History Admissions 2008

[crauson]

Sorry about Chicago... but creating a fake name. That's HILARIOUS! In fact, I would like to suggest that we all create fake g-mail accounts and start e-mailing the schools who have yet to notify.

I've heard from everyone but I think it might relieve some of the tension to play with the admission reps a bit. :wink:

Ya know, I have to wonder using a fake name isn't such a bad idea. I live in the far SW corner of the US, and I recently found out I was accepted to a school in the far NE corner and that they would be paying for my flight out for their visiting days. When it came time to book the flight, I emailed 2 schools I had applied to that were ~40 minutes away from the school I was visiting, to see if I had been admitted and if I should extend my stay in the area to visit them since it costs so much to get out there. Within 3 days both schools emailed my official rejection emails. These were not messages from the secretaries I had sent the emails too, but official rejection emails from the DGS. Moreover, they did not coincide with reports of email rejections from these schools on the results board (a slew of which followed ~7-10 days later).

The three schools in question have a very close relationship. You are allowed to take courses at all three of the schools if you are a grad student at one of them, many of the professors' books are published by the University Press at another of these universities, and probably a good 1/2 of the faculty have their PhDs from one of the other two schools. I must wonder if when they saw my email saying I had been admitted to X University if that didn't influence their decision. They might have said, oh, he's going to be at X, he can work with me anyway, no need to have him here! Or perhaps they didn't want to create awkwardness between a colleague at one of the other universities by "competing" for me.

Of course you never know for sure and I'm very happy with the school I was admitted to.

[UofChihopeful]

Amanda, while it was not an attempt at levity, I did draw some amusement from it, especially once I read

the response. That said, I am crushed though it has not totally hit me. I have not had my emotion moment

yet but I suspect it will come (likley whenletter arrives to make it official). I have been denied admission at

Penn, Chicago and Northwestern. Chicago represented my best opportunity to get into a Ph.D. program

as there were six faculty members in my specific field (four of whom I had great discussions with about

my research interests). As I stated before, one of the professors told me that based on my research

interest, there was really no other place for me to apply to and that she was certain I would get into the

program. Of course, that statement is useless if the corollary is not an admission into the program.

I feel defeated. As I drove around Ann Arbor today, I thought about my specific skillset and what other vocations

might be a match for me. And the only thing I know how to do is be smart. LOL! I sense that there are

a great number of talented scholars walking the streets who end in careers that are as miserable and monotonous as

they are mundane. After all, there are not many individuals on those jobs who care to engage in discourse about

the impact of World War II on American culture or who is interested in knowing why Thucydides should have given

Herodotus a bit of break since Herodotus, as the Father of History, could not have been concerned with historiography.

Sure, you want to just scream at them that the "unexamined life is not worth living," but it likely would not alter habits.

So what, then, becomes of the rejected intellectual? Where does the scholarship [he or she] was prepared to contribute to the

existing fund of knowledge go? Of course, one might argue that you keep going, you keep trying, you never give up

until you get into a program that is willing to house your research ambitions. That is a perspective that should not be

dismissed. Of course, when you been at this thing for three years, there comes a time to surrender and retreat to

the quotidian realities that are countenanced by most individuals in the world. I was once in law school and was offered

a position with Exxon. Go figure! The starting salary was $110K. I turned it down because I could not escape from this

urge to have a career in the life of the mind. I look back on that decision without regret. But I look back at that decision

to frame a context for this moment of rejection. It's truly disheartening and my only hope is that those individuals who have

gotten into Ph.D. programs take full advantage of the opportunity. Because rest assured, there are many individuals who

did not get in and who will perambulate all across this country without finding a place to be the persons they cannot help

being--scholars! I hate when I see someone who does not finish a program knowing the determination I would have inside to

finish if I got into a program. Keep that in mind when you find yourself in that exhausting space of ennui or when you are reading

a few books that seem to be scholarly-impoverished. Keep going! And, in the final analysis, be mindful always that you were chosen

for one of the few spots that others were just as qualified and hungry as you to fill. Make your ideas count for those who cannot because

they were turned down in their pursuit of a career in the life of the mind.

[UofChihopeful]

Ya know, I have to wonder using a fake name isn't such a bad idea. I live in the far SW corner of the US, and I recently found out I was accepted to a school in the far NE corner and that they would be paying for my flight out for their visiting days. When it came time to book the flight, I emailed 2 schools I had applied to that were ~40 minutes away from the school I was visiting, to see if I had been admitted and if I should extend my stay in the area to visit them since it costs so much to get out there. Within 3 days both schools emailed my official rejection emails. These were not messages from the secretaries I had sent the emails too, but official rejection emails from the DGS. Moreover, they did not coincide with reports of email rejections from these schools on the results board (a slew of which followed ~7-10 days later).

The three schools in question have a very close relationship. You are allowed to take courses at all three of the schools if you are a grad student at one of them, many of the professors' books are published by the University Press at another of these universities, and probably a good 1/2 of the faculty have their PhDs from one of the other two schools. I must wonder if when they saw my email saying I had been admitted to X University if that didn't influence their decision. They might have said, oh, he's going to be at X, he can work with me anyway, no need to have him here! Or perhaps they didn't want to create awkwardness between a colleague at one of the other universities by "competing" for me.

Of course you never know for sure and I'm very happy with the school I was admitted to.

Yes, I thought of the idea of using the fake name because most schools seem to have an aversion to being questioned with regard to whether or not they have made decisions and have sent out notifications. I notice that everyone who takes the approach of emailing or calling departments end up receiving unfavorable responses. Consider that in my response from Kelly, she was very interested in the fact that I kept a level of anonymity. If only she could find my name in that database, surely she could inform the department that one applicant dare write to get an update on the most important decision in his life at this time. It's far easier to get a yahoo or gmail or hotmail account and ask all the questions you want without the fear of retribution, or, more aptly put, rejection.

[historygirl]

Boy, does grad school paranoia take hold! Honestly, people. They don't blacklist you because you call to check on status. I did this at three different programs, and I was accepted to all three. They must receive 20 of these phone calls a day. And if there is a link between your call and rejection, it's that your call prompted them to actually give you official notification - as in "So-and-so called - we should let them know instead of sitting on this." The exception is if you call over and over again, but one phone call isn't gonna hurt ya.

If anything, I would definitely think an applicant that used a fake name was too weird for the program. I guarantee that story made it to the professors.

[samantha20]

Thank you for posting the email from the program administrator.

Do you have more schools to hear from other than Chicago, Northwestern, and Penn?

I truly wish you the best!

[TMP]

I finally got an official acceptance to Yale's MA in European Studies. No funding info. I was pretty sure I would be accepted, sine it would be VERY cruel to deny my PhD app, request permission to move it to the MA program, and then reject me anyway.

I feel weird about it. I feel sort-of attached to the program since at least one professor went through a lot to get me accepted to Yale, even if it wasn't for the program I originally applied to. But, my undergraduate professors keep reminding me I would be nuts to turn down a fully-funded PhD at Michigan for a MA at Yale.

Congrats!!! I was sure too that they'd give you funding if they liked your application. I can almost see how your undergrad professors are telling you all this- take Michigan over Yale! Especially that you're up for a scholarship. I feel the same way- just sent off my MA application an hour ago to Michigan for MA in another department and got an e-mail back today from the professor that I want to work with thanking me for the follow up with what I was planning to do with my MA application. So I'm trying not to hold my breath here that Michigan will give me a second chance because it'll be another committee reviewing it (though this professor is the head).

I agree with the job market/grad school applications. Law schools, from what I've heard, are going through this too- very stiff competition this year. I have YET to meet a law applicant who is truly passionate about law and who I can see will pursue law and pay off that crazy debt fast. Louiselabe was just saying that it seems like grad/law school is the new thing to avoid the real world. I am partly doing it to avoid the real world but I do have set goals that I'd like to accomplish while in grad school- PhD or MA. I can see myself finishing all of this and actually having a career that I want.

But am I willing to take a yaer off and reapply to PhD programs again, hoping that next year will have better numbers? I don't think so- the more research I'm doing for the PhD and credientials needed for professorship and such, I have decided that at this point I should just get my MA first so I can have a firmer grounding for the life beyond this degree (especially languages!!!). So I'm just applying to any MA program in Jewish Studies wherever I can at this point and take the offers and go in the fall. Then I'll reapply in a couple years and by then I will have a much stronger research focus and at least two languages under my belt. One thing at a time and slow down. Right now the circumstances aren't that great for me to get my PhD- competition-wise and preparation-wise.

[NSGoddessQ]

I feel defeated. As I drove around Ann Arbor today, I thought about my specific skillset and what other vocations might be a match for me. And the only thing I know how to do is be smart. LOL! I sense that there are a great number of talented scholars walking the streets who end in careers that are as miserable and monotonous as they are mundane. After all, there are not many individuals on those jobs who care to engage in discourse about the impact of World War II on American culture or who is interested in knowing why Thucydides should have given Herodotus a bit of break since Herodotus, as the Father of History, could not have been concerned with historiography. Sure, you want to just scream at them that the "unexamined life is not worth living," but it likely would not alter habits. So what, then, becomes of the rejected intellectual? Where does the scholarship [he or she] was prepared to contribute to the existing fund of knowledge go?

That was a beautifully written and heart-breaking post, man. I really do hope that you "find your bliss," whether it's within academia or outside it. As one of my recommenders said to me in an email, "There are plenty of people out there with 4.0 GPAs and high IQs who feel miserable and mediocre, and there are plenty of people who barely cleared a 2.5 who lead happy and productive lives."

About the best thing that I can suggest to you is to try to find a job that, even if it's not everything you've dreamt of, has nice co-workers and a decent salary. Once you're covering the basics...man, use your time outside of work to do the scholarship that you love. Not everyone with a successful piece of scholarship is a tenured professor somewhere. I recently took a grad class on social movements, and the closer we got to the current day, the more of the readings were actually written by journalists or other non-traditional historians.

You can definitely still contribute to your field of knowledge, especially if it's as specific a field as it seems. Read, write, submit journal articles, work on a manuscript of some sort, keep up your intellectual acquaintances, memberships and circles of discussion, find a job that will let you sock some money away while the rest of us are scraping by on Ramen Surprise (the surprise is ramen!) -- and try again in a year or two. We will all be leaning on our departments to accept you!

Also...don't be afraid to email Chicago and ask what the deal was with your rejection. Specifically the profs who you'd been chatting with. That might shed some light and help you decide what you want to do in the meantime.

[NSGoddessQ]

[quote name="Louiselab

[UofChihopeful]

That was a beautifully written and heart-breaking post, man. I really do hope that you "find your bliss," whether it's within academia or outside it. As one of my recommenders said to me in an email, "There are plenty of people out there with 4.0 GPAs and high IQs who feel miserable and mediocre, and there are plenty of people who barely cleared a 2.5 who lead happy and productive lives."

About the best thing that I can suggest to you is to try to find a job that, even if it's not everything you've dreamt of, has nice co-workers and a decent salary. Once you're covering the basics...man, use your time outside of work to do the scholarship that you love. Not everyone with a successful piece of scholarship is a tenured professor somewhere. I recently took a grad class on social movements, and the closer we got to the current day, the more of the readings were actually written by journalists or other non-traditional historians.

You can definitely still contribute to your field of knowledge, especially if it's as specific a field as it seems. Read, write, submit journal articles, work on a manuscript of some sort, keep up your intellectual acquaintances, memberships and circles of discussion, find a job that will let you sock some money away while the rest of us are scraping by on Ramen Surprise (the surprise is ramen!) -- and try again in a year or two. We will all be leaning on our departments to accept you!

Also...don't be afraid to email Chicago and ask what the deal was with your rejection. Specifically the profs who you'd been chatting with. That might shed some light and help you decide what you want to do in the meantime.

Thanks for both the advice and the encouragement.

[UofChihopeful]

Thank you for posting the email from the program administrator.

Do you have more schools to hear from other than Chicago, Northwestern, and Penn?

I truly wish you the best!

No, those are the only programs I applied to this year. Thanks for the wish. I truly wish you the

best as well. I am certain that you will excel!

[UofChihopeful]

If anything, I would definitely think an applicant that used a fake name was too weird for the program. I guarantee that story made it to the professors.

:roll:

[Minnesotan]

Oh, I'm not sure one is wondering at this point...

"Try the flavoured syrups! We have Hazelnut, Mint, Ivy, Old Money and Bitter Defeat. Also, the drink of the week is a vente breve made with beans imported via DHL the night before the deadline. Served with a side of biscotti and tears."

*in his best Homer Simpson voice*

Mmm... tears.

[Louiselab]

----------

[amanda1655]

Chicago Helpful -

I think you need to take a moment and breathe. Your life is not over. Your life is not going to be monotonous and dull just because the University of Chicago and Northwestern could not offer you a place in their PhD program. There are plenty of other ways to cultivate your interests and contribute for the scholarly world.

Here are just a couple of ideas that have appealed to me at certain points in my life.

1 - Write pieces for a weekly newspaper in your free time. Build your portfolio and then become a staff writer for a newspaper. I can't remember who said that journalists were writing a first draft of history but it seems rather appropriate here.

2 - Work as a librarian (university or public). There are lots of positions as an archivist that will allow you to continue working with historical sources.

3 - Work at a Museum. There is nothing more spectacularly geeky than leading tours in a museum and explaining why this piece of otherwise unidentiable pottery is actually one of the most important finds of the last decade.

4 - Own your own used bookstore.

Heck, become an elementary school teacher. My kids think I am the coolest thing since Pokemon. Anything I say is cool is automatically cool. You'll be surprised how many students you can convince that they should really be interested in the American Revolution. I have students asking how they can find more children's books about it and whether Liberty's Kids (a cartoon that details the road to the revolution) is available for purchase. If you told them to care about ancient Greek philosophy, they would just to try to please you.

[samantha20]

I agree with the above suggestion about contacting the professors at Chicago and asking them for their reasoning behind the decision to reject your application for this year. In fact, I would email the professors at Penn and Northwestern too.

From reading your posts, I cannot help but feel that you should apply again in the near future.

May I ask why you only applied to three schools this year?

[Nofia]

I second suggestions for working in archives or in a museum (though not giving tours...work with the registrar if you want to get to see/handle objects and documents or with the curator if you want to do research, write scholarly essays, and write exhibit scripts/labels). Being around the authentic stuff of history is pretty amazing, and while every job has its drawbacks and can be boring sometimes, you will see and learn amazing things in the archives/museum field.

[amanda1655]

I agree with Samantha and others that you should reapply. You sound as though this is your passion and you should try again.

There is one caveat - Eventually, people need to decide how many times they should apply. Every time you apply you are placing your life on hold for a year. Applying five times means that you will spend five years of your life fretting about finding letters of recommendation, writing statements of purpose, and honing your writing sample. This will delay your adulthood and make you an adolescent for those five years.

You don't want to wake up when you are 30 or 32 and realize that you have been waiting for graduate school when you could have been finding other ways to make your life fulfilled.

I don't know you, Chicago, so this caveat may not apply to you but it's one thing to think about. One day I would like to have children, a stable income, and a community that supports me intellectually and socially. Graduate school is important for me but I am not sure that I would be willing to sacrifice my entire life for it. There are too many other fulfilling ways for me to spend my life for me to wait in for four or five years in stasis and then find I still have not been accepted.

[TMP]

Strange, I posted and it never showed up.

I can speak about museums as I interned in museums 3 times for significant period of time. Museums are a LOT of fun but can be slightly boring at times, depending who you're dealing with. I really believe that the museums have a big responsiblity of educating the public properly about its focus because it's often the first time people learn about such things. I used to work in a Holocaust Museum and I was astonished by how many visitors who came to me at the info desk (I volunteered once a week for the summer) and just had no idea what the Holocaust museum was about. So it was up to me to get them all excited about learning. Because I have such natural passion for the Holocaust, they pick up on it pretty fast.

Now if you work in the research/exhibitions/education, you can hang out with pretty academic minded people- they do a lot of research and writing. After a while, you do become a "walking encyclopedia." When I asked for feedback on my PhD apps, the professors at Penn were awfully impressed with my CV in the sense that It demonstrated that I had deep background of the Holocaust and questioned my SOP which did NOT talk about the Holocaust (I wanted to "switch" fields). I think that if I had talked more about the Holocaust, who knows? I'm trying my hand at this angle for the MA program. So anyway, it's a great thing really to be working in a museum for a while for the sake of knowledge. I mean, I swear that I can probably teach a Holocaust survey course without even looking at lecture notes and I think that usually impresses people hehe.

Though I will keep trying for grad schools, I am already subscribing to the job posts database for a certain group of museums so I can stay on top of what's out there that i can dabble for a little while.

[samantha20]

I agree with Samantha and others that you should reapply. You sound as though this is your passion and you should try again.

There is one caveat - Eventually, people need to decide how many times they should apply. Every time you apply you are placing your life on hold for a year. Applying five times means that you will spend five years of your life fretting about finding letters of recommendation, writing statements of purpose, and honing your writing sample. This will delay your adulthood and make you an adolescent for those five years.

You don't want to wake up when you are 30 or 32 and realize that you have been waiting for graduate school when you could have been finding other ways to make your life fulfilled.

I don't know you, Chicago, so this caveat may not apply to you but it's one thing to think about. One day I would like to have children, a stable income, and a community that supports me intellectually and socially. Graduate school is important for me but I am not sure that I would be willing to sacrifice my entire life for it. There are too many other fulfilling ways for me to spend my life for me to wait in for four or five years in stasis and then find I still have not been accepted.

Well, he mentioned in earlier posts that he is married to someone who is a professor English, has an MA, was in law school at one point in his life, and turned down a six-figure salary in hopes of pursuing a career in academia.

Wow. I feel like a stalker. :shock:

Anyways, I hope everything works out, UofChihopeful!

[dmh26]

For anyone who applied to the University of Kansas, decisions have been made, letters go out early next week.

[amanda1655]

Samantha: I still think you eventually have to think about how much you are willing to sacrifice, especially if you have a wife or husband.

[samantha20]

Very true, Amanda.

[redwine]

I too was very moved by your post UofChihopeful. It is very tough to feel like you are prevented from doing what you really love. All I can say is if you have a real passion you should hang in there and try again. Perhaps if you take a year break you can think about ways to bolster your application - taking university level language courses, offering research assistance to a professor, presenting an undergrad paper at a conference etc. This would both make your application stronger and show just how passionate you are.

Also, to second what was said above about finding a job in the meantime when you can work on your scholarship. I know from experience this can be hard; but for myself I always looked to the example of my Dad (seriously!) He is passionate about historical scholarship but quit his PhD years ago when I was born to get a civil service job he knew could support his family. He regrets it (of course) but he has since written a number of articles and books and is a respected scholar in his field. When he retires he plans to go back and finish that PhD, but in the meantime he spends his weekends in archives and reading great scholarship, and is very fulfilled for it. A friend's father who is also a civil servant (its the town I come from...) is also a historian, has published heaps and said friend and I, bored one day in the library where we were doing undergrad, found half of his books in the Reserve section where they were on hold because they were required reading for core history courses. So you can influence young minds without being a tenured academic!

I am sure you will be doing a great PhD soon and a life of civil service work will not be your fate (not that its done my Dad any harm! He would just have preferred working as a historian, of course) But in the meantime remember the academy does not have a monopoly on scholarship. There are some fascinating people writing fascinating work who are not tenured professors. Not to mention all of the journalists and activists who have contributed to historical scholarship. Good luck for future applications!

[UofChihopeful]

[quote name="Louiselab

[UofChihopeful]

Chicago Helpful -

I think you need to take a moment and breathe. Your life is not over. Your life is not going to be monotonous and dull just because the University of Chicago and Northwestern could not offer you a place in their PhD program. There are plenty of other ways to cultivate your interests and contribute for the scholarly world.

Here are just a couple of ideas that have appealed to me at certain points in my life.

1 - Write pieces for a weekly newspaper in your free time. Build your portfolio and then become a staff writer for a newspaper. I can't remember who said that journalists were writing a first draft of history but it seems rather appropriate here.

2 - Work as a librarian (university or public). There are lots of positions as an archivist that will allow you to continue working with historical sources.

3 - Work at a Museum. There is nothing more spectacularly geeky than leading tours in a museum and explaining why this piece of otherwise unidentiable pottery is actually one of the most important finds of the last decade.

4 - Own your own used bookstore.

Heck, become an elementary school teacher. My kids think I am the coolest thing since Pokemon. Anything I say is cool is automatically cool. You'll be surprised how many students you can convince that they should really be interested in the American Revolution. I have students asking how they can find more children's books about it and whether Liberty's Kids (a cartoon that details the road to the revolution) is available for purchase. If you told them to care about ancient Greek philosophy, they would just to try to please you.

The librarian advice keeps coming up so I will definitely consider it.

On the newspaper front, I have worked as an editorial columnist for a weekly newspaper from 2002 to 2005. So I do have experience there as well as contacts. I still freelance from time to time.

I guess the underlying premise in your message is that there are a lot of things to do that can be fruitful and not rife with monotony. I will take your advice as well as the advice of others into consideration.