eh1688

Well that's a good thing in my view. I'm confident that I can write a compelling SOP. My worry is mostly whether I tick the required boxes to get into top programs in the first place (which always exist, for all the importance of the SOP and the writing sample). (That is to say, my main worry is that not having done a huge amount of previous study (especially at undergraduate) on Korean History will be a disadvantage I can't realistically overcome through doing everything else well, even if I pursue these historical interests more in my MPhil course.)

The MPhil isn’t really geared towards one region or another. You are more or less free to research what you want (within reason). Though my dissertation itself is still on British History. Either way, I’ll be applying without much of the work from that degree finished so I’m not sure how much help that will be.

Well, by way of an introduction/a profile, I'm from the UK. As an undergraduate, I read single honours History at the University of Warwick. I graduated in July. We don't use GPA here, but my marks were high and would (I think) translate to 4.0/4.0 GPA in America, probably top five in a large cohort. I'm starting a one year (as is typical in the UK) MPhil at the University of Cambridge in Economic and Social History in October; I took this year off because there's no way I'm paying for zoom classes and no access to archives. Trying to keep myself busy. The reason that I'm interested in applying to American universities for a PhD is that I want to study modern Korean history, which is quite honestly not offered much in Britain. You could go to SOAS I guess, but I refuse to do that for personal reasons. I did look at Leiden (in the Netherlands) for Master's courses, but their Korean Studies course didn't offer the sort of History I'm interested in. I did my year abroad at Seoul National University in Korea, where I learned the language very intensively and took a fair number of Korean history classes on the side. I'm confident I am at the level I need in Korean for a PhD program, and I will be taking the TOPIK late this year and expecting either Level 5 or Level 6 (6 is highest) depending purely on how the writing section (my weakest by far) goes. I'm working my way through Heisig's 'Learning the Kanji' so I can read Chinese characters* and I should be done with that by later this year. I've also started learning Japanese, though I'm still mostly a beginner - I'm planning to spend some more time on that though and hopefully should be much better by the time I start my PhD if I'm accepted. I've not taken the GRE yet but I took a practice test and scored 169 in the verbal, so I should be fine though I might(?) need to practice the quantitative section. But in any case it doesn't sound like they care very much about GRE scores for PhD programs, and they especially don't care about quantitative scores. I don't have any publications and I haven't attended any conferences. This sort of culture doesn't really exist in the UK at undergraduate. It's plausible I could develop my final year dissertation (equivalent of a senior thesis in the US) into something publishable before I apply later this year, but I can't really do much work on it until things like archives start to open up again. Maybe I'll think about getting on with that. Either way, I'm curious about how much weight these sorts of things play in an application. I'll need to develop a bespoke piece of writing for the applications which uses primary sources over the summer, which might be challenging given the difficulty of accessing this sort of material in the UK. This is necessary because I didn't have any real opportunity to do this kind of Korean language primary source work as an undergraduate. I've got a vague idea of the topic but it will be naturally limited by the sort of primary sources I'll have access to here in London. In terms of programs, I'm thinking about applying to Harvard's HEAL program (my Chinese history tutor last year got her PhD from there, so I'll ask her more about it). I've also been looking at some others; Chicago seems to be good for Korean history but I really don't want to live in Chicago for years and years (maybe I'm overthinking how bad it is). I'm looking at the other 'top 10' programs too, but I've got plenty of time to think it over for now. My main problem I suppose is that my direct experience of Korean history outside of Korea is quite limited. My undergraduate university offered courses on Chinese history, which I took, but nothing on Korea (or even Japan - though they recently hired a historian of Japan). What I've been studying in modern British and European history is directly related to what I want to study in Korean history (the idea of economic 'planning' in capitalist countries) - indeed, I actually came to studying that sort of stuff in Britain from my study of Korean history! But I'm not sure how much this would count against me in the US - in the UK, for an equivalent program (if it existed) I probably wouldn't be competitive for the simple reason that we are expected to specialise a lot more a lot earlier (even before we go to university!), while in the US it seems to be not uncommon to change majors entirely for your PhD! Perhaps the key is how I will need to justify the 'switch' from British to Korean history in my statement of purpose. I'll also be applying without any grades at all from my Master's course, since it's a one year course, and like most history courses in the UK, it's almost entirely graded through coursework or exams towards the end of the year. So that might be a problem, though of course a Master's degree isn't required in the US to move onto a PhD. I was wondering more generally whether from this sort of profile I'd be competitive for top programs in the US, so long as I polished a nice writing sample and a coherent statement of purpose. Of course, the key is your statement of purpose and your writing sample, but there are still some boxes to tick I imagine. Anyway, thanks for reading my long post! Good luck to everyone applying for this year. (* I'm aware that Hanja and Kanji are not identical and are read differently but it provides a structured way and order to learn the characters.)

Hi, I'm planning on applying for next year, is it still okay to ask questions in this thread? Quite unfamiliar with the US way of doing things...

I have a few questions because of how different the two higher education systems are. 1) What is intended from your writing sample? Is the purpose simply to show that you can write to a high standard, or does it actually need to be closely related to what you intend to research as part of your PhD? My best piece of writing is about British history, but I want to focus on East Asia (specifically Korea - that's why I need to go to America!) - would it be best to write something bespoke for the application (in particular using Korean-language sources)? 2) I'm starting my Master's course in October (in the UK, Master's courses are almost always one year), which means I would be applying with none of my marks from that course. Is this a problem? 3) I see all these crazy things like people applying to top PhD programs in the US with x number of publications, saying that they've gone to x number of conferences, etc. This whole culture (at least in the humanities) doesn't really exist in the UK, and it seems pretty insane to have a publication from something you have written as an undergraduate (my final-year dissertation (equivalent to a senior thesis in America) might be publishable with a lot of extra archival work, but that's unusual, and even here it's doubtful). Or does this not mean what I think it means, and a 'publication' here doesn't actually mean a publication in a frontline, peer-reviewed journal, and it's all just CV padding? When I see things like this I begin to wonder if I'm even competitive...