HELP deciding what to specialize in for PhD

cbries
Sun, 20 Jul 2014 10:41:33 +0000

Hello all!
I’m an ascending junior at the University of North Texas majoring in Anthropology with a minor in History. I have an overall GPA of 3.1 with a major GPA of 3.5 (which will likely rise as I only have classes within my major left). My main issue is deciding what PhD track I want or will even be successful in. I would like to shift my focus more towards History, specifically British history.

Professionally I would like to work in social history, conservation, and public education/consulting rather than professorial work. My openness to so many career options is the main reason I’m having trouble planning what exactly I need to do. I’ve been leaning towards pursuing a PhD in history but from what I’ve seen it’s extremely competitive and my scores aren’t exactly stellar so I’m open to other avenues like Public History or Museum Studies or anything else.

My universities advising department has proven pretty useless when it comes to specifics and searching on forums like this has only turned up scenarios in which the student intends to go into pure academia. Would my interest in British History make applying to schools in the UK more ideal? To any who have transferred US to UK; what is that like?
Is funding for international students common? I plan to move to the UK permanently in the future but if there was a US program that would work out more in my favor I would rather stay state-bound for it.

I realize this post is a little scatterbrained (sorry!) but that’s how I am right now.
Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks so much