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Wait! We're expected to marry our profs? Good to know. At least mine is relatively young and nerdhandsome. I'll start packing my trousseau.

Wait it's in Philly next year?? This is so ironic. I couldn't go this year because it was on the West Coast, and next year it'll be here and I'll be on the West Coast... lmao 

I've talked to grad students in the program to see what their general take is of the situation. Most of the time they seem to have a general idea. I've also emailed former students to see what they had to say. The more I read and listen to other people, it is very obvious that there are some schools (usually in the top 20) where you have a clear advantage when it comes to the job market. However, at the end of the day, a lot of it depends on you. If you want a job, you have to go in there from day one thinking about the job market and what makes you a good hire. A lot of it involves networking, CV building, etc. Don't expect the school to place you without doing any work. 

I'm going to completely derail this thread for a second to share a dream I had last night that absolutely no one will fully appreciate but you all:
 
I had a dream that I was interviewing with a POI, and he told me that my being accepted relied solely on completing a translation. He handed me something like a Cosmo but in Latin and asked me to translate the front cover. I completely blanked and he got mad at me for not knowing the word "accessory." I kept trying to tell him that I promised I really did know how to translate Latin!! He proceeded to look up at me and say "thank you, that is all" a la Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.
 
My subconscious must clearly be trying to work something out.

From my personal exchange with some professors across different departments, politics of gender and oral history are pretty hot in my subfield (Modern East Asia/ China). I have heard a lot of discussion on digital history (as in how to digitalize the conventional way of going about doing oral history for example) so I guess it is rising in terms of popularity. In Chinese history, transnational historiography has been quite the trend for the last few years for it shifts the orthodox historical paradigm of analyzing china as a lone entity separated from the world to be among the main players on the world's stage.
 
More and more historians are paying attention to the history of the borderland in Asia as opposed to frontier because the former points to an allegiance of fluid identity subject to changes while the latter holds a more restrictive connotation. I would say borderland history, cross-ethnic, cross-cultural history are also pretty hot right now especially in the context of what is going on now in the South China sea between East and South East Asia. The politics there is a total chaos.  

I'm literally incoherent.  I can barely hold a conversation right now.  I'm in a very happy state of shock over my email from Oxford. 

Sorry for the long reply, but one more note - talk to grad students. Some programs actually provide bios for this PhD students on their websites. Read through those and ask potential advisors to talk to grad students. They're often very honest and upfront about the program, the professors, the other students, and their own backgrounds. You may find that you have more academic preparation than they did when they entered.

I struggle with this too! But I think I've decided that I'll just have to love contemporary Japanese literature as a part of my life but not my career, while I study East Asian art history. But being on cloud 9 after that dinner does indicate a passion in the political side, etc! So you'd probably be happy in either!

The time commitment to a well done application is that needed for a graduate level course.  Just the application will consume about a third of your life.  Don't half ass it.
 
And I'd make an arguement that religion and the environment are also hot.

Don't do US history unless  your'e interested in race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality.  Those are hot.  Everything else?  Not.  The competition is really insane, a bit more so than European.

Having a single acceptance but no funding offer yet is terrifying. I want to get excited but also don't want to get my hopes up...

I think this is excellent advice.  Then, if your Masters goes well & you enjoy the field, you could apply for a PhD from a much stronger position...

Any tips on how to word such a letter/email, so as not to burn any bridges or create hard feelings?  For one POI, I could see myself possibly working with him down the road even if I don't end up at his program...  Also, you never know if you might have a post-doc opportunity at one of those universities that you're turning down!

Think also of what your opportunities will be after completing School X, vs if you graduate from School Y - with the reputation and facilities at X, are you likely to get far better opportunities in the future ?

Instead of changing schools, why not advisors? That way you get to keep all the "prestige" and benefits of X, while solving your problems with Professor Angry.

Nicely put.

I'd definitely be interested in hearing behind-the-scenes vignettes like these for other schools as well...these tidbits are really hard to come by on the interwebs.

A marathon with a $125 entrance fee and no participation sticker. 

Someone above compared this to a marathon. I'd say it's kind of like that, but right before the finish line all the spectators tackle you and kick you a lot.

Haha, that was me. I'm glad people enjoyed it. I needed to add some humor on the results board.

My favorite comment from the results page today:
"$175 for taking the GRE, $25 sending of the GRE scores to Columbia, $105 Columbia application fee....Getting rejected from Columbia: Priceless"

Well, I guess that at least means more tenure track positions for the rest of us.

If you have an offer you know you are going to decline you should go ahead and decline it.  You aren't really weighing your offers.  I even withdrew my applications from some places I knew I wasnt' going to before they could make a decision.

I wish the UW would just send out their notifications already. I'm getting antsy and just want to know where I'm living for the next two years. 

I guess Stanford is just going to stand the rest of us up today. It's Valentine's Day, Stanford. At least drop us a line and tell us how you really feel.