Fall 2013 Applicants?

[LadyRara]

Sanity... how I miss that phase of life.

[golfinggurl815]

If your having trouble with the historiography section I think a really good resource is "They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing".  It really helped me when I was writing the historiography section of my thesis because there isn't alot that is directly related to my topic.  Nonetheless though, its a good way to think about historiography and how to structure it to make your argument clearer.  

[viggosloof28]

Sanity... how I miss that phase of life.

So true. I think I threw my sanity out the window when I signed up for grad school. This waiting business has taken it to a whole new level, though...

[dknows]

I applied to UW-Madison, Toronto, and YorkU for PhD - US history. Was hoping to hear something from American schools before the Canadian deadlines rolled out. Alas, no such luck.

[kyjin]

Guess stalking my email paid off today; got a request for a visit/interview at Princeton! (East Asian Studies, not History! Sorry!) 

 

Does anyone have any advice for interview/visits?  When I applied to MAs, I just had a skype interview and an in-person when a prof was visiting Tokyo while I was there.  Visiting the campus though is a whole other story.

[theregalrenegade]

Congrats on the interview, kyjin! 

 

Unfortunately I don't have any pertinent advice for visits. Have only had phone interviews in the past.

 

So you will be coming out to the US for the interview? That's great! 

[New England Nat]

I can't tell you about the EAS department, but if you are applying across the two departments I'd try and see if you can talk to any history profs before next week. They will be doing adcom meetings next week and any time after that for history is useless.

I would advise you to think about other people besides your PoI you can visit at the same time, try to think about interconnections you can make between different scholars. And take a serious look at the town and campus. Princeton is about as isolated as you can get in New Jersey and some of our prospective students come to visit and just can't imagine spending a couple of years in the town.

[Sio68]

I applied to UW-Madison, Toronto, and YorkU for PhD - US history. Was hoping to hear something from American schools before the Canadian deadlines rolled out. Alas, no such luck.

 

Wisc are quite open about their timeline - it's outlined on the website. Adcom may have made decisions already (according to the outline) but notifications are sent out first week of Feb.This seems to correspond with last year's timetable too. I don't know about the others, sorry!

[hanbran]

Guess stalking my email paid off today; got a request for a visit/interview at Princeton! (East Asian Studies, not History! Sorry!) 

 

Does anyone have any advice for interview/visits?  When I applied to MAs, I just had a skype interview and an in-person when a prof was visiting Tokyo while I was there.  Visiting the campus though is a whole other story.

Don't let them know about your slipping sanity .

 

Congratulations though!  If you can, try to talk to current students alone to get some perspective on professors and departmental dynamics.

[viggosloof28]

Guess stalking my email paid off today; got a request for a visit/interview at Princeton! (East Asian Studies, not History! Sorry!) 

 

Does anyone have any advice for interview/visits?  When I applied to MAs, I just had a skype interview and an in-person when a prof was visiting Tokyo while I was there.  Visiting the campus though is a whole other story.

 

Congratulations!  I don't have too much advice, having never been on an interview at a prospective school before.  What NewEnglandNat and hanbran say is very useful.

 

I would also recommend talking with the grad students already there about the logistics of attending that program.  Based on my MA experiences, I've been careful to ask about the ILL system, ease of navigating the university's bureaucracy, intradepartmental communication, competency of the financial aid office, etc.  Sometimes the small things can really make life hellish, so I always ask if there was "anything surprising" or "anything they would warn someone" about XYZ-School.

[kyjin]

Thanks all for the advice and congrats!

 

New England Nat: The town is actually one of the reasons Princeton is so high on my list.  I'm from Philly originally, and the campus is only about an hour from where my parents live.  (So the visit is also a free trip home for me for a couple days.) 

 

viggosloof28: All great points, especially the ILL system. (The system at my current school is less than stellar.) 

[New England Nat]

I can answer most of those right off.

1) The ILL system is spectacular. All of the Ivys plus MIT are in a single library consortium where you can get any book from any library in the entire group. On the off chance none libaries in the Ivy league owns what you need you can get it through standard ILL. I know of no one who has failed to get something they want and nothing I've needed hasn't been available in 48 hours from burrow direct. The electronic resources are the best you could ask for.

2) The university bureaucracy is the smoothest functioning I've ever seen. Even the parking enforcement ladies are pleasent to deal with and I've never heard of any weird registration/financial problems that you sometimes run into even at other top universities.

Essentially, Princeton is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a beautiful, amazing, unreal ivory tower. No graduate student here would dare complain about it, we know we have it good.

[EL_V]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm a newbie, and I just wanted to say how much better I feel having discovered this thread. I've been lurking around thegradcafe for a week or two, especially since I found about the existence of the admission results search function. It's nice to know I'm not the only one losing my sanity by checking when LAST year's decisions came in. Good lord--my life! Haha. Anyway, I mainly just wanted to express my appreciation to you all for sharing

 

Wishing us all the best of luck!

[Wicked_Problem]

Your mention of the library consortium prompted me to do some digging around. I found this: http://www.valenj.org/ Turns out Princeton and Drew, two of a total of 53 core members, share resources. The extent to which this is analogous to the one you mention, I don't yet know. Do you know the name of that consortium so I can compare them? Search for yours on this website: http://icolc.net/

[New England Nat]

I believe the one you are talking about is the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, which is similar to Burrow Direct but Burrow Direct is much faster.

[lafayette]

NEN you are killing me. Please only describe how horrible Princeton is & how it will only be for the best to be rejected

[New England Nat]

I'm so sorry Lafayette, I wish I could. On the other hand.... it's an expensive area to live in and there is really nothng better to do in the town. Would it help if I told you the graduate housing is seriously post world war II temporary housing? And last year they had to take down a graduate apartment building because it weirdly had both asbestus and fire code violations?

[runaway]

@NEN, not to jump the gun on anything *knock on wood* but is it common for grad students to commute? My uncle, who lived in Princeton for a while, was telling me over the holidays how easy it was to commute to/from NYC. I'm trying to figure out how feasible it might be for me to move there, partially for my SO, partially because my social network is all there. My friends certainly all keep talking as if I'll be moving back soon, when I didn't even apply to any New York schools!

[Wicked_Problem]

PALCI.org Allegheny College* Bloomsburg University* Bryn Mawr College* Bucknell University Cabrini College Cal U* Carlow University* Carnegie Mellon University* Cedar Crest College Chatham University* Clarion University* Dickinson College* Drexel University* Duquesne University* East Stroudsburg University* Eastern University* Edinboro University* Elizabethtown College Franklin & Marshall College* Gannon University Gettysburg College Harrisburg University of Science & Technology Haverford College* IUP* Juniata College Kutztown University La Roche College* La Salle University* Lackawanna College Lafayette College Lehigh University* Lock Haven University* Lycoming College* Mansfield University* Marshall University* Marywood University* Messiah College Millersville University* Misericordia University* Moravian College* Mount Aloysius College Muhlenberg College Pennsylvania State University* Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine* Philadelphia University* Point Park University* Robert Morris University* Rowan University* Rutgers University* Saint Francis University Saint Joseph's University* Seton Hall University* Shippensburg University Slippery Rock University* Susquehanna University Swarthmore College* Temple University* University of Pennsylvania* University of Pittsburgh* University of Scranton* University of the Sciences in Philadelphia* Ursinus College West Chester University* Villanova University* West Virginia University* Widener University York College of Pennsylvania* *denotes participation in EZBorrow According to PALCI.org Princeton isn't a member of their consortium. Rapid ILL is another service mentioned.

[annieca]

A lovely conversation with my sister tonight:

"So I'm going to be freaking out because I'm in London in a committee of over one hundred delegates and frantically checking my phone. But I can't do it during caucus or even short coffee breaks because no one wants Australia to come in with mascara running down her face because X school said they didn't want her."

So what does my sister say?

"That is so you to a tee. The freaking out bit."

To be fair, I wasn't freaked out until the LOR debacle and then my first acceptance. Now that one school has accepted me my mind goes "WHY doesn't everyone else?!" It's going to be a long month until the programs tell me. :/

[runaway]

annieca, that's why I bought waterproof mascara

[New England Nat]

In theory you are supposed to be "in residence" in New Jersey during course work, but it is VERY common practice to live in either Philly or NYC. No one would say anything unless you were having trouble getting to campus for class.

[jogatoronto]

Submitted my last two applications today. Freedom! Now back to my masters degree.

[PhDreams]

Your mention of the library consortium prompted me to do some digging around. I found this: http://www.valenj.org/ Turns out Princeton and Drew, two of a total of 53 core members, share resources. The extent to which this is analogous to the one you mention, I don't yet know. Do you know the name of that consortium so I can compare them? Search for yours on this website: http://icolc.net/

 

 

I can answer most of those right off.

1) The ILL system is spectacular. All of the Ivys plus MIT are in a single library consortium where you can get any book from any library in the entire group. On the off chance none libaries in the Ivy league owns what you need you can get it through standard ILL. I know of no one who has failed to get something they want and nothing I've needed hasn't been available in 48 hours from burrow direct. The electronic resources are the best you could ask for.

 

 

About Borrow Direct

Borrow Direct enables students, faculty, and staff with library borrowing privileges and active e-mail accounts to borrow books directly from the libraries of Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. The library bears the cost of the service and there is no charge to patrons.

 

He's so right. It's a fantastic service. I use it often.

[PhDreams]

Sorry about the double post. I was trying to multi quote in the middle of my post and it posted before I was ready.