turnings
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Posts posted by turnings
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A study was released about a year ago looking at prestige hierarchies & hiring patterns in doctoral programs - this seems to be about the most "legitimate" measure available. The top five there are 1) Harvard 2) Yale 3) Berkeley 4)Princeton 5) Stanford.
I suppose in my head I have a similar rough sense of prestige as mvlchicago, although I would definitely include both columbia and stanford in the list of so-called "bomb schools." Maybe hopkins too?
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2 hours ago, mvlchicago said:
Basically the issue is that most historians don't take theory seriously
More accurate.
- meo03 and mvlchicago
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This is an extremely rare area of interest and has little (/next to no) institutional foothold within the American academy. U Chicago's Committee on Social Thought might be a place to look, or more philosophy-oriented intellectual historians like Peter Gordon at Harvard. Interdisciplinary programs, as you've noted, are very often more engaged with theoretical questions, and may generally be a better bet.
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The very best programs are competing for a similar set of applicants. Obviously not the same as fit varies from place to place but, as you'll discover when you bump into a number of the same people at different admit weekends, there is a fair bit of overlap. I imagine this is why places like NYU have such notoriously insane admissions procedures - they're competing for the Harvard-level admits but don't have quite the pull of those five or six top departments.
Mind I'm not saying it's great that the system works this way, and obviously the programs you're admitted to have, within reason, only a marginal relation to how talented you might be as a historian. The problem with prestige is that its luster fails to fade even when we admit to the much more complicated reality of the process.
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1) Quant scores mean next to nothing.
2) An MA will not harm your future prospects at PhD programs, and will very likely improve your application.
3) The Ivys (this is not a terribly useful metric for graduate program prestige, btw) do not have any particular preference for students coming directly from undergraduate programs, so far as I am aware.It sounds like you have a fair idea of what you'd like to study, and you've apparently identified some historians with whom you'd like to work. If you apply to both MA and doctoral programs, I would imagine you have a good shot at receiving admission somewhere. Even if you don't receive a direct PhD admit, a funded MA is quite a good deal and should position you very well for applications down the line. I'd go for it and apply now.
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Your stats are fine. AFAIK most programs require all GRE scores, so you can't choose between them. Your key problem at the moment is focus. Early American, Medieval, African, and Early Church history are vastly different fields. If you want to be admitted to any PhD program in history, much less the programs you've listed, you will need to choose one of these and develop enough familiarity with its historiography to propose an original research project. An MA in history might help here, especially if you can find funding/can afford it yourself.
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It sounds to me like you might want to consider archaeology programs.
That said, I know that Valerie Hansen at Yale works on the history of the Silk Road.
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The quantitative score is essentially irrelevant at most schools, even in the "top 10." Provided your score is not genuinely abysmal the only thing that will matter to admissions committees is the verbal section - this, obviously, should be as close to 170 as possible.
(one note: I believe many state schools use gre scores to determine funding packages, so what I said above may not apply in all cases.)
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It doesn't seem to vary much at all as far as I can tell. The only unusual placements (near the top) appear to be UWisconsin, coming in slightly higher than most would conventionally expect, and Brandeis, whose vastly higher position appears to result from the fact that the designers of the study used only the rank of Brandeis' American History PhD program, rather than the program as a whole (see footnote 3 on pg. 17 of the supplementary materials pdf).
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There's also the tried and true R1 --> book contract & book --> adjunct
- dr. t, poliorkein, Sigaba and 2 others
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AFAIK, NYU and Princeton do not have teaching requirements.
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FTofHistory: I would accept the MAPSS offer, provided you can swing it financially. I know a number of people who completed the MAPSS degree and now attend top ten doctoral programs. They would all say that Chicago got them there (indeed I've heard it said by more than one person that their year there was the most intellectually stimulating of their career).
I would not turn down a PhD offer from Brown.
(to clarify: by "swing it financially" I meant not taking on any debt whatsoever).
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Could someone explain what it is they like about Guns Germs and Steel?
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I think it should be noted that publishing for the sake of publishing is often a mistake. As an undergraduate it was suggested to me by a professor that I publish an essay I'd written. My adviser recommended against this. Why? Because the prestige of where you publish matters. Nobody really cares that you've published a paper in a minor regional journal. Now I'm not saying you should never publish unless it's the AHR. I am simply emphasizing that you should not expect a couple of publications to make a big difference in the admissions process. As everyone else has said, the writing sample and statement of purpose are the alpha and the omega.
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methodologies should not define history
Longtime lurker. Just wanted to let this particular quote speak for itself.
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No one wants to read a 2500 word statement of purpose.
- Professor Plum and dr. t
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I don't think there's really any excuse for a lack of familiarity with major theoretical trends. Every historian should have at least a broad strokes understanding of the history of philosophy - there is a disappointing tendency to read big 20th century names (Foucault especially) with no attempt to contextualize them. Kant and Hegel especially are thinkers people avoid taking the time to read (because they are very difficult) but you can't really get what's going on in most of western thought through to the present without them. Hegel particularly is important for historians; too many people read trendy Marxist thinkers without really understanding dialectical method.
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St. Benedict
Frederick II (HRE)
Erasmus
Jean Calvin
Hegel
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Yale has Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore for eastern europe so yeah I'd say they're alright on that front.
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french, spanish, german, italian, dutch, latin
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No I'm not sure what that could mean. That's very unusual. Your best bet is to email or call someone in the admissions office at Yale and ask them about it.
History Phd Rankings
in History
Posted
If I recall correctly, the placement of Brandeis on the list was somewhat anomalous (I can't remember the reason - I think they only looked at a particular part of its program, on "American Civilization" or something like that?).