czesc

Yeah, I don't have a breakdown by field, so you may be right that few US medievalists come from Oxbridge. Do you count Byzantine-ists as medievalists? Because in that case, I found at least one: http://www.princeton.edu/history/people/display_person.xml?netid=cshawcro

Maybe "dominate" was too strong a word. They are tied for 12th (with Johns Hopkins) for most PhDs in top 20 US history departments, beating Cornell, Brown, Northwestern, Duke, NYU, UNC Chapel Hill, and many others. Yale alone has seven historians who earned their PhDs from Oxford, and two more who earned theirs at Cambridge.

Why exactly are you looking at history programs rather than South Asian Studies or something like that? This would help us figure out where might be best for you. I know we have a PhD candidate working on Urdu language construction and politics at Cornell right now, but I'm not sure how close that kind of thing is to what you're looking for.

The key is "working" on your Arabic, though. I've been surprised by the number of people I've met in a very good ME history program who had only fairly basic Arabic when they applied. It may be easier/more efficient to master one of the other languages you might being able to use or need (French is a good one for the ME) with the indication you'll keep working on Arabic if admitted.

The Student Room (studentroom.co.uk) is an admissions forum like this one largely geared toward UK programs, both grad and undergrad (look for the "postgraduate" forum; that's the UK term for "graduate"). Keep in mind that UK PhDs don't require courses because you're required to do a standalone MA or MPhil prior to being admitted. Also note that, when it comes to history, you definitely won't be barred from American universities with an Oxford or Cambridge PhD; in fact, these dominate the better departments. Other British university PhDs might put you at a disadvantage, though. In any case there are ways to get teaching experience in the UK right out of a PhD that you could potentially use to leap back to an American university, but the combined time might equal or go beyond that required to complete a US PhD.

This might depend how long the MA is. Certain universities make students who quit liable for a full year's tuition - and if the MA is only a year long, it may just make sense to see it out. It also may be better to have finished the degree in order to explain away the resume gap you'll inevitably have after leaving; you can use the time while you're still in the program to search for jobs. Of course, some employers might be more sympathetic if you leave as soon as possible, but it's a risk either way.

It would still be very easy for you to integrate the medical/science historians in Cornell STS if you were to apply directly to the history department here, too, since they're in the "field" of history, even though they're outside the department - see my response to Rogue856 above for more clarification.

I assume you've looked at History of Science departments - have you looked at Science and Technology Studies departments as well? Suman Seth in Cornell STS works on both medical history and gender studies, and the history department offers historians versed in British and British women's history generally too.

Okay, let me try to clear this up. Cornell is a highly interdisciplinary school - its various departments tend to work better together than at other universities. It's relatively common to have members of a committee from another department or from units ILR, and both encouraged and easy when those people are members of the "field" of history, which essentially means they've been pre-approved to work together with the history department on committees by virtue of the affinity of their work to the discipline of history. People in the "field" come from various departments all over the university where you might expect historical work to be done - ILR, STS, Near Eastern Studies, etc. - and it's basically just a convenient way to acknowledge that history as a discipline sometimes spills outside the department walls and facilitate easy working relationships with other units (conversely, members of the history department are sometimes members of fields like South Asian Studies, etc.)

You might want to search around; the topic has been explored a lot on this forum, usually contrasting UK and US PhDs. One of the differences that always gets brought up is the lack of access to peer networks in the US that would help at the hiring phase - assuming you wanted to get a job stateside. American PhDs will have an advantage here. They also tend to get more teaching experience. On the other hand, American PhDs take a long time and essentially force you to complete the equivalent of another masters' degree worth of coursework before you can begin your dissertation. And if you're concentrating on European history you'll be further from your sources, requiring expensive and logistically difficult travel to reach them by comparison.

Important to remember that history is somewhat different from other disciplines in this respect. Publishing tons, whenever it's ready, is the norm in some of the social sciences. The fact that these disciplines are more paper than book based (history is more book based), and tend to be more collaborative than individual (meaning there are more opportunities for students to co-publish with faculty) contributes to fewer papers being written by students (grad or undergrad) in general, meaning very few PhD applicants will have been published prior to beginning their programs.

Keep in mind the quoted length of the Stanford PhD - 5 years - is probably an underestimate. The average length of a history PhD in the US is usually closer to 7, if not higher, except at Princeton where they're very strict about the 5 year limit. Stanford may officially offer only 5 years of financial support, but the likelihood is it'll take longer than that. I doubt it'll mean any financial difficulties (Stanford students wouldn't have a problem obtaining outside fellowships or grants) but it needs to be weighed properly against the much shorter Oxford program.

Amazed no one here's mentioned reading reviews as a strategy for getting basic arguments down. In history sometimes these are just a few paragraphs more or less summarizing entire books. I really wish they were available for volume chapters or articles. Often searching for citations of a work in question will bring up a brief takeaway description written in another work as well. I should warn you, though, there are tough profs out there who will really expect you to churn through detail in a way that will catch you out if you don't at least get down the basic points in each chapter of a book.

You might also want to consider Cornell, especially if you're thinking of looking into how New Grenada/Colombia defined itself as part of (or vis-a-vis) the Caribbean; these are topics that Ernesto Bassi concentrates on (he's Colombian and is also good on Colombia in the Age of Revolutions in general). With Ray Craib, who's also a Latin Americanist who's done work on Pacific History, you could focus on Colombia's other coast, too. There's a growing community of Latin Americanists here who work with both of them.

Add Cornell to your list; the university is building a program in the history of US capitalism. The history department made a new hire this year in the field and beyond the US historians in the department itself, there are several professors who work on the subject who are formally affiliated with the Cornell ILR School. Cornell also hosts a history of capitalism "camp" over the summer: https://sites.google.com/site/historyofcapitalismsummercamp/ You can find some of the relevant Cornell faculty members' names (and relevant faculty at some other schools) in this NYT article on the emerging history of capitalism field that came out last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/education/in-history-departments-its-up-with-capitalism.html?_r=0

The thing is, if elite programs are all graduating one person in each field, and there are, say, three openings in that field in a given year, you're going to have a remainder. And - though this is sort of speculative on my part - I'd assume one of the reasons Chicago students are among the biggest casualties of this (assuming equality among job candidates) is because they're often seen as equal contenders for prestigious spots as the Harvards and Princetons - but because the latter are slightly higher on the food chain, often just lose out to them - and then lack backup options because they're considered to be among the elite who would eventually want to pursue another position (or doesn't "fit" with others in less prestigious programs who may not have as-elite PhDs).

Ahtlatl - unless you get full funding from Oregon that'd make it more attractive for in-state tuition at UC for your whole time in a program, I'd go with UCLA. Having a masters in LAS will actually help you be more flexible on the job market if you do get a PhD (and may be a better thing to have at the top of your resume if for whatever reason you don't). You can most likely still do a lot of historical work within the LAS framework and gather useful recommendations from it. And UCLA is a brand that will benefit your CV throughout your career.

I've followed this person's career on Twitter and elsewhere. Many people have remarked that he could probably find a job outside the US much more easily. Of course it'd be difficult for him to move his family at this point (and he was basing all his plans on assumptions that were reasonable prior to the recession), but it's not necessarily hopeless for him. The lesson is that PhD applicants in coming cycles should be prepared for the eventuality of needing to live virtually anywhere in the world to get a job and should plan having a family accordingly. It's also worth noting that reality became more grim for many professions after 2008. I went through a cycle of job interviews that year and was lucky to receive one job offer in my field when people in previous positions in previous years had their hands full of them.

You're definitely right to check other fields as well as history. You might fit in at a comp lit program, for example (in the English-speaking world, continental philosophy tends to be read more in those departments than philosophy proper). UCSB's History of Consciousness program might be something to check out, too.

A lot of the most prestigious schools may be prestigious for reasons other than selectivity, which would help explain what's going on. I know that many tend to have very large programs, which means there are more professors for students to fit with and more grad students under them.

I'll bite in terms of answering the actual question. You're right that you should be worried about people moving...as well, I should add, of people retiring, and this is one of the main benefits of emailing POIs during the application process (even undergrad or masters advisers in the field may not be up to date on these things). For example, I can knock two potential graduate advisers out for you right now: Sam Moyn is moving to Harvard Law School (you might be able to work with him if you went to Harvard, but you'd probably want to aim your application at Gordon in the history department) and Martin Jay is retired from Berkeley and not taking any more grad students, as far as I know. You would definitely want to contact Megill before you apply at the very least, given he seems to require doing so before he agrees to take you (see his guide to graduate school in European intellectual history: http://people.virginia.edu/~adm9e/grad/grad.htm) Of course, it would be helpful to know more about the intellectual history you want to pursue. From the people you listed, I'd assume continental philosophy, but if you're more open to British political stuff, you could also potentially work with David Armitage at Harvard. With regard to the more classically continental stuff, there's been a really dedicated circle at Chicago around Moishe Postone, though he's getting advanced in years himself and I'm not sure if he's taking anyone anymore. Here at Cornell, Dominick LaCapra, who used to be a huge name in the field, is also now retired, but there are some younger scholars like Camille Robcis (who does a lot on French Marxism and psychology) and Claudia Verhoeven (who does German intellectual history in addition to her main focus on Russia) filling the gap; there's a new History and Theory Colloquium and Cornell's interdisciplinary emphasis makes it easy to work with people like Enzo Traverso, who's a big intellectual historian who happens to work in the Romance Studies (French/Spanish/Italian) department. The Society for the Humanities here is also like a sort of umbrella organization for theory-oriented work that tends to draw people interested in intellectual history as well.

There is some outdated and some overgeneralized information in the post above. This may be the "most important question," but where you go definitely matters. It matters a great deal on the job market -- more than anyone is really led to suspect. More on that below. There are troubling trends like MOOCs that, many people think, will restructure much of education in a way that will reduce the number of tenure track hires. There are troubling trends like adjunctification, but MOOCs have been proven to be a flash in the pan. The attrition rates are atrocious, meaning they're not likely to substantially replace credit programs at non-elite universities, and they lack the ability to facilitate connections that more elite universities provide. In short, getting worked up over them is very 2012. People freak out when they see numbers so terrible from places like Chicago and Harvard, but you ought to keep a few things in mind: these are huge programs with a vast diversity of people. Quite a few won't be looking for academic jobs, will leave academia for personal reasons, or will place constraints on their academic job search like location that will make it impossible for them to find a quality job in their field.* Of course, you may now wonder why I said where you go matters if this is the case. It's because the most elite programs don't necessarily have the best placement record, either. It's a shame no one's done this for history (the data may be too large), but someone put together a placement ranking for German Studies recently, and it's amazing how terribly Harvard and Chicago come out despite their reputations: http://pankisseskafka.com/2014/02/24/adjunct-nate-silver-the-real-placement-rates-of-german-phd-programs/ I've seen data on Cornell PhDs in history going back to 1989, and most have pretty solid jobs. Are they all tenured at Stanford? No, but most are not struggling in precarious adjunct positions, either. tl;dr the most elite institutions may not place the best on the academic job market, and aren't great indicators of that market (but will place well in nonacademic jobs* so you don't have to fear for your life). That said, a lot the dreary data is unquestionably true when it comes to institutions much lower down the chain than maybe the top 25-50 or so. I see many people who graduate from elite programs doing postdocs for a year or more before landing a job. Yes, it sucks moving every year to a new postdoc if necessary, but it's nowhere near adjunct hell. Again, most graduates from elite programs who wind up in the least desirable work situations are constrained by family ties to a certain area or something. You won't do well if you can't deal with the notion of conducting a national or international job search. This has more to do with your personal situation and preferences than the PhD. --- Am I saying I think going and getting a PhD is an unquestionably fantastic idea? No, I'm just questioning some of the logic above based on the data I've seen and on my experience. In general I'd say it's important to go to the best program possible -- but to make sure that program isn't overselling its elitism. Bad numbers coming out of Chicago are not necessarily indictative of the field as a whole. --- *One thing worth noting is that there's higher attrition from academia among people who got their PhDs from the most highly ranked (top 5 or so) institutions. Maybe their life expectations (paycheck, location) were higher. Quite a few have jobs that are better compensating than academic history (in finance, consulting, etc.) Yes, there are people from Harvard who have been on the adjunct track too long, too. But a Harvard PhD will take you places other than adjuncting at a community college if you wind up stuck doing that when it's not what you want to do.

FYI: Cornell admitted 17 people this year and 11 are coming for admitted weekend. Don't know if that means there's a waitlist or what might be the fate of anyone who could be on it.

I was on it last year, and remember getting a personalized letter (in an email attachment) about it, saying I was "high on the list". A few weeks later (still weeks before April 15), I received a summary "check the website" rejection -- presumably they'd already filled their desired cohort with their first choices, or at least filled the subfield slot I would have been able to take. One thing I didn't do was follow up the initial waitlist letter with an expression of interest, but that might be a good idea in this situation. p.s. Not two seconds after I'd posted this, someone from Charlottesville googled me. Can't help but feel there must be UVA faculty/students hanging around here who might know (and hold onto memories of) applicants' profiles!

Congrats! A scholarship from a school like Penn Law is no mean feat. As I recall the school is pretty tightly connected to the history department too (at least relative to some other schools) so you might use that to your advantage if you wan to keep alive your PhD dreams.