New England Nat

Don't take it personally when you dont' get into "safety schools". A lot of places can only take the people they give offers to, and if someone turns them down they don't get to offer to someone else. So many places will turn down strong applicants because they believe that they will be going elsehwere.

Geographic Information Systems. It's a classification of computer programs that arranges data with maps and helps see patterns that you might have otherwise missed.

You should let the graduate administrator know, and any PoI you had direct contact with.

You can do some amazing stuff with GIS. Anyone who hasn't explored the Stanford Spatial History project website should. It's not something you can pick up without training but I've seen some very cool stuff using it.

There are some fields memory isn't going to leave, usually ones with particularly bloody pasts. Holocaust Studies, latin american history, African American history, Western (American) history. But those are also the fields that have been using them for a long time, so it's most developed. It's a tool you have to have in the box, but just because you are using it doesn't mean anyone is going to be impressed.

I think it depends on the field if memory is hot or not. Fields that have been doing memory for a while are rather tired of it but there are sections of the profession that haven't used the tools before.

Sooo not my area, but I'm kind of surprised. I'd have thought James Scott might have sucked a lot of air out of the room.

The best transnational piece I've ever seen is Daniel Rodgers Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age in that the transnational approach radically changes the way you view the progressive age. But it's also not a book a grad student could or should try to write. The good comparatives I've seen written by grad students really involve countries using the same language. I should also add that the best use of the Digitel Humanities I've seen is Emily Thompson's roaring twenties project where she is looking at the soundscape of New York to find a new understanding of the city in the period in a way that you couldn't possibly do in old formats. The problem there is that one has to have some serious serious (MacArthur Genius Grant) money to do that kind of thing.

I want to second lafayette's experiance. My masters is from a program with very good faculty but virtually no reputation whose primary existance was to provide masters degrees to teachers. Where I got the masters was less important as the fact that I got one and that it showed in my developement. The top programs are largely looking for diversity in their cohorts.

Though interdisciplinary might be out of the basement and in the streets it isn't quite into the parlors yet. People say they are interested in it in theory but often get confused and hostile when presented with it in reality.

Religion is hot in political history.

Now the fun part is watching professors grill their grad students to find out who they think they've got. Mine were very happy about lafayette.

I don't think i'm blowing minds. I think there is some self delusion going on in some corners here. And not generally from the people who are current grad students. And I'll totally cop to people who aren't impressive coming out of prestigious institutions. I'm in class with them , and I certainly don't think i'm that impressive.

I'm not going to rarify the US New rankings. I'm also not going to argue that someplace with a narrow specialty and a 100% placement rate in tha specialty isn't a place you should go. However I am going to say something very unpopular here. Academia is my family buisness. I have a half dozen college professors in my family at a range of institutions and have attended everything from a community college to a second rate state university to a public ivy to an ivy. There are people on here who are going to have a rude awakening when they go on the job market. "But it's well respected in this field" or "well I know someone from X place that just got hired..." Exceptions and anecdote do not change the brutal facts. Hiring committees aren't made up of people in your sub field. They're made up of people from across a department who may have no idea what a good department is in your subfield. And don't expect that they do research on where the best department is before they start a search. They have enough work sorting through the hundreds of applications for each job. Name matters. It's ugly, none of us like it, and those of us that benefit from it feel dirty about it. I am in no way saying there aren't great scholars out there at places not listed or low on the list. They are. But the fact of the matter is that getting a PhD to be stuck in adjuncting hell because you wanted to believe you were the exception to a rule is a road to disappointment. And this is not just about research universities. Go to the CHE forums or the academic job wikis. You'll run into a lot of rants about how some small liberal arts college or teaching oriented place has hired someone from a research powerhouse instead of someone who has more teaching experiance. Oh, and while I'm being ugly on here, I wont name names, but at least one of the places that has been mentioned specifically on this subject as "being good for such and such" just cut off funding to a large percentage of their PhD students and told them to adjunct to pay their bills while they finish. Because fundamentally this industry is a pyramid scheme. In part because the entire educational structure needs more TAs to function than they will have assistant professorships to give. Would I quibble about if number 3 on this list is better than number 15? No. I'd say those are probably a matter of fit and preference. But there is a difference between number 16 and number 70. And pretending there isn't or that it doesn't matter or that your particular subfield is the exception should be between you and your future. It's almost criminal to pitch that narrative to people thinking about where to apply.

There is about 800 years and half a world between my work and my DGS. Our meetings last 3 minutes and he signs forms.

I'd say not looking outside of the top 10 would be nuts... but that's why i said 40-50. YMMV.

The job market. People talk about the over production of PhDs as if this is an even playing field. It isn't. There are departments where most people are getting jobs within a year of graduating. There are others where no one will get a job in academia. If what you want is a job in academia than a PhD from an institution lower than the top 50 programs will make getting hired very difficult. In another thread it was pointed out that AHA studies have shown that more than fifty percent of PhDs granted in the United States uncompetative on the job market. A PhD from such a place is a preventable mistake.

Pat, most universities do withhold taxes from international student stipends.

And I'd counter that part of being a professional is learning that not everyone else is going to be nice. That allowances have to be made for people who are overworked in under compensated service positions. Even the best most well oiled departments will have grumpy people. Universities exist in a world of exploitative labor these days, the tenured faculty member doing such a job may not be the most exploited person in the room but make no mistake the pressures are there too.

Not really. It's a horrible job that everyone has to do for 2-3 years. Much like department chair. Some professors will deliberately make themselves incompetent at such jobs so they aren't asked to do them. This is departmental dynamics that are both beyond anyone's control and temporary. There is a good chance that the DGS will change before you even start.

The DGS isn't irrelevent, but unless they are incompetent you should be able to stand or fall without their help. And Nice? Really? This is a professionalization exercise, don't expect everyone to be nice. A DGS signs forms and sets policy. Otherwise they are a professor doing a badly compensated service job for a couple of years.

I wouldn't be as big on trusting the subfield rankings. That you have to know the field (my home subfield isn't even listed). I would generally use that list to say where is the department in general relative to peers. And seriously question applying to anything below 40-50.

Some places give out stipends in chunks, some monthly. It depends on the school. (Mine is monthly)

Yeah, these days the schools themselves are avoiding the acronym so you will see a lot more of "University of Buffalo" "University of Albany" or "Stony Brook University" Mostly I also like to point out that crazy number... 62 SUNYs.

I would start by looking at some recent books in your field and seeing where people teach. Avoid schools with history departments ranked lower than 40 on the respected lists of history departments. As for writing professors just email them, apologize for taking their time, say what about their work that interests you and what sort of work you do. And don't be offended if they don't answer you they may be on leave.