Assistance needed in applying to Vanderbilt...

[wannaphdnHistory]

I live in Nashville and plan on applying to Vanderbilt's PhD History program this fall. I graduated in 1992 from a small liberal arts college with majors in History and English, and a minor in Political Science. I had a 3.92 cumulative GPA/ 4.0 history GPA. After college, I went to law school, and I graduated from Washington and Lee in 1996, with a 3.40 GPA. I practiced law for a while, but I did not like it. I went into teaching, high school and middle school. I am working this year in a program for at risk students. However, I want to teach history at the collegiate level. Here are a couple questions I have:

1. Does any one know what the average GRE scores are for accepted students into Vanderbilt's history program? I cannot find those anywhere on the net. I have not taken the GRE yet, but I plan to take it in July. It would be nice though to have a target to shoot for.

2. For a writing sample, I have a 10 page case summary that was published in the first edition of Washington and Lee's Race and Ethnic Ancestry Law Journal. Is that sufficient? I do not have any of my undergraduate papers or anything like that since it has been such a long period of time since I graduated.

3. Letters of recommendation may be tricky for me. I have not kept up with any of the professors at either schoool since I left, but some of the professors I worked with are still at the schools. What if they do not remember me that well? How do I approach them after so long asking them to write me a LOR? Even if they do remember me, should I get someone ( a supervisor?) to write me a LOR just so I have something more recent than 1996?

Any help that someone can give me on these issues will be greatly appreciated.

[reallywantcolumbia]

Hey WannaPhD

My advice would be to figure out which professors you want to work with in the department, and then get in touch with them. Ask them these questions. From the applications I did, I got the feeling that departments really want 'non-traditional' grad students, and are willing to make exceptions for them. There might be some way to get around the LoR requirement that professors might be willing to help you out with.

[Nofia]

More than anything else you need to know what you want to study and who the best scholars are in your field. If you were, say, interested in colonial America, there may or may not be someone at Vanderbilt who is good in that field (I am just pulling this example out of thin air, I know very little about the school). If no one there is good in your field, you likely won't get accepted (fit is everything), and even if you do, it may be very difficult down the line to get a job if no one knows who your dissertation advisor is. Knowing that you want to teach at the college level isn't enough, you need to know what you want to study .

You need a very strong statement of purpose, a good writing sample, and letters of recommendation from people that will attest to your abilities to succeed in a graduate history program. Having a publication is going to look good. As for approaching your former professors, it would help if you had some work you had done for them saved so you could include it with a letter or email, but since you don't I would just email and see if they remember you.

[misterpat]

I'm surprised synthla hasn't jumped in to answer these questions, since he just made the transfer from law to academia.

I think I can answer why those GRE stats are so hard to find, however. Most schools don't publish detailed stats like that (with the only exception that comes to mind being Duke). I assume that they don't provide GRE averages so that people don't get the impression that they're super important. The GRE isn't as important as the LSAT was for law school admissions. Shoot for above 90th percentile on the Verbal section, which I think is about a 650. Anything below that and you risk not having your application being taken seriously (or so I've been told).

[synthla]

Did someone say my name? Turns out I'm still alive out here... was just in Bloomington over the weekend finding a place to live... with success, I think.

I too am surprised I didn't jump in on this one already - here are my takes on the questions:

1. Don't know much about Vanderbilt target GRE scores - I agree with the finding that most schools don't publicize them; typically the only luck I've had has been scouring school websites for institutional reports (try looking for the Office of Institutional Research or something similar) that sometimes contain average admit data. Not every school has them publicly available, however. But Misterpat is right - GRE is not nearly as important as LSAT... if it was, I'd have been admitted more places. Being above 650 would be fine.

2. I used an undergrad history writing sample of about 15 pages, which I significantly rewrote. I didn't do any additional research, but I'll be the first to admit that my skill with prose appears to have increased dramatically over the last nine years, so the rewrite was well worth it. The paper was originally an A paper, and tied directly into my proposed area of research. That being said, one professor did say that it didn't demonstrate enough original source research, so I sent that person a copy of a 40-page bench memo I did in law school, and that seemed to do the trick (I got in). Unfortunately I would be wary of using a 10 page case summary as a writing sample because (unless case summary means something totally different at W&L), you're not drawing from many sources and "summary"-izing rather than making creative use of original sources.

3. I was worried about this as well - luckily I did keep in touch with 2 professors from undergrad so they were happy to help out - they wrote my recommendations for law school as well, so perhaps you should reach out to those people... if they wrote you an LOR before, it seems more likely they'd remember you. Personally, I didn't just write asking for an LOR - I checked in on them on a personal level first, exchanged a few emails about how I was thinking about going back to school and getting their advice and opinions, then asked for an LOR after a few months. I didn't know what to do about the 3rd LOR, so I had a law firm partner with whom I used to work write an LOR - everyone says avoid non-academics like the plague, but law is mostly researching, analyzing and writing - skills directly applicable to academia. It doesn't seem to have hurt me in at least 3 of 6 cases.