duesseldreamer

Thank you so much for this concrete info. I can try to fill in these blanks and would love if you could comment. Language: I tested C1 (reading/listening) B2 (speaking/writing) on the TestDAF in 2017. I then worked 6 months in a job where I had to speak German on the phone. I am confident I could clinch the 4x C1 needed, especially if I made some extra effort. GPA: My unique dual degree pooled the GPA on everything from finance courses to film studies. Both BA and BS show a 3.51 GPA. But my liberal arts coursework above the 300 level is literally a 4.0, maybe one A- I'm forgetting about, so 3.9+ for sure. I have around 20 credits of 300+ level cultural/history stuff with a GPA of 4.0. Am I "allowed" to point this out to them? That my subject GPA is significantly higher? Oh and if they care, my MS GPA is 3.89. Credits: This is exactly my issue. I see all sorts of things, often 60 ECTS of history credits. On a generous US-ECTS conversion I get near that? I guess? The page for the FUB/Humboldt program gets worse with something like "1/3 of credits must be in history" and like literally half my transcript is not liberal arts at all but business. Programs: To be totally honest I look at programs in a fairly vulgar way, I'd prefer to be in one of the bigger cities, so any big city uni with a high ranking interests me. Obviously if I see the department is not the global orientation i'm looking for i'd look elsewhere. I need to figure out if I CAN get into these programs I guess before really honing in. But a program such as FUB/Humboldts, or one at University of Konstanz ("Global European Studies" or something?), where both feature an obligatory semester in another country. That's my dream program. Something where i'm picking up language and international experience automatically as part of the program.

Let me be clear, I appreciate the tough love about the professor and totally respect the viewpoint, but I don't think it applies. I was on a fulbright english teaching grant at two highschools and auditing the courses for no credit. the professor consistently made entreaties and suggestions for me to get more involved. I DID begin writing a paper, and he literally said I could choose the deadline, he really wanted to see something from me, but personal stuff intervened (a stolen passport led to a lost month). I hope that doesn't sound cringey, just the professor explicitly said things like "I'd love for you to do something here, are you thinking about studying here next year" etc. By the standards of a student he owed nothing to, literally nothing, I believe he went beyond the baseline of your parenthetical statement. In other words it's completely my fault he probably couldnt do an LoR. He DID open the door, I didn't walk in. I will say though, he definitely egged me on in his classes for the sake of the actual grad students, thank you for that perspective, LOL. But I can't deny it doesn't make me feel I have potential if I (seemingly) frequently impressed him over students coming from a prestigious abitur, multiple language competencies, and a track BA program.

Some programs definitely leave out an email and I wasn't sure if it was simple as that. I guess I will have to start doing that. To be totally honest it seems like this board's leitmotif is funded north american programs. I can say 1. in my experience the CoL in North America ( I am from major NE metropolis) is so much higher that it smothers any difference in tuition. 2. To be honest I want to polish my German to beyond C1, possibly spend time in France as well to get to B2 at least, I just don't see those opportunities at a NA grad program. How can I phrase this? if 10 years from now I'm back to the private sector, I'd much rather remember "living in Europe and studying history" than "studying history". Oh and, I guess I really forgot some important details! I'd be shooting for a DAAD scholarship if I did this. I got a small DAAD scholarship already so I have a foot in the door with them. This would make the financial difference even more stark. Researching programs in NA also seems daunting to be honest. Is there a website that aggregates them as efficiently as, say, the websites for German and Dutch programs run by those countries?

Thanks so much for your reply, and for the compliment. Frightening classmate is exactly what I want to be, to be perfectly honest. Unfortunately it seems like I can't edit the main post anymore. I am going to more or less copy paste some stuff in this reply to the other responses, and hopefully new comments see it first. > would additionally recommend that you focus less on the history classes you didn't take and more on the ones that you did. Of course. I appreciate you writing this. I felt the post was getting too long, but it was silly to not include more info in this area. I minored in medieval studies and did several history-oriented German courses, including an independent research project that appears on my transcript that was essentially a literature review of German sources on post WW2 population movements in Central/Eastern Europe. Let's just start there: A medieval studies minor and WW2 history! I'm freaking all over the place. To be totally honest this is how I see my issue: I have done good UG work that anyone would call history, but it's all over the place, and aside from the broad German/European-ness of the topics they are not particularly related to my interests in European/global encounters in the early modern era. >work on defining yourself as a historian, refining your SOP, getting strong LoRs and polishing your writing sample. I have a LoR for sure from a German professor at my university. I could use my independent research project^^ as a writing sample, but would it make more sense to just... write a paper on a topic more germane to my interests? A huge mistake I made relevant to both of these topics is that, while auditing history courses in Germany on my fulbright, I failed to do any papers or projects. The professor loved me, invited me to his classes (and he's at an even more impressive swiss federal uni now), but I (assume?) he couldn't agree to recommend me when all he watched me produce was a powerpoint presentation on some books and make clever comments in his clases. His courses were on British Empire, global class formation, in both English and German, grad and undergrad. I feel that I really fucked up not leaving a paper trail there, but I had no idea what my future path would be. >business history? No not at all, lol, sorry. Optimizing a profit target using Excel solver is not something I think I will be able to easily shoe horn into a paper about central european colonial exploits in the 19th century (I hope that doesn't sound rude, I just know what I studied). I can bring a great interdisciplinary perspective between German and business to say, European Union studies, but it's not my interest. I actually have an MS in accounting and while I welcome the clout of coming from outside the humanities, I hate everything about it. I think it's worth mentioning: I'm saying it this way because I'm seeking advice in a safe space. OF COURSE I would talk this stuff up to some sort of advisor or person deciding to admit me into a program. Just, honestly, I see no link at all between "the market for lemons" and "colony and metropole".

Hi all, Formerly lurked here for the 2016-2017 Fulbright season but never had a reason to post anything. Would absolutely love to hear from all of you. I have a BA in German Studies from a less prominent R1 university. I've spent some years working at a non profit and am considering returning to grad school in the coming years. I have wanted to study history/historiography essentially my entire life, focus approximately being the "long 19th century". Just to get it out of the way, I know (certainly from threads here) how bad the PhD situation is. As I don't have a BA in the field, I assume I'd probably have to do some sort of intervening master's degree anyway, and that sounds just grand by itself. I'll see how it goes from there. My dream would be a program such as the global history program at Free University of Berlin/Humboldt, but I know from personal experience living in Germany and auditing some courses that there are many excellent and globally oriented programs in the time frame I'm looking at many German universities. For personal interest, language proficiency reasons, and the tuition issue, I am definitely set on studying in Europe. The issue: I have a peculiar BA. I have a relatively low credit count in the upper level liberal arts and history, about the minimum to graduate, because I originally went to school for business and could only pull off the BA because they offered a lower credit count for a dual-degree program (that is, I have a BA diploma and a BS diploma, it was not a double major, it is just relatively low on credits). And I have no idea how strict the standard would be for recognizing cultural/language studies as history-like courses. I basically have no idea if this is a big problem, what sort of problem it is, or how one makes up for it. I briefly googled "Master of Liberal Studies" programs, as well as, for example, a 1 year German Studies MA in Europe that would, I would think, give me the opportunity to build more credits/writing samples in rigorous cultural studies/history. I have no idea if these options make sense at all (spending an extra year does not strike me as painful financially or personally, fwiw). I cannot think of another graduate program that I could get into other than those. The notion of going back for UG credits sounds painful by comparison. I guess my question is am I making a mountain out of a mole hill, or am I correct that as I am now, I don't really qualify for an MA in history? Or at least one with competitive admissions. And if so, what do I do about it? Is there some other path I am woefully ignorant of? Hope this starts a conversation