grlu0701

I did a search for a WVU meet and greet thread for this year, but didn't find one. Anyone else headed to Morgantown next fall? I'll be entering into the PhD program in history.

I also received a rejection for my first response -- my first 3 actually, so I know what you mean about rejections shaking one's confidence.

Still, I think that, based one how the admissions process is handled by many universities (in which they send out rejections as they eliminate people), receiving rejections first is natural. I ended up 7 of 12 including my first three rejections, so hopefully you'll bounce back too!

It's a very good rule of thumb, and the polite way to do things. There's no reason not to compare two schools as you have them, and tell the "loser" that you won't be attending so they can move on and give someone else a chance. There's nothing to gain from "hoarding" your admission offers.

Generally, schools won't ask you to reply before April 15th, and I think it's not right that some pressure applicants to do so. I think it's definitely worth having a talk with the admissions director about the e-mail, but if the head of the adcom said the e-mail wasn't supposed to be sent, I wouldn't let it effect your decision too much.

As to it being "illegal" for them to require you to make the decision early, legality in no way enters into it. The only thing the school has to lose by requiring an early decision is reputation, or if they've signed the agreement, perhaps being removed as a signatory if it happens consistently. But there is question that they can "legally" require you to decide early.

BULL.

It is 110% illegal for them to make this demand. Don't buy it.

The rule of thumb I had alway heard was to hold no more than 2 acceptances at one time. Once you receive a second acceptance, then start deciding which of the two you do not want to go to and let them know so they can move to another person. Just what I was told.

You may be doing this, I obviously do not know. I would not think you would have to make a decision before April 15th, but it would probably be nice for those on the wait list if you do (wait list is no fun).

grlu0701--
My primary concern centers around backing up your files. Please consider saving copies of your notes in multiple formats (.txt, .rtf, .docx, .PDF) and in multiple locations (your computer's HDD, a back-up HDD, and in the cloud) and having also at least one hard copy of your notes.

Please keep in mind that as you go through graduate school, it is likely you'll become an increasingly skilled reader and note taker. Therefore, I recommend that you perform periodic self assessments to find ways to streamline your reading/note taking. Today you may need to take ten pages' worth of detailed notes for a book while in two years, sometimes five to nine bullet points will do the job just as well. That is, develop a frame of mind that allows you to trust your own judgement so that you can use methods appropriate to each particular circumstance.

Also, please find out as soon as you can what tools you'll be allowed to use when you take your qualifying exams. If you have a very old school professor on your exam committee who says "no computers!", you might be well served by taking your reading notes by hand so that your penmanship and spelling skills don't deteriorate too badly between now and then. (I use the computer so much that my hand writing is just about illegible to me.)

HTH.

I've heard this before, but it really just doesn't work. people don't always write middle school-style 5-paragraph essays. sometimes you need to dig into the actual paragraphs for the most important information. shocking!

I'm not against skimming of course, but I'd recommend a more holistic approach. Not much point otherwise.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the different approaches to reading that one might use as a graduate student in a history program.

I respectfully request that all participants in this thread state clearly how far along you are in your program. This information can be as simple as "I'm in my second year of coursework," or "I'm taking my qualifying exams in two semesters."

I also respectfully request that participants differentiate between methods that they've heard and ones that they've used and to distinguish among those methods that have worked very well, moderately well, and those that have crashed and burned. And, since history is the study of change over time, please do mention any significant changes or even minor tweaks you've made to your reading methods as you've progressed through your program.

It might also be helpful if participants in this thread said a little about their views towards reading historical works. That is, what are your basic objectives when you read various types of works?

If I'm in Boston next year (as currently looks likely) I've already decided to become a Red Sox fan... not the Patriots though. Never the Patriots. At least not until Brady/Belichick retire. I'm from a part of the country not exactly famed for its professional sports teams (Ohio) so it would be great to actually see some championships.

I'd advise anyone that is concerned about living costs to look outside of Boulder county. (I think that's the official name of the county?) I know that rent costs are only a fraction of a cost just over the county line and in many of the surrounding cities there are bus lines that regularly run into Boulder. This was the advice given to me by my fiancee's parents, who live about 20 min outside of Boulder.

Hi grlu0701,

I don't know about your department, but in my admission email, the DGS said that the financial aid package offered to me (TA-ship + fellowship) was offered to "less than 1%" of applicants. I don't know about what the rate is like for other forms of financial aid though, other posters can help here maybe? Hope this helps.

Not sure how much dissonance is going on in the previous posters scenario.

I guess it sounded good though when hitting reply. . .

STEM people must resolve cognitive dissonance way better than us bemused humanities kids!!

Ha. Laughing at the "rep" on my previous post.



Eh. Not about not being supportive. If one of the metrics is long-term success, then I would say the STEM programs have more than a leg up here. Yes I am pretty confident in my choice because there is an established history of success for folks in my program (and within the department I'll be joining).

If the metric is "buyers remorse" - well that is just something that will happen in any program; quite impossible to really judge how well a fit a program is going to be until you are in the thick of it.

More than overkill.

I had one program that accepted me over the phone. I reciprocated, when I declined that offer, by calling that person directly. He thanked me specifically for calling, and said he wouldn't have wanted to find out via email.

If a potential adviser or department chair called you to give you your acceptance, give them the same courtesy.

How old are you?

Agreed. Thankfully that's not what I said. . .at all.

I agree with the OP that your posts in this thread have been pretty negative. I don't think the OP was trying to get advice to send "handwritten scented cards" as you suggested in the last post, but to get some advice of what to say to POIs from a rejected program. I think it is bad advice to tell someone that a professor that they have been in contact and accepted them to work with will not want to hear from them. As we all know grad school is extremely competitive and often professors in a program will only pick one or two students that they would like to work with and will suggest them for admittance. Professors often spend a significant amount of time fighting for certain students and it would be unwise to not send an email thanking them for their support and telling them of your final decision.

There is no negative tone. It is simply me not shining you on; you asked for opinions, I gave you one which you reject out of hand which lead me to conclude you don't actually want opinions just validation for a decision you have already made. Nature of the beast.



I amended my recommendation to be more in line what you were seeking. . .did you not see?

ANDS!: I am sure you mean well, but many of your posts seem to have a severely negative tone. I was drawn to TheGradCafe.com for the supportive and positive environment. I think that many other posters feel the same way about this forum. In the future, I would prefer that you refrain from responding to my posts if you cannot be cordial.

Exactly. Perhaps people want to over complicate things because it is a big step in their life, and each action demands some grand gesture. Unless you're an exceptional candidate and the department went out of their way to recruit you (read: did they do anything they didn't do, or wont do again, to another candidate) a simple email suffices.

But hey I'm sure someone will come along and tell the OP what they want to hear: personalized hand written cards (perhaps scented) expressing deepest regrets and the hope that this doesn't completely shatter their graduate program.

Oserius--
It will depend upon how deep you want to go into the weeds.

For some, it will be an assignment one does just to get done. For me, it was an opportunity to learn more about a fairly prolific historian I wanted to emulate at that time. In my research for what ended up as a biographical/historiographical essay, I collected everything he'd written that I could get my hands on--including his master's thesis and dissertation. I read his major works with a magnifying glass (including a page by page comparison of a work that had two editions). I read reviews of his works, reviews on the works of his reviewers, and reviews he had written. I interviewed a couple of the professors he'd had at graduate school. (I did not, however, interview or correspond with him.) And I had the good fortune of getting to attend a series of lectures he gave at my school and attend a luncheon at which he was the guest of honor.

In all honesty, I was on pins and needles for a while from information overload. Fortunately, I took an approach used in the retrospective essays that appear in Reviews in American History. This approached allowed me to focus on the trends and themes of his scholarship rather than a blow-by-blow account of his "brawls" with his peers. (This latter approach would have required a much broader understanding of his field than I had.)

If/when you get this type of an assignment, you'll find that there's no single right way to complete it, that there are a lot of gracefully written published pieces that you can use as examples, and, that, if circumstances allow, you can use it to refine how you look at history. (I had the "time" because I wasn't taking any research classes that term.)

PhD- History
Arizona: dukelover50
Brown: Attia, Ganymede18 (partner), virmundi
 
Cambridge: superfluousflo
Colorado-Boulder: grlu0701
Columbia: Cpetersen, Safferz
Harvard: Safferz
Illinois-UC: Gene Parmesan, R_Escobar
Illinois-Chicago: crazedandinfused
Johns Hopkins: Pugsley87
Michigan State: Cranston
 
Minnesota: remenis, WendyDarling
Northwestern: Ganymede18 (partner), genesisy, goldielocks
 
Nebraska: R_Escobar
NYU: Sequi001, uhohlemonster
Ohio State: iamincontrolhere-haig, ticklemepink
Oxford: alleykat
 
Penn: Safferz, runner09, Pugsley87
Pitt: teachgrad/CageFree
Princeton: easybreesy9, maeisenb, Roxelana, Safferz
Rutgers: goldielocks
SUNY-Binghamton: alleykat
SUNY-Buffalo: goldielocks, Veilside1, wikichic, grlu0701
SUNY- Stonybrook: abacab44, always sunny, crazedandinfused
 
Temple University: crazedandinfused, alleykat, superrockr1
Virginia: cupoftea_andasitdown
 
UC- Berkeley: Astarabadi, CPetersen, telemaque
 
UC- Davis: teachgrad/CageFree
UC-Riverside: teachgrad/CageFree
UC- SB: virmundi
University of Exeter: Lureynol
University of Chicago: Attia, calamari19, Sequi001
University of Miami: sandyvanb
 
UNC- CH: cupoftea_andasitdown
 
USC: CPetersen, virmundi
 
UT- Austin: emerald54
University of Washington: Gene Parmesan
 
UW- Madison: Attia, emerald54, hopin’-n-prayin’, RevolutionBlues, sequi001, telemaque, ticklemepink
Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL): taybaxter, goldielocks
West Virginia: grlu0701
Yale: Agora, Safferz, telemaque, virmundi, zb642
PhD- Other
Harvard (AmCiv): CPetersen
Kansas (AMST): Gene Parmesan
 
Purdue (AMST): Gene Parmesan
SUNY- Buffalo (AMST): R_Escobar
UC- Davis (Cultural Studies): genesisy
 
UC- Irvine (Culture & Theory): genesisy
UC- SB (Classics): Attia
MA- History
Boston U: grlu0701
Cambridge: Lureynol
Chicago: uhohlemonster
Drew (History & Culture): naturalog
Fordham: qbluecheers
Indiana: GloFish
Louisiana State: grlu0701
Miami U.: Kelkel
Nebraska: grlu0701
Northern Illinois: Cranston
Tel Aviv University: uhohlemonster
Texas Tech: grlu0701
UMass-Amherst: crazedandinfused
SUNY-Binghamton: Kelkel
UT- Dallas: Kelkel
William and Mary: historyguy12485
University of Vermont: jrah822

@oswic Another option is for you to grab up a couple of text books in your fields and to study them. A frame of mind in which you stop and place an event or an unfolding dynamic within a chronological framework might serve you very well in the years to come. Some of the monographs you're going to read may rest on the assumption that readers already know the five w's backwards and forwards. Moreover, some professors have raised the point that while certain fields invite skepticism of narratives, narrative history does have a place--especially when teaching undergraduates.