Hello friends, I am applying for Fall 2016 and I wish y'all best luck in your application! Although I am more experienced with East Asian history, my interest lies in early modern Europe, especially the social, economic, political, and religious history of Germany and German-speaking area. I have a question and I'd like to know if someone here might be able to help me with:
I have a BA in History with GPA 3.85/4.0, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. I took 5 courses on French and 3 courses on Arabic. I also passed German B2 level at Goethe Institut within 3 months (no prior knowledge of German, self-taught 1 month, followed by 8 weeks of courses in Germany). I am not trying to brag but to show that I am a decent, hard-working student.
However, I am currently doing another BA in Economics in the German-speaking area. As I am pursuing a second BA, my current university exempted me from Assessment Year (the foundation year). So I missed out on many basic mathematical training. Currently I am suffering from this lack of training as I have to learn a lot of math by myself while other students have had the training, especially in courses related to linear models, statistics, and advanced micro. Meanwhile, the uni does not offer English lectures to the English courses in advanced micro and econometrics, and the learning materials for those of us who are not yet proficient with German are translated into English with plenty of typos and mistakes. I don't feel supported as I was in the US, and my current GPA in Economics is only 5.2/6.0.
At my current university, 5.5 is summa cum laude (I only know fewer than a handful of extremely intelligent classmates who have this grade) and 5.0 is magna cum laude. Generally speaking, with a 5.0/6.0 people already assume you are really good. But when converted into US scale, my GPA in Economics is only around 3.4/4.0 and I wonder if my second BA in Economics will hurt my chance of getting into a History PhD program?
Thank you very much for your help!