New England Nat

I had a number of phone interviews during the application process but I didn't think Skype had an advantage.

Programs that have admitted student days do so before the deadline and most good ones will pay for your travel no matter where you are in the world. Once you are admitted you are no longer trying to sell yourself, but for a brief period they are trying to sell themselves to you.

Each year there are a bunch of fake posts to results board. Be deeply suspicious of acceptances posted to big name schools without other acceptances with it. Unless the cohort is very small there will be a chunk of them at once to top programs.

It's worth noting that even Dan Rodgers, who I think of as one of the classic transnational historians, was officially an American Cultural/Intellectual Historian and the job search to replace him has that focus.

Tony Grafton is the one who told me they each have to look at them all. And I can tell you that when I was a first year I had a lot of people very far outside my subject area who seemed to at least vaguely remember my project. Some schools do use GRE as a hard cut off, but that tends to be a standard imposed by graduate schools across the board in all their disciplines. Or a department may not even consider a candidate who does not qualify for university wide funding that is done by GRE score.

I can tell you that the Princeton professors are expected to look at all 500-600 applications they receive each year. I'm told that it's standard practice to start reading the writing sample and that they know pretty quickly if they want to keep reading. So while hey may read each application they may only get a couple of pages into the writing sample of half the candidates.

No, I think they'll take living in China as enough of a test. The people I know who got further tested were ones who didn't have those manifest evidences. I adore Chen, so not my area, but she's a joy to be around but also a hard nosed adviser. I'm also not surprised at your attitude. I have a middle eastern specialist friend who described Near Asian Studies departments as "area studies ghettos." I can't speak to it myself as it's not my subject area but I have heard the reasoning behind wanting a history degree. ETA: You should know we're also hiring in late imperial china this year. I can't tell you anything about the search as I didn't go to the job talks but they are this week. It's the replacement for Naquin.

Well, Sue Naquin was the one I knew used to check languages herself. But it's also done not only by talking to the student but by looking for clues of proficiency in the application and writing sample. Janet Chen and someone else? Did you apply to history or east Asian studies?

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Papers and books aren't finished, they're abandoned when the writer has to finally walk away.

Ah, that clarifies things a lot. Out of curiosity do you have language skills. I know the strength of languages in some subfields can count for a lot more and POI I know will often test it out themselves rather than relying on either grades or qualifying exams. Our China people do that, and so can our medievalists where the number or required languages can be as many as five. Having difficult to learn languages can make up for a lot of other deficiencies.

I can't speak for the entire Ivy League but I know first hand about how my department operates and reasonably well about three others. The writing sample and statement of purpose are what matters. If the writing sample is not good you are in deep trouble no matter how interesting your project is to the faculty. As one faculty member explicitly described it to me, she started reading an application with the writing sample. If she couldn't make it all the way through the writing sample she didn't read either the SOP or the Letters of Rec. That she read them in order Writing Sample, SOP, and Letters of Rec. All Princeton faculty are expected to read all their applications, I've never seen them discuss them but believe me the weeks they're doing it are slightly fascinating as they each move to each other's offices to talk about this or that application. The process may be as was described to you at other places, but not at mine and not at the other ivy departments I know well. And I think it would be impossible to know ahead of time if the department is a "writing sample is everything" department. If Professor Plum is still around I'm curious what he/she would say. Undergraduates and MA applicants are held to the same standard, which explains why the Princeton cohorts of my generation are very heavy with existing masters degrees. My terminal masters, unlike TMP's to be honest, is from a forgettable department in a place you do not think great scholarship when you hear the city name. So the pedigree wasn't what got me in. In the strongest possible terms I would urge people to devote as much effort as possible to crafting your SOP and polishing your writing sample.

I'm shocked that anyone would say the writing sample doesn't matter and that doesn't jive with what I've been told.

My opinion is based on my relationship with Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer, and being a political historian (albit a slightly off beat one) at Princeton. I can tell you with absolute certainty that as long as your SOP explicitly dealt with historical questions and thinking you wouldn't be at a disadvantage in applying to my department. There are others that might but I think they would be in a distinct minority. Frankly, those would would be seriously out of touch with the recent trends in American political historiography.

I don't think you necessarily need an MA. The line between political history and poli sci is very blurry. In fact in the last twenty years all the good political history was done by poli sci people in the 1990s before the "rebirth" of political history in history departments. It's not like you are switching from a field with completely different methodology.

Does not matter. The people who make decisions wont even be looking at applications for weeks after the due date.

I put in all my applications by my first deadline. It helped me have a good holiday season but by late January the waiting comes back. I'm going to re-iterate for folks that Princeton will send out decisions in the first ten days in Feb, and that a Princeton waitlist should be read as a rejection. They take far more people than their minimum yield. A tenured professor told me once that they view the waitlist as a way of telling a student that they believe their project is interesting.

The guidelines that cover American graduate programs prevent nearly all of them from demanding a answer from admitted students before April 1st. By two weeks into March you should have most of your decisions outside of wait lists. It will be easier to manage.

The angst/torture after you finish the application but before decisions comes in is normal, and unavoidable. It doesn't really stop until you get your first acceptance. For those of you waiting on Princeton I would expect it in the first week in Feb. The nature of the Princeton semester is that finals for the fall semester aren't until the end of January.

BTW, since I've enjoyed being part of this community for a number of years now I'd just like to celebrate. As of this morning when my dissertation prospectus was signed off... i'm officially ABD. Yay.

I'd use the higher writing score as the difference between your two verbal scores is marginal.

Not to mention many programs require an outside reader on your dissertation committee and there is a high likelihood that person will come from the pool you contact during admissions.

If you have to pretend to know their work you shouldn't be contacting that person. Honestly I found a lot of your advise about the experience of contacting professors a little calculated itself. This is about give and take. Though perhaps if you started with that kind of template you went into this process thinking of it as more formal than it really is.

No one expects your CV to be very long at this point. Don't try and pad it. If your work experience is relevant it goes in the SOP.

The bit about who wants to read a 2500 word SOP is very true. Tony Grafton once assured me the professors at Princeton read all 400-500 applications they get every year (though not all the writing samples). It's a lot of work.

It's now been several years since I applied but 800 was what most of mine required.