Graduate schools: specialize (American Revolution/EarlyRep

[johnadams]

Hello Everyone,

I will not be graduating from Suny Plattsburgh for another year. However, I want to get a taste of certain graduate schools. Does anyone know of any graduate schools that specialize in American Revolution/Early Republic? Any advice? How many papers do I send with my application? Which schools are great, which schools suck? Any info would be really helpful.

[misterpat]

Hello Everyone,

I will not be graduating from Suny Plattsburgh for another year. However, I want to get a taste of certain graduate schools. Does anyone know of any graduate schools that specialize in American Revolution/Early Republic? Any advice? How many papers do I send with my application? Which schools are great, which schools suck? Any info would be really helpful.

US News Subfield Rankings for Colonial History:

1 Harvard University Cambridge, MA

Yale University New Haven, CT

3 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA

4 College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA

Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD

6 Princeton University Princeton, NJ

7 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA

8 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI

9 University of California--Berkeley Berkeley, CA

10 Cornell University Ithaca, NY

University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC

You typically send one paper as your writing sample. The only program I saw that asked for 2 is Arizona, and I would bet that they don't read 2 papers for every applicant anyway.

I applied for Modern US, but while I was looking at their faculty, Virginia seemed pretty impressive for your chronological focus.

[johnadams]

Thank you so much for the info.

Do any of schools really focus on GRE's part of the application?

[misterpat]

Thank you so much for the info.

Do any of schools really focus on GRE's part of the application?

No programs require the GRE Subject test, but the GRE General Test is quite important.

You will hear a number of opinions on the relative merits of GREs (both from faculty members and past applicants), and this reflects how they are viewed by history departments. It all depends. It depends on the program, on the faculty members reviewing your app, how strong your application is otherwise, etc.

However, if you are going for a top program in History (one of the most over-crowded disciplines in academia), you should consider your Verbal score to be an essential part of your application. A high score will not get you in, by any means. But some schools are rumored to use the GRE as a first-round cutoff, to weed out the pile.

Also, when it comes down to a number of qualified applicants for a fewer number of spots, low GREs are one easy way to weed people out. Ad-coms are looking for any reason to thin out the pile of apps, and they might not always be good ones (if you consider the GRE a modern form of torture).

To be competitive, I was told that one should try to get a Verbal score that is as close to 700 as possible.

Definitely study for a few months for the test. If you have no experience with the GRE, it will seem very difficult at first. I took a free practice exam that Kaplan offered when I had no idea what the question types were, and I think I scored somewhere in the 400s for Verbal and somewhere in the 500s for the Quantitative (if didn't help that I was trying to pick synonyms for the antonyms questions, but my score was all around horrible and cannot be singularly attributed to that mistake). But if you keep at it, you will improve. Just keep a positive attitude, take a lot of practice tests, make flash cards, learn word roots, and utilize this forum. Kaplan has an amusing quote in their GRE prep book: "Too many people think of standardized tests as cruel exercises in futility, as the oppressive instruments of a faceless societal machine. People who think this way usually don't do very well on these tests." I ended up with a 680 Verbal 710 Quantitative. Not the highest scores ever, but they are high enough to get me past any GRE weed-out threshold a program might have. At least for the programs I applied to.

[johnadams]

Does anyone suggest any schools that I should not apply to? :?:

[Nofia]

one important thing you can do is find out where the superstar scholars in your subfield teach and then look into those schools. you want to try to get into a school that has at least one or two top people in the field for you to work with. your advisor will probably have some good suggestions about where to apply and who to work with.

[misterpat]

Does anyone suggest any schools that I should not apply to? :?:

Michigan. Their applicaton is a pain in the ass.

[fortiesgirl]

US News Subfield Rankings for Colonial History:

1 Harvard University Cambridge, MA

Yale University New Haven, CT

3 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA

4 College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA

Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD

6 Princeton University Princeton, NJ

7 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA

8 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI

9 University of California--Berkeley Berkeley, CA

10 Cornell University Ithaca, NY

University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC

You typically send one paper as your writing sample. The only program I saw that asked for 2 is Arizona, and I would bet that they don't read 2 papers for every applicant anyway.

I applied for Modern US, but while I was looking at their faculty, Virginia seemed pretty impressive for your chronological focus.

Although it's not in the top ten programs, CUNY: The Graduate Center has an excellent American history program. I think CUNY is #22 on the US News rankings. Carol Berkin teaches there and is a renowned scholar in the field. There are others at the school as well but I am most familiar with her work.

[kahlan_amnell]

Does anyone suggest any schools that I should not apply to? :?:

The University of New Hampshire. Too many of their graduate classes are upper level undergraduate courses with one extra paper. Makes for easy coursework, but you don't learn as much.

[student35]

Just to be clear, the OP inquired on the American Revolution/Early Republic. That is not the same as Colonial America, which was provided. For whatever reason, the USNews rankings (which mean nothing) left out the American Revolution through the Gilded Age.

[John_E]

William and Mary is known for Colonial History. They are in Virginia, in the "colonial" capital of Williamsburg--lots of re-enactors, etc. It's a nice atmosphere if that's what you study. W&M is also near DC and the Library of Congress/National Archives. Small program but that's sometimes a nice thing.