Simple Twist of Fate

I'm an undergraduate senior, so I'm not sure about the applicability of this to graduate study, but I've found a program called Evernote to be very useful for research projects. It has several advantages to just taking notes in word documents:
1. Each document is easily searchable and taggable. For my thesis, having tags for certain sources was extremely helpful when I started to analyze them all together. I can use tags to categorize both secondary and primary sources.
2. It translates easily across devices. I use it on my laptop and my iPad. I'm sure it exists for iPhones, etc also. When I have pdfs of articles or sources open on my laptop and I'm trying to take notes, I frequently use both at the same time.
3. It's backed up on an external server and on my hard drive simultaneously. I don't have to worry about losing all my data.

It's free, also. And I promise I'm not involved with that company - unlike someone who seems to have posted an ad in another thread lately.

Keep it brief, simple and earnest. Mine followed a pattern like this:

Hello, I'm [name] a student at [university]. I'm applying for graduate programs in history for next fall, and I'm interested in studying [subject related to prof's interests]. I've done work on [a few words about a project related to this, if applicable]. Are you taking graduate students next fall?

That gives them the opportunity to respond to your research and even ask for more details, but it also could initiate a conversation by asking a direct question. If you have another direct question, stick that in too.

Avoid trying to sell yourself in the email. Your application will do that - and the Prof will be smart enough to detect this. Just get whatever information you need from them. And honestly, they will almost certainly forget your email, no matter how well-crafted, by the time that application season rolls around. So a simple email requesting information is best, to me anyway. If it strikes up a conversation, then great - but don't be disappointed, and don't take it personally, if a Prof. ignores your email or sends back a one line response.

It helps to know if a Prof. is taking grad students, or is going on sabbatical soon, etc, but I don't think these emails have to be very important. In retrospect, I stressed out about mine all out of proportion to their significance.

DO participate in PAT because it has the potential to be personally rewarding and could aid in your professionalization as an historian.
 
DO NOT participate in PAT because you think it will help you get into grad school. It really won't help you in any meaningful way. 

The OP was posted in the history forum. My recommendation is from one historian to another. Do you have experience in maintaining/developing relationships with historians? 
 
 
 
To clarify, the purpose of keeping two copies of each piece of correspondence is not about CYA or being cold. It is related to the suggestion that the OP do what established historians do: hold on to materials that may end up donated to a school under the heading of "Letters and Personal Papers..."

Wow. Do you over think everything like that? How bout a simple:
Dr. X,

It's John Doe. Grad school is going great. Learning a lot of interesting stuff. How are things over there?

Toodles

Hi caskofespresso,
 
I was a recent applicant in colonial American history, also focusing on Native American history. I just finished the application/decision process and will be beginning a Ph.D. program in the fall.
 
I honestly do not think those rankings can be applied to Native American history. In fact, during my application process, I felt that only four of the programs on that list would be strong places to pursue research with a focus in Native American history (at least for my interests/geographic focus). I also believe that some of the strongest Native American history programs do not appear on the list at all. For example, while Harvard has a wonderful program overall, it currently isn't the best place to pursue research with a focus in Native American history (this is both my personal opinion and something I've heard from others in the field).
 
When I searched for graduate programs, I felt that it was most important to look at the number of faculty focusing on Native American history (or cross-cultural relations in early America). I also felt it was important that programs have a vibrant community of scholars in other departments working on various aspects of Native American studies. I also found the regional focus of faculty to be a big factor in determining which programs were the best fit. (For example, if you study the Great Lakes region, programs like Michigan, Minnesota, or Illinois might be a particularly strong fit, even if all of them don't appear on the colonial history rankings.)
 
To find which programs I thought might be a good fit, I started with the obvious--figuring out where the authors of various books I used for my research and/or read in my undergraduate seminars are located. After this, I visited the websites of the 40 top-ranked programs in American history and made a spreadsheet of faculty with relevant research interests. (I realize this second method is somewhat arbitrary, but I needed some way to make the process more manageable.)
 
If you'd like to chat about this any more or want any more details, please feel free to PM me!

What is all this wait listed stuff and so few acceptances at IUB?? 
 
And whyyyyy do I not hear anything from anyone!   Yes, I am being dramatic. But, still would like to know one way or the other.
 
Story: just had a cell call from a number I didn't recognize. Picked up and the call was lost (I have bad cell connection right now). So I looked up the area code online and it was a Pittsburgh number. I nearly fell off my chair in worry. Called back and the number was "disconnected". 
 
Further search online determined that it was a scam call. Really?! From Pittsburgh?! Do the scammers WANT me to hunt them down?       

I'm an undergraduate senior, so I'm not sure about the applicability of this to graduate study, but I've found a program called Evernote to be very useful for research projects. It has several advantages to just taking notes in word documents:
1. Each document is easily searchable and taggable. For my thesis, having tags for certain sources was extremely helpful when I started to analyze them all together. I can use tags to categorize both secondary and primary sources.
2. It translates easily across devices. I use it on my laptop and my iPad. I'm sure it exists for iPhones, etc also. When I have pdfs of articles or sources open on my laptop and I'm trying to take notes, I frequently use both at the same time.
3. It's backed up on an external server and on my hard drive simultaneously. I don't have to worry about losing all my data.

It's free, also. And I promise I'm not involved with that company - unlike someone who seems to have posted an ad in another thread lately.

well, the long national nightmare is over - i got a funding offer from Temple, so barring something unforeseen, that's where I'll be come August.
 
glad to be finally over with this process...congratulations to all my fellow members of the 2013 cohort!

I am sorry that the experience you had contacting your POI at CUNY was negative, but it was informative, as I thought it might be. I believe that you are making the right decision, and I am very pleased that you have decided to post your experiences in this thread for the benefit of others. That is awesome! I will definitely check in regularly to follow this. GOOD LUCK!

DO participate in PAT because it has the potential to be personally rewarding and could aid in your professionalization as an historian.
 
DO NOT participate in PAT because you think it will help you get into grad school. It really won't help you in any meaningful way. 

DO participate in PAT because it has the potential to be personally rewarding and could aid in your professionalization as an historian.
 
DO NOT participate in PAT because you think it will help you get into grad school. It really won't help you in any meaningful way. 

DO participate in PAT because it has the potential to be personally rewarding and could aid in your professionalization as an historian.
 
DO NOT participate in PAT because you think it will help you get into grad school. It really won't help you in any meaningful way. 

DO participate in PAT because it has the potential to be personally rewarding and could aid in your professionalization as an historian.
 
DO NOT participate in PAT because you think it will help you get into grad school. It really won't help you in any meaningful way. 

And UConn isn't offering funding? If that's the case, I would bite Illinois State's hand off. UConn has a solid department, but I don't think that it's prestigious enough to consider going into unnecessary debt over.

And UConn isn't offering funding? If that's the case, I would bite Illinois State's hand off. UConn has a solid department, but I don't think that it's prestigious enough to consider going into unnecessary debt over.

Good to see another early Americanist. 
 
Take a look at this recent thread: 
A lot of the same points apply to your situation. It's pretty much impossible for us to say what your chances are. Too many variables. It's impossible to gauge the quality of your research from this position. But there's no reason you couldn't get into a strong MA and then Ph.D. program, if you work at putting together a solid application package. Like I said in the other thread, focusing on research over something like extracurriculars will help you in the long run.
 
Nothing wrong with going to a small, obscure liberal arts school. I doubt that would hurt your chances much, if at all. Many students in top programs once went to pretty anonymous undergraduate institutions. I would also say that the prestige of your potential MA institution is less important than several other factors - namely, the potential for funding, and having a strong advisor. 
 
Also, for early American history, languages are often not hugely important (unless your research really demands it). Since you have some time, it might be worth considering whether you could enroll in a language class to show you have at least some proficiency in a foreign language. 

Well, there's no admissions test for foreign languages... At my current (Ph.D.) university, there's an expectation that your language will be taken care of by the third semester, whether by taking language classes or by passing an exam at some point.
 
It's okay for you to not know how things work -- there's a pretty steep learning curve on a lot of this stuff. In graduate history applications, you will identify a potential advisor. This person will ideally have similar research interests to yours (this is usually referred to as "fit"). At the very least, he or she will need to be in your field. So while it's common to switch advisors once you're in a program, you select one during the application process who you could work with.
 
So once you've identified your research interests (which I understand may not be fully formed at this point) you should go back through the secondary sources you used and identify which scholars whose work you find useful are still teaching at graduate degree-granting institutions. Alternatively, you can do what I also did, which is to comb through the faculty pages of practically every scholar in your field. I applied to work with my current advisor in part because her faculty website said that she was working on a forthcoming book project similar to my own work. After you've identified several scholars who might be interested in working with you, you can begin to build a list of schools to apply to. Unfortunately, in this process, we have to apply to places based on where potential advisors are, not based on where we'd like to live, or the strength of the program. You haven't got a chance of getting into a graduate program if there's no (tenured) faculty member there who can support your research.
 
Best of luck.
 
PS- feel free to PM me about early American history more specifically, or particular historians who might be interested in your research. 

vtstevie, in an effort to avoid derailing this thread, I've sent you a PM.

The only thing I argued in my post was that the rank of a program matters, not because 2 is greater than 65, but because of what those ranks tend to represent in terms of the relative social position of a program’s faculty vis-à-vis the academy and the amount of resources the program has at its disposal relieve faculty and graduate students from teaching responsibilities so that they can dedicate their time to their work. I even tried to be a bit nuanced about it with statements like “To the extent institutional rank maps onto institutional resources and support,” which if you read it properly clearly acknowledges the existence of programs like Tulane, where apparently institutional rank does not map onto institutional resources and support.
 
That fact of the matter is that I was specifically talking about “the graduate admissions process and the current state of the academic job market” and the need to have those discussions in terms of broad trends rather than exceptions. I was not casting any dispersion about programs in general or individuals specifically. There are any number of reasons why you could have read into my post the argument “that someone like me should probably have just not attended grad school,” but none of them came from the actual content of the post.
 
So just to be specific for a bit, let’s look at Tulane’s statistics. According to the website there are 40 graduate students in the program. Assuming the time to completion is between 6 and 7 years, which is often the case for programs that offer five years of funding, that’s an average cohort size of about 6 students. According to the department’s site, 2 students got TT jobs in 2007, 4 in 2008, and 2 in 2009, for a very rough average of 3 per cohort. So, it seems to me there are two versions of the Tulane story. A) Don’t worry about the ranking because we have examples of students getting TT jobs, or B ) 50% of our graduate students don’t get TT jobs. The entire point of my post was that in terms of discussions about admission and the job market, story A is disingenuous and, I would argue, unethical to promote (despite the very true and real success stories of those students). The only story that we should be talking about is story B.
 
To the extent there is a problem, it isn’t with you. Like I said in my post, the difference between the student in Program 2 and the one in Program 65 isn’t that the former is smarter than the latter. The problem is with Tulane. A program that can only point to a 50% success rate in attaining for its students the type of job they spend six to seven years training for probably shouldn’t have a doctoral program. This is a problem shared by most programs, all the way up into the top ten. The move on the part of programs to relying on under paid and over worked adjunct and part-time faculty is in part facilitated by the over production of PhDs. In order to inflate their own desired sense of prestige, programs invite too many perfectly adequate and entirely sincere students into their doctoral programs, to feed off their hope and dreams in order to harvest cheap labor and maybe a bump of one or two notches on some ranking.

...drops the mic... walks away.

While you are not wrong in terms of big picture, you are speaking in generalizations that do not always hold up.  Tulane for the five years of funding only requires "service" for years 2 and 3, which ammounts to T.A.ing twice (in my case this did not include tedious work grading but was done purely for pedagogical purposes) and teaching two course as the instructor of record.  Year 1 is pure fellowship, as are the two years after you become ABD.  As a rich private school, Tulane also has a lot of travel funding.  We also bring in a decent amount of big name speakers.  I can name at least one top 20 (Just barely out of the top 10) public school where the students are stuck ta-ing for most of their graduate career.  You do say to disregard the rankings' face value then proceed to immediately re-enforce the discourse the rankings create.  Moreover, as someone (and plenty before this person) else said, correlation is not the same as causation. 
 
Most of the people at Tulane do most of their research outside of the bounds of the region (although not everyone as regional history is a strong suit).  I can't speak for every programs' "actual quality" but neither can you, and you are generalizing beyond your knowledge base based on a highly problematic list that ultimately re-enforces your own position and claims to superior education.  So much of the rankings is based on poles of people's perceptions, that the idea that they ultimately speak to what type of funding you get or some sort of objective quality is outrageous.  I would say there probably is often a disconnect in resources to those at well-endowed private schools compared to many state schools.  This is something I can speak to, having talked to a number of people at both types of universities and the types of funding packages I received from state institutions.
 
What is obnoxious and worth pointing out in both your and N. E. Nat's comments (and Nat I understand where you are coming from, and as far as a distant internet persona, I genuinely like you), is the way you generalize other programs based on limited source base, then act as if you are coming down on high to tell the commoners to face the facts.  I know you don't mean it that way, but that is certainly how I read it and it can be read.  Most people are where they are because it's the best place they go into with funding or had a better opportunity for some reason at a lower ranked program.  I took my name off a higher ranked waitlist, because Tulane put together just such a package as you refer to as being unique to a top 10 school.  Also, you are telling this to people who are living with the "adversity" that you speak of.  I assure you everybody is aware of what you are saying, but the truth is some of us started off much further down and while not impossible, it is very difficult to get into a top program from a very unknown state school in a state not known for quality public education.  Therefore, those of us in such situations have to take the certainly riskier route through lower ranked PhD programs, to try and claw for jobs at very poorly regarded branch schools or at a liberal arts college (which is my dream job, btw).  The result is that you come off sounding like an imperialist trying to tell the Africans how to build a railroad, without supplying any of the means to actually build said metaphorical railroad.  While some of your argument is right in a pure dollars and cents way, your ultimate point is that someone like me should probably have just not attended grad school, which is not only unpopular, but it's an argument made completely out of context of an individual's work and worth.  It also lumps every PhD program from some arbitrary range of the list into some sort of identical mold.  You can also make your points in such a way that come off better.  The "let me tell you the hard truth of your position" approach comes off as highly paternalistic.

I think some people are putting a bit more of a rosy tint on things than you, but I don't think anybody really disagrees either.  I think your right generally, but at the end of the day people from my school who finish (which is the only one I really speak for) are generally getting jobs, not prestigious ones usually but tenure track jobs.  I met a couple of them at the AHA.  Don't get me wrong, few of them are dream jobs, but they are tenure track at four-year institutions.  Also Nat, do you really think we don't know the realities of the job market?  I have been hearing it from my professors since day one.  People do make it though from second/third tier institutions and it's not one in a million.  You're not being unpopular, you are just stating the obvious. 
 
I know a chicago PhD with a book contract from a really good press, who is languishing compared to people from lesser schools.  It really isn't as cut and dry as you depict it (which doesn't mean your wrong in general though).  I hope this doesn't come off as a rant or anger at you Nat, I generally appreciate your input, but if you think you are blowing minds here, I would say for the most part, you are wasting your time.  We all know the numbers, and we are not idiots.

I'm not going to rarify the US New rankings.  I'm also not going to argue that someplace with a narrow specialty and a 100% placement rate in tha specialty isn't a place you should go.  However I am going to say something very unpopular here.  Academia is my family buisness.  I have a half dozen college professors in my family at a range of institutions and have attended everything from a community college to a second rate state university to a public ivy to an ivy. 
 
There are people on here who are going to have a rude awakening when they go on the job market.  "But it's well respected in this field" or "well I know someone from X place that just got hired..."  Exceptions and anecdote do not change the brutal facts.  Hiring committees aren't made up of people in your sub field.  They're made up of people from across a department who may have no idea what a good department is in your subfield.  And don't expect that they do research on where the best department is before they start a search.  They have enough work sorting through the hundreds of applications for each job. 
 
Name matters.  It's ugly, none of us like it, and those of us that benefit from it feel dirty about it.  I am in no way saying there aren't great scholars out there at places not listed or low on the list.  They are.  But the fact of the matter is that getting a PhD to be stuck in adjuncting hell because you wanted to believe you were the exception to a rule is a road to disappointment. 
 
And this is not just about research universities.  Go to the CHE forums or the academic job wikis.  You'll run into a lot of rants about how some small liberal arts college or teaching oriented place has hired someone from a research powerhouse instead of someone who has more teaching experiance. 
 
Oh, and while I'm being ugly on here, I wont name names, but at least one of the places that has been mentioned specifically on this subject as "being good for such and such" just cut off funding to a large percentage of their PhD students and told them to adjunct to pay their bills while they finish. 
 
Because fundamentally this industry is a pyramid scheme.  In part because the entire educational structure needs more TAs to function than they will have assistant professorships to give.  Would I quibble about if number 3 on this list is better than number 15?  No.  I'd say those are probably a matter of fit and preference.  But there is a difference between number 16 and number 70.  And pretending there isn't or that it doesn't matter or that your particular subfield is the exception should be between you and your future.  It's almost criminal to pitch that narrative to people thinking about where to apply.

Well that's a bit of an exaggeration, I think. The competition is very intense, sure. But there are lots of fields or approaches that are doing well besides those four. Actually, some schools are really into other things. While I would say it's impossible to avoid those categories for many topics, it's not as if writing one of those words on your SOP is a golden ticket. In fact, I was talking to a member of the adcom at my school, and he said that it seems like everyone who applies is doing race and gender -- they were looking for a project that stood out as particularly interesting and promising.
 
Another member of the adcom told me that what he really looked for in separating the good applicants is a certain "fire in the belly" -- that is, a determination that will help students slog through the tough times of grad school. And make no mistake, it is extremely difficult. It should be clear from your application that you're committed to this path, and that it's no passing fancy or way to avoid a bad job market.