APHistorian

Thank you for your responses, Westcott and cafe americano. I was thinking in a similar way as the both of you were, though I was concerned that that track was not the appropriate one- I am relieved to see that it most certainly is the appropriate one! I've made my decision (after talking with my parents much more on the subject today) to attend CU Boulder, and I'm quite pleased to have done so. I congratulate you on your acceptances, cafe, and I hope I can repeat your feats in the next two years! Thanks once again for your help!

Greetings all, I'm finishing up my undergraduate career at UC Irvine as a History and Classics double major. My acceptances this year were rather modest as I aimed far too ambitiously with my applications, but at the end of the day I was admitted to the UCI Tri-Campus program and guaranteed a year of waived tuition and a regent's stipend of 16,000 on top of that. I was also accepted to CU Boulder's MA program, though waitlisted for funding. I sat on my hands till the 15th waiting for my status to change. Then, on the morning of the 16th, Boulder gave me an offer of 6 units waived tuition per semester for both years, as well as a stipend of 9,400 and another fellowship of 1,500 on top of that. I've been struggling with this decision for the past week, and my time is winding down to make a call. I'm quite enamored with the prospects of going to Boulder as I was born in Orange County and have been living here in Irvine for the past three years (I was in Northern California for some time), but my family also lives in Irvine so if I were to attend UCI my cost of living would be essentially zero. Money isn't a critical issue, however. What is a critical issue is which school would be best to position myself for another attempt at applying to Ivies and big name schools. Boulder has done some pretty excellent placement in the last couple of years, but the number of students who actually make it to these schools is decidedly few compared to the number of their applicants. To further complicate things, staying at UCI would ensure that I am at least locked into a Ph.D. program- if it all goes to hell in a hand basket I can at least stay put and play it safe. I guess what I'm asking my fellow classicists on the board is, what would you do in my position? I should mention that my primary focus is Roman Imperial History and that I'd be trying to apply to Michigan, Chicago, Chapel Hill, and the like of the excellent history programs in two years, and that I planned (with my professors' blessings) to use UCI as an MA springboard even before the whole Boulder event happened. I've already made a positive contact with Noel Lenski in Boulder and he was quite interested in me- when I visited their campus two weeks ago he recalled several items from my application, something that really struck me. I don't know if UCI itself has strictly historians in its immediate campus, though it certainly has historians in SD and Riverside, which makes Boulder a more attractive option, but is the risk of Boulder worth the reward? Does the issue of remaining in my home campus set me at a disadvantage? Or should I be content with the fact that I have a pretty generous offer from UCI?