New England Nat

A word of warning about McCurry, I know she gave a job talk at Columbia this year. I don't know how that played out but make sure she's still at Penn.

I know you said you wanted to stay in the south, but you should look at Princeton too.

It's just depends on the crop of students. I wouldn't expect this thread to pick up until Sept/Oct

I would do some patching up and feel the letter writer out on if they would feel comfortable writing a letter for you. If they seem to hesitate, find another professor to form a relationship with. This is probably something best done by reading their body language.

3-4 days

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, m-ttl. Bonus points to a caption that gives you the medium that the picture is in. The best print place I know to learn how to read pictures is Print the Legend: Photography and the American West by Martha Sandweiss. Though get a used hard cover. After the first printing of the soft cover Yale Press printed it on cheaper paper and made the pictures all muddy and there is no way to know which version of the soft cover you'll get. Anyway, I learned this stuff from Marni herself, and I think if I caption a picture wrong in a monograph she'll hunt me down even if I'm a senior scholar some day. The good thing about Print the Legend is that it is about an age of transition and she takes you through photographic technology, display methods, and how to write about images that no longer exist themselves. A ton of things a non-art historian or non-photographic historian would miss that turn out to be incredibly useful in treating a photograph as a historical source rather than an illustration.

There are many many strategies for this. The only piece of universal advise I will give is that you can not read every word but you should turn every page. As for me... when I was in course work I read every word of the introduction, the conclusion, I than looked at the notes to see what kind of sources the author used. In part this is to decide if he or she could possibly reach the conclusions they do using those sources (this turns out to be a surprisingly easy way to spot massive problems in books). I than pick a couple of chapters that seem most interesting or like they are key to why the book was assigned. If chapters are repetitive, pick one. Nature's Metropolis for example has three commodities chapters which are brilliant but for the sake of a grad seminar you really only need one to get the argument. Some people read the first sentence of every paragraph, which can work, but I don't use that very often. It may seem like a waste, but at least skim acknowledgements, after a bit you'll learn to read a lot into academic family trees. Learn to read pictures and maps critically. Are they there just for the sake of being there or are they part of the argument. Hint, if they're not captioned well it's not a good sign for the book. Articles will always take longer to read than the equivalent number of pages in a book. They have to be read more closely. Just the nature of the beast. As for reading loads.... my masters program (respectable state school, not big name), was 1 book per week plus 1 article. My phd program (ivy, big name), is between 1-2 books per week or the equivalent number of pages in articles but rarely both that many articles plus a monograph. In my experience "Reading" for course work, "Reading" for comps, and Reading for your own research are all very different and what I just said applies to course work. For comps it's read the book until you get it and put it down. In my program comps lists can be up to 250 books. You can't spend a lot of time with anything and you learn to be super efficient. It was my experience that books I really liked in comps I really had to have the discipline to put down. If I liked it I had gotten the argument.

Yeaah, I wouldn't assume you've been around more blocks than I have or that you have more varied experience in the academic world. I'll take that bet, and I have the advantage of being a historian and knowing this field thank you.

Wow, that's very cynical and ... I don't think particularly accurate. Fit in my book is that you work has the support within the department to mature and advance. If you are a historian of early modern Swedish hip hop, with a particular interest in the cultural exchange with Namibian biochemists than fit would mean that the department has a Scandinavian historian, someone who knows something about early modern popular music, an Africanist and hopefully a historian of science. That all of these people are open to helping students who do not replicate their work exactly. Because frankly there is probably not room in the world for a transcultural comparative for 15th century Scandinavia and Africa.

That is basically how it's treated. At least according to a tenured professor who told a group I was in that they considered it "an honorable mention". You have to understand Princeton in the last few years has accepted roughly 36 people for an ideal cohort of 24, and they'd go as low as 16 before considering the cohort to small. 20 people are not going to turn them down. They just operate with a lot more margin for error in their cohort size than most places that really have to budget do.

Chicago has taken people from their waitlist in recent years, just not often. Princeton has not. I don't want to be anyone's Debbie Downer, but I just wanted it to be clear.

As someone posted a Princeton waitlist on the result board I'm going to repeat something I've said before. The likelihood that Princeton will dip into their wait list is something on the order of a Brazillian medaling in cross country skiing. Not impossible as Brazillian cross country skiers exist... but also very very unlikely. Professors have openly told current grad students that they view the waitlist as a means of encouraging the applicant, saying that your project is good, but that is it. For your own sanity treat it as a rejection.

czesc, I have it on good authority that once during the 1990s the Sheriff of the county threatened the president of Cornell because the university would not close despite the fact that the county had closed the roads.

Just a heads up, we're expecting 6-10 inches of snow, but perhaps a lot more on Wes night and Thursday this week. I'd still lay money on Princeton informing this week but Snowmagddon is really disruptive. And it could really stop now. Please.

I would be surprised if it wasn't this week. Though the prospective student days are later this year than normal by a week... so YMMV.

And I'd advise you that you have no idea if you have "no chance of getting in". I didn't think I would get into the place I ended up going because I didn't think I was a good fit. The faculty thought I was a better fit than I did. There is a very big difference between what levoyous describes (a POI telling him not to bother) and not believing in reach schools.

Be very wary of Madison's "apply for funding every year" structure. I know it's really tempting as a school but that's a nightmare.

Having to write my masters thesis saved my sanity during this process.

If Princeton hasn't dropped today, than I'd say either tomorrow or Thursday/Friday next week. I have no insider knowledge about this cycle other than the culture of the department. There is some variability because these things will be sent out by the graduate assistant who is new to the department.

I guess my point is your dealing with bureaucracies. We'd end up with something more specific that would discourage thinking outside the box.

As someone with a quirky research interest... I'd like to point out I think such a limitation would be bad for history in general. I think you are underestimating how much change in scholarship comes from creative minds who wouldn't be able to fit "we're looking for 3 modern Europeanists and 2 latin americanists and 4 americanists and maybe an Africanist." It would also short shift a lot of smaller, less geographically based fields.

Yeah, ice storm has brought trees down all over town. They were already under stress because of snow on Monday.

Princeton is closed today, so the chances of decisions from here is very low today.

I wouldn't read too much into that. This is also hiring season.

Three years ago, Yale and Brown both came down essentially at the same time as Princeton. So this week or next is my guess.