Are you thinking about Graduate School in History?

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According to the American Historical Association, a PhD in history usually takes 5-9 years to complete. Upon completion, the job market for history professors is highly competitive and may ultimately determine where you live.

Graduate work is a huge commitment of your time and energy. You should ask yourself if graduate work is right for you before beginning the application process. Don’t treat graduate work as something to do while you’re figuring out your life; it should be the next, necessary step towards your goal of becoming a professor, archivist, public historian, or author.

Some of our current faculty members have offered the following advice to students considering graduate work in history:

• Passion is the most important qualification! Passion manifests itself in loving to talk about history, reading historical literature outside of normal coursework, and feeling like history really matters to you.

• Academics live and die by what they write. What makes a historian is not only reading the scholarship, but writing it. Graduate school, as opposed to undergraduate coursework, is a world focused on literature rather than oral engagement.

• In order to move from being a lover of history to a historian, you need to produce original research and be equally attentive to the research of other scholars. You should spend time on your own defining what your contribution is going to be and think: "I want to write my OWN book." Many undergraduates get good at tearing arguments apart, but you also need to be good at building them. Start by writing an undergraduate thesis.

• Only apply if you love learning and cannot think of anything else you would rather be doing.

• Being an academic is not a 9-5 job; you are thinking and being inspired constantly. There is no set rhythm to the work.

• You should have a thick skin, a persistent attitude, and the capability to work independently.

Working on Graduate School Applications

Graduate programs have slightly different application processes and requirements. Go to the history department website for each school you’re interested in and search for prospective graduate student information.

With that in mind, the following advice generalizes the application requirements of many competitive History PhD programs within the United States:

Quick Links:

• Find Programs and Establish Contacts
• Letters of Recommendation
• Prepare your writing sample
• Write your Statement of Purpose
• Take the GRE
• Seek help
• Timeline