schlesinger1

What are you all considering knowledge of a language for purposes of this? I've taken a year of Arabic and lived in an Arab country where I picked up some dialect, but that's really far from "knowing" the language in any form.

I will say this. Nobody is going to post anything less than positive about their departments. It's just not professional to do so in public. At the same time, don't take the lack of responses as "there must be so much negativity" but rather simply not enough posters are here that go to those places and check in on this site.

You are better off waiting to be admitted and then asking graduate students for their opinions.

http://youtu.be/XViCOAu6UC0

Because the first response to the thread was an immediate assumption that this woman is a liar intent on destroying his life and reputation because of her worship of this false goddess called "feminism".

There's nothing that you can do but hope that people are rational enough to not listen to gossip. And perhaps take this as a lesson about sharing this story.

I don't understand how this became a men vs women thread. There are men that do rape. There are women that falsely accused. Summary of the story? People can do bad things regardless of gender.

It is a patriarchal society. And there is no "bandwagon". Evidence overwhelmingly proves male dominance in all aspects of society (except homemaking lololololo!!!!)

These "feminists" that make you ashamed to be a feminist (I should probably reverse those quotation marks) are the ones that are fighting for a woman's right not to be harassed without being labeled a "slut" or "asking for it".

Again, you're hearing this gentleman's side of the story yet you're immediately willing to jump in the fray and blame the woman. I'm not making any judgement calls either way: he could be right or she could be right but, clearly, your bias is showing.

ETA: I apologise to the OP. I didn't mean to hijack your thread. My $0.02: people will talk and that's the way of the world, but if you behave as if you believe what happened happened (ie. your version of the story), then it'll become a nonissue. Not much else you can do about it... if you go around protesting and trying to get people not to talk about well... that won't look very good.

Wow... take a chill pill, dude and read his text. He said: "And knowing the nature of rumors, it will probably turn into 'he was accused of rape' rather than 'he was a victim of a false accusation.' Doesn't this support what I'm saying about society's tendency to villainize men? See, the truth is clearly that "he was a victim of false accusation," but because (along the lines of my conjecture) some people automatically assume men are in the wrong in these matters, the case will be spun to "he was accused of rape omg let's stay away from him." People will more than possibly not be able to view the case objectively, jump to judgments and shun him -- unfortunately. Thus, this shows how we're dehumanizing men by not being able to view cases such as this one objectively but are rather inclined towards our pre-conceived notions of what men are like -- which equals rapists in this case.

and in regards to "feminists," I'm talking about women who will do and say anything to justify their position of victimization in a -- so they want to emphasize -- "patriarchal society". so they jump on the bandwagon when cases like this leak, as they get to suspect a man for being oh-so-evil! they tend to disregard the fact that men 1) have their unique feelings and insecurities and 2) women can make up stories precisely to take advantage of a "victim" position. these "feminists" make me ashamed to be one myself.

What is this supposed to mean?

You don't even know the full story yet you're willing to blame this on "feminists"? Disgusting. You're what's wrong with rape culture.

I'm so sorry to hear about this! I think this story shows how our society (especially self-righteous "feminists") is so willing to villainize men to the point that men are dehumanized. i really think men have feelings equally as women do.

i don't know what to tell you except to keep insisting on your innocence and tell them that you'd be in jail, instead of in academia, had you really been guilty?

I agree don't rush. I do think a solid SOP takes more than three months to write (and this also means thinking things through). You should definitely save up money if you can. You have a solid job. Why leave it now?

I would wait.

A lot of programs have deadlines on Dec 1 or Dec 15 and it just doesn't seem like enough time for you to put together a strong application. Most people spend months on their essays - for example, giving them to former professors to read and review etc, which can just take time because professors are busy. It doesn't seem like you would really have the time to put into getting really competitve essays done in the next few weeks.

Further it can take several weeks to get your GRE writing score back - but you need to imput that information on your application. Would you even have enough time to take the GRE before the applications are due?

Applications cost on average 100 dollars, so why waste your money?

Most of the people entering my program were 26 at orientation their first year and many were older, so turning 25 really wouldn't be that old compared to most other grad students.

Are you sure that's the case for all professors? My POI in your department is on leave this year, but he was certainly involved in reviewing applications last cycle. IME it's not unusual for professors on leave or planning to go on leave to be involved in the admissions process. I had one POI read my application in France, where he was based the entire year. My current adviser is on leave this year as well.

While it's best to know if a prof. is taking students, it's pretty common to be unaware of this and apply anyway. If you're really concerned about saving on application fees, you could email the DGS. You might also consider a couple of things to try to read the tea leaves a bit. Does their faculty page list them as being on leave for the coming year? Do they seem to be nearing the end of their career? If they're in their mid-70s, that's something to take into account, given that you're likely to be there for at least five years. If the department maintains a list of current graduate students, does this prof. have a lot of students already (relative to other professors)?

Sending emails out is a good idea because it can result in conversations or valuable information. But many profs won't respond. Not because they're inconsiderate people, but because of any number of reasons - they're busy, disorganized, on leave, inundated with a million emails a day, etc. I don't think one should expect a response. It's great if you get one, but it doesn't really mean anything if you don't. I applied (with several successes) to many schools without hearing back from my POIs because they were good fits. I didn't want to look back with a feeling of what might have been, for one thing.

Good luck.

God I am so isolated. Pitty me at my horrible little college in new jersey no one has heard of

Well, good for Oklahoma, they're building up a really cool environmental history program. I wrote an encyclopedia entry for her and she was always lovely in my dealings with her.

167 is about 97th percentile -- I don't think your verbal score needs to be that high to get into any program anywhere.

Every time I got rejected last year, I did something like this. So prepare a new furniture budget:

So, I was right. Publishable does not mean published and therefore, misleading. This process is truly dumbing down academia. This whole process should be rigorous. Only the best should succeed and therefore deserve their spots in the field. Call me archaic, but I know that I can produce a lengthy work. This will come as no surprise to me when I have to research and write a dissertation. By the way Riotbeard, I am published and so my thesis is far from useless.

If you are talking about SUNY Albany... don't bother. I'm sure there are lovely people teaching there, but one of my professors used to teach there and talked about how guilty he felt about their PhD students. That they were smart people they were taking advantage of because none of them had ever gotten a job teaching at the university level. Add to that recent systemwide cuts that have manifested at Albany in drastic cuts and attempted elimination of all languages other than Spanish...

In a PhD application there is no such thing as a safety school, but the buttom of the list shouldn't be impossible.

On another level, i'm mildly curious as to why Princeton didn't make the list given Isenberg and Kruse.

Wow, this thread old, but have to comment...
 
However, I can't see myself fitting in with a cohort that consists of a bunch of third-generation top-tier college kids, trust-fund offshoots, and the kind of kids that the author of this article describes.
I went to a "lower level" Ivy -- I'll leave it at that to protect my anonymity), and I was a first-generation (though white) female student from a lower-middle-class family.
My experience of the community was not as you describe above. Many of my friends took out loans (I did, too), and some were working part-time to help pay expenses, and some were theater geeks, and some (of course) were more business-oriented. My boyfriend, though not a first-gen (though his parents went to low-tier state schools), came from one of the poorest towns our state. One of my pre-med roommates from a middle-class family worked hard as a waitress during the school year.
 
I don't think I had a single friend with a trust fund, though they certainly existed, as did third-gen students and students from rich families. But I also had friends from upper-middle-class families, and they were great, so-called "real" (see below), down-to-earth people. I even had a friend with a connection to the school via a parent, and this friend is the one of the most down-to-earth people I know. It's not as if these schools are cesspools of classism. It exists, as it does at all private schools, but it's not as oppressive as you would think.
Keep in mind these are research universities with multiple colleges, not small liberal arts colleges, which means there are lots of students, and all of them doing different things with their lives. It's very easy to avoid the "good old boys (and girls)" and make friends from all walks of life. It's also easy to avoid frat-life or its equivalent, simply because the schools are so large.
but that the kind of people the Ivy League accepts are mostly those who have been best conditioned to favor correct answers over interesting ones.
While many people I know did have good test scores and grades, I was accepted to an Ivy with a sub-1200 SAT combo, a C+ in a math course, and an excellent admissions essay. I'm also in the extremely practical and uncreative field of creative writing. Basically: I could not be further from the type of person you expect me to be, having gone to the school I did. I think you are right about prep high schools, but, while elite, those aren't colleges -- it's very different. I would say that my Ivy League education only further inspired and encouraged my creative endeavors, not stifled them.
make friends with REAL people,
 
Oh yes, you can only be a REAL person if you go to a non-prestigious state school. Just as only REAL Americans live on minimum wage in the midwest and are sure to read their Bibles before bed, while all the fake Americans live in NYC and Los Angeles with the gays and the atheists. I think you can make your point without implying that people who attended "elite" schools are somehow not "real" or worth your friendship. You don't strike me as the kind of person who would buy that social-conservative rhetoric, so why speak it yourself?
the box of an ivy
Not even close to a "box." How could you possibly make such a judgment about years of educational experience you declined? Have you forgotten that you did not, in fact, attend the school, and that you could have easily have had an equally (or even more) positive experience there? That you might have evolved artistically there, too? I had more intellectual and creative freedom and engagement than I could dream of in school, and my professors were more encouraging than ever when I came to them with creative endeavors. I really had a wonderful, warm, and stimulating educational experience at my "fancy" school. I don't doubt, however, that I could have had a similar experience and grown in similar ways if I had attended my non-prestigious state school, simply because I can't accurately speak for experiences I never had.
The point:
I agree with glasses's commentary. I think we can speak to the value of attending a non-elite school (there are many) without acting as if an education from an elite school is somehow deficient ("the box of an Ivy," brb, laughing forever), or that the students at such schools are not worth knowing for X or Y reason. JFC.

Sorry folks. That article is bull. The inability to talk to someone who isn't of your class or educational background has nothing to do with where you went to school. It has to do with where you were raised and who raised you. Pure and simple. You don't "learn" how to be a snob in the Ivy League (or whatever public or private equivalent you might attend). The writer of the article just needs someone to blame for his own shortcomings. And people who agree with him who haven't gone Ivy just don't know because, well, they haven't gone Ivy. And using Gore and Kerry as examples to bolster his point is just lazy.

I did my undergrad at an Ivy and now I'm doing my grad work at an Ivy. But it was my parents, regular middle-class people who worked everyday and believed that goodness to others is a virtue--not my professors or deans or fellow students in college--who taught me how to interact with the world around me. But the ability to interact with people, to hold conversations and see other points of view? That was learned at home. Where, frankly, it should be.

Sure there WERE social and cultural things I learned at my undergrad Ivy that I can clearly see as marked as "different" or "special" in some people's eyes. But I don't have to let those systems define who I am. And there were things I saw there that bothered me at times. But I don't have to be pissed off at them when there are FAR more important things in the world to be pissed off about.

But I will say this: I've seen some selfish, mean, nasty, dumb, egotistical assholes come out of schools far off the Ivy path. What excuse do we give them?

@glf212 It is on you to prove that you did not start this thread so that you can thump your chest while many of your peers are in misery. It is up to you to make things right.

I think getting a debriefing from BU and posting the useful information from that conversation will be a wise move for you at this point and time.

sick brags all around in this thread

Dear TGC friends,

I’m sure this seems presumptuous for me to create a separate thread but having been on here for more than 3 years, it just seems like I should just do this, rather let this be buried under “decisions,decisions” or “chit-chat.” And there’s a lesson to this.

First of all, I am so grateful that this site exists, even if it drives each of us nuts. It is a place full of rich information and insights (and many “take it with a grain of salt” pieces of advice). It is full of passionate people who care deeply about their future. As Sigaba pointed out once, academia is like a black box. And so is TGC. While this site does attempt to create transparency, it will never be fully so. You just have to trust your instincts; don’t let your nerves get to you. People know but do they really need to say it? Here on the TGC, we are so tempted to share everything we know and that is fine. We want to help each other get to the right places and we seek out each other by subfield or common interests via PM. Future posters will need to take the initiative to read old threads and send a PM to a poster (and hope that the poster checks his/her spam box!). I should say that by doing this way this year, what I’ve seen and heard, it has helped many of us. Perhaps doing this kind of approach has fostered a sense of community full of positive vibes to the level that I have never seen before. So, congratulations!

Yet, I will urge people to consider information shared by previous posters about their campus visits to help them build their lists. Reading about campus visits and impressions by others helped me tremendously in terms of building my lists for Fall 2011 and 2012. My adviser recommended OSU for Fall 2011. If it had not been several positive campus visit reviews that year, I’d probably hesitate, I mean, OSU? I didn’t know anything, it's Michigan or Wisconsin or Indiana. I said, okay, I will apply, no question asked (despite being a Wolverine). The funding experiences of Wisconsin acceptees kept me away from that place for Fall 2010 and 2011, as well as less than favorable reviews of the department culture. I had to strike a deal with my POI there that I could not consider Wisconsin without funding, even though he brought up the issue himself. I learned from here not to apply to UCLA and other places for funding or department culture reasons. So, future posters, if someone suggests School X, use the search function to see if someone’s posted personal experiences with the department. I would imagine that they’re usually spot on.

I do want to say thank you to those who have been so incredibly supportive. I am truly humbled that there were people who reached out to me via PM to check up and express genuine interest in my applications. I seriously thought coming back here for fall 2012 admissions would be a walk of shame. I didn’t want to put off anyone by announcing that it was my third time- I mean this is how freaking competitive History PhD admissions has become. This year was based on luck of timing though I know that both of my POIs truly appreciated all of my hard work and my experiences. I also didn’t realize until later on that my OSU POI had somehow kept me so calm despite no guarantees or suggestions of an acceptance (and that's a quality you want in a PhD adviser!).

I do want to say that my visit to Wisconsin was incredibly pleasant. I loved the close-knit community there and the contagious intellectual energy. The faculty and students were positive despite the financial situation. My POI was a “genuine” person with a mind for details. I truly had a change of heart after I left Madison, which did not put me in a good position mentally for my visit to Columbus. At OSU, though I felt the department was more conservative (not politically but just the culture) in comparison to Wisconsin, everything is taken seriously. The department works hard to ensure that students are happy and satisfied with their training, funding, and professionalization opportunities. Because of its large size, it would indeed take time to find a niche especially that graduate students do not live near each other. Given my POI’s situation that day, our meeting was rather lackluster. So I left Columbus without a decision and I was very disappointed not to have that “light-bulb” moment.

But being a believer of “second chances,” I decided to see if my POI wanted another conversation. She seemed quite enthusiastic so we set a Skype date. I thought, “Okay, if she doesn’t wow me on this, I’m going to think real hard about turning down OSU, my top and most logical choice.” During our conversation, I discovered that she was the One, a beautiful intellectual, personal, and professional adviser match. I just felt right at home in her presence. It was such a pleasure to call her the other day to tell her that I would come to OSU in the fall.

She certainly wasn’t on my radar because her first book had nothing to do with my interests. If it had not been for my MA adviser’s suggestion and my OSU POI’s interest in me and current project, I would have never considered her seriously. If it had not been for positive reviews of OSU on TGC that encouraged me to apply to OSU, I’d be at Wisconsin.

It is time for me to say farewell and move on (after all, I will need to study!). I will check every now and then for any specific issues and questions that I may be able to answer. It’s truly been a lovely ride. As always, feel free to PM me as I get e-mail alerts.

-tciklemeink