Fall 2017 applicants

[bigbangdeux]

Got my first response and acceptance letter from my POI from OSU this morning! Department nominated me for two fellowships for a total of six years of funding! Beyond excited!  

[Quickmick]

5 minutes ago, bigbangdeux said:

Got my first response and acceptance letter from my POI from OSU this morning! Department nominated me for two fellowships for a total of six years of funding! Beyond excited!  

Huzzah! Congratulations.

[praxis34]

For those who applied to PhD at Michigan State, I received an email regarding my rejection and posted the result. It is a standard email attached the rejection letter. Though it was a poor matching, it is sad to begin the application season with a rejection :/ Congrats to admitted ones!  

[bigbangdeux]

1 hour ago, Quickmick said:

Huzzah! Congratulations.

Thank you!

[voforange]

Does anyone know when Berkeley, Harvard, or Columbia, will release decisions?

[voforange]

On 1/19/2017 at 7:27 PM, SarahBethSortino said:

It was quite a hassle trying to balance a job and a kid and figure out how to drive all over hell to visit POIs but I made it work and hopefully in the end it will help.

If I spoke with a few POIs from each school I applied to, do you think that's enough to get enough attention on my application? One of my conversations lasted over 40 minutes by accident. 

[voprosi]

Question for those accepted at Ohio State: did your application status on the portal change at all?

 

Oh, and congrats to the acceptees!

Edited January 23, 2017 by voprosi

[Neist]

30 minutes ago, voforange said:

If I spoke with a few POIs from each school I applied to, do you think that's enough to get enough attention on my application? One of my conversations lasted over 40 minutes by accident. 

 

It depends on the department and POI. No one knows. Some POIs don't like to be contacted at all, and some departments explicitly state that you should not contact POI. Other POIs might enjoy it, as I guess the one who you talked to for 40 minutes did (if they didn't, I imagine they would have given an excuse to hang up).

I didn't contact any POI for my applications unless I had something meaningful to ask, and I still got into half of the programs I applied to. *shrugs*

[emhafe]

I had an intriguing email today from my top choice program. The director was impressed with my application but some of the documents had errors when uploaded, which I didn't see. He wanted to make sure nothing prejudiced the committee against me so I was asked to reupload the documents. I got them in and it worked out, but my heart stopped when I saw the words "application" and "errors"!

[OHSP]

4 hours ago, bigbangdeux said:

Got my first response and acceptance letter from my POI from OSU this morning! Department nominated me for two fellowships for a total of six years of funding! Beyond excited!  

Congrats!! Also, excellent funding. Who are you hoping to work with at OSU? I last minute decided not to apply, but their faculty is great. 

[OHSP]

1 hour ago, voforange said:

If I spoke with a few POIs from each school I applied to, do you think that's enough to get enough attention on my application? One of my conversations lasted over 40 minutes by accident. 

I sent emails to POIs at most but not all schools - so far I have received an offer from one school where I emailed no one, and a "you're well in the running, I'm excited to work with you" from a POI who I emailed in October and who never responded. I.e. I think it depends a lot on the school/person/etc. 

Edited January 23, 2017 by OHSP

[voforange]

2 hours ago, Neist said:

It depends on the department and POI. No one knows. Some POIs don't like to be contacted at all, and some departments explicitly state that you should not contact POI. Other POIs might enjoy it, as I guess the one who you talked to for 40 minutes did (if they didn't, I imagine they would have given an excuse to hang up).

I didn't contact any POI for my applications unless I had something meaningful to ask, and I still got into half of the programs I applied to. *shrugs*

Thank you! Do you think certain programs (Berkeley, Michigan, Columbia, Harvard) are going to take until March?

[OHSP]

@voforange You can get a sense of when schools might release decisions by searching the grad results page and finding out when they interviewed/accepted/rejected people last year. It was more like early Feb than March, last year. 

Edited January 24, 2017 by OHSP

[JKL]

Stop worrying, guys. Just assume the committees laughed at your application then threw it in the trash. Assume that afterwards they went out for coffee to discuss how pathetic you truly are for thinking you stood a chance. After coffee, they returned to the office. They dug your application out of the trash for another laugh; your statement of "purpose" had them rolling. They took selfies of themselves with your application, posted the photos on Twitter, and watched as even the school chancellor retweeted them. Your POI crumbled up the application once again and shot it like a basketball into the trashcan but missed and didn't even pick it up. Making their rounds the next morning, the janitors picked it up and read it. They laughed harder than the admissions committee. "What a waste of time, money, and energy this person would be for the History Department," said one of the janitors. The other janitor agreed, noting that the time, money, and energy would be better spent on purchasing new toilet paper. Your POI returned home later that night. Family members asked about the applications and whether or not any of them stood out. "Nope. Not a single one," said your POI from the comfort of a home that tenure affords and that you'll never experience. "Not a single one."

[nevermind]

30 minutes ago, voforange said:

Thank you! Do you think certain programs (Berkeley, Michigan, Columbia, Harvard) are going to take until March?

It's possible that you might not know anything and then you get the magical phone call. It certainly happens. But I also think that many programs do official/unofficial interviews. If you're on the shortlist, you'll (usually) know it. I had an academia.edu page set up and could track my analytics. The programs that were interested in me (and did a Skype interview) went to my academia.edu page. The ones that rejected me didn't look me up at all. I was contacted at the end of January last year for a Skype interview and didn't get my official acceptance until the end of February and then 2 weeks after THAT, the fellowship info. It's a long process. Don't sit in front of a computer refreshing TGC--make sure you go do things to take your mind off the wait.  

[TK2]

7 minutes ago, nevermind said:

It's possible that you might not know anything and then you get the magical phone call. It certainly happens. But I also think that many programs do official/unofficial interviews. If you're on the shortlist, you'll (usually) know it. I had an academia.edu page set up and could track my analytics. The programs that were interested in me (and did a Skype interview) went to my academia.edu page. The ones that rejected me didn't look me up at all. I was contacted at the end of January last year for a Skype interview and didn't get my official acceptance until the end of February and then 2 weeks after THAT, the fellowship info. It's a long process. Don't sit in front of a computer refreshing TGC--make sure you go do things to take your mind off the wait.  

Oh lol, this would never have occured to me, but I did now randomly check the analytics of my academia.edu page (which I only set up a few weeks ago because I needed access to an article, and has nothing on it except a few bookmarks and interests) and, lo and behold, a lone 'view' from one of the college towns I applied to. Now I don't know whether to feel heartened by it, stressed out by it, assume its a coincidence, or stressed that I don't have views from anywhere else! Linkedin, on the other hand, shows nothing.

[nevermind]

20 minutes ago, TK2 said:

Oh lol, this would never have occured to me, but I did now randomly check the analytics of my academia.edu page (which I only set up a few weeks ago because I needed access to an article, and has nothing on it except a few bookmarks and interests) and, lo and behold, a lone 'view' from one of the college towns I applied to. Now I don't know whether to feel heartened by it, stressed out by it, assume its a coincidence, or stressed that I don't have views from anywhere else! Linkedin, on the other hand, shows nothing.

 

3

I can only speak of the academia.edu hits anecdotally. FWIW, that program contacted me the day they checked out my academia.edu profile. Later, I found out that my file was passed to my POI via someone else in the department. My case may be atypical because my file was re-routed to a different subfield...so there might have been extra searching on my name/interests? Not sure. But that's how it worked for me, in any case.

Edited January 24, 2017 by nevermind

[sstubble]

3 hours ago, voprosi said:

Question for those accepted at Ohio State: did your application status on the portal change at all?

 

Oh, and congrats to the acceptees!

My application status hasn't change; I got the acceptance notification from my POI. 

[bigbangdeux]

4 hours ago, voprosi said:

Question for those accepted at Ohio State: did your application status on the portal change at all?

 

Oh, and congrats to the acceptees!

 

Mine hasn't. I was contacted by my POI to inform me of acceptance and tentative funding. My portal still shows that my application is under review tho.

 

3 hours ago, OHSP said:

Congrats!! Also, excellent funding. Who are you hoping to work with at OSU? I last minute decided not to apply, but their faculty is great. 

Thank you very much! I can't believe it truly. My main POI is Alice Conklin but I expressed interest working with some other faculty members in the French and African history departments. 

[TMP]

Congrats OSU acceptees!  PM with any questions; I was one of the early admits (February 8, 2012 to be exact ).  I really have enjoyed the program more or less over the last (gasp) 4 1/2 years.  FWIW, I'm in Modern European history with focus on gender/sexuality.

[jayray11]

16 hours ago, voforange said:

Does anyone know when Berkeley, Harvard, or Columbia, will release decisions?

Harvard is on track for the same as last year - early February.

[dr. t]

18 hours ago, voforange said:

Does anyone know when Berkeley, Harvard, or Columbia, will release decisions?

Berkeley should be this week, if memory serves. Harvard, early to mid Feb, but if you haven't heard directly from a PI by the end of the first week of that month, I would steel yourself for a no. 

[dr. t]

15 hours ago, JKL said:

Stop worrying, guys. Just assume the committees laughed at your application then threw it in the trash. Assume that afterwards they went out for coffee to discuss how pathetic you truly are for thinking you stood a chance. After coffee, they returned to the office. They dug your application out of the trash for another laugh; your statement of "purpose" had them rolling. They took selfies of themselves with your application, posted the photos on Twitter, and watched as even the school chancellor retweeted them. Your POI crumbled up the application once again and shot it like a basketball into the trashcan but missed and didn't even pick it up. Making their rounds the next morning, the janitors picked it up and read it. They laughed harder than the admissions committee. "What a waste of time, money, and energy this person would be for the History Department," said one of the janitors. The other janitor agreed, noting that the time, money, and energy would be better spent on purchasing new toilet paper. Your POI returned home later that night. Family members asked about the applications and whether or not any of them stood out. "Nope. Not a single one," said your POI from the comfort of a home that tenure affords and that you'll never experience. "Not a single one."

http://www.theonion.com/article/report-today-the-day-they-find-out-youre-a-fraud-35133

[MMii]

16 hours ago, JKL said:

Stop worrying, guys. Just assume the committees laughed at your application then threw it in the trash. Assume that afterwards they went out for coffee to discuss how pathetic you truly are for thinking you stood a chance. After coffee, they returned to the office. They dug your application out of the trash for another laugh; your statement of "purpose" had them rolling. They took selfies of themselves with your application, posted the photos on Twitter, and watched as even the school chancellor retweeted them. Your POI crumbled up the application once again and shot it like a basketball into the trashcan but missed and didn't even pick it up. Making their rounds the next morning, the janitors picked it up and read it. They laughed harder than the admissions committee. "What a waste of time, money, and energy this person would be for the History Department," said one of the janitors. The other janitor agreed, noting that the time, money, and energy would be better spent on purchasing new toilet paper. Your POI returned home later that night. Family members asked about the applications and whether or not any of them stood out. "Nope. Not a single one," said your POI from the comfort of a home that tenure affords and that you'll never experience. "Not a single one."

Thank you.

[french_historynerd]

Guys! I got in! First school to hear from this application cycle: University Nebraska Lincoln, M.A. program. Got the email from my POI personally and then an email from the department minutes later. Waiting for a formal letter with funding info. I applied to 6 M.A. programs and 2 M.A./Ph.D. programs. Literally so excited and happy.