StrangeLight

you guys are nuts. if one of your LORs is late, that's fine. schools will not disqualify your application because of that because the LOR is one of the most central parts. the adcoms will not feel as though they have a good sense of the student without all 3 LORs, so they won't make a decision for or against without these letters. plus, as many others have said in this thread, profs will cut each other slack even when they won't cut students slack. if something you're responsible for (your writing sample, for example) is late or missing, they might throw out your application. but if it's something the prof is responsible for (the LOR), they'll wait. always. so breathe. if they're using an electronic LOR submission system, the prof will receive reminder emails before and after the deadline to submit the letter.

yeah, we don't have offices at all. students that are TAing get cubicles that they share with one or two other students, and those who are on fellowship get small lockers to store books. the cubicles are housed in a hallway between profs' offices, and we have no windows or natural light anywhere in my department because all the windows are taken up with prof offices.

they want to know if the prof is an assistant prof, associate, full prof, distinguished, etc. do NOT write "mrs." i saw a prof flip out last week in seminar when a student referred to an author as "mrs. X." they want to know the recommending professor's rank, that's all.

we have 5 communal computers in our grad lounge, but it's too noisy/distracting to do work there and the computers barely work. i'd say 3/4 of the students bring their computers with them to campus. but, other than the computer, i don't actually bring more than you do: keys, phone, wallet. all the stuff i listed is tiny and carried on a single keychain.

use the best paper. if they're both history papers, if they both use primary historical sources, if they both posit research questions and arguments, use whichever one is best, even if it's not what you work on anymore. the biggest things you want to demonstrate with these writing samples is 1) your ability to work with primary sources to make original arguments, 2) your ability to work with primary and secondary sources written in languages other than english. your SOP would/should demonstrate your knowledge of your intended field of study (modern europe and sexuality) by outlining a research project that would advance discussion in your new field, so your writing sample doesn't need to be related to your new topic. even if you can't demonstrate a lot of knowledge of modern european history or history of sexuality yet, those are things you can learn through the readings in your graduate seminars. knowing that stuff before you apply is FAR less important than demonstrating that you can actually DO history, which is what the writing sample is for.

i have considered a second AC adapter but it's too heavy/bulky to carry everyday if i can help it. if i'm on campus, there's a computer in our grad lounge that has my dropbox files on it, so i can switch over to that if need be, and almost every other student has a mac computer, so one of them usually has a charger with them.

my current EDC: mighty wallet tyvek wallet iphone 3gs carabiner with: leatherman squirt ps4, 4sevens quark mini 123, fisher trekker space pen, spy capsule with earbuds, house/car/department keys. BIC lighter if i'm headed to out campus i add: macbook pro 13" AC adapter (if i'm anticipating working for over 6 hours away from home) however many books i have to read/discuss that day i'm eying other lighters since i blow through BICs so fast lately. also considering a small spyderco folding knife, but i need to research the PA knife laws a little better first. i've been using a scarf in place of a hanky a lot, so i'm going to grab a handkerchief next time i see one i like. i considered getting a leatherman wave, but i find the squirt is perfect for everything when i'm out and about and, at home, i have all the other tools i'd need.

i just bought a fisher trekker space pen. while i think the bullets are more aesthetically pleasing, i like that i can attach the cap of the trekker to my keychain. i've gone off the deep end putting together my EDC (everyday carry). trying to fit my life on a single keychain has been... fun.

People usually get FLASes to fund advanced language study, so if you're looking to do the equivalent of the 2nd or 3rd year of language training, you might be able to get a FLAS in your first year. The problem is that many centers determine their FLAS recipients before that year's admissions cycle is over, and the FLAS has a separate application for continuing students, so the area studies centers may not consider incoming students for the fellowships at all. It'll really depend on the policies of each institution.

fair enough. but when i was leaving UBC as an undergrad, all of my professors told me that under no circumstances should i do my PhD in canada (in latin american history). when i protested and said i wanted to apply to at least one canadian program, the prof i contacted at that program also told me that if i wanted a good chance at getting a job, i should get my PhD from a US school rather than a canadian one. while these warnings might have been tailored to my situation as a latin americanist, i have heard countless profs at canadian institutions strongly encourage their BA and MA students to pursue their PhDs in the US if they hope to land tenure-track jobs. i hope that, for everyone's sake, the profs i've talked to about this were being overly pessimistic. i dig U of T, it's a great school, but a placement record "exceeding 50%" is not a good thing. it is a shame that we will all bleed and sweat and cry and work for almost a decade, only to have a coin flip's chance at a TT job. there are also a number of institutions with placement rates over 70%, so 50% is setting the bar pretty low. and are those tenure-track jobs, or simply jobs in academia? i only discourage others from getting PhDs at canadian schools because i was so strongly discouraged from doing the same by the professors at my canadian undergrad institution, and only because they said explicitly that staying in canada will kill my job chances. i hope they're wrong. i'm sure all of you in canadian programs have seen your colleagues get jobs and i genuinely hope that continues.

you're right, i shouldn't have written "everyone." in history, the top programs have placement rates in the 70%ile. and "top program" doesn't at all conform to the traditional top 10 rankings. harvard and princeton are down in the 40-50% placement range, which is why they won't publish their placements. 'cause it ain't good. but yeah, i misspoke/miswrote when i said "everyone." should've said "almost everyone."

no, sending your application in right at the deadline will not lower your chances of getting in. most admissions committees don't start looking at the applications until a week or two after the deadline. as for the GRE, it depends on how late your scores will get to each school. different schools have different rules, and some of them will consider your application to be incomplete. they may or may not actually reject you based on that alone. it depends. i would contact each school individually to ask them if they will accept your GRE scores after the deadline. you don't have another option now anyway, since you can't change the date of the test at this point.

that's what my undergraduate professors at my canadian R1 school with a PhD program told me. you won't get a job with a PhD in history from a canadian university, UNLESS: 1) you're doing medieval history at U of T, 2) you're doing first nations/indigenous history at a handful of schools, 3) you're doing canadian history. other than those three exceptions, the only jobs a student with a PhD from canada will even come close to getting is one at a community college relatively close to their PhD institution, and it probably won't be a tenure-track position. canadian schools prefer to hire candidates with PhDs from the US or oxbridge and with the state of the job market in the last 15 years, the schools have had the luxury of top-tier applicant pools for their job openings. you'll get a fine education at a canadian PhD program. you just won't get a job. conversely, canadian schools are GREAT places to get fully funded MAs in any subfield that let students springboard into some of the best PhD programs in the US and UK.

1) you should be applying to schools that offer you full funding, rather than asking you to pay for the MA/PhD, so american schools will be within your budget. they (almost) all provide full funding to the students they admit. do not leave them out. canada is (generally speaking, with a few small yet important exceptions) a wonderful place to get an MA and a terrible place to get a PhD. please also apply to american schools in addition to canadian ones. 2) what you're describing does not sound like "industrial history," which i would read as either the history of industrialization or the history of labour in industrialized settings. it sounds like you're talking about "business history." you may have more success searching for programs that specialize in "business history." the university of miami comes to mind. someone there specializes in business history (prof. miller?) and the school's library houses the pan am airlines archive. 3) in general, many programs do not specialize in business history or economic history. it is considered to be out of fashion. that's why you're not finding a lot of schools that work on it. in order for your project to not appear outdated, i think you'll need to make a case in your statement of purpose that the overall field of history should return to considerations of business or economic history because of X, Y, and Z.

listen, you said things were great with her until you really dropped the ball this week, so perhaps this conversation she wants to have is really just about what happened in this past week. try not to freak out until you actually hear what she has to say. i agree with sigaba, however. if your advisor phoned enterprise to see if they have rentals, then my sense is that your relationship with her prior to this week wasn't actually as smooth as you imagine it to be. i have a very intense advisor myself and i feel like i've been in your situation before. i was doing great with my advisor until i produced a terrible first draft of my MA thesis. once i fixed the problems for the second draft, she decided that the outline for the thesis she had enthusiastically approved months prior no longer worked, so she asked for a full re-write, which i produced to her satisfaction. so between an awful first draft and then a simple reorganization of the second draft, my advisor wasn't sure if she wanted to keep me on as a student anymore. she took responsibility for my poor work by saying she didn't realize she needed to police me this much or to hold my hand through the process. even when the other committee members of my defense thought my work was great, she still congratulated me with back-handed compliments. when i won a highly competitive national fellowship for my dissertation project, she said it was "a great way to end what has been a very difficult year for you." all because of one bad draft and one reorganization of the outline. it took literally 4 more months of producing flawless work, catching some of her own mistakes before she sent emails out to her colleagues, and covering her classes when she needed to take mat leave in order for her to regain her confidence in me. i now have it. i don't worry about my standing with her anymore. but this took work. for some particularly intense and perfectionistic profs (even more perfectionistic than any of us), you can get on their shit list very easily. you have two options: take your lumps silently when you fuck up (even if it's a minor fuck up) and work your ass off for far too long to make up for it OR change advisors to someone a little more laid back. i stayed with my advisor because even though her margin for error is unforgivingly small, she was still right about everything that was wrong with my work and she helped me fix it. would other advisors in our department have been happy with my terrible first draft? absolutely. i know that for a fact. but that doesn't mean it wasn't terrible or that i shouldn't have rewritten it. i guess... listen to what your advisor has to say. if it is as harsh as you fear it will be, you can double-down on your effort, cut back on your sleep, and bust your ass to please her, or you can talk to the DGS about potentially moving on. i'd suggest attempting the ass-busting before the moving-on, at least for a little while.

give them your statistics on job placements in the last 5 years. be specific: list both the university and the job position, since getting a 1-year adjuncting gig at an ivy is not as good as a tenure-track job at a state school satellite campus and you don't want to misrepresent your placement statistics by only naming the institutions. if you can demonstrate that everyone graduating from your program gets a TT job within 2 years of completion, people will apply there. if you can't say that about your school, well.... then i guess you shouldn't mention placement at all. (or, if lots of people move to industry from your field, list those jobs and companies as well).

for what it's worth, since i've been in my program not a single person that came to visit before being admitted was actually accepted to my program. i'd lay back a bit and let the prof reestablish contact, and if you get admitted, then ask about visiting.

for what it's worth, i was trying to be rude to tittywriter83. whenever i read/hear someone complaining that they are unfairly graded because they're so brilliant and their peers with higher grades are let off easy, i think they deserve a bit of rudeness. people think too damn highly of themselves. and while i appreciate sigaba sticking up for me, i can also handle myself and any negative recs that may come my way. sometimes delusional people need to be told that they're delusional, and i'm always happy to provide that service.

your MA GPA will be weighted much more heavily than your undergrad because it will be evidence that you can do graduate work. once you get the MA, the undergrad GPA is always much less of a factor, so your top schools could still be within your reach. in general, i think it's best to wait until the MA is done to apply for the PhD so you can use your MA thesis as your writing sample, but if you'll have a draft of your thesis that your advisor thinks is strong enough for a writing sample during the second year of your MA, it doesn't hurt to apply then either. just be prepared for possibly needing to apply again if things don't pan out the first time through.

you're a literature student and that is probably one of the most poorly written paragraphs i've read in a while, so i'm guessing you actually earned those Bs and think far too highly of yourself. in my experience, it's way more common for students to reinterpret criticism as praise. i've been in the room while a student gets told, gently, that everything in their writing needs to change, but "the ideas are there" or "the content looks great," because people need something nice to say other than "this is a train wreck." and those students leave the room thinking, "everyone loved my ideas and content," not "everyone basically told me i need to rewrite this."

<p>i&#39;ve heard that some students get multiyear fellowships and others are admitted without guaranteed funding. they are usually able to secure funding each year, or each year after their first, but they never actually know if they&#39;re funded until the end of the previous school year. it&#39;s a stressful and precarious position to be in and one i would recommend avoiding (i.e. if that&#39;s what wisconsin offers you and you get in ANYWHERE else, don&#39;t go to wisconsin). i spoke briefly with a wisconsin student about it and he told me it was stressful but that &quot;most&quot; people &quot;usually&quot; got funded. he did feel, however, that professors treated the students with multi-year guaranteed funding differently than the ones who were scrambling year in and out for funding.</p> <p> </p> <p>talk to the DGS and current grad students there. it was 2 years ago that i had this conversation with a wisconsin student, so it may be different now. better, or worse. you should ask around.</p> <div id="myEventWatcherDiv" style="display:none;"> </div>

this is a great post. i look forward to reading the replies of prospective grad students who will write, "but my case will be different, because i've wanted this since forever." there is a way to bow out gracefully, by the way. it's to go to your primary advisor and to say, "i don't want this life. i look around here, at profs and students alike with varying degrees of stress, dissatisfaction, and contentment, and i just don't want any of it. thank you for seeing the potential in my scholarly work, but this isn't where i want to be." and then leave. anyone that will begrudge you for leaving that way is not worth your time anyway.

i schedule exercise the same way i schedule course work, research work, prepping to TA. i look at it as something that needs to get done (ideally, a minimum of 3 times a week, although the past month i've fallen off the rails a bit). since you're in new york, i'd recommend walking to as many places as possible. getting off a few stops early and walking the rest of the way sounds like a good move. venture a little farther out in your neighborhood than usual to get a meal or buy groceries. always take the stairs instead of the elevator. also, consider trying a standing work-station. since you've waited tables, you're used to being on your feet all day. elevate a desk to chest height and try to stand while you read or write, taking breaks as necessary. you'd be surprised how much energy you can burn doing that.

<p>i don&amp;#39;t know. sometimes i go back and edit out the code. sometimes it doesn&amp;#39;t come up at all. this website hates me.</p> <div id="myEventWatcherDiv" style="display:none;"> </div> see???

<p>&quot;adding a primary source&quot; wouldn&#39;t be a good way to create a research paper anyway. research papers are built on your primary sources, they&#39;re not historiographies with a few primary sources thrown in. the lack of ability to work with arabic primary sources also implies a lack of ability to work with arabic secondary sources, which will also be critically important. i&#39;d suggest revising your writing sample to clearly show your knowledge of the secondary sources written in arabic. this will at least communicate to programs that you can read arabic (which, after 2.5 semesters, you should be able to do, if slowly and with a dictionary/translator on hand). this is doable in the time frame you have until applications are due and it will, at a minimum, prove that you really know arabic.</p> <p> </p> <p>you say you already completed an MA in history, so i&#39;m surprised to see that you don&#39;t have a writing sample that includes primary sources. what did you do for your MA thesis? i promise you that PhD programs will also be surprised that you don&#39;t have a writing sample that includes primary sources. this should be a much larger concern to you than anything about visits or GRE scores.</p> <p> </p> <p>forget about the GRE. it&#39;s over. unless you scored under 500V (or, under the old system, a 500V), i wouldn&#39;t even bother mentioning it in your SOP. let it go. either use a writing sample with primary sources (even if they&#39;re in english) OR make sure your historiography paper mentions secondary sources that are written in arabic. if possible, choose a writing sample with english primary sources but arabic secondary sources.</p> <p> </p> <p>again, the weak part of your application is not your GRE or your lack of a visit: it&#39;s your writing sample/language preparation. do what you can now to make up for that and forget about the rest.</p> <div id="myEventWatcherDiv" style="display:none;"> </div>