Professor Plum

What does NP signify at your university? Is it equivalent to an incomplete, or a failing grade? How clearly is this spelled out on the transcript that the admissions committee will review?

What was the nature of your work with the military command historian? How recent was it? Are you applying with a focus in military history?

I'd omit the letter in that case. I'm sure it's a glowing review of your performance at the museum, but there's unlikely to be much in there that strengthens your case for admission to the PhD program.

Does your boss at the museum have a PhD? The admissions committee is chiefly interested in your ability to do successful work at the doctoral level, something that someone who lacks that experience cannot usually speak to with authority.

I'm on the admissions committee at a middling PhD program, and I can say quite definitively that we don't take extracurriculars into account when weighing applications. In the three years I've been on the committee, I don't think an applicant's extracurriculars have even come up in our discussions, much less affected an admissions decision. My second PhD student is getting ready to defend in a few months, and I have four or five more in the pipeline--and now that I have some experience working with doctoral candidates, a "mechanical studious graduate student" is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in an applicant. So obviously, it varies. LeventeL, I'm very sorry to hear about your mom. Having gone through the same thing when I was a grad student, I know how difficult it can be. Please consider the possibility of taking a year between undergrad and grad school. It was one of the smartest things I've done, and set me up for a lot more success professionally than if I'd tried to go directly from undergrad. Grad school will still be there in a year's time.

I love two-stoplight towns, too. Plenty of people prefer them to cities, for all sorts of reasons I can easily understand. My point is that this isn't a profession that offers much in the way of choices in that respect--so if you know you'll only be happy in a big city or the mountains or a two-stoplight town, or refuse to work in the south, or insist on being on the East Coast, you should seriously think about whether pursuing a PhD and an academic position makes sense for you. There are a lot of wonderful things about being an academic, but the freedom to choose where you want to work is not usually among them.

This is a perfectly legitimate desire--but if being able to choose the part of the country (or the kind of town) in which you live is really important to you, you should consider very carefully whether getting a PhD is a good fit. This is not a profession that allows you to pick where you want to work. The very fortunate graduates get a tenure-track offer, often in a two-stoplight town with a Taco Bell. The job market simply doesn't afford the luxury of being geographically selective--something you should take into account if location is really important to your quality of life.

What is the drop policy at this program? Can you obtain the reading list for any of the three courses and get an early start this summer?

I think that depends on the discipline. My graduate courses are worlds different from even my upper-level undergrad courses.

Absolutely. Make sure that the first instance of each work in your footnotes includes the full citation.

I agree--this thread is full of good advice. But I'm more curious to understand the motivations of someone trolling GradCafe. Really--it's a pretty modest stage. Why not National Review Online, or Mother Jones? This is such a tiny niche. What does a troll hope to accomplish? The human condition is endlessly fascinating.

I'm on the admissions committee at a middle-of-the-road doctoral institution, and GRE scores are about the fifth thing I look at in an application--after the writing sample, letters of recommendation, undergraduate transcript, and statement of purpose. The comments upthread are spot-on: a good GRE score won't get you in, and a bad one won't keep you out. Many members of the admissions committee had lousy standardized test scores (historians are not good test-takers, by and large), so they tend to be more forgiving. I don't take them too seriously because I knocked mine out of the park, only to discover that those skills were essentially useless as a graduate student. Invest the extra time in polishing your writing sample.

Like a lot of readers, I just assumed that this poster was trolling. The more intriguing question: Why? What is the possible payoff in getting a bunch of people on a grad student message board all wound up? That--and not the OP's totally nonexistent chances at being admitted to any kind of graduate program in the field--is what's keeping me coming back. It's fascinating.

Just to clarify my earlier post: there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a strong preference regarding where you want to live. But if you know that you will only be happy living in the South (or in New England, or near the mountains, or on the water, or in a small town, or in a big city), then a PhD in the humanities is not for you, because that kind of geographic flexibility does not exist in this profession. There are many, many wonderful things about academe, but the freedom to decide where you will live is not among them. There is a term to describe history PhDs who have determined that they are only willing to work in a specific region, or a specific kind of city, or at a small liberal-arts college, or at a large research university. That term is "unemployed." It is a lucky few who land tenure-track jobs after completing the degree; trying to decide whether you are better-suited to living in, say, Ithaca or San Francisco is not a problem you will have. (I suggest anyone who is contemplating pursuing a PhD spend a little time each week reading the Chronicle of Higher Education's forums, since they give you a little glimpse into your future self. The recent article "Embracing Your Inner North Dakotan" contains a telling discussion of some of these issues, which are well worht thinking about before you begin the program.) Anyway, OP, congratulations on what sounds like a very smart decision to delay your applications. I have no doubt that you will be both a stronger applicant and (should you ultimately decide to enroll in a program) a more successful grad student with the extra experience. Good luck with your thesis this year.

Do yourself a favor and think very, very carefully about applying to PhD programs right now. From my vantage point on the other side of the desk, these are not very good reasons to pursue doctoral study straight out of college. You say your student loans will kick in if you're not enrolled in a program within six months of graduation, and that you don't have a full-time job to pay them off. Presumably you could get a full-time job of you didn't enroll in graduate school, but leave that aside for a moment. Assuming more debt at this point, in pursuit of an extremely time-consuming degree that does not offer much likelihood of full-time employment does not seem all that wise, especially when you consider that even those who find full-time jobs pull down very modest salaries with which to pay down their accumulated debt. You say you're worried that you might get caught up in something else--a relationship, a job offer--and become distracted. That's terrific. (In some ways, you should hope that this happens. This is a good description of many of the happiest people I know, some of whom dropped out of grad school.) If there are other interests that might tempt you if you took a year away from school, what makes you think that they won't be equally or more tempting once you begin a grad program, which will be an isolating grind for long stretches? Why not explore other options now before accepting the financial and opportunity costs of a PhD in the humanities? You say that you only want to attend school in certain areas so that you can embrace the adventure of grad school. Leave aside the fact that, done properly, a PhD in the humanities is almost exactly as romantic as dental school. Leave aside the fact that the time commitment is probably much, much higher than you imagine right now--I averaged about 70 hours/week during my doctoral work, and I was hardly the hardest-working member of my cohort--so that no matter where you wind up, your time to "enjoy life" there is going to be more limited than you imagine. Instead, project yourself eight years into the future, and imagine that you're nearing the end of your PhD. You should already be aware that the chances of finding tenure-track employment of any sort are fairly slim given the trends in the market. Those odds drop to around zero if you rule out large parts of the country, like the midwest or the south, because you dislike the political views of the residents. Many newly-minted history PhDs consider themselves extremely lucky to head off to a one-stoplight town with a Taco Bell and a Wal-Mart at a university they'd never heard of before in a part of the country they'd never visited and may have actively avoided. If you've ruled out half the country because you don't want to spend eight years in graduate school there (a completely reasonable sentiment, I might add), you should seriously reconsider whether you want to pursue a degree that could land you in those regions for decades, or leave you unemployable. You say you love learning. This is a wonderful quality--but you do not need to go to grad school to keep learning. You say you really want to teach, but not high-school students. I'll lay aside the reality of much of college teaching, where you may find yourself teaching large groups of disaffected students in gen ed survey classes, covering material that interests neither you or them to fulfill department or university curriculum requirements. I won't point out that the difference between a high-school senior in an AP class and a first-year in an entry-level college survey is about 11 weeks, during which surprisingly little maturation occurs. Instead, I will point out that the world is desperately short of people who can engage and excite students, even (especially) apathetic high-schoolers, and get them passionate about learning and developing the ability to think. Teaching high school well strikes me as every bit, if not more, valuable as teaching at the college level. Someone who really wants to teach, but only at the college level is a little like someone who really wants to coach basketball, but only for the Lakers. If you really want to teach, you'll find a place to do it without worrying too much about the level because... well, because you really want to teach. This isn't meant to be as discouraging as it probably reads. But, really--think very, very carefully about this big decision. The reasons you've listed are not the strongest predictors of success, in my experience.

"I highly enjoy life not focused on publishing and research constantly." There's your answer. A PhD is not what you want. (And the world desperately needs passionate, dedicated, insightful history teachers at the secondary level.)

Both students will likely be passed over for the applicant who has a 3.9 and a stellar writing sample. I say this as someone who sits on the PhD admissions committee at my (thoroughly mediocre) program. We are ranked almost exactly in the middle of doctoral programs nationally, and we receive more than a hundred applicants for six funded slots. That allows us to be amazingly selective--much more than the quality of the program (or the prospects for its graduates) should warrant. An applicant with a 3.1 GPA that isn't from Princeton or isn't carrying Ds in differential equations and organic chemistry from their sopohomore year usually gets a very cursory look from the committee. There is a lot of encouraging, optimistic advice on these boards, and that's fine. Do not forget that most of it is from grad students and aspiring grad students. I strongly encourage considering graduate work to spend at least as much time over at the boards on the Chronicle website to get perspectives from people who are further along in the process--and dealing with the frustrations of the job search, the prospect of moving to a one-stoplight town in the middle of nowhere or facing a lifetime of low-paid, uncertain work as adjuncts, contending with debt and low savings, the molar-grinding anxiety of the tenure process... It's a useful corrective. Dismissing Benton as a "resentful idiot" is just being willfully ignorant of the realities of the way the humanities work today. (I happen to be a big fan of Kelsky's site, but don't forget how she makes her money, and where her interests lie with regards to encouraging people to pursue graduate school.)

As someone who has been on the other end of this thing, I suggest two sentences: "Attached please find X, Y, and Z materials for Q conference. If I can furnish any other materials to aid in the review, please do not hesitate to let me know." Usually the person fielding the e-mails simply forwards the attachments to the program committee, who make the final determinations. The cover e-mail is stripped off anyway. (Depending on the profile of the conference, that committee will be reading scores if not hundreds of proposals, and will not do much in the way of extra reading.) Be encouraged--your submission will succeed on the basis of its substantive contributions, and is unlikely to be displaced by somebody who wrote a more ingratiating cover lettter.

...and in the bad old days before word processors, it was not uncommon for the acknowlegments in a first book to read "Thanks to Catherine, who typed and edited the manuscript. The biggest thanks go to my lovely wife Elaine, whose support sustained me through the arduous process of research, writing, and advising...." Followed, of course, by acknowledgments in the second book beginning with "To my lovely wife Catherine...."