czesc

Well put, lafayette. When I left my job recently I had a lot of older colleagues tell me they wish they could have done this, or that they actually had planned to (get a PhD in history specifically) but could never work up the courage. I'm glad that I won't wind up the person who, late in life, is embarrassed to explain that they didn't go through with it because they worried what their parents would think.

Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but TMP's post definitely has me questioning how many of the admissions decisions I received were colored by any of my comments on Gradcafe! I'd considered the possibility but assumed that most people with the power to make decisions weren't likely to be spending their time lurking around here. I hadn't thought so much about grad students influencing the process so closely... Going back to the geography question -- NorthernLights, I'm a bit confused. The Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and South are very diverse culturally and politically...it's strange to me that you'd find all of these places objectionable. Not to mention that there's considerable diversity within these regions...New York and Chicago are not Smallville, Illinois and Smallville, PA...and most college towns and neighborhoods have fairly similar cultures and politics, anyway - at least, while they're flavored by their regions, they're equally flavored by a sort of national academic culture that make them distinct from their surroundings as well.

I can't imagine having to TA right off the bat! Good luck to all of you preparing to do that. And thanks for the kind words from others. Annieca: While it's far from the UK, U Maryland (I assume you're at College Park?) is literally right next to DC - hopefully you can find some things there (a store? a restaurant? a rowhouse-lined street?) that will remind you of your erstwhile home.

In terms of "prestige" within the discipline, the USNWR rankings may be controversial but come relatively close to an accurate representation of how people feel in history about programs, as opposed to the general impression of schools by the public at large: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/history-rankings

I wonder if OP is an older undergrad/nontrad student though? After all, he/she has a spouse already. In that case he/she might already have enough life experience to know this is what he/she wants. OP, I would caution that you're really top-loading your list with institutions that are elite from a lay perspective. You can't write off Michigan as a "safety" -- it's a really formidable graduate institution that ranks in the top ten for history. While Brown, for one, is an Ivy League school with a lot of name brand appeal, its department isn't quite as reputable in the field overall. That said, I second Brown for your interests, which is at least as important as overall reputation. I can vouch for Jonathan Conant who's now there and does late antiquity, specializing in North Africa. I don't know how he is with grad students he supervises (or the extent to which he does) but I was always impressed in my interactions with him. You should know that Brown is a very small graduate community overall, though, if that is something that concerns you. You may also want to consider Cornell. Eric Rebillard also works on late antiquity. And Barry Strauss covers the ancient world in general, though his research focus tends to be military.

I've been thinking of doing something like this, if the class schedules work out. The ~4 hour trip from Ithaca doesn't make much sense given a two day weekend, but given a four day version, it might be more doable (timewise, even if it is a financial drain). I assume you're not planning on taking any languages, lafayette? They usually span the week and would be the biggest obstacle to this for me.

Related question: have many of you who are already attending learned languages on your own on the side? I assumed this is what coursework was for, but I'm already identifying some scheduling conflicts/lack of course offerings where I'm headed and wondered how common it was to be learning a language on one's own while enrolled in a PhD program.

Yeah, I understand the whole pastoral/contemplative vibe is great for some people academically. That said, I attended two large, primarily graduate urban universities so Cornell is a system shock. I think the busy rush of serious grad student life in these places actually helped motivate me before and it's definitely a strange transition to go to a primarily-undergraduate, rural environment at this stage in my life. Anyway, I know I should just shut up and be happy with it. My head has been a wrestling match between "be happy you got in this one place and go with it" and "maybe I accepted just because it was the only place I got into and has a good reputation and that was a mistake - I should have used the lessons from this cycle to get in somewhere else next year". Hopefully all of this goes away when I'm absorbed in reading. Has anyone who's not yet able to register for classes or access syllabi emailed ahead for reading lists from profs? I guess it's never too early to start studying for generals?

Wow, some of you are way further ahead of the game than I am. I've received precious little info on course registration, etc., so I have no idea what books to order. All I have is a Cornell email address and an assurance from the history department admin that, yes, I am enrolled, and should be getting any relevant emails... I did go up to Ithaca to lock down an apartment, but it was a tough trip. My girlfriend, who will be staying behind in NYC but is considering moving up there, came with and could not believe the distance to, isolation of, and all-around tininess of the place, which didn't really help assuage my own doubts about those things (she also has a newly-discovered medical condition that may prevent her from ever living somewhere so remote). Sure, a PhD is only three years in residence, but that's still a long time to be in a location you dislike that's remote from everyone you care about. To be honest it's given me a lot of cold feet and I keep wondering whether I can transfer if it gets to be too bad (though the answer I've gleaned from Googling and searching this forum seems to be: not really, unless I want to piss off the whole faculty, and I'd need them to be friendly in order to write new letters of rec...)

Benefits: usually cheaper than a US MA, closer to research materials and ability to learn the local language, if they relate to your interests (assuming so, if you're doing medieval/classical). Drawbacks: might not be as well-recognized by US admissions committees, or they might feel that their standards are lower if they're not, say, a prestigious UK school.

I have a JD and applied for PhDs this last cycle. Not much to add here that others haven't said, but maybe I can contribute some nuggets from my own experience: - Part of me wonders whether applying for a PhD after being a lawyer for some time made me stand out in the application process in a less than helpful way. I may not have seemed as serious about history as someone coming in with a masters and a job in the archive. Doing so while still in law school might be a different experience, but may still raise similar questions. Even formal joint JD/PhDs are still a relatively rare and novel thing in history academia, I think. And it seems from experience that law schools are more receptive to receiving people who have begun their PhDs than vice versa. - Professors have asked me why I didn't pursue a JD/PhD concurrently, and this question might come up if you begin attending law school and then apply for a PhD later. - Your chances of admission are much higher if there is a legal historian working in the department you're applying to (and on the same region/topic/issue/time period), even if you say you want to study policy and politics instead. These people will be the most excited to have a JD with formal training as a student. - Almost nowhere is a university's law school well integrated with its arts and sciences departments, so you will probably need to seek support from your law school and the other school's history department, and will rarely be able to cross disciplinary lines on any one campus. - You will probably need a recommendation from a law professor if you've started classes in law school, since it will have been your most recent academic experience, but this could also hurt you, since law professors won't know how to write recommendation letters targeted at history departments. - Definitely try and figure out which teaching market you want to apply in early. Legal academia places emphasis on published papers, the more the better, and the papers will ideally be in legal journals and in a very disciplinarily unique format. Law students frequently publish. History PhDs, however, rarely publish papers, and tend to focus on publishing their dissertations as books. I've encountered history academics who actually discourage publishing before finishing a dissertation so as not to have to include "embarrassing" early works on a CV. Trying to adhere to both publishing cultures seems to be very challenging.

Do you know what their goal was? They told me they wound up taking no one from the waitlist.

Yeah, the above is what I got from the document, too. But what confuses me is whether you need to accept an offer by April 15. Because theoretically, if you don't accept by then, would you not need written permission (or not need to deal with the social opprobrium) of backing out? And would your offer still be held open? The resolution discusses "an offer given or left in force"...I wonder if the difference between these covers both scenarios (i.e. a student has accepted an offer or not).

Very interesting; thanks for this. The language is sort of vague though. Does an acceptance "left in force" mean one that hasn't been committed to after April 15? If so, does this mean you need to obtain written authorization to accept another offer whether or not you've accepted an offer already? And does this language imply that there's not really any obligation to accept an offer on April 15?

Yeah, I saw some waitlist decision days last year were after the 15th. Don't you have to commit on that day though? What do you do if you get a waitlist acceptance after?

Fixed it for you by giving it a positive vote.

Looks like waitlists are being shut down today...

You'd need it maybe even more in NYC or the Bay Area though. Surprised USC beats Columbia/NYU/Stanford.

Not really envious since I think the cost of living in Ithaca would put me in at least an equal financial situation, just surprised that a state university that's not known as being quite as pumped up financially by its state as, say, UC Berkeley or Michigan or UVA would have the highest graduate stipend in history in the country (that we know of).

It's 1:30am and I get an email from UVA with a decision on my application - go to website and rejection. No mention of the waiting list I was told I was on or anything. I wonder if this is it, or if there are crossed wires? Could they have the full cohort they want committed already?

Wow, Rutgers! Who knew?

^ Did they invite you to visit? I'm curious about how this works for waitlistees.

I suppose that's true. It's been awhile since undergrad but I remember a lot of students could barely pass a map quiz, and this was at a very good college.

Thanks for the stats -- I'm glad I'm not the only one for whom it seems like a different world now than it did then. My area is European political/intellectual history with transnational components (e.g. empire, comparative/international law). As far as I can tell, a mostly-European focus was not a good bet this year either. At Cornell they told me they had admitted two of us (and I know Virginia imposed a quota of the same number). What's strange to me is that, while I know schools are paring down admissions in certain fields because of the market, don't they need people to TA all the European classes (still quite a few in most departments) on offer for undergrads!? p.s. Andean Pat, thanks. Again, I'm really happy about Cornell. I'm just engaging in post-mortem analysis out of interest in the process.

I do! It's not an either-or thing.