amanda1655
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Posts posted by amanda1655
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I also ordered books by my potential advisors, so I could a sense of their style of writing and approach to writing history before I decide where I ultimately want to go.
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I would suggest googling doctoral reading lists for your field of study. Before someone starts their prelims, they have to create a reading list that includes all of the major works in their field.
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Personally, I would love to go to Princeton BUT I know that you are looking for reasons why someone might choose Penn over it, so I'll try my best.
Princeton is very focused on its undergraduate population, and I have heard that being a grad student there can be a bit lonely. There is something to be said about going to grad school very close to where you are studying. Graduate school is as much about the informal interactions between members of a department as it is about class interaction. Your husband would no doubt miss out on a lot of these. Living far from Princeton would no doubt increase the aforementioned sense of isolation.
I don't know how Penn is ranked in terms of his subfield but I have heard that the difference between #1 - #10 on the scale isn't that great. Students should instead focus on where they would be happiest. Being depressed will negatively affect his quality of work and eventually his job prospects. If he would be happier at Penn, he should go there regardless of the rankings.
Also, I currently have a 40 min commute each day (total 1 hr 20 min.) and I find it exhausting. I don't doubt that it affects the quality of work that I produce.
I would also ask about TAing responsibility. I wouldn't want to go to a school with too many but I also wouldn't want to go to somewhere with none. TAing is what prepares people for being a professor.
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Several of the schools that I applied to gave full tuition and a stipend to everyone accepted, including internationals. This includes a few public schools but there are a lot more private schools that do this.
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It might not hurt to call and ask how many people typically receive offers from the waitlist. If your significant other is number 5, and traditionally six or seven get in, it's probably a good bet. If he's number 4 and two or three typically get in, I'd be a bit more nervous.
Also, not all schools rank their waitlist. For some, it's a bit more complex. There might be individual waitlists for subfields. I would try to get more information from UMich because few people here are going to be offer specific information.
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I differ a little bit from misscari about British History. You can have trouble in British history if your interest is in Welsh, Irish, or Scottish history. These areas are relatively understudied and professors in mainstream British history are often a bit reticent to advise students on them. Notice I said normally. One of the offers I am seriously considering is with a professor who studies Victorian Britain. I think the link between us is that we are both very interested in literary culture and its historical context.
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I second this question. One of my prospective professors wants me to call him this week. I told him it would be near the end of the week, partially because of work I have to do. Partially because I am a wimp and need time to build confidence.
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On a related note, the prodigious amounts of alcohol consumed by certain graduate students would shame even the most bacchanal of college freshmen.
Sounds classy.
Louiselabe - I'm glad that you got such a great e-mail back from Penn. I have feeling that a lot of us weren't accepted for similar reasons. If you still want to do history, take a year, read a lot, and try to figure out what ultimately interested you about your field of study. Maybe you can find a similar interest that explores the same questions and ideas.
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Congratulations on your acceptances! UM Ann Arbor said that that they only accepted 33 people. We must know about 1/5 of the entire cohort by now. I have friend who went to Northwestern for history. She had an awful experience with her advisor (a British historian) and ended up dropping the program, but she said the rest of the faculty and students were fantastic!
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Sorry to hear that Minnesotan. I think I am over this entire process. I can't even imagine doing twice like you have.
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NYU is interviewing some of its applicants for admissions. Anyone who applied for a joint program may or may not be invited depending on the program. Unfortunately, NYU doesn't list which programs these are. I applied to a program in Irish studies and History so who knows if I even would have been invited. I am just going to assume it's a rejection as well.
I like Yale's way as well. I received notice that I wasn't going to be invited to join the PhD class before they even sent out rejections, mainly I think because they wanted to move my app to their MA program. It felt nice to know that they had been at least interested in my app.
Historically, Princeton has notified rejections within a few days of their admissions e-mails, so hopefully, that's the case this year.
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I know... I just wish they would let us know. We sent in our applications MONTHS ago, and surely if they have their acceptances (Princeton) and interviews (NYU) notified, they know who is going to be rejected and whether or not they'll have a waitlist.
I just wish the system was a lot more transparent.
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I really wish they would just all notify... Right now, my schedule for March is already a bit full and it would be nice to know if I need to move things around a bit. I am going to California next weekend (to visit friends), Idaho that week for a bridal shower, Michigan that weekend (for a visit day), back to Idaho to plan a wedding, and then Wisconsin the following weekend (for a visit day).
Boston College: I don't care if your answer is a yes or no. I would just really like to know!
Also, it would be nice to know if my implicit rejections (NYU and Princeton) are really rejections or waitlists.
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It's all right. I was teasing you, mostly. One of the advantages of starting Kindergarten when you are four is that you have some time to play around with what you want to do before deciding what you want to do with your life without risking being ancient when you finally decide.
About TFA: If we both end up at Michigan, I promise to add hilarious to that category. My students are nothing, if not occasionally ridiculous.
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Perhaps the fact that you are an older student
Ouch! I have never felt so positively ancient. I hope that 24 years old isn't too old for a graduate student. :wink:
I have been on my own for a while. I decided to do Teach for America after I graduated, and after my commitment to them was over, I agreed to do an extra year. When I graduated, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do and I wasn't ready to apply to graduate school yet. TFA seemed like a way good way to delay decisions about what I wanted to do with my life.
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Hmm.... I had always heard that an MA was a fantastic way to make up for a low undergraduate GPA or to improve your theoretical understanding of history. From what I have seen on this board, though, it doesn't seem like having an MA has been too advantageous for people. Personally, I would contact individual departments to find out why you were rejected. If the reason was your Statement of Purpose was weak, receiving an MA may or may not help that. Also, keep in mind that the quality of the program will matter A LOT. Will an MA in history from a third tier research institution help your chances? Maybe not.
On a side note, I received my funding info from the University of Michigan and it said that they had nominated for me for a Rackham Merit Fellowship. I did some more research on it and the websites say that it was created to help disadvantaged and minority applicants make graduate study affordable. I am as lilly white as can be, so I must fall into the disadvantaged category. Were the other people accepted to Michigan nominated for this fellowship as well? From what I can tell, if I receive it, it will knock off a year of TAing and give me a slightly higher stipend than the 15,200 promised by my award.
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Someone fessed up on Livejournal. They said they were a lurker there.
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What is your field? I am originally from Idaho, and I wouldn't suggest attending any of the schools in the state for an MA unless you are specifically interested in water rights, the environment, or the history of the West. They also have fairly good programs in the sciences, especially health-related fields.
They are fantastically cheap, though. When I graduated from high school in 2001, in-state tuition was around $1500 a year. Sometimes I wonder why I didn't take them up on it.
P.S. People from Idaho and Montana consider tbemselves to be from the West, not the mid-West. You'll get a lot of puzzled stares if you lump us together with N.Dakota.
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Yale has funding available for some its MA programs in the humanities but most of the programs I saw were not funded.
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I saw a rejection posted today. Has anyone gotten in there?
I applied and haven't heard anything. They wouldn't be my first choice even if I did get accepted (right now that honor goes to Michigan with Wisconsin a close second (with a change to catch up depending on funding)), but I would like to hear either way.
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okay stop feeling sorry for yourselves.......start reapplying or improving your apps.
I don't think everyone who has engaged in this discussion is feeling sorry for themselves. I, for one, think there is value in offering comfort and advice to people who may not have had as successful an application season as they would have hoped. How is someone supposed to improve their app if they engage in these types of discussions, where we talk about the admissions process and how it works. If you don't agree, don't engage in the conversation but don't insult those who do.
P.S. I have taught in the inner city and also object to anyone going into it just because they don't get into graduate school. It is tough work, and no one should do it who isn't one hundred percent committed to working 50 - 60 hours a week to improve the educational opportunities for those kids.
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In general, I think what you write is true, except I'm not sure about taking time off. I took three years off and believe I am a much better candidate because of it. I am much more certain about what I want to do as a 24 year old than I was at 21.
Also, working for three years allowed me to be in a much better financial situation and develop more maturity. Maybe it's an individual thing. I started Kindergarten when I was four years old rather than five, so I've always been much younger than my classmates. At 24, I'm not much older than most people just graduating from college.
On the other hand, I realize that there were weaknesses within my application that may have turned some people off. I completed an interdisciplinary major, which combined a study of religion and history. And, I completed an M.Ed. from a third tier university as part of my alternative certification as an elementary school teacher. I had my two advisors for my interdisciplinary honors thesis and my graduate advisor write my letters of recommendation. As a result, only one of my letters of rec came from a history professor.
I had good stats - a 3.94 undergraduate GPA (albeit from an unknown liberal arts college), a 4.0 in a Master's degree I earned while working 40 hours a week, and a 670 Verbal on the GRE (6.0 Analytical Writing). So far, I have gotten into two top 10 programs (Michigan and Wisconsin) and the professors at Yale turned me down for the PhD but were at least interested enough to ask me to move my app to an MA program with the possibility of full funding. I have been down from several schools. My professors warned me from the beginning that I might have a difficult time because I don't exactly mirror the ideal candidate.
In short, I think people who don't match your profile can get into top programs (as my history professor put it, Michigan is an extraordinarily good place to be) but they may have more rejections than people who fit it more closely. Perhaps randomness is the wrong word. There are people who are more likely to get in than others BUT we have an imperfect knowledge of admissions decisions and there are too many variables to be able to predict who will get in where. A lot depends on the individual preferences of adcomms. Saying that something is random is a way (perhaps slightly inaccurate) to say that your rejections may have nothing to do with your scholastic ability and that people may get rejected from a third tier institution only to be accepted to a first tier one (Look at my own stats. In at Michigan, top 10 or top 5 depending on your subfield. Out at Illinois, ranked 20 - 25).
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I took the opposite route. To some degree, I tried to infuse my personality into my writing. I have been out of undergrad for three years and what I have done during that time has shaped the historical questions I find interesting and how I will function as a historian. I am sure that some schools decided not to admit me because of my focus in my SOP. For others, it may have been the factor that pushed me into the admit pile. If I had known which schools preferred a more "personal" statement and which were more research focused, I would have responded accordingly. But, I didn't know. None of us do. In the end, we have to be satisfied with our decisions because we can't change them.
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Hmmm... if you replaced "marketing" with the word "history," I would be suitably jealous. Right now, not so much.
I am sure, though, that my fiancee would be drooling.
History Admissions 2008
in History
Posted
You could put citations in your application under the published work section but for the life of me I can't think of how to word it. How did your professor cite you in his work? Did he thank you? Did he cite your term paper?
Maybe this would be something he could put in his letter of rec?