mvlchicago

Fields ebb and flow at any given point and I doubt there's a large enough dataset out there to give you the answers you want. if you're that concerned about the job at the end of the road, you should probably not be going into history academia and trying literally any other field more geared towards quantitative methods: political science, sociology, pyschology, these are all fields hiring at rates that are ridiculously high compared to history. If you're serious about doing a historical perspective, what you need to focus on is what drives your questions and interests. What should drive this decision is what you, as the scholar, would find easier to motivate yourself to do when you get up in the morning to start your coursework and reading. This isn't from some fantastical notion of loving the craft; it'll be much easier to do your best work (and therefore get hired at the 1/2 jobs available when you graduate) if you do what you want to be doing rather than what you should be. If it really doesn't matter refer to the advice in my first paragraph.

eh, imo primary source research >>>>>>>>> secondary source stuff. Like, you've got anywhere between 10-25 pages to demonstrate your potential as a historian–if they want to know your ability to navigate secondary scholarship, they'll ask for a book review (cough cough Yale.) I think you'll be fine so long as you sort of wave your hand in the general direction of some names. Obviously more detailed would be better, but like your secondary stuff at this point could literally be "X professor said that social history was important in this context and Y professor said political history is cool so I'm doing both! Yay moving on now~" and that would suffice for the most part.

This largely depends on the peer context of your PhD programs and your MA. For example; if your MA is solid from a large state school and you're moving into Harvard's PhD, I doubt you could expect much in regards to adjustment of your course requirements. But aside from that, I think PhD programs tend to not waive such requirements because the coursework is a large part of the "collegiality" that the school wants to develop within cohorts. So if you're only spending one year taking classes with them, that sort of ruins the model for everyone else they've accepted. Further, I think as has been iterated on these threads a number of times that the concept of "MA" as strengthening a Ph.D application is incredibly new and that traditionally most PhD programs have not really been built around accommodating such students. As such, it is possible in the future that you may be able to "skip" theory & methods course but a large part of what you're learning in those programs is how to network and interact with a wide range of scholars within your home institution. I think if you did your MA with a sense of wanting to "skip" elements of the PhD program, you did the MA for the wrong reason.

Just looking at this, I get the feeling that an MA program isn't quite what you need right now: you need to first figure out what precisely you're looking to do, or at least narrow it from "I want to go into research or library sciences." These are two incredibly different fields and doing an MLS vs. a research MA are going to provide very different career trajectories. Further, if you decide you want to do research, you're going to need a more specific set of interests and figure out where they intersect: an MA program that is strong in a history of capitalism via the culture of French Empire will be incredibly different from an MA program whose speciality is intellectual history in the context of modern US politics. Right now, it sort of sounds like you're throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping just one thing will stick for you. I would advise taking this summer to seriously focus on what you want to do before thinking about applying to MA programs. What programs propel you to a top 20 PhD program HEAVILY depend on the answers to these questions (for example, I really, really doubt an MLS will get you there w/o very specific reasoning as to why you did that vs. a research degree.) Finally, I think at some point you're going to have to bite the bullet when it comes to your thinking about the MA degree re: finance. The name of the game right now is that MAs are meant for poeple who don't want to go into academic professions, but want to engage with academic history on some level, or people who messed up majorly in undergrad and need to improve their credentials. Since 2008 things have changed, but administrations have been slow on the uptake. What this means is that most programs that are going to be perfect for your specific interest (once you figure it out) will have very little funding for you to do it. If you're committed to not "be some other PhD's piggy bank" then I'd suggest you seriously evaluate other options: Fulbrights, Peace Corps, international job experience in the country of your interest, these will all provide ways of improving your applications for PhDs without your paying them. You may just happen to find an MA program that will fund you, but if you do, count your lucky stars because that is going to be the exception rather than the norm.

^ heads-up, just heard back from the program and they don't anticipate this being the last year. So if any of y'all are reading for 2016 onwards, don't worry about it.

at the chance of sounding a lil insensitive, might I suggest y'all put this in a PM box? This thread was meant for the answers to the OP's specific questions.

^^^ Arendt will always be relevant, I'd add The Origins of Totalitarianism for a fuller description of her thoughts regarding the development and aftermaths of the European experience in WWII

^^^^^ except for apartments I like

I have no actual sense, hence heresay . Honestly it's probably the amount of credence that you could give the post that started this um... interesting conversation, so to speak. If it makes anyone feel better, I've traditionally been the "lowest" or "weakest" applicant to get whatever was available: fellowships, schools, scholarships for undergrad, research positions and so on. In my years of experience, it's less about where or how you're perceived at the start of the game, and more about where you finish at the end of it. I have confidence in y'all to be ballers wherever you are or end up.

Then I wouldn't worry about it; I don't have much experience applying to masters programs for public/local history, but I can't imagine that volunteering in a site that has little to do with your own development/career goals is going to have much impact on your applications. If anything, I'd place value on my happiness and ability to do well over another line on the resume/CV

I was being a little hyperbolic, I do think the particulars of a "group" being weak is a fascinating question; all the same more than one person might take that in a slightly different way (this season worked v well for me, even if I really liked Penn) What attracts to me about your phrasing though, is what you mean by "first." Since the 70s? the 00s? Ever? There are a lot of speculations one can make dependent on the time frame. I do think I've heard on heresay that this year saw the fewest apps since 2008, and if one has fewer applications I think there's inevitably a dip in quality (not always, but correlation.)

Considering that I applied to Penn (and had tangential interests to Richter)... ouch. Apply ointment to the burn?

Question one: Yes, anything you're doing that helps you figure out specific details for your PhD applications will always further your endeavors in that field> That said, I would've seriously emphasized applying to at least a few PhD programs because you could be selling yourself short. As it is, my decision would be heavily predicated on an economic question, namely If you had the amount of money you would need to borrow/spend to do your masters in hand, could you do a better job of pursuing your interests? Basically, the MA will offer you a way to refine the questions you ask, and give you the time you need to ask them. If you don't really need refining, I'd jump straight to asking them, look through archives, dig up sources, think critically about what you want to argue. (you'll probably decide an MA has something to offer you, which is fine. But I think you should really spend the time making sure that's true, rather than jumping to spend the money) Question two. Again dependent, on what you are looking to do, what languages you will need, whether you can handle an extra class (Applying for the PhD), whether you have a sense of what your MA thesis will be and so on. More often than not, I think the answer is it will be easier to apply the year after your MA is done, but it's not impossible.

Yeah, even if it's a pre-req for your programs (although I doubt it) if you hate it this much, you should maybe re-consider what you're trying to do with your degree. Just a couple (maybe too harsh?) thoughts.

I feel like Penn's undergrad newspaper would have much better intel than the NY Times FWIW. Either way I agree the Penn name is going to do miles for you regardless of how "unhappy" people are.

I mean the post already stated that there are a lot of pro's in harvard's direction. Not knowing the specifics of the fields, I don't think many of us can offer better input than "think about the network" since it never showed up in the initial post. I do think matters of personal affect are very important, but I think OP is probably aware of that.

God what am I not reading right now. I'll give the five currently holding my interest: Subaltern Studies IV of XII, Ed. Ranajit Guha s/o to David Hardiman's essay on the Politics of Drinking in Colonial Gujarat. Genealogical Fictions by the late Maria Elena Martinez, a fascinating text tracing the limpieza de sangre from their origins in fears of converso pollution to their arrival in the Americas. Nasty Wenches, Good Wives and Anxious Patriarchs by Kathleen Brown, focused on the intersections of race and gender in the context of 16th-17th century North America. Coming of Age in Second Life by Tom Boellstorff, focused on ethnographic/anthropological approaches in writing new media/gaming histories, focused on Second Life and other Virtual Worlds. Defining Boundaries by Janina M. Safran focused on narrating a social/cultural history mediated through Islamic legal texts in the 8th-10th centuries of Andalusia

The best way I could describe it is knowing what's happening in two separate areas: I'm still in touch with all my faculty from Chicago, and they've invited me to continue updating them on my progress and to stop by when I'm in the area. If they know of panels/books/positions available they send me emails and talk about networking opportunities. I presume that when I see them at conferences we'll hang out and they'll introduce me to other people. Meanwhile, at Brown, I'll be doing this same sort of networking except with a whole different set of faculties working on a whole different set of projects who will (presumably?) take interest in what I'm doing. When it comes time for job searches, if one's in Chicago I know there's a group of people there who can push for me at other schools in the area. Or if they have friends on job search committees trying to figure out if they want to hire for Atlantic World or Latin America, they can push my name as someone who'll be on the market. And when I start publishing, two groups of scholars'll be interested in what's going on. In short, obviously broadening networks if you're not good at keeping in touch won't do much for you, but if you can juggle the balls it will work wonders for you in the long run. Further, if you show that you're successful at a number of schools, it makes your future job search applications look more appealing, since you can say "I did well at x y and z schools, it's probably a safe bet I'll do well at your institution as well" and things like that. I spent a long time speaking with faculty about applying to Chicago for my Ph.D and most of them were fairly emphatic that I should avoid going back because it would limit my opportunities.

Who specifically are you working with at Chicago? I had the good fortune of being particularly close to a number of faculty in the history dept. while an undergrad. From what I've heard, the grad administration at Chicago is not fantastic–and if undergrad is anything to go by, I certainly would believe it. Also, if you've done your MA at Chicago, I would seriously suggest expanding your networks by going elsewhere; the faculty you worked with at Chicago will still be there if you need help down the road. Whereas, you've no experience (I'm assuming) with people at Harvard, and building those connections can only be beneficial at this point in your career.

EM student just came to say holy smokes please thank your scholars for engaging postcolonial theory over the past ten years. It's making my dissertation ideas easier, knowing that I'm temporally surrounded from both sides .

This is my basic gist on the situation based on experiences mostly at varying schools in the ivy+ realm (re: is my school top 10? What about my subfield? Will I get a job? etc.): If you are attending an Ivy League+ School (so inclusive of Stanford, Duke, UChicago, WashU and Johns Hopkins), or a pretty well-reputed public/private school, (Wisconsin-Madison, Berkeley, NYU, UMich, Northwestern, etc.) you're probably fine, regardless of what your subfield is, so long as you're putting in the work that you need to do. If you're not attending those schools, nor a school that is legendary for its subfields (so like Arizona for Reformation under Heiko Oberman, or UCLA for colonial Latin America over the past couple decades), you're probably "behind" so to speak of the pack leaders who are mostly at the programs listed above. Does this mean you won't be hired? No, because these things aren't set in stone. It just means you probably have an uphill battle in regards to demonstrating why you are just as qualified as a student coming out of UChicago for NELC, or UMich for the Ancient World, or Yale for religious studies. I don't mean to single this thread out, since a number of people have been asking "Well what does it mean to be here" or "Should I take the top tier masters or the second tier phd." I think, ultimately, a lot of these questions depend on your specific needs as an individual. I've had faculty at Chicago who started at colleges whose names I cannot even remember. The bottom line is I'd spend the time you are worrying about the name of the degree and develop your thesis, or build your networks and so on. Also important is just because a school's name or pedigree is amazing does not mean it will be the right fit for you. If you fail out of a top 10 program, you'll be in less a position to get your dream job than if you did a steady, well-written dissertation at a lesser known school. This doesn't mean you were a worse student or any less able–maybe you hate the East Coast! It's probably easier for me to say this on the other side of the chasm, but I've seen friends drive themselves insane over rankings for both undergrad and grad programs when I think it wasn't necessary. Compiling datasets that you want (placement records for a specific field from each program over 10 years) is basically impossible since not all schools are releasing their info publicly, and to start worrying about everything based on a non-set is time-consuming. Just stick to your guns and know what you're bringing to the table, and I think you'll find you'll be getting the offers you need to make your programs work.

Gates and Rhodes are both more competitive than any Ph.D program for which you'd be applying so I don't think you want to do that. Fulbright researchwise is still pretty stiff, but the English teaching Fulbrights are a lil easier to obtain especially if you've some teaching with which to begin. I'd honestly push for the two-year MA programs (if you're going to go that route) because I think it's difficult to do much of anything concrete in a one-year program; unless you're planning on doing the full year of MA, and applying the year after you're done, you'll be trying to write your MA thesis, pick up languages and applying to PhD programs. That's not going to be a fun time for you. I'd also seriously push for you to apply to a few PhD programs with your MAs since honestly "competitiveness" is not something that can really be judged based on prior results: at this point our interests are all so specialized that maybe your work and place is v competitive in a way that wouldn't be true for other fields. Further, it'll give you practice in applying to PhD programs: going through the motions, contacting faculty you'd like to work with, assessing the 5-7 year programs you'd be happy at and so on. Yes it'll be a few hundred dollars more, but if you're planning on a mostly non funded MA, it might be beneficial to ensure you can't just start doctoral work. For that reason (no money) it's much easier to score MA admissions than PhDs, but keep in mind that the MA isn't going to guarantee a spot anywhere. Sure, it'll be another line on your CV, but unless you do something more with that opportunity (which is why I think a two year program would be better) you might as well take a couple years to work in "the real world" while you figure out your commitment to history on your own. I think for the first couple of years, provided you're still working on things related to your interests, your application only gets better. Those are my couple of thoughts.

I mean, yes it might annoy them, but you're also on the hook for a potentially life-altering decision. I think it's important to do what's comfortable for you, but I doubt the number of emails you send at this point will have any effective shift on whether or not you get off the list. In any case, good luck!

A year is definitely not enough for Arabic, short of a program located in a country and run entirely in Arabic.

I'd be emailing at least once a week; although for a school like JH, you'll probably have to wait until April 15th before they have an answer :/