One app two fields?

[Quickmick]

Hi all, I hope you are all well. I have an application out that I am pleased with, and hope it gets into the 'serious consideration category.' Looking over the guidelines at the grad school generally, you can submit multiple apps, but only 1 to a department. One of my POIs who "strongly encouraged" me to apply is in a field other than the one I applied to (they knew this).

I have a couple of questions.  How common is it for adcomms offer admission to a candidate in a field other than the one they applied to? I was thinking about writing this POI and communicating that if the committee thought I would be a better fit in this other field I would be very interested in attending, I am worried that this might come across as less than confident/wishy washy/etc, but the fact is my interests could be applied in either area and my experience to date might actually dovetail with the second field more smoothly. Thanks a bunch!

 

[TMP]

I'm not clear what you mean.  Do you mean one Graduate School but in two different departments (i.e. History and Sociology)?  Or to the Department but say you're interested in both African and European history?  

If it is the former, you might want to talk with the POIs in BOTH departments to see what they think.  But ultimately, it is about which discipline you wish to be trained in.

If it is the latter, while it is strongly encouraged that you choose a field and stick to it, graduate students do change major fields (say from Europe to Africa) during their first year as they're taking courses and discovering topics that became more interesting to them.  If your POI has one foot in one field and the other in another (say, a French colonial historian with specialty in Africa), it is worth asking.  But if your POI does gender in Germany but you're interested in gender in America, it's worth asking which you should apply to (Europe or US if there is no thematic field).  You may need to expand your list of faculty of interest.

[AP]

I'm not sure what you mean either and based on our correspondence, I think it could mean both things @TMP said.

Let me add one more thing to the second case, the one where you are torn between two fields within the History department: You have probably talked with many faculty by now or are acquainted with their work. In general, the adcomm doesn't read an application for European history and offer a place with African history because this means different advisors. In your SOP you should have made the case why you want to work with Dr. A and Dr. B from European history and if you did not make the case properly, there is no reason why the Africanists should read your SOP. 

What can happen in some places is that once you are in, you begin to work with other faculty besides your advisors because you discovered them during coursework or because your own project changed. In my department, I know one person who changed fields but the overall topic remained. I also know many people who incorporated/swapped some faculty as their secondary advisors because they (students) were transitioning into other topics (for example, instead of doing labor history, they prefered to focus on agriculture). I know one extreme case where the student did not get along with his advisor and changed her for another one from an entirely different field that had experience in talking to a broader audience and advising students from other disciplines (so, he was a very flexible person). 

And this brings me back to the beginning: you have talked/read faculty. Check how much they move around in their research to know how "flexible" they would be. In my case, none of my advisors focus on my geographical area (yes the field) and that has not been a problem thus far. And this is because I was very straight forward in my SOP: although they studied country A, I wanted to study country B and thought they could advise me with the questions they were dealing with. 

Finally, I am thinking of a third option to your post. If you want to do a PhD in History, say, but want someone from Sociology to be your advisor as well, this is doable, and sometimes (depending on the school) encouraged. A PhD a first sight may seem it is limiting you to one discipline, but depending on the school you can cross those boundaries and make a case for a more transdisciplinary approach to whatever you want to study.