Loimographia

That's a fair point, he may have only been speaking for history. But, I do think that in general, if you feel that any further reductions of a paper seriously reduces its argument's integrity or clarity, then you're better off submitting an excerpt, rather than allowing the adcom to think your writing skills were weak.

Actually, I'm just going to copy/paste what my own prof e-mailed me when I asked him about cutting down my 40 pages thesis to 10 pages: "Submit one or two sections as an excerpt. You can write a brief (separate) introduction to put the sample in perspective, lead into it, but that introduction must be counted as part of the 10 pp. max. Also, the less choppy you make it, the better: i.e., try to have as much continuity in the argument that you except as possible. One long passage is better than three or four shorter excerpts. You can, however, use ellipses to weave together different sections." He's the nitpickiest professor I've ever met, so if he says it's an OK-go situation, I trust his word. That said, I think it might be easier to simply condense a 20 page paper, since a 12 page excerpt is probably going to end at an awkward, inconclusive spot (I lucked out in that my thesis was essentially a two-pronged argument, so I could submit either and it would have a conclusion-y feel). Meanwhile, I'm going to go mope that of the six schools I'm applying to, I have 10 page, 15 page, 20 page, 25 page and 50 page limits... yay for 5 different versions of the same damn paper > !

If they specify double space, I honestly think it would look pretty bad to still send 1.5 spaced, simply because it will look like you're deliberately ignoring explicit directions. It's not like they're not going to notice; if everyone else's papers are 2x spaced, they'll see yours side by side theirs and the difference will be immediate. It might merely irritate them slightly, but when competition is as stiff as it is these days, you don't want to be intentionally irritating the people who will get you in. I feel your pain in having to cut things down so much, it definitely sucks. But I'd say keep slogging at it (and if you're really desperate, go for 1.95x spacing or such, widen the margins a teeny-tiny bit)! Good luck ^^

I think lyoness' advice is sound, but if you're forced, on an app, to give your subfield in a single word (this happens for history, where you have to choose a subfield and if, say, you want to focus on the transitive nature of the late middle ages and early renaissance, well, tough luck, you just get to type out "renaissance") I would state the later era. Why? Because when studying the effect of one thing upon another, it sets up your interest in the earlier era as contingent upon its relevance to the later era. after all, you'll only talk about the importance of the first era in terms of its effects upon the later era rather than as an independent era, while you implicitly consider the second era as of independent value. So, go with the later era, if you *really* have to choose. my opinion only, of course

So, I'm going to admit to a rather pathetic, worrywart and nitpicky question: when applications ask for the "title" of a recommendation giver, does anybody here know what the heck that means? I assumed they were referring to, say, distinguishing Assistant profs from Full profs, but then it occurred to me that they might just be asking for whether to refer to the LR as "Miss" or "Mrs." in their automated e-mail, and that when my prof received the notification, that he might take umbrage at be referred to as "Dear Assistant Prof XX" as if I were deliberately trying to remind him that he hasn't received full professorship yet O.O Now I'm mortified that I might have stupidly offended a professor I completely adore... (To be honest, this minor panic diversion is somehow keeping me from completely panicking over the rest of my application, since I just sent in my first app today and the finality of it hasn't quite set in yet)

It's been my experience that if a professor can't write an out-and-out enthusiastic letter for you, s/he'll refuse to write a letter at all. Last year I asked a prof to write me a letter. I'd taken multiple classes with him, was one of the most vocal students in class discussions, spent endless hours with him in office hours. But, he pointed out, he hadn't seen any extensive research projects from me, and couldn't honestly vouch for my research abilities without them, and as such couldn't produce a wholeheartedly enthusiastic endorsement. So he refused me the letter. Any prof who's honest enough to give a lukewarm/reserved LoR is also honest enough to admit as much to a student requesting an LoR (well, perhaps there are some particularly cowardly profs, but if you know a prof well enough to ask for a recommendation, you should know whether he's that much of an ass). So I think you should trust your profs to be enthusiastic, because if they weren't enthusiastic, they wouldn't have agreed in the first place

My biggest concern with one of my LoRs has been that the one prof I asked from my junior year simply did not know me as well as the two from my senior year (he was a visiting prof from another uni, so I only had one semester to get to know him). I'm sort of relying upon the fact that he's from a big name uni to impress the adcoms. But I'm now terrified to apply to the uni where he teaches, simply because I have this nightmare the adcom will go to him and say "so what did you think of this student?" and he won't remember me anymore! I just keep having to reassure myself that yes, I spoke up frequently in his class, and spent several hours with him in office hours, and that he quite liked the papers I wrote for his class, and that I really did deserve the letter.

Just as a word of support, I know of at least one graduate student I knew as an undergrad who had made a very similar shift in focuses as you want to. He'd double majored in Math and Middle Eastern literature, iirc, and only decided to switch to history after he'd graduated. A good SOP and his experience with languages got him into good schools, despite his lack of experience with any history classes. Moreover, despite the fact that nominally you're not a history major, the fact that you've taken many classes in the department will look very good, and particularly motivated, I think.

I'd just like to peep up in favor of a few of the undergrads who never picked up their papers. At least in my experience, the reason I never picked up final papers was because I simply never knew it was an option: until my senior year, profs/TA's never even told the class about picking up final papers, I assumed that they were simply marked with a letter grade and filed in some cabinet for records, and weren't available to undergrads unless they wanted to contest their overall grades. Then, when I did at last try to pick up a paper the following semester, the professor had lost it I know this probably isn't the case for everyone (mandarin, you in particular seem to have gone out of your way to try to help students, admirably) and sheer ignorance isn't entirely defensible, but it may explain at least some of the lazier students...

Well, since you asked ^^ The argument I made involves authorship of the text. The previous scholarship on the source I worked with always assumed a single author. Most of the material in the text is from the early 14th century, but the handwriting is from the later 14th, so the argument has been that the source was compiled early 14th and then rewritten by a professional scribe later. BUT there's a discrepancy in the style of the first and second half of the text: the first half uses predominantly arabic numerals, the second half, roman numerals. So I argue this change is actually evidence of a second compiler from the second half of the 14th century, but that the handwriting of the second compiler was erased by the later recompiling by a professional scribe. So it's basically (I think) much more like your example 2, which is good (again, I think) but it's so wrapped up in Arabic and Roman numerals that I have to think that most people would find ten pages of it rather boring (nevertheless, I get way too excited when explaining it to people). It's not exactly "just reading paleography" but it is sufficiently complicated that my thesis adviser had me write up a 10 page appendix "map" to the text that lays out which pages are attributed to which compiler (which, obviously, I can't include with the sample). So the technical half of my thesis is a lot of challenging the earlier scholarship and proving the evidence of the second compiler, and the second half of my thesis is then analyzing the differences between the two compilers historically (specifically, how their cultural identities were reflected in their writing, and how these identities reflect changes in merchant culture in the 14th century).

As someone fairly familiar with the UC system's big schools (attended one as an undergrad, and my father taught at UCSD, so I've seen both sides) I'd just give a warning of my impression of distance between faculty and students. I don't know much about smaller schools, but from what I've heard the relationship between faculty and students is a fairly close one, and if you feel distance already at a small school, I certainly wouldn't expect it to improve at a large school where professors have even more students vying for their attention. That said, if you really fight for a connection, it's definitely possible to feel close to your professors if you make the effort. But the larger the university, the more self-motivated you have to be.

I have a similar question about cutting down writing samples. My full thesis is ~38 pages, but contains two separate (but crucially related, naturally! ) arguments: the first is a very close reading of paleography, and is fairly technical and dry, but is a really creative approach to the text (well, in my opinion, fwiw). The second argument is about the historical significance of the text (i.e. more conventional analysis) but is more, i guess interesting to anyone who doesn't find the minutiae of paleography exciting (almost everyone, i think?). Both reflect different strengths of mine, and I can't decide which one to use. I'm not sure whether the adcoms would prefer to see the originality of my close analysis, or the more conventionally entertaining sample. What do you all think? (Or am I overthinking this entirely and the adcoms don't care?)

Some schools mention they will take accept late additional materials, some explicitly say they won't; first priority is to check whether the ones that demand mailed letters accept late materials, either on their website, or by phone (my guess is they will, because of the complications of snail mail). That said, why can't you mail her the paper forms? UPS or Fedex can get you their forms in the matter of days (yes, it will be expensive, and if she needs to do the same to get them there in time, offer to pay for her cost as well). I've had to mail a number of forms to my LoRs simply because I no longer live in the same state as them (or, indeed, the same country in the case of one). It's less than optimal, and I'm sure a little frustrating to spend the money when you'll see her in person in less than two weeks, but it may simply be necessary.

I had one professor respond only after several months. I'd e-mailed him right as he was going to a conference and professors receive so many e-mails daily that they can be easily missed; this is the most likely explanation for any delay. Thankfully, I'd e-mailed this professor in question far in advance, so the delay wasn't a huge issue. But if they haven't responded within, say, a week, try e-mailing them again, or consider calling them at their office.

I had the same problem. Apparently if you have the full version of adobe (which only costs, oh, several hundred dollars) there's a file resizing option. But alas, this isn't available on the free version. My solution was to rescan at a lower dpi (150 instead of 300) and in black and white rather than full color. The scan was still perfectly legible, and the file size went from 25MB to 1MB.

I don't expect something (for someone else to look at my SOP for me) in exchange for nothing (not editing their paper in exchange). I thought it would only be fair to ask for feedback from those whom I can offer the same in exchange. That said, I've had a professor look at my paper, but unfortunately I know him to have oddly low standards for his students, so I don't trust his opinion much. Meanwhile, I no longer live in my college town so I don't have easy access to talk to my former profs and TA's about my SOP. I asked one of my LOR profs to take a look, but he's busy and slow to respond, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask here for additional input. Your question implies that I can only get input from either fellow students OR profs and grad students, but that's just not the case.

I'm applying to history programs and just got my first GRE scores from the new test. I'm not terribly disappointed with my V and Q (96th percentile and 79th respectively). *But* I got a rather pathetic 4.5 on the AW. Should I retake it? Panic and cry? Slap myself for being ridiculous for considering 4.5 a mediocre score? I honestly have no idea

maisenb: A great source for lesser known schools with decent medieval programs is medievalists.net's list at http://www.medievalists.net/2009/10/30/north-american-universities-that-specialize-in-medieval-history/ It's got all the top tier names you would expect, but also a LOT more that you wouldn't have ever thought of. It really helped me balance out my own list.

Looking to swap SOP's with someone applying to liberal arts programs (ideally, medieval history, but I don't think there are a ton of us around so... ). I'm a tad at a loss with my own SOP, since I feel like it's atrocious but don't really know how to improve it since I feel like anything self-complimentary will sound odd to my own ears. I love to edit other people's papers as well (it's a weird passion that should suit me well as a TA), so I'd really like to see what other History applicants have come up with (it'll also give me an idea whether my own is as poor as I think it is).

I'm a medievalist! Late medieval Italian economics/social history (I'm really interested in the cultural influence of merchants in Northern Italy). So glad to see fellow medievalists around, since it seemed like 90% of my graduating class was US history... I actually have a question as well: I took three semesters of Latin in University (and couldn't take a fourth in Medieval Latin because the prof. decided to teach a different class that semester). But, I'm only currently getting started on my other two languages, French and Italian. I'm taking night courses on both, but do you think this will be enough? I went out of my way to mention it in my SOP, but a promise to take a year of a language, rather than evidence of actual completion, seems so flimsy... That said, I took Japanese in highschool, so I feel like I started behind the curve as of eight years ago, since it seems like everyone I know studied either French or Latin back then.