annieca

I'll be starting grad school at 20. And yes, that kind of freaks me out. But both my parents and my advisor said I was a student born at 30 so it will be fine. In preparation for the next question - I completed high school in 3 years and I'll graduate from college in 2013 with 3 years of undergrad. Study abroad credit inflation is helping a bit to accomplish my BA in 3 years.

So I've been trying, to no avail, to get my math skills back. I took the ACT in high school so relearning SAT math and how that works is weird and hard. Then, someone suggested Khan Academy to me. The videos are generally short, but thorough and it's not some guy standing at a whiteboard. There's practice problems and even little badges you earn for finishing different skills. Some of them (telling time, for example) wouldn't be useful for GRE review but I really think it's going to be useful for remembering/relearning how to solve inequalities. Anyone else found success with Khan Academy in using their math review?

I'll be doing a campus visit for my dream POI in a few weeks. The center has made an intinerary for me with meetings with an MLIS professor and that dream POI as well as a campus tour (I imagine) and a few other things. I'm super stoked to talk to someone whose research interests mirror mine but I've come across a problem. The school barely has any funding for students unless it's a FLAS grant or the Romanian grant. I can't get a FLAS because my Czech/Romanian is non-existent which leaves the Romanian grant. I'm interested in Romania but I know almost nothing about it. Right now I'm researching for a senior thesis on Czechoslovakia so I know way more about it and East Germany than I do Romania. However, I know making a good impression on this professor is important since he's on the application committee for the Romanian grant. Question is (and hopefully an easy one), how do I prepare to meet this professor and prove I'm really interested in Romanian history or comparative East European history with a focus on Romania if I know very little about it?

I imagine that yes, if you did want to get your PhD, Public History would be limiting. However, if you just wanted to work in most archives (Stanford's Herbert Hoover Center is one exception I know of), then the PhD isn't as necessary. Public History programs, as I've researched, tend to teach you how to be a historian in the context of working with the public. They don't care so much if you can spout off every date within your field as much as you can help someone find where to find those dates. It's learning how to help people search and help people learn more than history itself. Library Science teaches a very specific set of skills, some of which are totally not useful for History. But dual Public History/MLIS shows that you know both the library techniques and the historian backing. I met a few people at the National Council of Public History's annual conference in Milwaukee who said that the people who have those dual degrees are hot commodities for employment straight out of graduation because they don't have to show as much experience as those with one or the other. One of these such people was one of the Librarians for the House of Representatives Archives (or whatever it is officially called.) I think it ultimately depends on your end goal. If you want to teach and have a PhD or be a super-specialized librarian, then do the "regular" History MA. If you want to be a little more employable to both libraries and museums, go with Public History.

Hi! I don't think I'll get anything close to answering all of your questions, but I'll try to answer a few. I'm also looking at dual MLIS/MA's. My two favorites are Indiana and South Carolina for multiple reasons. I'm a Post Cold-War Eastern Europe historian and Indiana has a great East European center where I can take both Czech and Romanian. South Carolina has an amazing Public History program. I would recommend looking at dual Library Science/Public History if you want to go into what you mentioned - archives/rare books/academic librarianship. Public History will look great on resumes to help get a job in non-library sector archives like the Smithsonian, Library of Congress, etc. One last piece of advice I have is to diversify your recommenders. I'll have two professors and one in the industry which will show the History committee that you can do research and the MLIS that you can do the library science part of the degrees. Feel free to PM me if you want to talk more specifically about any of the programs you're looking at or more of my process.

@Simple Twist of Fate - I've been using Princeton Review's 2012 book. I also used the GRE for Dummies book for one verbal practice test and scored really high. But I definitely feel Princeton Review's tests are harder. I know its definitely freaking me out a bit because my top program has a minimum GRE of 154 for Verbal and that's what I've been getting. As for the writing sample question - I don't know anyone who went straight from undergrad to grad using their thesis as a sample. For one thing, its long. Mine will be between 35-50 pages and my applications want 20ish. Secondly, I think schools want to see your research so if its extremely well-researched it should be on the same (if not better) caliber of your thesis.

Took my second practice test today for the GRE. The first time was just cold to see where I needed to work on, the second after a month of on-and off studying with the last two weeks being more concentrated on studying. My verbal score actually went *down* two points and my math stayed the same. So here I am, sitting with a 64th percentile verbal and a 22-32nd percentile math. It makes me want to scream and cry at the same time. I know I can do better than this but my brain seems to say that the GRE isn't conquerable. I know for acceptance I could probably get in with my scores now but I can't do grad school without funding and I think it's a little low. So, I suppose my thinking is, "Do I try and just improve verbal or do both?" Any thoughts?

@CageFree - danke! My 20 page paper isn't divided into chapters but I think I could easily divide it if I had to. Did you include the table of contents as part of the sample page count, along with your bibliography or are those considered "freebie extra" pages?

I would be careful about saying that a university would void recs even seen by an applicant. FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) says very explicitly that students have the right to see letters of recommendation and that it cannot be held against them. That's why applications have the waiver. To not comply with FERPA (as I've been told) is a huge no-no in the education world. That being said, I agree that writing your own letter can be harder sometimes than having someone right one for you.

An Unquiet History is interesting. A little pompous but a good read. I've been doing senior thesis research lately so my metro book has been Roman David's Lustration and Transitional Justice: Personnel Systems in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

Really awesome to hear everyone's backup plans! @Weepsie - Are you referring to the UK National Libraries? I'll be studying at Aber in the fall which is just down the hill from the National Library of Wales and I'd love to intern there. And a question for y'all - the schools I'm applying to want a writing sample that ranges from 5-25 pages. The paper I want to use is 20 pages. How in the world do you shorten a paper from 20 pages to 5 while still showing I can do the research and analysis necessary for a graduate school program? Should I not condense and just use an exerpt instead? Or use a source analysis which is closer to 5 pages?

I'll be applying to exclusively dual-degree programs this fall - MLIS and MA's which is not too too common (there's about 20 programs in the country). That being said, I agree with tmp - foreign policy/international history is a combination I haven't heard of and you are probably better just choosing one program. What I've found in my experience with professors is that if you find an adviser to support you, you can tailor a degree to you. For example... say you go for your degree in international history, you could find an adviser who is more focused on public policy within international history. That might severely limit your choices but it is an option. I know there are ways - I know multiple poli sci grad students whose research interests lie in something that would be considered another field - communications for example. Wish you luck!

I LOVE this advice! I would add two things: It's also one of the initial steps to working in a history-based field (archives, library science, etc.) Have a back up plan. Speaking of back up plan - I've determined mine. If I don't get into grad school/don't get funding I am going to move to Prague for a year, teach English or something of the sort, and attempt to learn Czech. What are everyone else's backup plans?

I remember arguing with a professor that if you answered E, you were really setting yourself up for a logical impossibility. I mean, think about it. If 1, 2 and 3 are correct, then they can't be not correct as well. And if you choose "All of the above" you are saying that the three choices are both correct and incorrect. Still didn't get the point though.

At the Archives where I work, I've been helping a ABD gender studies woman who is writing her dissertation on the history of sex toys and how it has affected communication within the US. While we all blush and chuckle about it, it's important research. So, I would definitely not go after it because of the "riske" nature of the topic.

The American Library Association website (ala.org) has a HUGE listing of every program for digital humanities/library science in the country. What I love about that one is that you can search by geographic location on a list or on a Google Map. Of course, it's only going to include schools that are accredited by the ALA so if a school has a digital humanities program but not a library science/information science program then it won't show up. I used publichistory.org's database as well but unfortunately I believe it's got a bug at the moment. Best of luck!

I think it really depends on your field and your own feelings. However, being a Spanish major, I think that a study abroad experience could be invaluable for you. You can definitely pick up some Spanish that you don't learn in class. My sister spent 4 weeks in an intensive German-only Goethe course and she learned so many little things she never learned in class - like who do you really use the formal "You" with or what the word for "little box of matches" is. I highly suggest it!

Some professor told me that the GRE scores don't tell you how well you will do in graduate school. (Unlike, perhaps, someone could argue, the ACT, or more concretely the MCAT, Praxis, NCLEX, etc.) Instead, the only thing your GRE score tells you is how well you did on GRE. I like to think that admissions and funding committees understanding that we are human beings. Some of us don't do standardized tests well. Some of us really don't get math. (Ergo why we're Historians!) If a 3.5 and a 70th percentile make them say "Ugh, he or she isn't worth our time," then I think they're being a pompous committee. Just my two cents.

Two things I'm grappling with now: 1) I'm doing my senior thesis on the transition from communism to democracy and the lustration laws in Czechoslovakia up until the Velvet Divorce. I want to look at it from a social history aspect. But... I don't read Czech. Anyone have any suggestions for learning a language without a class? I don't particularly care if I can speak it. I just want to be able to read it. 2) One of the schools I'm looking at eliminated their dual Library Science, Public History program because they didn't have the professors for the Archives Concentration. This was by FAR my favorite program for the actual program aspects. (Another school took top spot for one professor.) Do I eliminate it from my list because it no longer "kind of" doesn't have my program or do I contact the university and say "You are one my top schools. Can we figure something out?" I don't want to tell them that they're #1 because of the money gamble but should I? Hope the summer is going well for everyone!

Thanks everyone for the advice! I'm currently the head scanner for a new exhibit that's being planned and I got my first taste of what I'm actually doing with it on Thursday. When they asked "Are you doing just scanning or scanning and research?" I took the opportunity and said "Both." Because 10 weeks of just scanning, doing metadata and entering things into Horizon would drive me insane. Which led me into the collections. Now this is what I'm interested in - getting my hands "dirty" or so to speak. Yes, there's no one really there that does anything I'd remotely want to do for a career except maybe a volunteer who comes in once a week to do research for historians. However, I'm hoping that the amount of work inside the collections will help with the finding aid things I'm working on as well. I'm still iffy on if it's going to all turn out okay but I guess I just have to keep taking opportunities and keep an open mind. (And train the dog who wakes me up at 5:45 in the morning to not wake me up on the weekends so I can destress from reference desk work.) As a side note, have any of you worked with Archivist's Toolkit or Horizon before? Horizon seems to have a steep learning curve and I'd love to know if anyone else has had experience with it.

There's a professor at South Carolina - I can't remember his name right now - but he does Modern German environmental history. It's a bit of a stretch but you might check him out to see who he cites since he's pretty well published.

Well this is slightly disheartening. It's been my dream for a few years (once I settled on working in Archives) to work at the Smithsonian. And here I am, interning at the Smithsonian and I kind of hate it. Part of it might because I'm very much an intern (though I'm treated very nicely and professionally) and it's just not what I was expecting. Some days I'm super busy but it's with scanning for paying customers or updating their databases by creating finding aids. I don't do research for the historians who stop through our door and I really don't get involved in the collections. So that of course, could be part of it. Which begs the question - how many times do you get experiences in your potential future job and dislike them before deciding it's not for you? Is once enough? Twice? I ask because my plans for graduate school hinge on the fact I love working in Archives.

@runaway - Looking at mascots? (Go Puddles!) I think you suffer from some over-research of schools. I know logistically I narrowed down my list to 7 schools with the program that I wanted to apply to. Some are *way* better fits than others but there isn't a school that I wouldn't be happy to attend. So I would start, first by narrowing. Ranking (which it sounds like you're doing with the pro/con lists) can come after that. It's hard to do both at the same time. I don't know what your field is, but I think the average student applies to between 6-10 grad programs in History so if you can find 6-10 professors you would instantly move across the country to work with, then there you go. As to how many programs... that's up to your checkbook and how comfortable you are with schools that are about an 85% fit and not a 100% fit. (I actually don't think 100% fit exists but that's beside the point.) I would say that you can even through out schools you don't get a good feeling about. At one point I was looking at a school in the South but I couldn't find ANYTHING on their website and I decided "it's not worth my time." That helped narrow it down some more. Lastly, I think the third most important factor (after POI, funding/cost of living) is just the environment of the university. Does it have great alumni office/career center? Is it an undergrad huge center with a small grad school? You have to pick what you know you can thrive in and will work well for you. My own $0.02

Don't mind you asking! The professor is Dr. Padraic Kenney. I'm planning on visiting Indiana in the fall and seeing if I like him as much as I like his interests/ do I like the school?

I've never heard of a professor only giving good LORs to the A students. That just seems ridiculous. At my school we do the A, AB, B, BC kind of thing so it's really hard to get an A in some classes. In saying that, I think professors understand not everyone can get an A and people who get B's might work just as hard (if not harder) for their grades as others in the class. I say go for it, but as Kay mentioned, make sure that the professor can emphasize how hard you worked.