What Should My Next Steps Be? (Looking for Advice)

[KAMALAGRAD]

OK, so here is the deal. I've always wanted to be a reporter, but for the last 5 or 6 years I have also been interested in working as a professor. I earned a BA in literary journalism/film and media studies ( a double major) from the University of California, Irvine (a top 50 university). In May of this year I earned my MS from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, did some reporting work for a website, but am now looking for a better job. Ideally, I would want to work as a reporter for five years or so (maybe a little longer, probably not any shorter), pay back a substantial part of my student loans than go to a top history program. Ones I've looked into so far that seem interesting to me are Columbia (which I love as a university in general and is probably my top choice) and Brown University. I've also looked into some other programs and both Harvard and Princeton seem appealing to me as well. Also, my proposed area of study would be studying propaganda distributed through the media from a global history/international history perspective with emphasis on the media in Spain, Italy, and the United States. This area of study is not set in stone, but is probably what I'd be most interested in devoting my professional life to.

My problem?

That is just it, there is not one problem, but several. First, I know all of these schools are extremely tough to get into, but I only really want to continue in these studies if I can get into a top program. Second, my undergrad GPA was an unimpressive 3.25 GPA and Columbia Journalism (which is an unrelated field anyway) grades on a pass/no pass system so I don't really have a GPA there (though I did pass all of my classes). Third, I have not published any history papers or anything like that and am also not a part of any group/have been to any conferences. Finally, I do not have an undergrad degree in history and I hear MA programs in history are not good options unless they are part of earning the PhD in your program.

That being said as I stated in the beginning of this post I am not planning to apply to these programs this year or even next year. I am also 24 so I would plan to start in the program when I am 29 or so, which would make me 34 or 35 when I finish the program, which I think might be considered a little old, but not too old. So what should my next steps be?

Here are some things I've been thinking of.

*Going back to undergrad to get a bachelor's degree in history. I'm not sure if it will help my GPA (does anyone know if it would?), but my undergrad, UCI does offer the option to go back and earn an additional degree on a case by case basis. The problem here is that I REALLY don't want to go back to California and if I did earn a history degree I would like to do it in NYC (or at least the Northeast) probably from a CUNY school. Also, if I went to CUNY does anyone know if that would affect my undergrad GPA and if I could still finish in a comparatively short amount of time? I think at UCI they wave the breadth for students coming back to earn an additional degree so it would only take two years or maybe even less there.

*Looking for places to get published or associations to join based on my areas of interests. Although admittedly, I am a little clueless on this process.

*Really studying Spanish and Italian to add to my foreign language skills. At the moment I am proficient at reading Spanish and want to really master it then move onto Italian. The reason for this is I hear if you learn them simultaneously it can do more harm than good because the languages are so similar.

*Lastly, really studying for the GREs and getting a great score on them. I took the GREs before and did horrible on the math section, mediocre in the verbal section, and pretty good (a 5.0) in the written section. However, I barely studied for it and had a lot to worry about at the time. I know if I really study for it I can get great scores in the verbal section and at least acceptable scores in the math section.

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

[StrangeLight]

<p>1. look into more schools than columbia, brown, harvard, and princeton. you might get into those schools. you might not. and you won't be able to bump your stats or write a great SOP or get a perfect GRE score to get in. getting into &quot;the top&quot; programs is a roll of the dice, based in large part on what quotas the program is looking to fill (do they want more africanists this year? are they moving away from a modern US emphasis? etc.) and if your potential advisor is excited to work with you. apply much more broadly and revise what a &quot;top program&quot; means to you. i don't think brown is considered a top program in many subfields, despite being an ivy league school. the university michigan is almost always an excellent option. redefine your thinking a bit.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>2. your GPA is lackluster and you know it. that's okay. especially as someone who plans to start the PhD at 29, programs will be less interested in your GPA and more interested in your life experience, your potential research project, and your writing sample. (by the way, finishing in your mid-30s will definitely NOT make you slightly older than normal... the time-to-degree for history PhDs is an average of 8 years, so even people that start at 23 or 24 are in their 30s when they finish.) terminal masters programs are actually perfect for students like you. an unrelated and low undergrad GPA, life experience that isn't in the field of history. you are who those programs are meant for. you dip your toe into the water, learn what doing history at the graduate level is like (vastly different from journalism and from undergrad history classes), and prove through your GPA and masters thesis that you can do it. you will not need a history-related BA to get into a history MA program. you won't need conference presentations or publications. you will need to produce a research essay based on primary sources to use as a writing sample for the apps, which will in all likelihood be done on your own time. i'd strongly suggest doing the terminal history MA rather than history BA. strongly.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>3. in order for you to get published, you need to write a research paper. until you do an honours thesis or masters thesis in history, you just don't know how to do this. for your application writing sample, i'd suggest getting in contact with a history prof and asking them very, very nicely if they'd informally review your paper and offer suggestions. many will say no. perhaps try to email it to UCI profs? once you have the sample, DO NOT try to get it published unless history professors tell you that you should. simply submit your research paper with your applications. once you complete an MA and write a thesis, then you can try to get that published. odds are it won't be accepted for publication before you apply for PhD programs, but that's okay. most applicants get into PhD programs without any publications. it's much easier to submit those papers (and maybe even your writing sample paper) to conferences. i've submitted absolute junk to regional, national, and international conferences and every single paper has been accepted. the bar's lower, but it'll be good experience for you, good networking, and a line on your CV.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>4. i was learning spanish and french at the same time and often mixed them up because they're so similar. in some respects, the similar structure helps, because you can guess at words or conjugations. in other respects, it hurts, because you start speaking french when you mean to be speaking spanish. it happens. it's not the end of the world. definitely brush up on your languages. all that history programs require of you (unless you plan to do oral history) is that you have reading proficiency in the language. if you can already read spanish, feel free to strengthen it, but consider working on your weaker language first, especially since you plan to use both of them in your research project. believe it or not, language proficiencies look much better on applications than publications in graduate journals or undergraduate journals, which are probably all you can get into without formal training in history.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>5. i don't know what &quot;horrible&quot; means for the GRE. you don't want to embarrass yourself with something below 550 on either the math or the verbal. cracking 600 on both scores should be fine, and if you get around the 650 mark on the verbal score, i wouldn't bother taking it again. cracking 700 on the verbal is great. the thing is, most programs don't give a rat's ass about the GREs. some may use it as a cut-off to toss out applications (i.e. anyone lower than 4xx or 5xx goes in the bin) but most just use it to determine university-wide fellowships. so you may miss out on certain types of funding (you'd TA instead of getting the fellowship, for example), but a 700 verbal score will never guarantee you admission over a 600 verbal score. never. study for them, prepare, do your best, and if you crack 600 leave it at that. especially for older students, they figure that you haven't written a standardized test in a while, so they put much less emphasis on the score.</p>

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<p>regarding the terminal masters, there are some programs out there that will fund you. if your other option is to do a BA, it is WAY better to pay for your masters than to pay for another BA. but there are some options out there where you can get an MA and they'll pay you. after that, you can move onto the PhD at another school. i will say that most of your target programs either won't offer a terminal MA at all or won't offer a funded terminal MA, so you'll have to look around a bit for them.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>also, think of what type of historian you want to be. unfortunately, our field still very much defines itself geographically. do you want to be an americanist? a europeanist? an atlanticist? your project sounds like it would fit well into world/international history, but not that many programs offer this concentration. you may find yourself applying to columbia or princeton as an americanist or western europeanist.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>good luck with all this.</p>

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[KAMALAGRAD]

Hey StrangeLight,

Thank you very much for all of the information. As you may have guessed coming from a different field a lot of this stuff is completely new to me and I unknowingly assumed a lot of things that just made sense to me. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

As for the points you made here are my thoughts.

1: I don't know if I got this across in my first message, but that was a pretty short list I initially gave because I just started looking into the programs more or less. I definitely plan on broadening my scope, but kind of want to stay in the Northeast, which I know limits my options. As I mentioned I did undergrad in CA and honestly didn't have the best experience there (well at least not after graduating) so I kind of want to stay based around this area. I'm not 100 percent against the idea of moving out of the Northeast as I know you can't let a fairly semantic idea like that stay in your way, but I am hesitant. Anyway, other than that I am pretty flexible.

2: I think you are right about the MA over the BA thing. I think I am just really self-conscious about my weak undergrad GPA, but your post and explanations gave me some confidence. I'll see what MA programs are out there either with funding or minimal expenses. I don't mind paying to earn an MA, I'd just really hate to go too much further into debt. I'll start looking to see what CUNY schools offer in terms of MA programs and of course will keep my options broad and see what others offer. Still, I'm a bit concerned and it is probably one of those questions no one can really answer, but I'll ask anyways, will my lackluster undergrad GPA automatically disqualify me from any programs?

3: Not really anything to say here, it is just good advice

4: Nope, I don't plan on doing oral history at all so as long as I keep strengthening my Spanish skills I should be pretty good there. As for Italian that is a whole other barrel of fish so I'll try to chip away at it (though as you mentioned knowing a similar language does help sometimes).

5: My GREs were BAD (though I still managed to get into USC and Syracuse with them for journalism, but I digress). Anyway as I mentioned I know I can do better. I can definitely hit the mark you mentioned in verbal (at least the 600 mark) and as long as I study should be able to pull off a decent math score.

As for your last point as you correctly gathered I'd like to be a world/international historian based on the theme I suggested. However, when pushed I would also be interested in being a western europeanist as you mentioned it is a field with more programs. Being an americanist might interest me, but from what I hear the field is quite bloated and tough to get placement in after graduation (though I could be wrong).

[Sparky]

3.25 is lower than most applicants you'll see post on TGC; it is not disqualifying for a master's program. If you do well at the MA level, you're far enough removed from bachelor's work that it won't matter. If it were a 1.25, I could see room for concern.

Being an americanist might interest me, but from what I hear the field is quite bloated and tough to get placement in after graduation (though I could be wrong).

Unfortunately, you're quite right. But it's not really any better for Europeanists.

If you decide to pursue this, understand that only something like 1/6 of people who enter humanities PhD programs end up as tenured professors--a number that will most likely continue to fall.

Do it because you love it. There really isn't another reason.

Edited August 19, 2011 by Sparky

[KAMALAGRAD]

Hey Sparky,

Thank you for the info. As for the Europeanists field being quite bloated I'm not too surprised. I'm guessing from StangeLight's earlier post Africanists are under represented as our I'm sure some other histories I don't have an interest to study as the key focus of my studies anyway and like you said, you have to do what you love

[Sigaba]

So what should my next steps be?

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

KAMALAGRAD--

With one exception, my recommendations center around the goal of getting you to develop a historian's skill set. When you apply to graduate school, you will be competing against individuals who have been working on these skills since they were in junior high school.

• Start reading works of academic historians in your field of interest.
  
  • You can start 'small' with relevant journals and from there develop a list of monographs you need to read.
    
  • Concurrently, you can read text books that provide you a lay of the broader terrain.
    
  • Start developing a list of the leading scholars in your fields of interest, regardless of their location or institutional affiliation.
    
    • Read what they've written.
      
    • Communicate with them.
      
    • Find reading lists/syllabi for upper division undergraduate courses and graduate classes in historiography, and then start reading.
      
    • Build your endurance as a reader to the point where you can digest on the average one densely written monograph a day for weeks at a time.
      
    • Start writing review essays on the books you're reading using the published reviews in journals as templates.
      
      • These essays should vary in length from approximately 1-2 pages, to 5-7 pages, to 12-15, and then 20-25.
        
      • You will need to know how to say as much about a work in two pages that you can in five and in twelve pages that you might say in twenty. (When you go to graduate school, your professors will summarize five hundred page books in one or two sentences.)
        
      • Start thinking of small projects (10-12 pages) you can do that center around the research of primary source materials.
        
        • Find a historian who can mentor you through those projects.
          
        • Initially, it won't need to be an established scholar.
          
        • Many graduate students will be able to provide adequate support.
          

        [*]Start developing bigger projects (25-30 pages) that require a substantial amount of primary research or familiarity with the historiography of a specific subject.

        [*]Execute both projects within the same four month time frame.

        [*]Start the process of understanding how the study of history differs from the craft of journalism.

        [*]Figure out which skills and sensibilities have good lateral transfer.

        [*]Figure out which skills and sensibilities are going to trip you up.

        [*]As you perform any of the above tasks, do not allow yourself to use wikipedia or any other source that is not peer-reviewed.

        [*]Keep in mind that the task is not to read history, but to study history.

        [*]Keep your sense of humor about things.

        [*]Understand and accept the premise that the more you study history, the less you will know about history.

        [*]The answer to a question is going to be more questions

        [*]Finally, do not burn any bridges as a journalist. Seven years from now, you may well decide that professional academic history isn't for you.

        HTH.

[NenaStarr2005]

What exactly do you want to do now? I don't get that from your post.

When I get to your status in life, I want to teach at a college. Through my current job, I learned that I'm really good at mentoring and teaching others. I always get stuck mentoring the interns who go on to become producers at the station, which at this point frustrates me to no end. However, after being an online reporter for 5 to 10 years, I'd love to do that at a college, helping people with their resumes and helping them get the skills they need for careers in journalism. That's why I say you should really think about what you want to do, because going back to school might not necessarily help you.

[Hopin'-n-Prayin']

I would like to reiterate the point which others have made (which it seems like you understand) about the value of an M.A. in helping to prepare you for the PhD application process and for the rigors of a studying history at a top program.

I would also say that, if you properly investigate all of the options, over time your best option will likely make itself apparent to you...

Good luck

[natsteel]

Both StrangeLight and Sigaba have given you very good advice. I would like to just give some info on one of your options which was a second degree.

If you're serious about a second B.A. degree and feel like CUNY is an option, you might consider the CUNY Baccalaureate Program. They generally transfer 90 of your previous credits leaving you to fulfill your new major's requirements. The program also allows you to design your own major and requires you to have a faculty mentor throughout your time in the program. It also allows you to take classes at any of the 8 CUNY senior colleges so you essentially have 8 History Departments to find faculty with whom to work. You could conceivably do the 30 remaining credits in a year, but since they would mostly be major courses, you'd probably be better off stretching it out over 3 or even 4 semesters. I did my BA at CUNY and it was a fantastic experience. Additionally, in the last 3 years, CUNY BA Program students have received fully-funded graduate school acceptances in History at Harvard, Yale, and Northwestern along with a few others at lower-ranked programs.