, you shouldn't), but ask for advice on how to improve your work with your advisor. how should you go about prioritizing your own research experiments without dismissing your advisor's needs? when should you defend your intellectual position and when should you acknowledge that you're still learning and perhaps your advisor has something to teach you? people often mistake advisors for mentors. many wish (and sometimes get) an advisor that also acts as a mentor, showing a student how to get through grad school, how to deal with other professors and students, etc. while your relationship with your advisor sounds absolutely less than ideal, that's on both sides of the equation, not just yours. neither of you see each other as ideal. seek out a mentor you can trust and ask for advice on how to improve that situation for BOTH you and your advisor.

thanks for the clarification. as for what mean things i said, i basically told you to act like an adult and swore at you a lot (for real), but then i realized you might be young or in a new location and therefore have absolutely no one to talk to. now i know that this is about a dislike of your coworkers, i can say: suck it up. in your entire life, you will often have to work with people, and work well with them, when you actively dislike them as human beings. just be thankful they're not family members that you HAVE to spend time with! if you don't want to go to social events with them, then don't. in my own program (which is admittedly less collaborative than yours) there are people who never come to any departmental social event and usually can't even be found on campus except in the classroom, and no one holds it against them. they still win departmental fellowships, professors still talk about them as examples of great students, and grad students still think of them when putting together conference panels. if and when you get a tenured job at a university, you'll be working with people you can't stand as human beings. and you'll both be there for life (or until another job comes along). so dealing with people you hate in a way that doesn't affect anyone's work is a skill you must learn NOW. don't hang out with them. at departmental events, DO go if you already have to be on campus that day (skip it if it means commuting just for that event), but don't stay long at the event, and spend your time talking to professors, not grad students. or hell, just talk to the staff. making the secretaries like you will go a long way, and odds are they're very nice, normal people. if you read an article and you know it may be relevant for a fellow grad student's work, send it to them. say "hey, i thought this would be relevant for you." if you're putting together a conference panel, ask some fellow grad students to be on it. build a professional relationship with these jerks, not a personal one. it is possible to do, most "networking" is professional rather than personal. i often send articles or calls for papers to people i don't like because i see it's relevant for them. and guess what? then they start sending that stuff to me. and i know that, years later, if they're putting together a panel or a collection, they'll think of me. but that doesn't mean i get beers with them or hang out with them. know the difference between a colleague and a friend. it matters. change your thinking on this issue before you go quitting grad school for what is easily the WORST reason i've ever heard ("i hate the grad students"). really... it's the WORST reason. it will kill your career to admit to professors that you're leaving because you don't like the grad students. they won't write you good LORs for another program, if they write them at all, because this is such an unprofessional reason to bail on their program. you will burn bridges with professors. so learn to live with the grad students. be an adult.

let me clarify, while i think it IS very important to have friends while you are in graduate school (and to have a social life), i don't think those friends need to be your fellow graduate students. so if you have friends, any friends, right now, then just maintain cordial working relationships with your coworkers and carry on. if you have no friends at all (which didn't sound like it, considering you're commuting to your program from your previous residence), then that's another matter, to which i would still say: find friends outside of your program and just don't try to be friends with people you don't like.

what i wrote here was very mean. so i took it out. and i'll replace it with this. you don't need to be friends with your coworkers, which is what your fellow grad students are. coworkers. it would be a colossal mistake to jeopardize your relationship with your professors by transferring programs because you don't have friends in your graduate program. as long as you have some friends, in any capacity, to hang out with where you live, you don't need to be anything more than cordial with other grad students. so get friends you like, wherever they are. but do not throw away your career because you mistake your coworkers for people that are supposed to be your only source of friendship. also, there many be students who enroll next year that you like. or the year after. have some perspective. treat grad school like a job, because it is.

1. it is ability, not need. most programs (but not all) in the US only accept students they can fully fund, so it will be rare to get an offer of admission without any funding, or for less than at least 4 years of funding. but whether those years are all TAships or all fellowships or a mixture of the two will depend solely on the merit of your application. 2. the amount is determined by the university budget committee. your department and your potential advisor have nothing to do with the dollars and cents of your paycheck. absolutely zero. even if you ask them how much you'll get paid, they won't actually have a clue. 3. i would only "expect a definite amount" when you have your offer in hand. they usually tell you how much they paid someone in your position last year and they promise your stipend will be equal to or higher than that amount. again: whether or not you, with a family, can live on your stipend is an important question, but it is one that CAN wait until february, march, and april, when you get your acceptances. you will have time to figure out if you can live on that stipend. asking profs won't be helpful because at best they'll say they don't know and at worse they'll guess and give you bad info. asking grad students won't help because they'll find it rude and it will create some unintentional bad blood with your future colleagues. you CAN ask grad students if the stipend is enough to support a family, or if any of them have families and how they manage with the pay. the problem is asking for the dollars and cents or what their split between TA and fellowship years looks like. it's bad form, and bottom line, you can just wait for the envelope with the actual offer in it.

that's not what i was implying. i gotta say, if i read someone's SOP and it was full of assertions that history can be objective (or that journalism can be objective, or that "slant" is something that can be turned off or on) i would throw that application in the trash. "objectivity" is simply reinforcing the status quo, and doing so is absolutely a politically biased choice. "center" is very much a political position, just like "left" and "right" are. to claim to offer the "true" history, consisting "only" of facts (which facts? whose facts? choosing what to exclude is as political and subjective as what you put in) is an incredibly dangerous perspective because it keeps a historian ignorant of his or her own biases. so, someone arguing long and hard about doing history the "proper" way by presenting only facts and making centrist/status quo arguments would (probably?) be a big turn-off at schools like berkeley or michigan or texas.

getting a job at a museum or archive is as competitive as getting one at a university. for museums, you usually need internship experience, which people rarely do during their PhD unless their ultimate goal is to work in a museum rather than at a university. for archives, you almost always need a library science degree. if you have that AND a PhD, then you're really well positioned for archive jobs, but you will almost always be paying for the masters of library science yourself (and taking out loans and/or working a full-time "regular" job). there are a lot of options in public history (government, NGOs, think-tanks, historical societies) and private enterprises (business stuff? private consulting) but if these are going to be realistic fall-back options for you, you need to build networking connections in these fields as you do your PhD, not once you're finished and can't get a teaching gig. in this political climate, with growing attacks on higher education and public education, i think everyone needs to at least be building connections for a non-university plan B, if not making that their plan A. read the chronicle of higher education's website to get a feel for the job market problems and please realize that the job market isn't bad because the economy is bad right now. the academic job market has been in the toilet for 15-20 years. now, despite all this doom and gloom, people do in fact get tenure-track jobs. and they're not all 4/4 teaching loads, and they're not all at community colleges and state satellite campuses either. for real! it happens. the best book i've read on how to navigate graduate school successfully and maximize your odds at getting a tenure-track job is graduate study for the 21st century: how to build an academic career in the humanities by gregory colón semenza. it is my bible. it is worth reading before starting graduate school and re-reading repeatedly throughout the process.

a couple things (i'm in procrastination mode. eff comps): 1. regarding teaching and education experience at US vs. european schools... european (including UK) PhD programs do not generally have seminars, or at least not what american schools consider graduate seminars. at a US school, you'll take courses with 8-12 (and sometimes more) other graduate students that, depending on the size of your department, may or may not be close to the general subject of your dissertation (like "race in latin america" or "18th century france"). at a UK/euro school, you will instead have independent studies with your advisor and maybe 1-3 other students, and the topic will be narrowly focused on what you're researching (like "travel account narratives in 19th century southeast asia" or "public health in early 20th century caribbean"). because graduate and undergraduate education are so fundamentally different, being a US-born student with a US undergraduate degree in no way prepares you to lead US graduate seminars if you get your PhD at a european school. in fact, the biggest gulf between the educational styles of US vs. european schools is in graduate training, so american schools will want a european PhD candidate to prove that they can advise grad students and lead grad seminars in the US style before they hire someone. it is a distinct transition from the european to US style (and vice versa) and it is often difficult to make. some US schools will take chances on people with european PhDs, believing that they have the ability to grow and adapt as mentors and teachers, but this whole conversation does put a european-earned PhD at a disadvantage compared to US-earned PhDs. 2. regarding interviews: read the department's website carefully. read their graduate handbook front to back. you do NOT want to ask anyone a question that could've been answered by reading their website. it looks bad. i recommend checking the department's course offerings and asking how often X seminar is taught. know something about the work of all of the professors you will be speaking with. ask if you'll get the opportunity to TA and how the TA assignments are determined. ask what sort of research funding the department can provide. ask about the publication rates and job placement statistics of grad students in general and grad students in your subfield in particular. REALLY important: ask what it's like to live in that city/town (it's an easy question and one people love answering, including profs). ask about grad student morale (all you need to do is check the "officially grad students" subforum here to realize that, often, morale is low). ask your potential advisor about his or her new work or next project. ask what people do for fun, ask if there's a good running trail or yoga studio or microbrew. beyond letting them know that you're smart, you want to demonstrate that you're nice and that you're a well-rounded complete human being with a life. in terms of questions you will be asked, one of the softball questions (in their mind) is "why do you want to come here?" "because it's an ivy league" is not a good answer. good answers include "i'm interested in race and gender in latin america, and i feel like the latin americanists here ask the sort of questions i'm interested in answering in my own work. i like their approach to questions of social construction and inequality." or whatever. but link the answer of why you want to go there to your potential advisors' own research and arguments. "i want to live in new york" is a terrible answer. so does everyone. "i love history" is a boring answer. no one cares. they all love history. "i'm really interested in modern europe." of course, otherwise why would you want to write about it for the rest of your life? if you don't know the work of your potential advisors at these schools, then 1) why are you applying there? and 2) learn their work, learn about the types of questions they ask and arguments they make, and link your answer to that. as far as clothing goes, dress business-casual. we're dealing with academics here. until you meet them, you don't know if they wear suits every day or jeans and tevas every day (my own department? jeans and tevas. profs wear sandals until there's snow on the ground). wearing a suit might put people off and make you seem like you approach history as a business. dress too informally and they may think you're not serious about making this your career. dress pants or khakis and a button-up shirt/blouse or a nice sweater never really offends anyone, but a power suit or jeans and a t-shirt might, and you never know what the department culture is like until you get there. 3. the matter of stipends: this is a VERY touchy subject. asking a professor this question is tough, because different students are offered different funding packages (you're not all treated equally in the same department), and a prof doesn't want to lead you to believe you'll definitely get fellowships or definitely only receive TAships. also, frankly, most profs don't know what their students' salaries are. i know that in my own program the profs were particularly shocked to learn that the cost of one credit (out of 30 in a year) is higher than our monthly stipends as TAs. so they have no clue. but you can ask if students usually receive or win research fellowships and dissertation writing fellowships, how well they do competing for national fellowships like the ACLS mellon or the SSRC. odds are, on a campus visit, you'll meet with a few grad students for lunch or coffee. DO NOT ASK THEM HOW MUCH THEY MAKE. they don't all earn the same amount of money. some will have fellowships that pay a few hundred dollars more a month than the people with TAships. don't ask them what the normal incoming funding package looks like, because they're all different, and some people might be upset that they make less than others. it's a very sensitive subject. and if you ask it, they'll hold it against you (i've seen it happen) and if you decide to go to that school, it can take people a while to forget the uncomfortable situation you put them in with your seemingly innocuous question. so what can you ask? ask if the stipends are usually livable. ask if you'll need to take out loans to cover your expenses. ask if people can afford to keep a car. ask if it's easy or hard to get research fellowships that allow you to go abroad to use archives. grad students will then volunteer as much as they're comfortable with regarding how much they make. because here's the bottom line on stipends: when you're accepted to a school, they'll tell you how much they'll offer you. it won't be a mystery. and if you don't get in, then who cares how much that school pays their students anyway? it really is none of your business what your fellow grad students make. you'll know the stipend amounts when the acceptances come in from the schools. then get a cost of living calculator and compare your offers. you don't need to make your future colleagues uncomfortable by asking them how much they make. it doesn't matter. what matters is how much that school offers you. again: DON'T ASK THEM HOW MUCH THEY MAKE.

time for my annual "turn off the internet" post: most of you won't hear anything, positive or negative, until mid-february. right now, it's mid-january. with a few exceptions (which seem to be genuine surprises, so there's no way to predict them) you won't get any news for the next 3-4 weeks. so do yourself a favour and don't visit this website in that time. if you get an email from a school, it will arrive regardless of whether or not you check this website. if you get a letter in the mail, that will also arrive regardless of the power of the internet. if february 15 comes and goes with no word, log back on and see if others have heard from the same school yet. but do yourself a favour and wait until february 15 to start haunting this place in the hope that you'll get some inside info. otherwise, the next month will crawl.

1. you hear an outcome regarding your application (winning it, being waitlisted, losing) in april. no sooner. they promise early april and usually only actually send the letters in late april (meaning april 30, not april 16). my award letter from last year was dated may 5, 2011. so anyone hoping for anything in march or even the beginning of april can just calm down. it won't happen. you will, however, hear in february whether you were considered A list or B list. B list means you're out, A list means you still have a shot. if you're applying through your school, odds are you know this information already, but if you're applying directly, you don't hear until february. 2. students cannot really negotiate their awards. i applied directly to SSHRC as i was finishing a masters program in the US. i was accepted to the same school's PhD program (which was just a little more than a mere formality) but the SSHRC considered me to be not yet enrolled in any PhD program, so they offered me the CGS, which you can only hold while studying in canada, or the SSHRC. my choice. since i decided to stay in the US, i took the SSHRC, and that opened up a CGS for someone else who had only won the SSHRC. that, in turn, opened up a spot for someone on the waitlist to get an SSHRC. that is, i believe, the total extent of "negotiating" that one can do with the SSHRC. you can turn down awards, but you can't angle for anything better. 3. students have been able to negotiate admission to schools after receiving the SSHRC or CGS. if you're rejected from every school you can apply to, but then have this external source of funding, it would be a wise move to reach out to your dream school and let them know you'll be able to fund (or partially fund, depending on the tuition rate) yourself. particularly if you win a 4-year doctoral award but aren't admitted to any PhD programs, you can convince many schools (american and canadian) to take you on. however, if you're admitted to even one school and you win an award, just go to that school. keeping them on hold (way past the april 15 deadline to confirm your school acceptances) because you might win a SSHRC in early may which means you might convince harvard to take you after all is a waste of everyone's time and generally considered poor form. but again, if you win an award and are shut out of admissions (which does happen) then you can convince schools to bring you along. it might be possible to negotiate different funding packages with schools based on receiving a SSHRC, but be careful about how you approach that. if you're too demanding, the schools reserve the right to rescind their offer of admission.

sapperdaddy will do well at berkeley.

ask your graduate director to reach out to other departments and ask if they have any TA positions open. in my own program (history), we've had TAs from religious studies, math, biology. another option would be to get a non-academic job for a few months. coffee/bar/restaurant gigs can have fairly flexible hours.