My apologies if a similar topic has been posted already (I didn't see anything like it, but I'm new to GradCafe so I may have missed it) but I'm here with a question...
I'm in a little bit of a unique situation -- next year I will complete a Master of Arts in Teaching in social studies. As an undergrad, I double-majored in history with a Middle East concentration and an Arabic minor. I really want to pursue a Ph.D. in history (still concentrating in the Middle East) in order to become a stronger and better-informed teacher. I think that I would enjoy teaching at the college-level as well, but my ultimate goal would not be to secure a college/university TT position (I thought about going that route and then decided that secondary teaching was just a better fit for me personally).
I'm thinking about applying for Fall of 2014 (although it may be smarter for me to wait to apply until after I have been teaching full-time for a couple of years -- I'm not entirely sure yet) and so my question is this: do you think that openly announcing, in my personal statement, that I don't want to pursue a career in higher education and want to stay in secondary teaching would be a death knell to my application? Do you think that a faculty committee reading my application would think to themselves, "This person obviously doesn't take the Ph.D. seriously" and reject me? I really want to obtain the Ph.D. to provide the highest-quality education I can to my students and to become a strong teacher-scholar, and because I am sincerely enthusiastic about my subject area and want to expand my knowledge about it as much as possible, but I can also understand how an admissions committee might just find my whole application "silly."
Any thoughts?
Thanks for reading and good luck to all of you applying this year!
History Teacher Applying for Ph.D.
in History
Posted
Hi all,
My apologies if a similar topic has been posted already (I didn't see anything like it, but I'm new to GradCafe so I may have missed it) but I'm here with a question...
I'm in a little bit of a unique situation -- next year I will complete a Master of Arts in Teaching in social studies. As an undergrad, I double-majored in history with a Middle East concentration and an Arabic minor. I really want to pursue a Ph.D. in history (still concentrating in the Middle East) in order to become a stronger and better-informed teacher. I think that I would enjoy teaching at the college-level as well, but my ultimate goal would not be to secure a college/university TT position (I thought about going that route and then decided that secondary teaching was just a better fit for me personally).
I'm thinking about applying for Fall of 2014 (although it may be smarter for me to wait to apply until after I have been teaching full-time for a couple of years -- I'm not entirely sure yet) and so my question is this: do you think that openly announcing, in my personal statement, that I don't want to pursue a career in higher education and want to stay in secondary teaching would be a death knell to my application? Do you think that a faculty committee reading my application would think to themselves, "This person obviously doesn't take the Ph.D. seriously" and reject me? I really want to obtain the Ph.D. to provide the highest-quality education I can to my students and to become a strong teacher-scholar, and because I am sincerely enthusiastic about my subject area and want to expand my knowledge about it as much as possible, but I can also understand how an admissions committee might just find my whole application "silly."
Any thoughts?
Thanks for reading and good luck to all of you applying this year!