New England Nat

No it's not. I've had this conversation with czesc before. What he is describing is incredibly rare and the benefits of letting the programs know what landscape they are playing on are much more common and tangible.

I would advise that you talk about the intellectual journey you took to the topic you have. Something like "I was studying X and it led me to this and I found it interesting because of Y..." Obviously more sophisticated in telling. But your interests in a SOP should show your thought processes as much as a project.

I agree. Don't try and spin it.

I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned. Bruno Latour is all over history of science, environmental history and history of medicine. I'm not a theory heavy person and I use Latour. But I'm also very fond of Ludwig Fleck, but most of the time when I'm using theory it's about knowledge transfer and how knowledge communities are formed.

There are older threads about this but... It is not some grand conspiracy. There are internal reasons for the information. The aggregate data about where their applicants are applying helps programs gauge where they are applying helps them figure out who their peer institutions are. For example, in helping set stipend and funding levels, a school doesn't want to be far below their peer institutions. On the individual level, it's a good indicator of how much the student has a sense of their own academic field. Have they just applied to big names that do not have strengths in the subfield? Or have they chosen a logical list of places. There are of course outliers. The state schools aren't going to try and match Princeton's funding. Nearly everyone applies to Berkley. But when a department is fighting for their students with an administration the data helps them say "we're competing with X, Y, and Z... you have to give us the resources to make our offer competitive." EDIT: agggh typos at 4AM.

Oh, it never occurred to me that it wasn't obvious. Yes, I have girl parts.

I don't think it will hurt you. It's better for you not to say something there rather than make something up. Lack of diversity is a problem for programs themselves but they don't expect every student to fix a problem. Says a woman at a place with a fair bit of angst about it's over-whiteness.

Princeton Generals are two part, 1 part written. 4000 per field hard limit, usually with a "answer one from part 1 and one from part 2". And while they are about your field the prompts can seem kind of random when you are reading them. Orals are 1 hour for major field and 1 half hour for minor fields.

It's not exactly like a blue book exam ... but the writing half of Princeton's qualification exams aren't that far from the GRE writing exam.

There is no way to tell ahead of time.

I know of at least three programs in the top 25 ranked departments that have used it like that in the past. Particularly resource poor or scarce schools tend to be more likely to see the allure of using numbers that way. Not enough people read Ted Porter and think numbers always mean something.

It's not the professors that matter with GRE scores. Some schools simply have a cut off and they wont take anyone under it. Others will look at the entire application. In the cases of some schools, university wide funding depends on GRE scores.

Kenningsa, Assuming you have Dec 1st deadlines it sounds like you are right where you should be. I'd be a little concerned about the W score, but some schools will care about it and others wont and you wont know which are which really.

It depends on the university and the funding. It has happened once every other year in my program, but all graduate students at my university are fully funded so you aren't having the departments fighting for resources. We also took someone who had his funding cut from another school this year but he had to start over as a first year. I would suggest going to someone you trust in the history department and explaining your problems.

Or you are already a certified teacher looking to make more money. My MA program was about 1/3 MAT students, 1/3 existing teachers, and 1/3 people wanting to get into PhD programs.

"Often funded" is I think an overstatement about MAs.

For terminal masters... There is also partial funding. I had a TAship that gave me 1/3rd tuition remission during mine and that's all the program could afford and they only gave out 6 out of 20 or so each year. But even paying what I did for that masters was infinitely valuable to me because my masters got me into a better PhD program.

It is in no way rude to check such boxes, assuming you are applying for a PhD. The lifetime earning for a humanities and social sciences PhD do not merit paying for the degree. Repeat the mantra, "An unfunded history PhD is a preventable mistake."

I just wanted to let people know i'm back for the season. I have not been reading for a few months. For those of you who don't know me I'm a third year at Princeton and I field a fair number of PMs but I have to apologize to the person who was trying to contact me last month when Life Happened .

No, though I'd recommend you skip the course. Invest in a good book, I was fond of the Princeton Review version, and just do as many practice tests as you can. Make sure to look at how the written portion is graded and try to write with that in mind. In my opinion, a prep course is a waste of time and money.

It sounds to me like you have a solid foundation. I don't spot any trouble spots other than not having the GRE. When are you taking it?

For the record, I think you are right at least in that there are too many programs producing PhDs. I don't advise people to apply to any program ranked below 40/50th because I believe they will have an unreasonable handicap on the market. Every time I say that thought I manage to offend someone. But it's also an easy thing for me to say from where I sit. What kind of program are you in?

It usually comes up in other discussions. Don't worry too much. The site gets an almost new population each application cycle with a few grad student hang overs to giver advice. This is the slow time of year here because the next cycle hasn't started yet.

I think you'll find a lot of us have rehashed this in other threads and don't want to go round and round again.

Not answer your question directly... but about international MAs. I've been told by a number of East Asian specialist historians that they don't consider a Chinese MA to be worth the paper it's written on and that it only represents a certain amount of time spent in China for language use.