ashiepoo72

Do you have any primary source-based papers? Or ones that could be expanded with primary sources? I don't know that this is something you can explain in an SOP, but maybe others have advice on that. Personally, I'd try to take an existing paper and make it more historical. If you spend the next 2-3 months working on it, I think you could have something good (if you already have something written that you could use, although I know people who bang out 20-30 page research papers from scratch in that amount of time) You might want to check out UCSC. Profs Christy and Yang are there and they're awesome.

Pero Dagbovie at MSU might be of interest, too. He's also just a really cool person. I know they offer an MA and PhD.

I'd say anything below like 40th percentile is worth a retest, but that's my personal threshold. I luckily got slightly above 50th percentile so I didn't have to test if I'd actually retake the exam. I pretty much went in with a mentality that if I got above 90th in verbal, I didn't care about my other scores. Obviously 40th percentile isn't ideal, but I wouldn't spend $200 extra dollars hoping to score a teeny bit higher, especially with a strong verbal score. If you have that cash to spend and are set on doing it, by all means, but I don't think it's necessary. In my year+ on this forum, I've found people worry way too much about the GRE when the most important parts of the application, in my humble and not expert opinion, are the statement and writing sample. You can control those and have time to make them beautiful works of art--why waste time trying to get a bit better at math when you should be polishing your statement into an admissions weapon and perfecting your thesis, historiography, primary sources and footnotes in the writing sample?

Also you might want to check out UCSC. It may not be top tier in history, but it definitely is in Asian history. Gail Hershatter and Emily Honig may focus on periods a bit later than you, but they're broadly knowledgable and you couldn't have better advisers. Also, Minghui Hu is there.

I wouldn't worry about the quant score unless it's so abysmal they think you can't do basic math or you plan on using quantitative methods in your research. 150s should be perfectly fine. Dont spend too much time talking about grades or peccadilloes in your statement. Make it focused almost entirely on research interests and experience and fit with the program. I would consider using your undergrad and MA experiences to create a narrative that demonstrates how being an international applicant lends you a unique perspective that'll strengthen your doctoral career. The narrative shouldn't be the whole SOP, but I find statements with a unifying thread that makes an applicant stand apart from the rest particularly strong and memorable, which is what you want. Submit the best primary source-based research paper you have as a writing sample. You may want to do intellectual history, but that doesn't mean diplomatic can't be connected (and you said that it helped refine your interests, something you should definitely mention in the statement when describing your research experience).

MAs generally are based on coursework and you may or may not have to write a primary source-based thesis. PhD programs (in the U.S.) generally have two years of coursework but the pinnacle is researching and writing a book-length(ish) dissertation. I had a comprehensive exam in the MA, but it was nowhere near the amount of reading and detail expected of PhD comps (for the MA I read about 80 books, at Davis at least comps lists are approximately 300 books). There's also a lot more professionalization expected at the PhD level. While there are opportunities to attend conferences, get fellowships and teach at MA programs, PhD programs expect these things to happen in the course of your career (part of the reason why TAing is encouraged at many programs, along with it being one of the only ways to fund people fully). MA programs, or at least mine, have people with more diversity of reasons for attending. I'd say most of the people I encountered were "hobby historians" who previously had careers and were newly retired, or were high school teachers wanting a pay raise. Many more were interested in teaching community college, few were interested in a career that involved original research and even fewer planned to pursue a PhD--I was the only person in the program to apply to PhDs last season, the only one to get into a program in about 3 years. Some MAs are pipelines into PhD programs, but I'd bet they still get students uninterested in more than an MA. While people pursue PhDs for different reasons, I don't think it's exaggeration to say most want to work at a university and also be able to do original research. Also, minor fields. Again in my experience, MAs are geared more toward picking one major field, although you may be required to take a course or two outside that field. I took a bunch due to my interests, but there was no expectation that students would have minor fields.

I personally would apply to MA programs so you can get the foundation in the field you want to pursue in the PhD. Try looking for funded MAs though. I did an unfunded MA to help me narrow my interests--I knew the general period but not the more nitty gritty details of what I wanted to study, and my grades were mediocre so I needed the MA as a stepping stone. I would not recommend an unfunded MA to anyone. Maybe if you had to pay for one year out of the two it'd be worth it if your debt from undergrad is minuscule, but it is extremely costly and isn't worth footing the entire bill in light of job prospects for history grads. If you dig around the history threads I'm sure someone has listed funded MA programs somewhere. Anyway, if you have languages for your proposed research down, a solid writing sample (even if unrelated to your proposed research) and a focused SOP, you should definitely throw some PhD apps in this season just to see what happens. But I'd definitely have an MA as a backup plan, and if you don't have languages you should get on that ASAP. Another option is to teach abroad in Japan or Korea for a year. I know several people who've done it in Japan and enjoyed it, that'll help with acquiring languages and give you valuable teaching experience and a cool thing to talk about in the SOP. End of the day, research interests change and advisers know this. If you have primary source-based research experience, grounding in methodology, languages and an interesting, focused research proposal, you'll have a decent shot even without coursework in the field. Definitely spend a lot of time talking about research experience in your SOP. Reading up on the historiography of your new area of interest and talking about it in the statement would be good too. It'll help if you can explain why you want to switch and show you've thought deeply and meaningfully about it. For your SOP, you should think about what political-ideological exchanges you're interested in scrutinizing and why anyone should care about them. Grounding in historiography will help you identify any gaps, but that's half the battle--you need to figure out why the gap matters and how you can fill it, or at least have ideas for the directions a research project in this vein can go. I don't known much about UCSC's history of consciousness program despite being an alumna of the history program, except that your philosophy background is a boon if you want to apply there. UCSC is rad though. good luck!

Contact professors of interest, gauge if they're interested in your proposed research. Shore up all the parts of the application you control--writing sample, GRE, statement of purpose. Especially the statement...this should be pristine, deliberate, thoughtful and focused. Get the best LORs you can. Don't worry about your undergrad record. Lots of people have less than stellar undergrad scores and get into PhD programs, myself included. Your MA is more important (that is, if it's in history or a sister field). Good luck!

I've made a habit of looking at endnotes when I finish a chapter, skimming through to get a feel for the sources used and looking for any longer ones that describe historiographical debates, secondary literature or archival material at greater length. When I read something interesting/questionable/controversial/etc in the chapter I go to the endnote immediately to check it out. Like KNP, I read footnotes pretty much immediately (and I love me some footnotes). i do like to go through the bibliography before I even crack open the book. Generally I look over the table of contents, index and bibliography very closely before delving in, which helps me figure out what I should be looking for. This helps me narrow in on more important endnotes too. I don't think it's exaggeration to say I spend way more time reading footnotes/endnotes, the index and bibliography than the rest of the book (excluding the intro and conclusion, which I spend the most time on out of everything).

It's been going really well! I am loving my new city and spend most of the time exploring and hanging out with a friend from my old city who moved here around the same time as me. I moved nearly two months before my program starts in order to get my daughter situated in school, so I have about a month to kill before I actually start classes. Now that my kid is in school, I'm planning on brushing up on language skills, looking over some documents that I've stored away for a new research project and reading for pleasure--something I haven't done in a tragically long time! I hope you all have easy transitions and enjoy your first year. I love reading about everyone's experiences in very different fields and geographic regions and am looking forward to keeping up with everyone's progress in this thread

It's my daughter's first day of school today. After I dropped her off, I got this overwhelming sense I'm in the exact place I'm supposed to be, the only place where I can make it work well for both of us. What a good feeling.

I start on September 24th...one month from today!

Actually it was the incredible number of cockroaches running around Davis along with all the allergens in the air that clinched it for me.

I'm gonna send you a PM

Made it to Davis! :)

That sucks I felt the same way when I found out John Bodnar was retiring. It'll all work out, though. Are there other people at that program you could work with?

LOL so true. These are the same people who send one-word responses to emails students agonize over. I've spent much time trying to interpret further meaning from the word "ok."

Haha! I had a similar moment during recruitment weekend at Davis. Apparently we should memorize pictures on faculty webpages to avoid this in the future...

If you take really good notes you'll probably be fine only buying hard copies of books you'd like on your bookshelf and getting digital copies of the rest. Maybe check them out at the library or through interlibrary loan if you like hard copies. I buy print versions because I scribble all over my books, but it all depends on what works for you.

Good point, Chiqui. Reading with a dictionary is MUCH easier than speaking a language.

You totally can at the MA level, but definitely look into your program's requirements to see if they allow it like mine did. I opted for the 2 additional courses even though I know 2 languages well enough to take the language exams (because I'm a nerd and wanted more classes). Maybe contact the grad adviser?

From what I know based on my experience, it's not as important at the MA level. My program allowed people on the U.S. track to take 2 additional grad courses in lieu of a language exam. If you're studying anything involving nations that do not speak your native tongue, not having a language will be to your detriment. It's not that you can't get language training in a doctoral program--you totally can--but having even rudimentary language training looks better than none when you're applying, especially with how competitive it is. Have you considered taking a few community college language courses? It's not like these will get you up to snuff to dive in foreign language archives, but it'll show programs you're making an effort to acquire the necessary tools for a dissertation. If your project really requires no additional languages, I would think about other tools that can shore up your application--maybe some classes in statistics, or sociology, psychology, poli sci, anthropology etc that you can use as potential methodological training. I tend to overthink things, as anyone who's seen my application prep can confirm, but I look for balance--if I'm weak in one area, I try to be especially strong in another. So, undergrad GPA low, GRE high. Or no languages, but tons of methodological and research training. Something along those lines. Good luck!

sdelehan -- you might want to check out UCSB and Madison, too. Scaluni -- Don't worry about getting an AA first. Frame your SOP in a way that discusses your unique journey and how it prepared you for a doctoral program.

I know of people who switched from, say, early Latin American history to modern U.S. history while in a PhD program, so it's not unprecedented. I don't personally know anyone who switched to a different field from what they did in their MA, but I'm sure people have. You have the right idea about languages. I think having a graduate degree, even in another field (and poli sci is a sister discipline to history...I've used scholarship by political scientists in many projects), shows you have the preparation to do a dissertation, especially since you completed two theses. Right now I would focus on language acquisition and think about how and if your MA experiences can be used in your current research interests--methodologically perhaps? At the very least you have experience in primary source research, which is very important. I would also focus on brushing up on the historiography related to your research interests. All of this can be put into a SOP. Basically you have to show adcomms that you benefited from your grad experience (gained research experience, methodology, have broad knowledge that can give you a unique perspective, etc) and that you've done the legwork to prepare for a shift in research.

I just wanna say that I like how our cohort is keeping tabs in this thread, and I hope we continue to do so...doesn't seem like previous years did the same. I feel like we bonded through all the "fun" we had applying, tearing our hair out while waiting, and picking programs