crazedandinfused

Ok! Great thanks to everyone who has responded. I really needed some guidance as to how to best approach this. What I'll probably do is apply to MA programs at schools where I'm a long shot, and apply to PhD programs at schools where I have a better chance....... Strangelight, thank you for your comment regarding how it would be perceived if were to pay for an MA out of pocket. Those are exactly the sort of inside-baseball tips that I need. To anyone that may be a 19th century US historian: I've been trying to hone in on a topic that will make for a paper which is original and substantive, but finding a gap in the historiography has been really difficult. If anyone has any tips about recent trends in antebellum history (particularly cultural history and it's relation to the economic changes of the time) I would REALLY appreciate some help. I'm interested in the way in which immigrants and freedmen (basically the people who were left out of Chants Democratic) saw their role in economic changes, and how shifting perceptions of status and class were represented in expressive culture. The eternal problem is that the groups I want to study are under-represented in the culture of the time. I've thought about using popular song but I haven't had much luck finding anything....... Am I overreaching by trying to write a innovative paper? This is pretty much exactly why I need to enroll in a history program!!!! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hey everyone, I've been lurking around this board for a while and it's finally time to ask the big question which has been bouncing around my head for the last year. I have had a long academic journey and I have finally gotten to the point where I am certain that I want to be a Historian. I am definitely going on to a PHD but my question is mostly tactical regarding the best approach to application. I have a BA in Anthropology (3.0 GPA) and a Master's degree in International Development (3.4). My Master's is a policy degree that gets you ready to work for the government/UN/aid agencies. I at one point had thought that this might have been a career path which I was interested in, but after one semester I realized it wasn't for me. Instead of dropping out I took as many cross-listed grad courses in econ and poli sci as i could. I also took one graduate seminar in History. So I have done a significant amount of graduate work, completed a graduate degree, and am familiar with the seminar setting and what graduate work entails. My question is: Given my non-History academic background (This is kind of a misnomer. I have always been a historian. My work up until now has merely contextualized my historical perspective), and my somewhat mediocre grades, would I be better off applying for an MA or a PHD? Above all I want to get in somewhere. I have spent the last 6 months reading the scholarship on the field I am interested in -19th Century US cultural history- and I am going to spend the summer working on my writing sample. I am re-taking the GRE to get a better score and I should have ok LORs ( because at least two will come from non-Historians I am praying that I can get the third from the professor of the grad course that i took in history. He also happens to be department chair.) Recently I have been leaning towards applying for an MA because I would have to get one anyway and I'm terrified of rejection. If anyone has any advice I would really appreciate it. I can also elaborate on my academic history if necessary. This conundrum keeps me awake some nights.................. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PS: I should point out that there is actually much more coherence to my academic career than I let on. My Master's essentially dealt with the development of capitalism and urbanization, as well as touching on some of the socio-cultural ramifications of those developments. I am interested in the history of these same processes in the US and how culture both responded to, and laid the groundwork for, these forces of "modernization". That's where Anthropology fits in.

Got my rejection letter about a week ago.