New to Grad History with Questions (& Profile Evaluation)!

[DGrayson]

Hi Everyone! 

 I am a Masters student in Economics at UT and i've been going through what I call a "quarter life crisis" the past couple of weeks. I have always been interested in Economic History but I was scared out of the field by a former professor. I thought that I wanted to do a Ph.D in Economics but I just don't love it as much as I thought. I've been coming back to History for a while now, and after some reflection believe my best move is to apply to History programs. My only problem is I am not entirely sure of my chances of getting accepted. My profile can be summarized as follows:

Undergraduate Institution: University of Central Florida (unranked) 

Majors: HIstory, Economics

Minors: Mathematics

GPA: 3.78 (Overall) 3.95 (History) (Damn those math classes!  )

I've completed 4 major research papers: 2 Economics papers, 2 History papers

GRE:

(Here is where my first question lies) I have two different GRE scores: V: 159 Q: 158 Writing: 6

                                                                                                               V: 160 Q: 160 Writing 5 (not a clue how the 5 happened! Really upset!)

I'm not sure which to use! I'm thinking the 6 is more important than the 1 point increase in verbal. I am planning to take the GRE again though. 

Graduate Education: Masters in Economics at UT Austin (Question 2: Will this degree hurt me since it is not in History?)

GPA: 3.90 (Only two classes in though). This is a one year program, so I will have the degree before starting Ph.D

Research Interests: I am mainly interested in Economic History (Early American, Medieval, and African) and Early Church History.

Problem: I have no background languages. I'm thinking of declaring a major field in Early American and a secondary field in Medieval as the language requirements for entering are not as stringent. 

Where I'm planning to apply: Yale, Princeton, Berkeley, Northwestern, University of Michigan, U Penn, Stanford (Are there any schools I should be looking at that I'm missing?)

Any advice you guys could give me on how to best improve my application would be greatly appreciated!  

 

Edited October 6, 2015 by DGrayson

[turnings]

Your stats are fine. AFAIK most programs require all GRE scores, so you can't choose between them. Your key problem at the moment is focus. Early American, Medieval, African, and Early Church history are vastly different fields. If  you want to be admitted to any PhD program in history, much less the programs you've listed, you will need to choose one of these and develop enough familiarity with its historiography to propose an original research project. An MA in  history might help here, especially if you can find funding/can afford it yourself.

[DGrayson]

Your stats are fine. AFAIK most programs require all GRE scores, so you can't choose between them. Your key problem at the moment is focus. Early American, Medieval, African, and Early Church history are vastly different fields. If  you want to be admitted to any PhD program in history, much less the programs you've listed, you will need to choose one of these and develop enough familiarity with its historiography to propose an original research project. An MA in  history might help here, especially if you can find funding/can afford it yourself.

Thanks for responding so quickly! I was able to select the overall test I wanted to send, instead of having to select all for Ph.D Econ programs last cycle but I'm not sure what AFAIK is so it may be different for History. My plan right now is to pursue Early American in my SOP, but I may end up changing my mind while in the program (I'm assuming that's fine as others have stated they have done so). 

[knp]

I'm wondering whether you might be placing too much emphasis on the idea of switching fields once admitted. Many people switch from fields with higher linguistic burdens to lower ones (medieval to US, e.g.). Doing it the other way around is possible, and it happens, but it's really difficult. It would probably be best to prepare for your actual favorite before you start applying, since it's hard to pick up a lot of new languages once you're in a PhD program. Switching to early church history from early American will be more or less impossible unless you take some years now and start picking up Koine Greek, Syriac, Latin, etc. (If you were applying for that from the start, for reference, you might be admitted with only a solid knowledge of Greek, and learn the rest later; not my field). Medieval would likewise be difficult, although probably a little less so. I'm also curious what sort of medieval economic history you're interested in—some economic historians believe that such a thing can't exist, because there isn't enough data. I don't think that's the general opinion, but data is still even harder than it would be for early American.

Do you know what period or region of Africa you're thinking of? It's huge, and knowing what period you're talking about is just as important as knowing that information for U.S. history. It is probably possible to study its modern economic history with only English, or English and French, since although "Africa" is a region of intense linguistic diversity, a lot of sub-Saharan economic information will be in one of the old colonial languages. (Portuguese to be even more complete). The Mediterranean requires Arabic, which is harder, especially because it has so many different varieties. But are you thinking of doing the economic history of Africa in the same period as your other interests, like 1400-1700...? You could maybe do an economic history of some of northern Africa for that period, since the Ottomans were meticulous about their records, or join the growing scholarly interest in the "Atlantic world", which includes studies on the economics of European trade, especially the slave trade. Those are really different paths, though.

What are your two history research papers about?

[DGrayson]

I'm wondering whether you might be placing too much emphasis on the idea of switching fields once admitted. Many people switch from fields with higher linguistic burdens to lower ones (medieval to US, e.g.). Doing it the other way around is possible, and it happens, but it's really difficult. It would probably be best to prepare for your actual favorite before you start applying, since it's hard to pick up a lot of new languages once you're in a PhD program. Switching to early church history from early American will be more or less impossible unless you take some years now and start picking up Koine Greek, Syriac, Latin, etc. (If you were applying for that from the start, for reference, you might be admitted with only a solid knowledge of Greek, and learn the rest later; not my field). Medieval would likewise be difficult, although probably a little less so. I'm also curious what sort of medieval economic history you're interested in—some economic historians believe that such a thing can't exist, because there isn't enough data. I don't think that's the general opinion, but data is still even harder than it would be for early American.

Do you know what period or region of Africa you're thinking of? It's huge, and knowing what period you're talking about is just as important as knowing that information for U.S. history. It is probably possible to study its modern economic history with only English, or English and French, since although "Africa" is a region of intense linguistic diversity, a lot of sub-Saharan economic information will be in one of the old colonial languages. (Portuguese to be even more complete). The Mediterranean requires Arabic, which is harder, especially because it has so many different varieties. But are you thinking of doing the economic history of Africa in the same period as your other interests, like 1400-1700...? You could maybe do an economic history of some of northern Africa for that period, since the Ottomans were meticulous about their records, or join the growing scholarly interest in the "Atlantic world", which includes studies on the economics of European trade, especially the slave trade. Those are really different paths, though.

What are your two history research papers about?

knp, 

It's entirely possible that I am underestimating a field switch!!  I have been trained as an economist so switching disciplines has left me scrambling to get acquainted with all the background to grad programs. I really like the work of Peter Temin, who has published in multiple disciplines (including antiquity, where the exact structure of the economy is a point of contention), and Anne McCants at MIT. I was thinking about focusing on the intersection of religion and economics (cult of the saints, etc) and the effects of disease on economic growth/development. I have been talking with Professor McCants and she had agreed with the addition of a medieval secondary field. This is primarily why I was thinking about doing it. If I were to focus in African, it would probably be the transition from colonies to independent states and the economic transformations that resulted. My papers are as follows:

1) Historiography of the 1st Kennedy/Nixon debate (Pure History paper)

2) Economics of Ancient Roman Prostitution (combines work from economics and history)

3) Effect of U.S. GDP on South Africa's economic growth (economics with history background)

4) Effect of exogenous variables on the South African Development Community in anticipation of regional monetary unification. (really just Econ) 

Edited October 6, 2015 by DGrayson

[knp]

Oh, interesting! It sounds like good stuff, whereas I had been leery that your interests were a smorgasbord of things you'd once read a couple books about. (I seem to run across a lot of people who say they're interested in "Africa!" without knowing there's a difference between Johannesburg and Cairo. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but also find it draining. My post was intended as a mild warning in case you had tendencies in that direction, which I am now reassured about.) You seem to have a pretty good methodological unity that makes sense across at least two fields. Beyond that, you're beyond the limits of my knowledge!

[RevolutionBlues]

It's worth looking into a bit more in depth (see the thread on the History of Capitalism), but in a nutshell over the last three decades the field of "economic history" has gone from being primarily housed within the discipline of history to being primarily housed within the discipline of economics. Basically, the former approach is much more contextual and focused on the economy in history and the latter is much more quantitative and often boils down to running econometric formulas on data sets from the past. In terms of focus and languages, if you want to pursue economic history in the econometric sense, having interests in several continents and no language background should be fine if your quantitative skills are snazzy, but you'll want to be looking at economics programs for that. If you're more interested in bringing econometric skills to the table but are committed to a more historical approach (which, as an aside, I really hope is the case because we need more historians like that), you will probably need to narrow your interests down to a particular region and time, learn the relevant languages, and immerse yourself in the historiography of that subfield. For example, you might be really hard pressed to convince a history department to let you study medieval Europe AND early US history. Even as a primary and secondary field such disparate foci might raise red flags. If you do go the Early American route, you should probably consider UVA. But I get the impression that you may have chosen schools that are just in the top tier when it might be pragmatic to shoot for a broader spread based on fit. For example, the only economic historian in this sense at Berkeley that I know about is Jan de Vries, who does early modern European with an emphasis on the Netherlands, and he's retiring. But the economics department there does have the Berkeley Economic History Lab. In short, I would first really think about what exactly your interests are, decide if that is more in line with an economics or history department, then look for people that have similar interests AND the ability to teach economic history, and then decide which of those are worth applying to.

[DGrayson]

It's worth looking into a bit more in depth (see the thread on the History of Capitalism), but in a nutshell over the last three decades the field of "economic history" has gone from being primarily housed within the discipline of history to being primarily housed within the discipline of economics. Basically, the former approach is much more contextual and focused on the economy in history and the latter is much more quantitative and often boils down to running econometric formulas on data sets from the past. In terms of focus and languages, if you want to pursue economic history in the econometric sense, having interests in several continents and no language background should be fine if your quantitative skills are snazzy, but you'll want to be looking at economics programs for that. If you're more interested in bringing econometric skills to the table but are committed to a more historical approach (which, as an aside, I really hope is the case because we need more historians like that), you will probably need to narrow your interests down to a particular region and time, learn the relevant languages, and immerse yourself in the historiography of that subfield. For example, you might be really hard pressed to convince a history department to let you study medieval Europe AND early US history. Even as a primary and secondary field such disparate foci might raise red flags. If you do go the Early American route, you should probably consider UVA. But I get the impression that you may have chosen schools that are just in the top tier when it might be pragmatic to shoot for a broader spread based on fit. For example, the only economic historian in this sense at Berkeley that I know about is Jan de Vries, who does early modern European with an emphasis on the Netherlands, and he's retiring. But the economics department there does have the Berkeley Economic History Lab. In short, I would first really think about what exactly your interests are, decide if that is more in line with an economics or history department, then look for people that have similar interests AND the ability to teach economic history, and then decide which of those are worth applying to.

Actually, the field of Economic History in the Econ departments has been steadily decreasing over the past couple of years. I completely agree with your distinction between the two fields though and that has been the biggest reason for me to consider an Econ Ph.D. I like the idea of being able to study various regions, but I can easily see myself focusing on just the Middle Ages. The biggest problem I've seen so far is that there are so few people focusing on Economic History in this area. I've been in contact with Thomas Safley at UPenn as I am pretty interested in his work, but I did aim for the top schools because of job placement fears.