I am just beginning to look into grad school. I want a PhD in History. I will probably be graduating college (from Hawaii Pacific University) with a 3.6-3.7 GPA (due to a bad term when I thought I would major in biochemistry, haha), 4.0 in major classes. I had somewhere between a 3.15-3.5 in community college for my first 30 credits- does this matter? My husband is getting out of the Navy and I will probably want to start Grad School around Fall 2011 (I know.. far away, right?)
I need some guidance on what to do from here.
We would really like to move to North Carolina..My husband is majoring in Computer Science and the Raleigh area is good for what he wants to do, and we both think it is really nice.
I want to apply to Duke and UNCCH, but I know they are highly selective and I don't know how to go about making my application something that stands out. I did really well on the verbal part of my SATs 750 (on old SAT- 2003)... only 500 in Math because I had only taken a little bit of Algebra and basically knew nothing. I have faith in my ability do well on verbal for the GRE.. I will need to really study for the Quantitative part, but I think I can score above a 600.
Do I need to get internship experience? Who usually gets into these schools? I have never done anything very cool.. I haven't traveled outside of the U.S., yet, and I don't have any interesting awards or anything. I feel like I need to join some clubs or something, but I'm not really living the normal college life right now, obviously. I take a lot of my classes online and live on a military base. I also am not attending a prestigious school. I put off college to pursue a singing career and lived in L.A. and everything, singing in a girl group. I really wanted to have a music career and I didn't fall in love with school until I went back to college. (In fact, I really hated school most of my life and felt bored- A really good teacher at my community college made me realize how well it fit with my personality) Then I met my husband, got married, and moved to Hawaii.
For my language, I am studying Spanish, and will probably be fairly advanced when it comes time to apply for grad school.
I don't know if I even stand a chance.
If I can't get into those two top schools, would it be bad if I tried to get into the Master's Program in History at North Carolina State University? Then I could get more experience, do well, write more papers, and keep trying to get into the PhD programs at the other two schools. I could also try for Greensboro, I guess...
Am I hoping for too much, here?
Thanks for the advice.
