History PhD: Question on GPA of Irrelevant Major

[schoggi]

Hello friends, I am applying for Fall 2016 and I wish y'all best luck in your application! Although I am more experienced with East Asian history, my interest lies in early modern Europe, especially the social, economic, political, and religious history of Germany and German-speaking area. I have a question and I'd like to know if someone here might be able to help me with:

 

I have a BA in History with GPA 3.85/4.0, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. I took 5 courses on French and 3 courses on Arabic. I also passed German B2 level at Goethe Institut within 3 months (no prior knowledge of German, self-taught 1 month, followed by 8 weeks of courses in Germany). I am not trying to brag but to show that I am a decent, hard-working student.

 

However, I am currently doing another BA in Economics in the German-speaking area. As I am pursuing a second BA, my current university exempted me from Assessment Year (the foundation year). So I missed out on many basic mathematical training. Currently I am suffering from this lack of training as I have to learn a lot of math by myself while other students have had the training, especially in courses related to linear models, statistics, and advanced micro. Meanwhile, the uni does not offer English lectures to the English courses in advanced micro and econometrics, and the learning materials for those of us who are not yet proficient with German are translated into English with plenty of typos and mistakes. I don't feel supported as I was in the US, and my current GPA in Economics is only 5.2/6.0.

 

At my current university, 5.5 is summa cum laude (I only know fewer than a handful of extremely intelligent classmates who have this grade) and 5.0 is magna cum laude. Generally speaking, with a 5.0/6.0 people already assume you are really good. But when converted into US scale, my GPA in Economics is only around 3.4/4.0 and I wonder if my second BA in Economics will hurt my chance of getting into a History PhD program?

 

Thank you very much for your help!

[mvlchicago]

I feel like this is generally asking us to chance you based on your scores and their conversion into US programs. Honestly nothing you've listed is helpful in determining your "chances." What are you interested in specifically? With which professors do you want to work? To what programs are you seeking admission? How do you see those interests developing as a result? Are there any relations between your geographic interests?

The languages stuff is good provided they're useful to your interests. Beyond that, I suggest you start thinking about the questions I've listed above before asking about what your chances are like, as whether you get in or not will be more impacted by the specificity of your research as indicated by your SOP and writing sample than what your grades in Germany were like.

[xolo]

Hi schoggi, I don't think anything you listed will hurt you per se (I don't know if your intended school is exotic like an Ivy League school, maybe then it might matter). I agree with mvlchicago. I can see a number of ways you can use your European second degree and language skills to differentiate yourself - which can be big plus. So I think you are doing a great program. 

 

BTW, B2 in 3 months is fantastic! But, attending a university with B2, even though possibly it was a univ requirement to attend, is a bit problematic, at least the first semester.

[schoggi]

I feel like this is generally asking us to chance you based on your scores and their conversion into US programs. Honestly nothing you've listed is helpful in determining your "chances." What are you interested in specifically? With which professors do you want to work? To what programs are you seeking admission? How do you see those interests developing as a result? Are there any relations between your geographic interests?

The languages stuff is good provided they're useful to your interests. Beyond that, I suggest you start thinking about the questions I've listed above before asking about what your chances are like, as whether you get in or not will be more impacted by the specificity of your research as indicated by your SOP and writing sample than what your grades in Germany were like.

Thank you mvlchicago. I'm interested in studying early modern Germany and I understand this is probably too broad a topic. I am trying to read more to see where exactly my interest lies. Currently I am quite interested in the Fugger family in Augsburg or a city history of Frankfurt in Reformation. I know these are very immature ideas as I did not seriously consider a PhD in history until recently. I understand you can't chance me.

 

Currently I am looking into programs such as UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin Madison, BU, and Oregon as they have some scholars who specialize in early modern Germany. The list might expand as I check into more programs.

 

I am preparing for a bachelor thesis at my current university and it will be related to the asexual and undesirable Asian males on screen (this is the best topic I can relate to history due to regulations of thesis topics at my program). I do not have any well polished writing samples on early modern Europe. During my history BA I did not have the chance to write a thesis and as my current uni offers no history courses I cannot write my bachelor thesis on a pure historical topic.  Do you think this will be a big issue?

[schoggi]

Hi schoggi, I don't think anything you listed will hurt you per se (I don't know if your intended school is exotic like an Ivy League school, maybe then it might matter). I agree with mvlchicago. I can see a number of ways you can use your European second degree and language skills to differentiate yourself - which can be big plus. So I think you are doing a great program. 

 

BTW, B2 in 3 months is fantastic! But, attending a university with B2, even though possibly it was a univ requirement to attend, is a bit problematic, at least the first semester.

Thank you for your reply eyepod! No I do not dream of ivy league as I do not think I am that competitive. I'll be very glad to go to a top 80 program with funding. My biggest issue at the moment is simply that my current bachelor thesis will not be on a topic related to early modern Europe, which is the general field that I would like to pursue in a PhD program. I had a hard time choosing either to continue with a master's in Econ or a PhD in History. After that I had trouble choosing to focus on East Asia or on Europe. I am clearer now about what I want to pursue, but not detailed enough yet. I will spend the summer reading as much as I can and find out some topics that really intrigue me.

[xolo]

I had a similar problem. I had no Writing Sample that I liked so I ended up writing an academic essay from the ground up on my own. I had six months and I should have allocated a year to the project. I think it is important that you present yourself as a coherent whole. 

Edited June 13, 2015 by eyepod

[dr. t]

I repeat this so often it has become a mantra: do not pick schools based on where you think you will get in. First you're probably wrong. Second, there are no safety schools. Third, you're making it way more likely that you never find a job before you even show up on the first day.

 

I don't think any particular thing on your CV would sink you, even at an Ivy. I do think you should worry about the fact that you have only a vague idea of your research questions and no writing sample relevant to the subfield.

 

I would add Michele Sanchez and the Harvard CSR to your list.

[knp]

I'll be very glad to go to a top 80 program with funding. ...  I had a hard time choosing either to continue with a master's in Econ or a PhD in History.

 

Here's a few more questions to think about: do you want to get a history PhD in order to become a professor of history? If so, have you investigated how hard it is to get a tenure-track job, and how that gets exponentially more difficult the further down the rankings your graduate school is? For example, I looked up the University of Miami, which is ranked #80 on the USNWR history rankings. Miami history graduated 5 PhDs in 2012; of those, the department website lists the placement for three. One became a visiting assistant professor at the University of South Florida for one year, but now seems to have left academia; the other two joined private high schools' history departments. Most of the schools you listed as possibilities are ranked better than that, but be warned, wherever you go, it's dire out there.

 

(I believe one's forum privileges are revoked if one does not make a doom-and-gloom "BUT: JOB MARKET" post once every other month or so.)

 

A question I've been pondering, but I think would also be helpful for the OP: what do more experienced posters think is the ideal level of specificity for a SOP? Without having gone through an admissions cycle, I don't want to pontificate.

[mvlchicago]

The SOP is weird because you want to show both a sense of how your interests could fulfill a lovely long career as an academic nerd, but also leave yourself open to plenty of interpretation and improvement from the faculty of the school for whom the SOP is intended. My general advice about approaching it has two stages:

first, write out the 1000-2000 word statement that you think most encapsulates how your interests relate to the field. So, for example, when I was writing about my interest in how identity was formed, I made sure to think specifically about how the key journals for Atlantic, EM Europe and Latin America were approaching the problem, and was sure to use some of the key vocabulary present in those essays in how I described the issues.

second, when you've written that out, look to the faculty at each school. If you're applying there, your POIs should have some opinion/research related to specific ideas and sources that are important to sections of your statement. Start figuring out where you can replace the more *general* trends and vocab used to describe the issues in your statement with the ways that your POIs and related faculty at the school are approaching them. It's great procrastination to look at said school's faculty and seeing odd interests that overlap with those of your own, and makes your SOP seem much more closely aligned to what the faculty at the school is doing.

I think it's hard to describe a specific level of specificity because it really depends on your field and what has or hasn't been done. "Specificity" for a German Reformation PhD student would look very different from "specificity" for a 9th century Islamic Andalusian student. Follow the trail of your main articles in the past five years, and you'll find yourself asking the right questions .

[tingdeh]

Agreeing wholeheartedly with above--don't use programs and GPAs (and even GREs) as be-all and end-all crutches. I'm going into a great program (great fit, great rankings if that matters to you) with no relevant undergraduate degree, so my GPA would all have been but useless except for as a minimum gauge of scholarly aptitude. Let your research statement, letters, and writing sample speak the loudest and have the most thought and show the most promise. Read your relevant subfields' journals. Look at the schools where they were from, or people they've worked with, to give you a sense of the community. Get into the conversation with your application.

[random_grad]

To add another voice to what was said above, do not cut off the possibility of getting into a top program by not applying to one just because you think your current GPA is not enough. GPA is just one thing of many and really not the most important thing.

I ve spoken to folks who got into top programs this year during campus visits and many said they applied just for the heck of it without really thinking they d get in. If you read this forum you ll the reverse happens just as much with people who got into top school not getting into their safety schools. Cast a broad net, build a narrative around your weak points and focus on the SoP and Weiting sample.