New England Nat

During the 1920s the AMA supported a doctor who proposed that there was a disease characterized by excessive concern for animals particular to women. Symptoms included caring more about your neighborhood cat than your husband, and of course being active in the anti-vivisection movement. The cure? Gynecological surgery.

In fact the nick name was actually N***** Jack, but the newspapers wouldn't print the slur word during WWI.

I've been told that this unoffiically happens in a smaller humanities field. Without the student part of the input. The top programs talk to each other subrosa so that each top applicant only gets one top tier offer. When it was discribed to me it struck me as likely illegal.

I can't speak for other schools but about 8 people in my cohort (slightly over 1/4th) are over 30. 2 over 34.

The soviets rejected the science of genetics on ideological grounds, and advocating the teaching of genetics could get you sent to a gulag.

NASA investigated launching a giant mirror into space to light up the jungles of Vietnam at night. The project was dropped when the neighboring countries objected.

I'm not sure what kind of proof you want that something is a bad idea. There is no way anyone could produce such a thing. The thing about graduate school is that it is a process of professionalization. You spend the six months (or longer) networking and making the contacts that will allow you to get into grad school. You spend two or three or god forbid four months waiting for an answer, it's horrible. The worst time of your life outside of death or pain in your family. Your fate in someone elses hands, someone you may never have met. But if you are good enough or lucky enough (or more likely both) and you do get in the situation reverses. You get an amazing month or two where people you have admired start to court you. They want you to come to them, and it's amazing. But that is also short. Once you arrive you have to start dealing with the professionalization process which means being a good colleague. Doors close silently in grad school. When you start to show that you are a flake, or are needy or are difficult or you can't make your deadlines... people will stop going out of their way for you. Your professors will do the minimum they are required. There is nothing good that will come of calling a PoI or a grad department now. Nothing. At best you will get a cagey response because no one who knows what is going on for certain can tell you the answers you want to know until their respective universities make up the contractual paperwork is ready. I would even be careful about these emails from PoI that say you've been admitted that "official paperwork" will come in a few weeks--that is not to say the ones that include PDF files of the offer letters, but the unofficial emails. I did not want to say this before, but this comes from deep and painful experiance. I finished undergrad in 2009, and while I knew I was going to a masters program I watched a number of friends from a R1 flagship state university get admitted to grad school in such a manner and as the financial crisis collapsed the world they never did get that official paperwork. Now this is not 2009, and it's a crushing and horrible thing that happened, but my point in relaying that story is that until you have a piece of paper or a PDF with your name on it and the funding terms spelled out in detail... it can go away. Once you have that piece of paper they are stuck with you

Do not do it. The process is beyond your control at this point and contacting them can only do you harm.

I want to second what Strangelight just said. It can be frustrating when you are waiting, I know, but calling the graduate secretaries is almost never the answer. I almost typed never the answer. Not only are people who are on the adcomms also often on hiring committees, but the department administraters often loose entire days to campus visits as they bring job candidates around. I can tell you Princeton ran three job searches in January (and has one more still pending). Professors were dealing with both reading writing samples and trying to make reasoned judgements on hiring candidates at the same time. It was pretty amazing to watch and gave me a lot of respect for how much work those doing departmental service end up doing.

I think that's a very good way to think about it.

Some schools the professor on leave does have a say in the process--if they want to--but many professors on leave don't care to. I know of some places where professors who will be on leave during the cohorts first year don't get to be part of the process. It can very by institutions, but I'm afraid to say that having your PoI on leave isn't a plus in your camp.

Acceptances come from the graduate program administrator or assistant, I don't know which of the two of them will be doing it. The professors generally will not email you until the official notice is out but I had emails from professors in my box before I'd even stopped jumping up and down and running around crazy showing my roommates the print out from the first email. The graduate school paperwork came two weeks later, with the perspective student weekend sometime mid march.

They traditionally accept a bunch of people early, than have a perspective student weekend inviting the already accepted and the people still waiting on decisions. I can't remember if they sent out a bunch of declines after the weekend but they held their waitlist people in limbo for a very long time taking people off of it in drips. Having watched someone in my masters program go through it that perspective student weekend is the killer.

I wish I could tell you the neurotic thing was going to get better, but it wont until you get your first yes. The first thing I got was a no from a place I was really attached to and it just gutted me. And than I got a Yes four hours later and I could laugh about what a flake i had been just that morning.

Yeah, it will get worse before it gets better (I was active last year under a different name). There were a bunch of people convinced that people were posting false info on update board. Also NYU's process completely messes with peoples' heads.

Not trying to bum people out. Believe me, I was super neurotic last year.

They bounce up and down in yield numbers, i'm told the reason the first years were so high is because they had (relatively) poor yield in the current second years. I'm afraid I can't give you hope with the idea that there are people dropping out. It's relatively rare for people to leave or burn out. Princeton is it's own animal though, so they might decide not to try and compensate for the excess. They can afford it.

There is a long complicated history behind if a history of science department is separate, or combined with history, philosophy or something else. There are also minor distinctions between H&PoS, History and Sociology of Science (Penn), and Science and Technology Studies. Each department (or program) mixes methodology in the disciplines differently and you basically have to look up each school to see if they are combined or not.

I can only tell you from my experience but last year Princeton and Brown were the first big departments to notify and they did it the same day. Yale the day after. In this case the Princeton timing is actually very specific because of the way the semester works here, they try to do all of the applications in January and do most of their job talks during that period as well. The undergrads finals only just finished, and as I said before, the new semester starts on Feb 6th. Last year I was totally convinced there was some grand logic on the way it was done, but now I know they just don't want to be dealing with this once Spring semester starts.

Not the same thing at ND, don't freak out if you are general history.

Not all that useful I know, but I remember this time of year with not so many fond memories.... I'm currently a student at Princeton's history department. They have either made their choices or are very close by now. They try to do all their work on next years PhD applications before the start of the new semester (Feb 6th). Writing samples were being read for the past several weeks, and the departmental staff was putting together this years acceptance packet about 10 days ago. I should warn people. The current first year cohort is extraordinarily large as far as the department is concerned and they may under accept this year to compensate. Last year's acceptance letters went out by email on Feb 10th.