Offer holders, how do you make your final decision?

[TMP]

A round-about option would be to look at the AHA's dissertation directory: http://www.historians.org/pubs/dissertations/index.cfm

You can google the names of those who've completed dissertations in recent years and see where they wound up. 

 

It's not very well updated.  You're better off just asking about recent dissertations defended.

 

Departments, in general, will have trouble explaining their graduates' employment because there's a very strong culture in academia of not sharing perceived failures.  Sometimes graduates who don't wind up with jobs just leave without reporting because the'yre too ashamed that they did not get a tenure-track job at a good university.  There's also not always a strong sense of affinity between the department and its graduates as it is at the undergraduate level.  But departments are now working to track down to start putting together a clearer picture of placement record (or "outcomes" as a recent CHE piece puts it).

 

You should definitely ask your potential adviser about his/her past students.  HOWEVER, know that professors don't like to talk about "failures."  My POI hid the fact (or maybe forgot?!) that his first student had chosen not to go into academia and stuck around to teach at the local high school.  I found this out by asking the graduate program coordinator (s/he is your best bet).   There are a number of combinations though graduates of hands-off advisers will find more difficulty in getting a job than an adviser who just gets out there, network, and sell their students.  Sometimes advisers bank on their students' "amazing' dissertations and fellowship successes and do not realize that networking still needs to happen.

 

You should also ask graduate students what they'd like to do with their PhDs to get a full sense of your colleagues' ambitions.  If someone is very interested in teaching may find fitting in a group of research-oriented colleagues more challenging.  You want to be able to find some people whom you can talk to about professional development as you all move towards graduation.  Otherwise, you're left to totally network and keep in touch with like-minded peers via e-mail and other forms of contact.  In general, the department responds to that culture.  So if you're very interested in teaching, just ask around for teaching resources on campus and you can just go there to satisfy your need to talk with others about excellence in teaching.

 

Feel free to ask the DGS about exams and dissertation completion- how often does it happen that people fail?  It should tell you how hard the faculty will work with you to help you become an ABD.

[der]

So, I was wondering if you guys could offer some advice.

 

Recently, I've been admitted to three schools (one of which is my alma mater, so I don't really want to go to the same school again, nothing against them, I just want a change).

 

The other two schools I was admitted to were UNC Chapel Hill and the University of Chicago. I'm leaning heavily towards Chapel Hill, I really did not expect to get into Chicago at all. I've wanted to go to Chapel Hill for years, and the fit, i think, is better than the University of Chicago! Also, I'm from the South and, despite the crappy politics, I do love it down here (especially the weather, I hate the cold), so going to school in the South is definitely a plus for me. I also know that I feel much more comfortable in smaller towns than larger cities. And I'm incredibly impressed by the congeniality of the History Department at Chapel Hill.

 

All this being said, am I putting too much weight on my perceived comfort and happiness in this line of thinking? Am I potentially sabotaging my chances of eventually getting more job offers by turning down an offer from a more prestigious university?  Sorry, this process is so confusing...

[New England Nat]

It sounds to me like you've already made your decision.  

 

But that said I'll give you a few words of warning; as a Tar Heel I feel like I can say this in all honesty.  Chapel Hill has been facing some serious budget cuts for the last few years, and the newly elected governor of the state is already showing signs that he has no respect for the humanities.  He was in the news a couple weeks ago dismissing educational elites and the entire idea of women's studies.  Crappy politics matter.

 

The department has a history of overworking their graduate students as TAs, something they are aware of, but breaking the cycle is harder to do than most people thought.  If you go there you can be certain to do a LOT of teaching. 

 

Congeniality is all well and good until the professors leave.  Nearly half the professors I had as an undergrad are no longer at UNC.  They're all at Yale.  The Ivy's love Chapel Hill's history department as much as you do.  The history department at UNC has a serious poaching problem at the associate level.  It's not just a matter of the assistant professors leaving, and there really is very little warning or way you can figure ahead of time if your PoI will leave.

 

All of that said, Chicago has it's own issues.  There is a reason people say it's where the fun goes to die.  It has a reputation for eating it's grad students alive.  I can't say as much specifically about Chicago as about Chapel Hill, and there are great things about the department.  Just understand that there are tradeoffs. 

[Katzenmusik]

All this being said, am I putting too much weight on my perceived comfort and happiness in this line of thinking? Am I potentially sabotaging my chances of eventually getting more job offers by turning down an offer from a more prestigious university?  Sorry, this process is so confusing...

 

Your happiness in a certain location is important to consider, since morale may affect your work.  And it sounds like you love UNC for lots of reasons, not just the warm weather. 

 

That said, have you visited Chicago yet?  Good to keep an open mind until visiting in person.

 

Also, perhaps both departments could furnish you with a list of recent job placements?  Then you could compare the actual outcomes for students and factor that into your decision as opposed to relying on perceived prestige differences.

 

Good luck!

 

Edited to add: I have no personal experience with either department, but it would definitely be important to take into account the behind-the-scenes problems that New England Nat is mentioning.  Be sure to hang out with some of the current grad students when you do your visits (if you haven't already) -- they can (or should) give you relatively honest answers about their experiences in the program and how these issues have affected them.

Edited February 26, 2013 by Katzenmusik

[Sio68]

fossilchick and TMP: Thank-you so much! This is massively helpful! *makes notes*

 

Would anyone be so kind as to explain to me how health insurance works? (briefly)

 

If you are 'eligible' under a fellowship for health insurance then this I assume means that you must pay for it. How does that work? I mean, *roughly* how much is it?

 

I know it varies but I'm not American and I have absolutely zero idea. It could be 1 million dollars a month for all I know. I ask because I have different packages that treat health insurance and fees differently, so I'm trying to do some calculations before I head to visit days.

Edited February 26, 2013 by Sio68

[czesc]

The department has a history of overworking their graduate students as TAs, something they are aware of, but breaking the cycle is harder to do than most people thought.  If you go there you can be certain to do a LOT of teaching. 

 

...

 

All of that said, Chicago has it's own issues.  There is a reason people say it's where the fun goes to die.  It has a reputation for eating it's grad students alive.  I can't say as much specifically about Chicago as about Chapel Hill, and there are great things about the department.  Just understand that there are tradeoffs. 

 

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.

[lafayette]

 

The department has a history of overworking their graduate students as TAs, something they are aware of, but breaking the cycle is harder to do than most people thought.  If you go there you can be certain to do a LOT of teaching. 

This is the same for CUNY. You will teach a lot; many, many lower level classes are taught by an army of adjuncts and grad students. And you'll teach at far flung CUNY campuses (do a google map search for Queens College), all of which are seriously lacking in resources. That said, it's New York City, so the location attracts a lot of top rate faculty. I got my MA through CUNY and my professors/advisors were absolutely fantastic. I've heard rumors of Columbia's being sort of an unhappy department, but that's second-hand information, and NYU's grad students and faculty are in constant battle with the administration. That's all from your NYC correspondent.

[czesc]

As to the rumors about Columbia -- I've known a lot of grad students in that department. I met one person who was very unhappy, but most of the others seemed fairly well-adjusted and enthusiastic. That said, this was before the application process so I didn't talk to them much about specific issues like funding, access to faculty, etc. The department as a whole didn't seem to have much esprit de corps, but this may have been a function of its size and the fact that people tend to socialize more independently when they're in school in NYC.

Edited February 26, 2013 by czesc

[AKACaz]

NYU is pretty weird, but in general everyone gets along (this coming from an NYU grad whose boyfriend is in his 5th year of his PhD there). What fights there are at NYU are top level, i.e. professors from all schools being mad at the president over expansion plans and adjuncts constantly agitating for more rights - and with good reason, but I imagine that happens to some degree everywhere. The Bureaucracy, and I type it like that because it is endemic to the entire university and not just to individual departments, is huge, unwieldy, and slow. It can take months to get simple reimbursements or requests through.

 

That being said, the History Department is okay. The business people do what they can, the administrators are friendly, and, as far as I know, there are no backstabbing campaigns between professors. The relationship between professors and grad students is not fraught as a rule, though occasionally disagreements do come up; just recently a job search went horribly wrong when none of the invitees gave good talks, and the whole place was in an uproar with the students liking one person, the professors not liking any, and everyone frustrated with the frazzled professor in charge of the search committee (my bf's advisor, so I heard a lot about it). At this very moment, the grad students are talking amongst themselves to conduct a post-mortem on that whole process and figure out if there's anything they can do to improve student involvement in things like that (some are pissed that there wasn't a student on the search committee). And so on, and so forth, etc. Every department is going to have its issues. Generally, though, I'd say things there trundle along pretty well, and they produce some really fantastic grads in the end. The Atlantic Workshop in particular is really making waves in a burgeoning new field.

 

Fairly important edit: though I must add that I met someone there recently who was really unhappy, because they're trying to reinstate a 5-year grad time. She was really being squeezed on her work by her advisor - who is, albeit, really high-powered and a workaholic herself - but she had had little to no time or opportunity to teach. Something to ask about for admits, I would definitely think. I can't imagine finishing in a hard-and-fast 5 years.

Edited February 26, 2013 by akacentimetre

[AKACaz]

Oh, and on Columbia - in my conversations with professors there before I applied I was told very frankly that they had had a reputation for being cold, and perhaps they still were, but that it was a place where everyone was trusted enough to get on with what they were doing and do good work. A declaration of trust in thinking adults, perhaps, instead of mollycoddling (though of course that's putting it in its best light. It's up to the personalities).

[czesc]

The Atlantic Workshop in particular is really making waves in a burgeoning new field.

 

Nicely put.

[AKACaz]

Nicely put.

 

Would you believe me if I said I didn't notice I'd done that? 

[benedicite]

I'm trying to decide between two schools and the deciding factor will probably be the POI. They have both reached out to me (in fact, I'm talking to one on the phone tomorrow). I'll get the chance to meet them both when I visit campuses next month.

 

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions about questions to ask, things to look for - what might make an advisor better than another one? Both POIs are highly connected, editors of fairly well-known journals, and often write in public forum, though one is probably more of a public figure than the other one. I wonder how highly I ought to rate those qualities.

 

Any thoughts would be great. Thanks!

[herstorian]

Oh, and on Columbia - in my conversations with professors there before I applied I was told very frankly that they had had a reputation for being cold, and perhaps they still were, but that it was a place where everyone was trusted enough to get on with what they were doing and do good work. A declaration of trust in thinking adults, perhaps, instead of mollycoddling (though of course that's putting it in its best light. It's up to the personalities).

 

If my undergrad years there are any indication, it really depends on the subfield and the professors. Some of the nicest and warmest professors are there along with the famous and hands-off faculty. 

And most grad students I've spoken to seem to be quite content with the department itself. I suspect that the overall stress of Columbia (apparently ranked #1 stressful college) and NYC in general tend to create most of the problems. 

 

I'm trying to decide between two schools and the deciding factor will probably be the POI. They have both reached out to me (in fact, I'm talking to one on the phone tomorrow). I'll get the chance to meet them both when I visit campuses next month.

 

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions about questions to ask, things to look for - what might make an advisor better than another one? Both POIs are highly connected, editors of fairly well-known journals, and often write in public forum, though one is probably more of a public figure than the other one. I wonder how highly I ought to rate those qualities.

 

Any thoughts would be great. Thanks!

 

I am in a similar boat. Both of the POIs at both schools are very welI matched in terms of research, which is amazing since it's a very narrow field and I've been thinking of ways to differentiate between the two. I had a long conversation with one POI over the weekend. What I found really helpful was asking her questions about funding international travel, asking how she advises her grad students (how often, what sort of schedules, etc), where recent grads of the field are and general questions about interdisciplinary work and working with other faculty members (I was very pleased to hear about co-advising). 

[TMP]

I was in a position to decide between two advisers all other factors equal (i.e. funding, personal networks, job placement).  I asked the following questions and their answers were starkly different so it ended up being pretty easy to choose one.

 

1) What kind of questions in (insert field) occupy you? (we're going beyond their projects)

2) Here are my project ideas... what do you think?  (Often times, they'll have forgotten what you're really interested in doing so refresh their memory)

3) What do you value as a historian?  Adviser?

4) What are your requirements and expectations of me as your advisee?

 

By this point, you should have a clear idea of which of the two POIs you want to work with.  You want to work with someone who can generally agree with you on 1 and 3 and like your project ideas and you can deal with their expectations/requirements.

[reed155]

I have friends warning me against choosing a school because of a POI. The say that a POI can leave a school or can get an administrative position that would leave no time for them to supervise graduate students. Instead, I was told I should look at how many faculty members have interests that somehow overlap with my interests, i.g. how many "back up plans"  I'll have in case my POI leaves the school or gets overwhelmed with administrative work.

At the same time, of course, I understand that a good academic overlap and good personal relationship with your POI are crucial for your success. I guess, it would be ideal if we all end up at a place with both POIs that we like both as scholars and just as people and other faculty members who would also be interested in some aspects of our work.

[bkify76]

So, I was wondering if you guys could offer some advice.

 

Recently, I've been admitted to three schools (one of which is my alma mater, so I don't really want to go to the same school again, nothing against them, I just want a change).

 

The other two schools I was admitted to were UNC Chapel Hill and the University of Chicago. I'm leaning heavily towards Chapel Hill, I really did not expect to get into Chicago at all. I've wanted to go to Chapel Hill for years, and the fit, i think, is better than the University of Chicago! Also, I'm from the South and, despite the crappy politics, I do love it down here (especially the weather, I hate the cold), so going to school in the South is definitely a plus for me. I also know that I feel much more comfortable in smaller towns than larger cities. And I'm incredibly impressed by the congeniality of the History Department at Chapel Hill.

 

All this being said, am I putting too much weight on my perceived comfort and happiness in this line of thinking? Am I potentially sabotaging my chances of eventually getting more job offers by turning down an offer from a more prestigious university?  Sorry, this process is so confusing...

Just sent you a PM.

[LeatherElbows]

I have friends warning me against choosing a school because of a POI. The say that a POI can leave a school or can get an administrative position that would leave no time for them to supervise graduate students. Instead, I was told I should look at how many faculty members have interests that somehow overlap with my interests, i.g. how many "back up plans"  I'll have in case my POI leaves the school or gets overwhelmed with administrative work.

At the same time, of course, I understand that a good academic overlap and good personal relationship with your POI are crucial for your success. I guess, it would be ideal if we all end up at a place with both POIs that we like both as scholars and just as people and other faculty members who would also be interested in some aspects of our work.

 

I agree with your friends, to a certain extent. While I still recommend weighing the POI match heavily in your decision, it's good to have a "backup POI" in your mind. If there is only one person at a school you want to work with and no one else remotely connected to your focus area, this might be trouble down the line. That said, if the professor is well-established at the school and not going to retire, you are probably safe.

 

This is potentially a good thing to sound out with the POI or a grad student, although I would mention it in an offhand manner. Maybe also check how long the POI has been at that school, if they are heavily involved in research groups or other responsibilities, how many grad students they have currently, and how much they have published recently to get a feel for their stability. 

[New England Nat]

I would be very leary of going to a school with only one person you can work with, but these are tha balances one must make.

[getitlow]

This thread is really useful as I will have a lot of information to think ahead of what I should take into consideration when making decision. I have a question though, especially for those who have been attending grad programs for a while. When you pick a program to enroll in, do you choose based on the professors in your field, or you choose based on prestige? In my field, Modern China, for example, some leading scholars in my subfield (gender and women) belong to lower-ranked department while schools like Princeton and Yale had no one for me to work with. For my subfield, actually UC Santa Cruz has a very prominent scholar I really wanted to work with (for some personal reasons I did not apply there) but the school itself is not highly ranked within humanity ranking.

 

I'm just confused. Does going to a lower-ranked department with a professor who really excels in what he/she does help with the job market as I finish my PhD (I know the job market for humanity is pretty bad) or should I consider prestige more if I get into a school like that (given the condition that I will not research the exact topic of interest or research something that is just close to my original interests)? I really appreciate it if somebody can give me some advices on this!   

[Thumbelina]

I just read through some of the last few pages of this thread and they were VERY helpful! Thanks for the detailed information, everyone! I saw a few discussions regarding UNC, Columbia, and Chicago's departments and was wondering if anyone can give me some insight on Yale's history department? Do faculty members interact frequently with their students? Do they overwork their grad students? Any help or information would be appreciated! 

[reed155]

I agree with your friends, to a certain extent. While I still recommend weighing the POI match heavily in your decision, it's good to have a "backup POI" in your mind. If there is only one person at a school you want to work with and no one else remotely connected to your focus area, this might be trouble down the line. That said, if the professor is well-established at the school and not going to retire, you are probably safe.

 

This is potentially a good thing to sound out with the POI or a grad student, although I would mention it in an offhand manner. Maybe also check how long the POI has been at that school, if they are heavily involved in research groups or other responsibilities, how many grad students they have currently, and how much they have published recently to get a feel for their stability. 

Thanks for your input! I will.

[New England Nat]

So this is a major trade off and really it hits on the job market.  Remember that hiring is not done by people in your subfield, it's done by entire departments.  This is a dirty ugly aspect that I hate, but if you are dealing with an interview committee full of Asianists they will know that UCSC is a good place to have come with that degree.  But very few places actually have enough asianists to make up an entire hiring committee.

 

There are a lot of people around who will tell you the prestige of the general department isn't as important as the PoI.  I'm not going to say they're wrong... but theyr'e not right either.  I have a masters from a ... shall we say... not disreputable place.  But not somewhere you think "world class scholars".  It was filled with very good scholars.  Some of them were tops in their fields, but I can tell you when I went to conferences I could feel the brush offs I got.  It only diminished a little when I could say "I'm so and so's student". 

 

The professors at lesser ranked programs will tell you it doesn't matter so much, and they aren't lying, but you should remember that if you are teaching at an R2 or non-flag ship state university you really have to tell yourself that.

[virmundi]

So this is a major trade off and really it hits on the job market.  Remember that hiring is not done by people in your subfield, it's done by entire departments.  This is a dirty ugly aspect that I hate, but if you are dealing with an interview committee full of Asianists they will know that UCSC is a good place to have come with that degree.  But very few places actually have enough asianists to make up an entire hiring committee.

 

There are a lot of people around who will tell you the prestige of the general department isn't as important as the PoI.  I'm not going to say they're wrong... but theyr'e not right either.  I have a masters from a ... shall we say... not disreputable place.  But not somewhere you think "world class scholars".  It was filled with very good scholars.  Some of them were tops in their fields, but I can tell you when I went to conferences I could feel the brush offs I got.  It only diminished a little when I could say "I'm so and so's student". 

 

The professors at lesser ranked programs will tell you it doesn't matter so much, and they aren't lying, but you should remember that if you are teaching at an R2 or non-flag ship state university you really have to tell yourself that.

 

Yes -- but if you work with an advisor at a top-ranked school who is not the best fit for you, you may produce a dissertation that isn't at the top of its game. Make sure your advisor can guide you appropriately. You don't want to have a well-meaning advisor who doesn't know much about what you are doing. Yes, this can work out, but it makes thing far far harder on you than it needs to be. It's definitely a trade off.

[New England Nat]

Virmundi

 

I think "yes but" is the real answer to both sides of the go for PoI versus go for big name department debate.  Mostly I said what I did because I haven't seen anyone on this board say the other side of it.