Simple Twist of Fate

I totally agree with Shep. I also think a lot of students have no idea what they know what they are getting themselves into. I am not saying this is the case with people on Grad Cafe. Most people here are very well informed. I know several students in my program that want to go for a PhD, but haven't done any conferences, networked with anyone outside the school, etc. In fact, one student who is applying this year hasn't even started working on his application. He told me that his personal statement will just take a day or two to write. His first choice is Berkeley. Good luck with that.

Just reading over this thread (because it's kind of fun) and have to say that I read SK's question as comparing costs-of-living, rather than prestige (but it's still a strange comparison, so I don't know).

SK, I would suggest that you speak to some of the professors at your undergrad institution and ask their opinion. It can be hard to take strangers' advice, especially when it is negative. Perhaps hearing from a few professors (especially younger ones or any of the profs who remain attuned to the current state of affairs in history graduate training) might serve you better.

My advice is the same as everyone else. I wouldn't even try to apply with your credentials (unless, possibly there were outside circumstances such as a personal crisis or a major switch from engineering or something like that). Graduate school is exponentially more challenging than undergrad, and includes far less room for error. To persevere and succeed in graduate school requires a different attitude than you're exhibiting in this thread. I don't mean to be rude, as I'm sure the other posters also do not, but it doesn't look good for you in this regard.

Good luck, though.

Just to clarify my earlier post: there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a strong preference regarding where you want to live. But if you know that you will only be happy living in the South (or in New England, or near the mountains, or on the water, or in a small town, or in a big city), then a PhD in the humanities is not for you, because that kind of geographic flexibility does not exist in this profession. There are many, many wonderful things about academe, but the freedom to decide where you will live is not among them. There is a term to describe history PhDs who have determined that they are only willing to work in a specific region, or a specific kind of city, or at a small liberal-arts college, or at a large research university. That term is "unemployed." It is a lucky few who land tenure-track jobs after completing the degree; trying to decide whether you are better-suited to living in, say, Ithaca or San Francisco is not a problem you will have. (I suggest anyone who is contemplating pursuing a PhD spend a little time each week reading the Chronicle of Higher Education's forums, since they give you a little glimpse into your future self. The recent article "Embracing Your Inner North Dakotan" contains a telling discussion of some of these issues, which are well worht thinking about before you begin the program.)

Anyway, OP, congratulations on what sounds like a very smart decision to delay your applications. I have no doubt that you will be both a stronger applicant and (should you ultimately decide to enroll in a program) a more successful grad student with the extra experience. Good luck with your thesis this year.

I don't mean to harp, but I wonder how much time you've spent in midwestern college towns? I can't speak for the south, as I've never lived there myself, but there are many very liberal (I'm guessing you're not avoiding the south because it is too liberal, hence my inference) colleges and towns in the midwest. Bloomington, Champaign, Evanston, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Madison, Louisville, etc are all known to be very liberal and accepting places, for example. I would also suggest that if you're serious about working in academia, then you may ultimately end up living and working in a place you're less than thrilled about (at least initially). Again, I would suggest you apply to all programs you fit well with, and if a midwestern/southern university accepts you, go visit! Maybe you'll find that life in between the coasts really isn't so horrible (it's not).

Additionally, consider the possibility that in grad school, you probably won't have either the time or money to really enjoy an exciting locale. In fact, living in a great city like Boston has its disadvantages for a grad student - namely cost of living and numerous distractions.

Hello, and welcome to the gradcafe. First of all, you have a lot of time to prepare, which is great, so try not to let yourself get stressed out too early. By that, I mean, don't worry if you get a B+ on a history paper. Many intellectually-ambitious people have that moment when they get a poor grade (not that a B or B+ is a poor grade, but as you point out, grade inflation) and worry that they now will miss out on their dream graduate school, and consequently won't be able to get a job, and will die in a cardboard box, etc. The advantages of beginning this preparation early are obvious, but savor your undergrad experience as well, and don't let The Plan get in the way of a healthy lifestyle or good mental and emotional health. In retrospect, I wish I had done this more. For example, I now realize that many of the things (extracurriculars mostly) that I pursued because they would look good on a CV almost certainly had no bearing on my admissions.

As to your actual questions, I would suggest several things to focus on:
1) Developing your research skills, and being able to show that you have developed these skills. It's unlikely your eventual writing sample will come from something you wrote during your sophomore year, but a research internship or something like that can show that you have research experience. Be intentional about this. Take your professors' advice seriously, and begin from the assumption that you have a lot to learn.

2) Don't close off other possibilities. If your current plan is to go to graduate school right after undergrad, that's great, but recognize that a lot can happen between now and when you submit your apps in 2.5 years. If opportunities seem to conflict with your Plan, that's okay. A good friend of mine was so committed to her Plan of going to law school that she turned down a lucrative job in Spain that basically fell into her lap. A few months later, she decided against law school, but the job opportunity had passed, and she's now jobless, waiting for a year to start a Master's program in something else entirely.

3) Develop your own distinctive research interests. It's great that you know you're interested in Latin American history. Do you have any thoughts about what part of that is most appealing to you? You might be able to develop that for your honors thesis. As you do research in Latin American history and discover the fields that interest you most, take note of the best scholarship you read. Are any of the scholars still teaching (at schools with graduate programs)? Take note of this, it will help later. The minors you're considering could be helpful for this. If you're thinking you might want to do economic history, taking a few Econ classes can help you figure that out. Rather than being attractive assets for your CV (which they're not in any significant measure, and can actually be detrimental if you let minor-collecting turn your focus away from historical research), consider a minor as a way of defining your interests and possibly approaching your research interest in Latin America from multiple perspectives. For example, I minored in English and Philosophy, and took quite a few Sociology classes (not quite enough for a minor). At every opportunity I got, I (shamelessly) focused research papers with open-ended topics on my field of early America and profited by learning to apply the methods and theory of different disciplines to my own field of interest.

4) Keep in the back of your mind that you're embarking on an intellectual journey - at which the end may be graduate school, or something better. When you apply, you'll write a Statement of Purpose describing this journey. As you go on, keep track of what's significant to you. For me, I can recall 1 or 2 moments (one in a professor's office talking with him, the other while doing some very tedious research and having one of those great moments when you feel like you've just done something significant) that gave me the confidence to pursue graduate school in history. Though my SOP didn't describe these scenes, they were key to helping me frame and describe my "purpose" as it were.

Also, as everyone else will point out, languages. It's good that you're going into Spanish, but the more languages you're competent in (and more specifically, the more you're able to prove you're competent in), the more competitive your application will eventually be.

Finally, your question about undergrad "name brand". Your assumption is that "top schools are not very open to students who went to non-elite schools". I'm not sure I agree with that. I think that this is one of those many things that is hard to give advice about, because every admissions committee has its own little biases. Some schools will probably be impressed by a big-name school. Others apparently favor some measure of "diversity" in their cohorts by including a mix of different academic backgrounds. No committee wants to admit that "We chose X over Y because X went to a better name-brand school." Yet there is the undeniable fact that a 3.7 at Yale is likely to seem more impressive than a 4.0 at Pine Holler Bible College. In truth, there's probably some validity in this over a large sample size (and I say this as a proud and unrepentant attendee of a very-much non-name-brand school). However, I believe that while your generalization probably describes some members of some adcoms, and perhaps some schools, it isn't a significant enough barrier to a) prevent you from applying to top schools, barring your entry, assuming you put together a strong application for each top school, and c) requiring something "extra" to compensate.

My advice is that you don't worry about that particular aspect of your application. You can't control an adcom's reaction to your school's name any more than the dozens of other variables you can't control in this process. I also chose my undergrad over a more prestigious alternative to avoid debt, and it turned out to have been a good decision. For one thing, I absolutely wouldn't have had the same great relationships with professors at the other school as I had at my alma mater. It's also *very* nice to go off to grad school without any debt. While I can't speak for all of the schools I applied to, I know that among the schools I was accepted to, my application beat several applications from students at far more prestigious undergrads. One prof. specifically told me that my subfield chose my app over someone's from Harvard. I don't know why she proffered that particular example, but I have to admit that it felt good (nothing against the Harvard-people). :-) Don't look at coming from a state school as "limiting your options" or as "something to make up for". The Ivys, the Chicagos, the Berkeleys of the world might bite your arm off if you put together the right app with the right fit for their needs and their program.

EDIT: Sorry - this was a much longer response than I anticipated. I think I had many of the same apprehensions as you did prior to my application cycle, so I wanted to offer my thoughts and experiences to assuage your worries. Feel free to PM if you have questions or would like to talk, and good luck with your sophomore year. As someone who just left undergrad, I envy you.

Hello, and welcome to the gradcafe. First of all, you have a lot of time to prepare, which is great, so try not to let yourself get stressed out too early. By that, I mean, don't worry if you get a B+ on a history paper. Many intellectually-ambitious people have that moment when they get a poor grade (not that a B or B+ is a poor grade, but as you point out, grade inflation) and worry that they now will miss out on their dream graduate school, and consequently won't be able to get a job, and will die in a cardboard box, etc. The advantages of beginning this preparation early are obvious, but savor your undergrad experience as well, and don't let The Plan get in the way of a healthy lifestyle or good mental and emotional health. In retrospect, I wish I had done this more. For example, I now realize that many of the things (extracurriculars mostly) that I pursued because they would look good on a CV almost certainly had no bearing on my admissions.

As to your actual questions, I would suggest several things to focus on:
1) Developing your research skills, and being able to show that you have developed these skills. It's unlikely your eventual writing sample will come from something you wrote during your sophomore year, but a research internship or something like that can show that you have research experience. Be intentional about this. Take your professors' advice seriously, and begin from the assumption that you have a lot to learn.

2) Don't close off other possibilities. If your current plan is to go to graduate school right after undergrad, that's great, but recognize that a lot can happen between now and when you submit your apps in 2.5 years. If opportunities seem to conflict with your Plan, that's okay. A good friend of mine was so committed to her Plan of going to law school that she turned down a lucrative job in Spain that basically fell into her lap. A few months later, she decided against law school, but the job opportunity had passed, and she's now jobless, waiting for a year to start a Master's program in something else entirely.

3) Develop your own distinctive research interests. It's great that you know you're interested in Latin American history. Do you have any thoughts about what part of that is most appealing to you? You might be able to develop that for your honors thesis. As you do research in Latin American history and discover the fields that interest you most, take note of the best scholarship you read. Are any of the scholars still teaching (at schools with graduate programs)? Take note of this, it will help later. The minors you're considering could be helpful for this. If you're thinking you might want to do economic history, taking a few Econ classes can help you figure that out. Rather than being attractive assets for your CV (which they're not in any significant measure, and can actually be detrimental if you let minor-collecting turn your focus away from historical research), consider a minor as a way of defining your interests and possibly approaching your research interest in Latin America from multiple perspectives. For example, I minored in English and Philosophy, and took quite a few Sociology classes (not quite enough for a minor). At every opportunity I got, I (shamelessly) focused research papers with open-ended topics on my field of early America and profited by learning to apply the methods and theory of different disciplines to my own field of interest.

4) Keep in the back of your mind that you're embarking on an intellectual journey - at which the end may be graduate school, or something better. When you apply, you'll write a Statement of Purpose describing this journey. As you go on, keep track of what's significant to you. For me, I can recall 1 or 2 moments (one in a professor's office talking with him, the other while doing some very tedious research and having one of those great moments when you feel like you've just done something significant) that gave me the confidence to pursue graduate school in history. Though my SOP didn't describe these scenes, they were key to helping me frame and describe my "purpose" as it were.

Also, as everyone else will point out, languages. It's good that you're going into Spanish, but the more languages you're competent in (and more specifically, the more you're able to prove you're competent in), the more competitive your application will eventually be.

Finally, your question about undergrad "name brand". Your assumption is that "top schools are not very open to students who went to non-elite schools". I'm not sure I agree with that. I think that this is one of those many things that is hard to give advice about, because every admissions committee has its own little biases. Some schools will probably be impressed by a big-name school. Others apparently favor some measure of "diversity" in their cohorts by including a mix of different academic backgrounds. No committee wants to admit that "We chose X over Y because X went to a better name-brand school." Yet there is the undeniable fact that a 3.7 at Yale is likely to seem more impressive than a 4.0 at Pine Holler Bible College. In truth, there's probably some validity in this over a large sample size (and I say this as a proud and unrepentant attendee of a very-much non-name-brand school). However, I believe that while your generalization probably describes some members of some adcoms, and perhaps some schools, it isn't a significant enough barrier to a) prevent you from applying to top schools, barring your entry, assuming you put together a strong application for each top school, and c) requiring something "extra" to compensate.

My advice is that you don't worry about that particular aspect of your application. You can't control an adcom's reaction to your school's name any more than the dozens of other variables you can't control in this process. I also chose my undergrad over a more prestigious alternative to avoid debt, and it turned out to have been a good decision. For one thing, I absolutely wouldn't have had the same great relationships with professors at the other school as I had at my alma mater. It's also *very* nice to go off to grad school without any debt. While I can't speak for all of the schools I applied to, I know that among the schools I was accepted to, my application beat several applications from students at far more prestigious undergrads. One prof. specifically told me that my subfield chose my app over someone's from Harvard. I don't know why she proffered that particular example, but I have to admit that it felt good (nothing against the Harvard-people). :-) Don't look at coming from a state school as "limiting your options" or as "something to make up for". The Ivys, the Chicagos, the Berkeleys of the world might bite your arm off if you put together the right app with the right fit for their needs and their program.

EDIT: Sorry - this was a much longer response than I anticipated. I think I had many of the same apprehensions as you did prior to my application cycle, so I wanted to offer my thoughts and experiences to assuage your worries. Feel free to PM if you have questions or would like to talk, and good luck with your sophomore year. As someone who just left undergrad, I envy you.

ukstudent: One thing worth remembering is that American universities are primarily training students for the American job market, where British history is very much on the decline, possibly even more than European history as a whole. While in the UK itself, there are presumably still a plethora of positions for British historians, it seems to me that in the US, it is increasingly valuable for British historians to be willing to take more transnational approaches, which may mean looking at Britain as part of Europe (and thus make knowledge of languages like French or German quite important) or may mean approaching Britain in the context of its empire, which could make a plethora of languages valuable, depending on one's particular focus, anything from Hindi to Swahili to Arabic could be worthwhile.
Assuming you want to stick to domestic British history, you can probably find programs, even good ones, that won't expect any foreign language proficiency to admit you. But there are reasons that programs require foreign language skills (even Americanists increasingly find them valuable, whether to study immigrant communities in the US or transnational or comparative histories), and it's worth considering whether you might be able to improve your research by acquiring some.
If you don't know yet whether you want to work on Britain or America, you're presumably not ready to apply this Fall in any case, so there isn't really any harm, if you can manage it, in spending at least some time over the next year working on a language that could be valuable to you later, whether in admissions, research, or on the job market.

Don't get too specific: Just say you plan to spend all your time during the PhD looking at porn.

Will depend on the program, but I've often heard that not much thought is given to the analytic section. I agree that it shouldn't be - it's really a poor gauge of writing and analytic ability, in my opinion.Also, go ahead and take a practice test (there should be one or two free ones online) to give yourself a baseline. But don't freak out if you don't do well on the first try. I remember the year before I applied, I took a practice test and did so poorly that I started to question whether I could ever be admitted anywhere. But the GRE is very much a test you can study for. I got serious about studying for it and ended up with 99% Verbal, 99% analytic and a respectable quant score (which I can't remember off the top of my head, but it wasn't awful).


I'll add that I had a similar experience. I was told all through this process that it's hugely important to get the closest fit possible with your POI. And that's good advice, but I do want to add that it's sometimes more complex than that. The work that I want to do is basically something that nobody is doing, or has done (which is why it's so exciting to me). Therefore, I didn't have any totally obvious POIs - only some that were loosely related to my research interest or field, with the exception of one Prof who I thought might be a pretty good fit. I applied anyway, and I ended up being admitted to three good schools, and was left as first on the waitlist at one great program. In retrospect, I was pretty lucky. In the process, I found out that one prof said he has "wide interests" and basically just advocates for the most impressive/interesting applicant regardless of whether he's done work in that student's area. Another one indicated pretty much the same approach. My advisor for next year turned out to be writing a book that's related to my work - which I didn't know at first (and I'm not sure how I would have known that if not through direct communication). However, at the program I was wait-listed at, I was told that I was put on the wait list because my interests didn't align as closely with my POI as other applicants. So every professor, adcom and program may have different approaches. And honestly, if I had followed all the advice here exactly, I probably wouldn't have applied to several of the programs that were interested in me. As tmp says, there's no "magic formula" - if you feel like you're ready for a PhD, you just have to do your best to put together the very best application you can, and hope that somebody will see something in you.

So very true. Best of luck to next year's crop of applicants. It's strange how much more confident about my scholarship I feel now than I did a year ago.

I hope to hang around this forum a little bit during the summer, and possibly on occasion next fall (if I have any time). Many of the past applicants and currently attending students were so helpful to me, I'd like to be able to pay it forward a little bit.

W&M are done, so I've officially been left hanging at the very top of the wait list. Disappointing, but IU just gave me a fellowship for my 3rd year (instead of teaching) which I'm considering the spoonful of sugar to make the W&M medicine go down. So I'm headed to IU. I'll talk to my advisor tomorrow before making it official, but I'm decided, and I'm confident.

April 15. End of the line.

I was in the area yesterday, so I visited IU's campus (I only had an hour, and it was a Saturday, so I didn't meet any faculty). Beautiful buildings. I'm really looking forward to next year.

For some reason, I pictured April 15 to be the craziest day on this board. But it's ending not with a bang... etc.

Dear TGC friends,

I’m sure this seems presumptuous for me to create a separate thread but having been on here for more than 3 years, it just seems like I should just do this, rather let this be buried under “decisions,decisions” or “chit-chat.” And there’s a lesson to this.

First of all, I am so grateful that this site exists, even if it drives each of us nuts. It is a place full of rich information and insights (and many “take it with a grain of salt” pieces of advice). It is full of passionate people who care deeply about their future. As Sigaba pointed out once, academia is like a black box. And so is TGC. While this site does attempt to create transparency, it will never be fully so. You just have to trust your instincts; don’t let your nerves get to you. People know but do they really need to say it? Here on the TGC, we are so tempted to share everything we know and that is fine. We want to help each other get to the right places and we seek out each other by subfield or common interests via PM. Future posters will need to take the initiative to read old threads and send a PM to a poster (and hope that the poster checks his/her spam box!). I should say that by doing this way this year, what I’ve seen and heard, it has helped many of us. Perhaps doing this kind of approach has fostered a sense of community full of positive vibes to the level that I have never seen before. So, congratulations!

Yet, I will urge people to consider information shared by previous posters about their campus visits to help them build their lists. Reading about campus visits and impressions by others helped me tremendously in terms of building my lists for Fall 2011 and 2012. My adviser recommended OSU for Fall 2011. If it had not been several positive campus visit reviews that year, I’d probably hesitate, I mean, OSU? I didn’t know anything, it's Michigan or Wisconsin or Indiana. I said, okay, I will apply, no question asked (despite being a Wolverine). The funding experiences of Wisconsin acceptees kept me away from that place for Fall 2010 and 2011, as well as less than favorable reviews of the department culture. I had to strike a deal with my POI there that I could not consider Wisconsin without funding, even though he brought up the issue himself. I learned from here not to apply to UCLA and other places for funding or department culture reasons. So, future posters, if someone suggests School X, use the search function to see if someone’s posted personal experiences with the department. I would imagine that they’re usually spot on.

I do want to say thank you to those who have been so incredibly supportive. I am truly humbled that there were people who reached out to me via PM to check up and express genuine interest in my applications. I seriously thought coming back here for fall 2012 admissions would be a walk of shame. I didn’t want to put off anyone by announcing that it was my third time- I mean this is how freaking competitive History PhD admissions has become. This year was based on luck of timing though I know that both of my POIs truly appreciated all of my hard work and my experiences. I also didn’t realize until later on that my OSU POI had somehow kept me so calm despite no guarantees or suggestions of an acceptance (and that's a quality you want in a PhD adviser!).

I do want to say that my visit to Wisconsin was incredibly pleasant. I loved the close-knit community there and the contagious intellectual energy. The faculty and students were positive despite the financial situation. My POI was a “genuine” person with a mind for details. I truly had a change of heart after I left Madison, which did not put me in a good position mentally for my visit to Columbus. At OSU, though I felt the department was more conservative (not politically but just the culture) in comparison to Wisconsin, everything is taken seriously. The department works hard to ensure that students are happy and satisfied with their training, funding, and professionalization opportunities. Because of its large size, it would indeed take time to find a niche especially that graduate students do not live near each other. Given my POI’s situation that day, our meeting was rather lackluster. So I left Columbus without a decision and I was very disappointed not to have that “light-bulb” moment.

But being a believer of “second chances,” I decided to see if my POI wanted another conversation. She seemed quite enthusiastic so we set a Skype date. I thought, “Okay, if she doesn’t wow me on this, I’m going to think real hard about turning down OSU, my top and most logical choice.” During our conversation, I discovered that she was the One, a beautiful intellectual, personal, and professional adviser match. I just felt right at home in her presence. It was such a pleasure to call her the other day to tell her that I would come to OSU in the fall.

She certainly wasn’t on my radar because her first book had nothing to do with my interests. If it had not been for my MA adviser’s suggestion and my OSU POI’s interest in me and current project, I would have never considered her seriously. If it had not been for positive reviews of OSU on TGC that encouraged me to apply to OSU, I’d be at Wisconsin.

It is time for me to say farewell and move on (after all, I will need to study!). I will check every now and then for any specific issues and questions that I may be able to answer. It’s truly been a lovely ride. As always, feel free to PM me as I get e-mail alerts.

-tciklemeink

Yeah... It would be, but Indiana just sent me an offer. Wow. As excited as I by this (and I am) it makes what was going to be a relaxing weekend into crunch time.

Yeah... It would be, but Indiana just sent me an offer. Wow. As excited as I by this (and I am) it makes what was going to be a relaxing weekend into crunch time.

Yeah... It would be, but Indiana just sent me an offer. Wow. As excited as I by this (and I am) it makes what was going to be a relaxing weekend into crunch time.

Yeah... It would be, but Indiana just sent me an offer. Wow. As excited as I by this (and I am) it makes what was going to be a relaxing weekend into crunch time.

True.

Just sent off the final version of my (undergrad) thesis. Feels good to be done with that - and baseball season starts today (Go Reds!). Headed to visit my girlfriend's family for Easter - will hopefully not be checking my email/gradcafe too much. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Oseirus, I think I speak for Buckeye nation when I say that we're happy to pretend that 2006-2007 never happened if you are.

tmp - the good thing is that since you have a pretty even split in terms of the things that matter, you get to think about the things that we're usually told not to decide schools based on - like sports, lifestyle, city, proximity to family and friends, etc. Or you could flip a coin.

Heard from W&M about the wait list. I'm second on their list, and there are two offers that are still undecided. My reaction:

Random change of subject: I still haven't heard from UMass and I'm about ready to jump off a metaphorical bridge. My brain is seriously at the point where I can feel it starting to snap. It like holding a bunch of twigs and small branches horizontally in your two hands, and then you start to try and break them in half. . . They start to crack and bend, and you can hear a few of them creaking. The cluster is still mostly intact, but just a little more pressure and I think they will all just break in one giant SNAP!

Any-who, how is everyone else doing?

Also, is sanity relative? I've felt sane my whole life, but the grad school application process has made me feel crazy. Am I crazy? Or am I normal for someone in my situation, but I just seem crazy?

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.

Talk about being too focused!

I'd also encourage you to cast a wide net in terms of contacts. I've found at least two faculty members in potential programs for me that have interests coinciding with mine that appear nowhere on their websites. I spent about a whole summer obsessing over faculty website profiles (which, when you come down to it, are really like a one-sided, very pathetic version of a dating website) and you can only benefit so much from that.

I remember the frustration of narrowing down the list of schools. I hated that - especially when I crossed one off in a location I would have enjoyed. My method was to do one school per day, skimming through journal articles, dissertation abstracts, books/book reviews and of course faculty profiles. All of the information available. And taking detailed notes for when I begin to doubt myself later about whether x University might make a good fit after all...

It's tedious, but if you really want to have an advisor who will be able to support your specific interests, then it can't hurt.

Good luck.

If I'm in Boston next year (as currently looks likely) I've already decided to become a Red Sox fan... not the Patriots though. Never the Patriots. At least not until Brady/Belichick retire. I'm from a part of the country not exactly famed for its professional sports teams (Ohio) so it would be great to actually see some championships.