lelick1234

I graduated from UCSB in 2012. I am currently teaching social studies at a high school in Egypt. I am thinking that I will be applying to grad school 3-4 years from now. What should I do to improve my chances of getting into an excellent graduate program for the history of U.S. policy towards the World during this extended break? If I have choice, should I focus on language preparation or the GRE? Would it be better if I apply to master's programs first? My undergrad GPA was a 3.89.

Hello, Do any of you believe that a PhD would make me overqualified, or at the very least, cut into at least six years of possible teaching experience? Should I instead just cut my losses and just skip graduate school altogether and just get my teaching certificate? I was thinking about getting a stable secondary teaching job, then earn my master's degree while working so that I can at least apply for positions at community colleges. Do community colleges even hire people with master's degrees anymore, or do I have to have a PhD to be competitive? -Leo

Does earning a PhD or maybe even a Master's degree in history make you overqualified to teach secondary school? Although I would love to become the next big thing in historical scholarship, I am convinced that I would be extremely lucky to even find a full-time position at a community college. If I need medical benefits for my family to survive, is secondary school teaching an option?

Hello folks, I am well aware that U.S. foreign policy historians are a dime a dozen. With that being said, I am not sure I will be able to master Arabic before my short window of opportunity to apply to graduate schools in Middle Eastern history closes. I was wondering if I mastered Arabic and maybe Farsi, while obtaining my PhD in US foreign policy, would I be automatically rejected for positions in Modern Middle Eastern history even if my research focused deeply on Middle Eastern primary sources along with English primary sources? Is it possible to stretch my focus from strictly U.S. foreign policy and move more into a regional focus like the Middle East by the time I earned my PhD? --Leonard

Hello, I am not exactly sure where I should post this, but maybe you all might be able to give some advice. My wife is an Egyptian immigrant to the United States who has her bachelor's degree English from the University of Alexandria. She would like to obtain her Master's degree in English, but is quite intimidated by the costs. She was wondering if there were any colleges in the United States that offer financial assistance to graduate students who are able to teach a language other than English. She was a Fulbright teaching assistant at the University of California, Santa Barbara in Arabic a couple years ago, therefore she has at least a full year of college teaching experience. I am looking forward to your responses. --Leonard.

What are graduate schools looking for in a writing sample? Would anyone who has been successfully admitted into a history program be interested in reading a portion of my senior thesis?

Fellow Grads, I greatly appreciate all of your responses. I think I have made some progress towards developing a more sophisticated plan. I have definitely decided to put off applying to PhD programs for at least three years. I will probably substitute teach for a year while I am establishing my Californian residency. Then I will move somewhere close to Cal State San Bernardino, which seems to have a rather impressive and inexpensive Arabic summer program ($1000-5000$). I am assuming that if I am already living in the area, my tuition costs will be closer to $1000 than $5000. Moreover, since the Imperial Valley is the arm-pit of California, the cost of living will be cheap. Since my wife is Egyptian and her bachelors degree is from an unaccredited Egyptian university, she will have to get her Master's degree so that she can find work in the future. She will complete degree at CSSB while I substitute teach for income during the school year. During the summer I will attend my Arabic courses. I will also take the GRE again. I am assuming I should probably raise my verbal score from the 89-90 percentile to the 93-96 percentile, and at least attempt to get into the 50 percentile in the math section. I believe that this is possible because when I first took the test, I just guessed on the math section. I sure a more concerted effort would yield better results. Hopefully, after two summers of studying, which would equate to two years of Arabic study, I will apply to San Francisco State University. Since I would have already completed Arabic, I should be able to start studying Farsi. Moreover, I will probably try choose Master's thesis topic that would allow me to show off my abilities to read Arabic sources. If this all goes to plan, I will have written a Master's thesis using Arabic sources, made significant progress on my second Middle Eastern language, and raised my GRE scores to more competitive levels. I would then only apply to top-20 graduate schools. If I am rejected by America's academic elite, I will respectfully bow out of the scene and see if I can afford a teaching certificate to teach high school social studies. I am sure my credentials and Master degree will make me more than competitive in the secondary teaching field. Do you guys think that this is realistic?

Hello Folks!! I graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a BA in history in 2011. My GPA was 3.89 and I scored within the 90 percentile in the verbal section and 4.5 on the essay section of the GRE. Don't ask about the quantitative section. I think I scored within the the 20 percentile because I rushed through it, all the time telling myself that it was not a big deal if I didn't go to graduate school because I could always join the Coast Guard. Anyways it turned out to be a moot issue because I married the Arabic Fulbright TA at my university and moved to Alexandria, Egypt. I have been teaching high school social studies at an American school for the past three years. As I am sure you all know, Egypt is not exactly the most stable country to live in. And as I am sure you would expect, my wife got pregnant, making living in Egypt a seemingly a selfish decision. Suffice it is to say, I will be returning to California sometime during the fall, and I have no idea what I am going to do. The following are my general concerns about graduate school: *My Prospective Programs (UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, University of Michigan--Ann Arbor, and Columbia.) 1) Are my quantitative statistics from my undergraduate years (GPA, GRE scores) a liability when applying to Phd programs? 2) I need to improve my Arabic skills before applying to these schools. Where does one take advanced Arabic courses if one is not currently attending a graduate program? Remember: I am moving back to California with my family. It would be a hard sell to them to say that I am going to spend thousand of dollars at a summer session thousands of miles away from California to the East Coast. 3) If I do get accepted into a PhD program, how should I explain to my wife why it is necessary for me to not have a steady job and to continue my studies even if the opportunities to find academic jobs are very weak after 6 years of work? How should I explain that it is possible to raise children while attending PhD programs? 4) What if I applied to a Master's program in history at San Fransisco State, which has a decent Arabic program? How would I survive earning my Master's degree while living in one of the most expensive cities in the world with a family? Would I need to secure a job before I apply? Or should I just take out student loans and just hope after I complete my degree that I score a jack-pot with full-funding from a top-10 graduate school? 5) Would it just be more responsible to earn my teaching credential and attempt to find a job a job at local high school, maybe earning my Master's degree at the nearest state school at some undetermined future date, and cast the PhD dream to the waste-basket? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------