Public History vs History MA

[freddyc]

I applied for a MA in Public History and was accepted a couple of weeks ago. I visited the school the other day and had a good time meeting the faculty and students, and came away really impressed, so much so that I formally accepted the offer once I got back home. The day afterwards the grad chair called me and said that while the program is normally capped at 15 students, as a standard practice they accept something like 18 and expect a few declines. Well this year apparently no one declined, so he asked me if I was interested in doing the regular history stream instead of the Public History.

 

They are both one year programs with the same amount of funding (fully funded). For the coursework part, I could pretty much take the exact same courses if I wanted to. There are two main differences: the Public History stream offers RAships that are basically co-ops during the semester (a TAship is also available, but most people do the RAships), whereas the regular stream only offers TAships. The other difference is that the regular stream does a thesis in the summer, whereas the Public History stream does an internship.

 

I'm really not sure what I should do. The grad chair made it clear that this was their fault and that I could still do the Public History stream if I wanted, they wouldn't hold it against me at all. I'm pretty sure they specifically offered the regular stream to me because I have no experience with public history yet, and they have a potential supervisor that would be extremely compatible with my research interests. I applied to two other places both for regular history streams, so it's something I was considering anyway.

 

My reservation is that I'm not sure I'm cut out for doing a 50 page thesis, and I kind of doubt I'll be interested in doing a PhD afterwards. While I don't have any experience in the public history field yet, I think it will be something I'd enjoy doing and having an internship will make it easier to get a real job once I graduate. I think that if I do the regular stream, I'd probably end up doing a post-grad diploma in museum studies anyway, so it might be a waste of a year to not just do the Public History stream in the first place. But then again, if I find that I love grad school, it would be much easier to do a PhD with the regular stream.

 

So could anyone offer some advice on what I should do in this situation?