zanymae8

I graduated from a small private liberal arts college in 2012 with a double major, BA History and BA German Studies, both with honors (I wrote two honors theses, and earned honors in each case). I graduated magna cum laude with a 3.81 GPA, and I was accepted for a Fulbright fellowship as an English teaching assistant in Germany for 2012-2013. I haven't taken the GRE yet, but I expect to do very well in verbal and writing but only average in quantitative. I am considering applying to graduate school for history, more specifically German history, Late Modern European Period, specializing in German colonial history and German class history in the 19th century. I speak and write German fluently, but I have not learned French (which I would probably need as a second language). Might I reasonably be able to get into a top grad school for history (Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, Chicago, Michigan, Harvard, UCLA, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Penn, Brown, Duke, Northwestern, Virginia, Indiana, Rutgers, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas)? Is there anything I can do to become more competitive during my year abroad with Fulbright?

juillet

What other research have you done aside from your honors theses? The humanities is harder for me because science and social science are straightforward: you work as a research assistant for some professor(s) for 2-3 years to be minimally competitive for programs. I'm not sure whether aspiring humanities PhD students work with professors on scholarship, but I'm sure they do in some capacity.

I suppose you could also start studying French while you are in Germany, and perhaps visit some archives to start your own little project in your spare time. You're not there to do a full grant, of course, but if you have an idea of a small side project that you can complete in maybe 10-15 hours a week over a years' time, you may be able to make use of German archives to do so.

snarlatron

Your laundry list of "top" schools is of no worth. What is important is your area of interest and specialization (above) and potential dissertation topic. What scholarship will you add to the field? Can it pass the "so what" test? You need to do deep research to find departments and specific faculty that share your interests and expertise, and who will be willing to move forward your research. In fine you are already looking for a potential dissertation committee, and those are very hard to assemble. You will ultimately be applying to individual departments more than schools, based on all of this. You will also have a pretty good idea, after visiting with departments, which ones will be interested in you. I applied to my Ph.D. program after pretty much having been given the green light by those in the dept. that they were knowledgeable about my area and interested in my own research, and that I stood a good chance of being admitted to the graduate school based on this. Good luck and best wishes.