What should I aim for?

[readandreview]

*cross post from the Questions thread

This is going to be a combination of a 'help me, I'm ignorant' post and a 'what are my chances' post. I'm interested in applying to graduate programs for the F' 2017 cycle, but I think I need advice. 

I attended a small, religious liberal arts college in the Midwest and majored in History. The school has little to no reputation and is very unknown - my department consisted of a handful of professors and students, and the professors rarely published due to the school's emphasis on teaching. I did well - earning a 3.94 in the major, and both departmental honors my senior year (graduated this May). I took as many upper level courses as I could, nearly every single one that the school offered, and I did some minor research for a professor during my senior year. Although I feel as though my senior thesis could have been a bit better (and I intend to polish it before submitting to journals/as a writing sample for grad admissions), my advisor told me that if the school had honors designations for theses, mine would have received it. I served as the president of the honor society for a term my senior year, will likely have decent recommendations, and presented at a general undergraduate research conference this year. For my first two summers during undergrad, I volunteered at a National Historical park where I gave talks and answered questions. Before my senior year, I worked in the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and I spent 2.5 years working in the archives at my college. Since graduation, I've been working as a writer for a national newspaper (not the WaPo or the NYT, but professors I interview tend to recognize and respect it). 

I am concerned that because my school is unknown, I have no publications, and I learned too late that although research opportunities were thin on the ground, I could create my own, I'll have a hard time gaining acceptance into programs that I'm interested in. I am also light on the language side of things. I took German in high school and retain a little bit of that reading ability, and took 'hola, uno, dos, tres' Spanish classes for my undergrad language requirement. 

Currently, I'm looking at William and Mary's funded MA program, and PhD programs at Penn, Princeton, Brown, UVA, BU, and Berkeley due to my interests in American history (particularly early American) and urban history. I don't know if these are ridiculous programs to aim for. What would be more realistic? Ideally, I'd like to take on as little debt as possible. 

[Quickmick]

Just a thought, you might want to look at the question by asking, "who do I want to work with," and then the "where" piece will become easier to see.

Edited September 19, 2016 by Quickmick

[Warelin]

I think it's important to realize that many programs in general are a reach for most people. There aren't really any guarantees since so many applicants applying at top schools have really great grades and gre scores. During the 2013-2014 cycle, the history department at UVA received 241 applications and admitted 20. The median gre verbal score was in the 93rd percentile. During the 2014-2015 cycle, the history department at UVA received 212 applicants  and admitted 21. The median gre verbal score was in the 96th percentile. Scores are however not everything.

And there's so much that you know and haven't provided. We don't know what your writing sample and letter of interest look like. We don't know what the admissions committee are looking for this year. We don't know how many people are applying in each subfield. Each of these factors as are many more will determine who gets offered an admissions spot.

As a sidenote: I've heard from a professor that the Ivy League schools tend to reserve most of their spots for other ivy league grads and other prestigious programs. However, this could also just as easily be attributed to that applicant having a certain style the school was looking for.

[TMP]

My suggestion is-- wait another year.  Spend the next year figuring out why you want to apply to PhD programs.  What do you want to get out of it?  What kind of research questions are you interested in?  What is your end goal?

Don't worry about publishing or languages.  Nobody really expects publications from someone coming from BA.  If you are interested in US history, while it'll look great to have a language under your belt, I wouldn't fret too much unless you're into transnational history with the Atlantic World (which in that case you would need French and/or Spanish).

[Sigaba]

On 9/12/2016 at 0:54 PM, jeanlouisescout said:

*cross post from the Questions thread

This is going to be a combination of a 'help me, I'm ignorant' post and a 'what are my chances' post. I'm interested in applying to graduate programs for the F' 2017 cycle, but I think I need advice. 

I attended a small, religious liberal arts college in the Midwest and majored in History. The school has little to no reputation and is very unknown - my department consisted of a handful of professors and students, and the professors rarely published due to the school's emphasis on teaching. I did well - earning a 3.94 in the major, and both departmental honors my senior year (graduated this May). I took as many upper level courses as I could, nearly every single one that the school offered, and I did some minor research for a professor during my senior year. Although I feel as though my senior thesis could have been a bit better (and I intend to polish it before submitting to journals/as a writing sample for grad admissions), my advisor told me that if the school had honors designations for theses, mine would have received it. I served as the president of the honor society for a term my senior year, will likely have decent recommendations, and presented at a general undergraduate research conference this year. For my first two summers during undergrad, I volunteered at a National Historical park where I gave talks and answered questions. Before my senior year, I worked in the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and I spent 2.5 years working in the archives at my college. Since graduation, I've been working as a writer for a national newspaper (not the WaPo or the NYT, but professors I interview tend to recognize and respect it). 

I am concerned that because my school is unknown, I have no publications, and I learned too late that although research opportunities were thin on the ground, I could create my own, I'll have a hard time gaining acceptance into programs that I'm interested in. I am also light on the language side of things. I took German in high school and retain a little bit of that reading ability, and took 'hola, uno, dos, tres' Spanish classes for my undergrad language requirement. 

Currently, I'm looking at William and Mary's funded MA program, and PhD programs at Penn, Princeton, Brown, UVA, BU, and Berkeley due to my interests in American history (particularly early American) and urban history. I don't know if these are ridiculous programs to aim for. What would be more realistic? Ideally, I'd like to take on as little debt as possible. 

IMO, your greatest challenge is your level of confidence in what you have learned and in yourself. Your current level of confidence leads you to asking the same questions over and again, and keeps you from asking yourself more important questions. Questions like:

1. What type of historian do you want to become? 
2. Which departments have the faculty and the resources that will help you reach your objectives?
3. What do you bring to the table that will make you a good fit in the programs where you'd like to study?

Recommendations

• Stop second guessing your academic pedigree -- it is what it is and it's now beyond your control.
• Continue to develop your relationships with your professors at your UGI.
  • If they give you advice, follow it.
  • If you don't understand the advice they're giving you, you're likely being invited to think and to work harder.
• Make a commitment to exhausting every resource and every ounce of your creativity as a researcher before asking questions.
  • I'm going to send you a PM on this point.
• Keep developing your skills are a writer. You write well and that skill will help you.
• Start spending time in the stacks ... physically going through publications relevant to your interests. Develop lists of subjects of interest and POIs.
  • Physically, because serendipity can help one develop one's instincts as a historian.
• Develop a sense of the historiographical landscape of the past fifty years (or so).
  • Understand how debates in urban history fit into larger debates within the profession.
  • Develop your own POV on the debates, but give yourself the liberty of holding your views provisionally.
• Do not worry about anything at this point in time.
  • Don't worry about debt or funding. Someone's going to the University of Happyland on a Sarah Goodwin Happlyand Memorial Fellowship...why not you?
  • Don't worry about disappointment--there's going to be plenty of that once you're a graduate student.

#HTH.