How to Apply to Graduate School in History
Everyone who applies to graduate school has applied to college, and the first mistake many of them make is to assume that the process for both is more or less the same.
It isn’t.
For one thing, undergraduate applications are read and evaluated by a separate staff of admissions officers unaffiliated with any particular university department. Their job is to select a wide range of candidates whose combination of academic achievement, extracurricular activities, and life experiences will contribute to a vibrant and diverse campus community. To that end, they look for evidence that prospective students are "well-rounded" and "interesting." So it is hardly surprising that aspiring college students emphasize their family backgrounds and upbringing, challenges met and overcome, and all manner of personal anecdotes to convey their unique accomplishments and personalities.
Graduate applicants, by contrast, must adapt to a different set of priorities and incentives. They don’t have an office of admissions to impress but instead apply directly to the academic department they wish to join as master’s or doctoral students. A committee of faculty members evaluates their credentials and abilities according to a narrow set of criteria. Above all, they have to determine whether candidates have the skill set to complete their degrees on time, and whether stated research interests will result in viable thesis or dissertation projects worth risking limited faculty time and departmental funding to support. Unlike the undergraduate experience, where variety is the spice of life, graduate student success revolves around one’s relationship with a particular faculty advisor. If that person doesn’t think you would be a good fit, the buck stops there.
Graduate school, then, is more like an apprenticeship. You seek to become a professional historian. To do so, you must demonstrate the drive and talent necessary to complete the work required of you. Above all, you must craft your application to convince potential advisors, in specific terms, that your interests match up well with theirs and you have something interesting to contribute to their field.
Here's how to do that.
The history department’s graduate application has multiple components, but three in particular are worthy of your most careful consideration.
The Personal Statement
Grades and standardized test scores can tell us something about your abilities, and we certainly consider them. But the GRE is now optional (albeit encouraged), and grades are notoriously inconsistent across institutions. By contrast, your ability to describe academic interests and research plans in clear, concise terms offers a direct indication of scholarly potential.
By the same token, more applicants are tripped up by poorly rendered statements than any other stumbling block. For this reason, we offer the following advice.
Don’t treat your statement like a college application essay. Your statement need not be clever or quirky, nor should it recount your life’s story. You don’t have to trace your love of history back to your childhood, when grandpa sat you on his knee and recounted the 24th Wisconsin’s exploits at Missionary Ridge. That might be true, but meandering tales set the wrong tone and tax the patience of your evaluators. Better to get to the point and be specific.
What topic do you want to study? You would be surprised how often applicants’ statements are devoid of this basic information. Providing a chronological, geographical and thematic reference is a good way to frame your interests from the outset, e.g., 20th century Chinese political history, the intellectual history of the Early American Republic, gender relations in medieval Europe, the 19th century British empire, the Cold War United States military. Feel free to describe how that interest developed in reference to specific college courses you’ve taken, books you’ve read, research papers you’ve written, or other experiential opportunities you’ve had, such as museum internships, study abroad, or military service.
With whom do you wish to study? Be sure to state specifically which faculty member(s) you’d like to work with and explain how their research and expertise intersects with your interests. Statements that make no mention of any History Department faculty raise a big red flag. They suggest that the applicant has not considered his or her course of study enough to peruse our website looking for professors with relevant field knowledge. We strongly encourage you to contact potential advisors before you apply to discuss your academic goals and how well suited the department is to accommodate them. Faculty members’ familiarity with applicants is no guarantee of admission, but it can certainly help them determine if they would prefer to work with you. The admissions committee will not admit any applicant without prior approval from potential advisors.
How do you wish to pursue a research agenda within your field of interest? Prospective master’s students don’t need to articulate a fully formed thesis project but should be able to describe a few potential areas of broad inquiry within their chosen field that can be narrowed down with the help of an advisor (e.g., medicine and disease in Early Modern Spain, congressional approaches to poverty after World War II, U.S.–Vietnamese relations after the Cold War). Prospective doctoral students should have a somewhat more refined sense of a dissertation topic, described in reference to research already conducted for the master’s thesis or archival sources germane to the larger project.
How will your course of history study help support your career trajectory? The academic job market in history is nothing to write home about, so we encourage serious contemplation of alternative options, including think tanks, government service, museums, consulting, etc.
To ensure that you hit all these notes, we advise you to show drafts of your statement to a trusted professor or advisor familiar with the graduate application process in history.
The Writing Sample
What mathematics is to physics, the written narrative is to history. Applicants who cannot write well cannot succeed in the discipline. The writing sample offers a direct demonstration of one’s ability to compose clear prose, make convincing arguments, interpret secondary literature, and marshal primary source evidence. For this reason, the sample you submit should consist of a longer term paper if you have one. The essay topic need not relate directly to your proposed course of study, but ideally it should be a work of historical research and/or analysis. You should once again consult with a history professor or advisor to select something that best represents your abilities. Feel free to revise and improve the original piece prior to submitting it.
Letters of Recommendation
The department’s admissions committee considers the testimony of your letter writers carefully in its deliberations. Be certain to select those who can 1) submit their letters on time, 2) speak in detail about the quality of work you produced in a classroom or other academic setting, and 3) emphasize your preparation for graduate school, including writing and oral presentation skills, maturity, and other relevant character strengths.
The best option for a reference would be a thesis or research project advisor who has observed you working through the kind of assignments you will deal with most often in graduate school. The next best choice is a history professor who taught you in a relatively small class and can provide specific examples of how the quality of your work bodes well for more advanced studies in the field. Professors in disciplines other than history who know you well can also write good letters. Large survey course lecturers will have less to say – you would be better off asking a teaching assistant who interacted with you directly than a big name academic who hardly knows you. Letters from supervisors in non-academic settings can attest to your general competence, but they usually provide only limited insight about your qualifications for graduate study. Do not even contemplate submitting letters written by family members.