*cross post from the Questions thread
This is going to be a combination of a 'help me, I'm ignorant' post and a 'what are my chances' post. I'm interested in applying to graduate programs for the F' 2017 cycle, but I think I need advice.
I attended a small, religious liberal arts college in the Midwest and majored in History. The school has little to no reputation and is very unknown - my department consisted of a handful of professors and students, and the professors rarely published due to the school's emphasis on teaching. I did well - earning a 3.94 in the major, and both departmental honors my senior year (graduated this May). I took as many upper level courses as I could, nearly every single one that the school offered, and I did some minor research for a professor during my senior year. Although I feel as though my senior thesis could have been a bit better (and I intend to polish it before submitting to journals/as a writing sample for grad admissions), my advisor told me that if the school had honors designations for theses, mine would have received it. I served as the president of the honor society for a term my senior year, will likely have decent recommendations, and presented at a general undergraduate research conference this year. For my first two summers during undergrad, I volunteered at a National Historical park where I gave talks and answered questions. Before my senior year, I worked in the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and I spent 2.5 years working in the archives at my college. Since graduation, I've been working as a writer for a national newspaper (not the WaPo or the NYT, but professors I interview tend to recognize and respect it).
I am concerned that because my school is unknown, I have no publications, and I learned too late that although research opportunities were thin on the ground, I could create my own, I'll have a hard time gaining acceptance into programs that I'm interested in. I am also light on the language side of things. I took German in high school and retain a little bit of that reading ability, and took 'hola, uno, dos, tres' Spanish classes for my undergrad language requirement.
Currently, I'm looking at William and Mary's funded MA program, and PhD programs at Penn, Princeton, Brown, UVA, BU, and Berkeley due to my interests in American history (particularly early American) and urban history. I don't know if these are ridiculous programs to aim for. What would be more realistic? Ideally, I'd like to take on as little debt as possible.
