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silfeid

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  1. I have some local schools (4) that I'm intent on applying to for entry into their MA/PhD programs in history. I have a history and German double major from a good liberal arts college and an MA in German Studies from the University of Minnesota. GRE scores are good. I want to do German history, obviously, but just where and when my focus is, remains undecided. I have some notions of what I'd like to do, but am not married to any single are of study/research. I am planning on e-mailing the DGS of the schools that I intend to apply to in the coming weeks, rather than e-mail many individual professors. I intend to outline my background and some of my research interests and ask whether they think these will fit in well with their department and faculty. Is this a good idea? Do people normally/often do this? Would it be better to go straight to the profs? I'm not sure how to proceed, but the autumn is wearing on and I need to act soon.
  2. Hi all. I am planning on applying to History PhD programs this fall, with an aim to enter in 2012 (btw, is it common to allow people to defer their initial appointment by one year in History programs? I could have done this for my current program, and sometimes I think that it might be nice to pull that card in the future. Reassure myself that I've got somewhere to go, but take one more year off to get my life/finances together). Anyway, I'm wrapping up a Master's Degree in German Studies, with a graduate minor in History, from a top-ten (#4) school in this field (University of Minnesota) this spring, and I'll be off next year trying to make money and beef up my CV - probably work a shitty job and volunteer part-time at some local history centers/museums etc. Possibly take French courses at community college, or perhaps Dutch or Swedish if possible. The question, though, is what sort of topics are considered viable when I write my Statement of Purpose etc.? I'm really interested in confessional and economic transformation in Hanseatic cities in the early modern era (especially in the era of the decline of the league), and obviously this fits in pretty solidly with German Studies. I double-majored in History and German in undergrad, so again the history connection is obvious - the switch from German Studies to history is not that abrupt or jarring, methinks. The problem is that this subject matter has been covered pretty heavily in the past (what hasn't though?), and I'm not sure how great of a research focus it would make, for that reason. Obviously I need to do more research myself in this area to figure out how tired this ground really is, but I thought there might be people on this site that already have a good notion of it. I'm also interested in the concept of a German Diaspora across the Baltic Region via Hanse trading activities, and at looking at the entire Baltic region as a unit, similar to what's been done with the Mediterranean in the past thirty or forty years. I have quite a number of other potential topics, mostly in the early modern period, but this one is my favorite, and I'm wondering how viable the general premise sounds. Obviously my actual research or dissertation would be focused far more narrowly on some sub-set within this (Let's say the role of resident German merchants in transforming religious life in Riga, Latvia in the 16th century, off the top of my head), but getting a sense for whether this subject matter is acceptable or not would be helpful at this point. I haven't done research for very many schools yet (over the summer I shall be getting more involved in all of this), but my top choice, Carnegie Mellon, has 2 professors whose research interests fit very well (early modern and modern Germany) and a couple others whose research interests overlap a bit, or can be brought to bear on the subject matter.
  3. This is preposterous advice for anyone applying to anything in the humanities. It's just bad advice. For any field in which you will be doing work that does not involve intensive math skills (most of the humanities), the quantitative section of the GRE is just a sort of "retard check" - they want to make sure that you have the basic cognitive and study skills needed not to bomb the math section - as long as you perform decently on it, (500+ I would say) then it's simply glossed over. A good score surely won't hurt you, but is not that important. Whereas a good verbal score DOES NOT INDICATE THAT YOU MEMORIZED VOCAB LISTS! That is ridiculous. No one who is trying to prepare for the GRE by memorizing lists of words in the last months before the test is going to boost their score by this method by more than 50 pts. And while luck plays some role, making the verbal portion of the test out to be a crap shoot is not only illogical (and would defeat the point of any standardized test, period), it also is insulting to everyone who did well on the verbal. You want to do well on the verbal? Start reading books at as young an age as possible, and keep reading them your life until you take the test! Read the canon (Especially Dickens)! That Is EXACTLY what the verbal section is testing you on - how many works of canonical literature you have read in your life, because if you have been an avid reader your whole life, you will do well on the test. If not, then...maybe (probably) not. This is why the verbal section matters - because it shows the faculty that you must be able to write, since you damned obviously know how to read (you know what I mean).
  4. more answers are welcome of course....
  5. Ok so here's the dizzeal: I will be finishing my Master's Degree in German Studies at the University of Minnesota this spring. My department was recently ranked fourth nationwide in this field for PhD programs (the Master's Degree is part of that program, and is not normally intended as a terminal degree, although it can/does function as such). My GPA here will end up being something like 3.8-3.85. I am also pursuing a graduate minor in History here, with the Gary B. Cohen, the head of the U of M's history department, as my advisor in this field. He was for many years the director of the center for Austrian Studies (one of two in the US) here, and although he specializes in Habsburg history, he's quite competent with German/Central European history at large. He's rather old, so he's not exactly cutting edge, and he was never all that famous, but he did make meaningful contributions to his field and is not entirely a no-name, it's fair to say. He is the head of the history department, which is ranked better than the one that I most want to get into (CMU). He would hopefully (probably) be writing me a letter of recommendation. My GPA for the history minor is similar to my overall GPA. I have decided to switch to a PhD program in History, and would like to specialize in early modern German history, particularly in confessionalism and economics in the early modern Hanseatic cities. My school of choice is Carnegie Mellon University (I'm from Pittsburgh), and they have a professor who specializes in Early Modern German and the Reformation period, although I'm not (yet) familiar with her work. My undergraduate institution is Washington and Jefferson College, which is well-regarded in the Pittsburgh area, and my GPA was 3.5 (I was foolish with some core courses freshman year, but still, I graduated cum laude). I did a double major in German and in History, with 3.85-ish GPAs in both. My GRE score was 1500 / 5.0 Analytical Writing, with a 760 verbal and 740 math. My writing sample will probably be my master's thesis, or part of it, so it will be well-written, scholarly, and generally quite impressive as a writing sample, I imagine. My statement of purpose will explain my realization through taking courses with Professor Cohen that I have a greater aptitude as a historian than as a cultural theorist, and that my department here at the U of M (German department) was not a perfect fit for me, although the skills that I have acquired there will leave me well prepared for further graduate study, especially in terms of post-modern thought, which is emphasized strongly here. Obviously my German is native-level fluency, although I have no other languages. I hope to take a year of French before entering a PhD program, as I will be applying next fall and hoping to enter in the fall of 2012, although I'm not sure if this will be worth mentioning on an application. I should have letters of recommendation from the aforementioned Gary Cohen, from a history professor at my undergrad who knows people at Pitt (and thus presumably at CMU), and from one other professor in my current department. How should I view my chances of being accepted to the PhD program in history at Carnegie Mellon? I desperately want to be accepted there - if I am accepted, I will attend there without a doubt. But I don't want to be unrealistic about the whole thing either.
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