<p>I’m currently studying history in France i’ll graduate this year and would like to continue my studies in the states. I’d like to come to the States because i think history is less ethnocentric there and also because i’d like to enhance my intellectual references beyond french speaking world.</p>
<p>I’d like to be a researcher in history but i have a deep interrest in philosophy(critical) and social thought, what college would suit me best considering the fact that i may work on african history.</p>
<p>At the graduate level, speciality will matter a good deal. The usual suspects will be strong in European History, including Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Michigan-Ann Arbor, Stanford, UC-Berkeley and Yale. Johns Hopkins, UCLA and UNC-Chapel Hill are also be strong. </p>
<p>For African History, powerhouses such as Michigan, Stanford and UCLA are among the very best, but so are other History programs such as Emory, Michigan State, Northwestern and Wisconsin-Madison.</p>
<p>Specialty matters. Michigan, for example, has only four tenure-track professors working in African history. If your interests do not match one of theirs, you will not be admitted.</p>
<p>Funding also matters. The humanities and social sciences in the UC system are hit particularly hard, but those departments at Michigan and undoubtedly other publics have also been crippled by funding shortages.</p>
<p>The deadlines for applying for fall 2010 are long past. If you would like to apply for fall 2011, your first step would be to take the GRE.</p>
<p>Hippo, Michigan’s fiscal situation is actually quite stable. I did not hear a crippling funding shortage. Of course, these days, all universities are tightening the belt, but I am not sure that this is limited to public universities. In fact, private universities depend far more on their endowments are are feeling the pinch of the current economic crisis more than the wealthier publics.</p>
<p>There are a good many professors and graduate applicants alike who would vehemently disagree with you. I have been looking into graduate admissions myself lately (although not in history, of course), and I’ve heard nothing but bleak news from professors I’ve contacted as well as friends going through the process. Compare the financial packages of admits in those departments over the last five years and you’ll see quite a difference, as well as a sharp decrease in the number of students admitted. The last is admittedly not necessarily a bad thing, given the extremely poor job prospects for anyone going into those fields. It’s a bit disingenuous, incidentally, to suggest that publics are buffered better; UVA, Michigan, and several other publics draw nearly 90% of their operating budgets from non-state sources.</p>
<p>It is the wealthiest privates (like Harvard, Princeton, and even Brown given its small graduate population) who’ve best managed to stay the course. Princeton and a handful of other privates are also unique in not requiring students to function as teaching assistants.</p>
<p>I agree that poorer private universities like Hopkins have also been hit hard. Duke philosophy suspended admissions this year, for example. I’ve heard reports that near eastern studies at Michigan, art history at Berkeley, sociology at UNC, and anthropology at Emory have also cut admissions, but I haven’t seen the announcements for those personally.</p>
<p>Yep…big time cuts are out there. Which is sad. However, the top 20 programs will continue. Go to USNWR and (while I hate rankings) look for the graduate History rankings. Its very informative. And you can also research through google. History is a very broad subject and has many categories of graduate research. They do admit top flight foreign students, but its very, very, very competitive. Most of these programs admit at most 20 students a year total and have an admissions rate of 10 percent or less.</p>
<p>At least at UW Madison much of the pain was prior to the recession. State funding last year was nearly $500m, and a recent tuition increase targets faculty recruitment and salaries. History appears to be advertising three or four positions now. Hope things improve.</p>
<p>Thanx for your help, UCLA and Wisconsin seems good. What i’ll do is read some of the works of those i would like to work with and then write to them.</p>
<p>Universities across the board have been hurt by the financial crisis. According to hawkette’s numbers, Hopkins saw its endowment drop 21.7% (6/30/08 to 6/30/09). However, endowments at Stanford and most of the Ivies dropped even more (29.8% at Harvard). </p>
<p>Johns Hopkins is not exactly poor. Its endowment in 2009 hovered around $2 billion, just slightly less than Brown’s. In addition, it gets a huge amount of federal research grant money. So it would be interesting to see what is happening to that, and the impact. </p>
<p>Recession or no recession, in a field like history, getting admitted is only the first of your worries. If you want to pursue it, better be extraordinarily good, or else independently wealthy, or nimble enough to move into another field such as banking after grad school.</p>
I will be blunt and say those numbers are useless. Like Alexandre, you have no idea how money is apportioned to departments and thus are clinging to the belief that things are as good as they used to be.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins traditionally gave full tuition to all admitted humanities students, as well as a stipend averaging about $18-19,000. Last year it offered an 80% tuition waiver to admitted students and no stipend. Perhaps you are wealthier than I, but I would personally consider that a problem.</p>
<p>Also look at Emory, where graduate admissions dropped forty pecent (by nearly half!) in the last year alone due to their inability to fund students. Even Columbia, already super selective, is cutting graduate admissions by 10%. Brown is, as far as I know, the only university that plans to increase admissions. A few, like Princeton and Harvard, plan to admit about the same amount as always. </p>
<p>Endowment alone is not the right answer here; if you insist on analyzing such data, however, what one should look at is the size of the endowment relative to the graduate population. Brown’s endowment is about 1/3 that of Michigan’s, but it has less than 1/10 of Michigan’s graduate population. It’s also important to distinguish between which schools want to keep admitting the same number of students with less funding (Hopkins), admit a smaller number of students but keep funding the same (Emory), and admit about the same number with about the same funding (Harvard).</p>
<p>Classy as always hippo. I never explained how different universities use their endowments, I was merely commenting on a couple of Hawkette’s endowment/student figures.</p>
<p>Apology accepted hippo. But Brown is not 1/10 the size of Michigan. Brown (8,200 total students) is roughly 1/5 the size of Michigan (41,000 students) with 1/3 its endowment. But remember that Michigan gets a lot of money from the state and a lot of federal research money.</p>
Huh? As I said, universities across the board have been hurt by the financial crisis. </p>
<p>But it’s true, I have very little understanding of how cuts are being spread across various academic programs. Hawkette’s endowment numbers admittedly only reflect one window of time and are distinct from operating budget numbers, debt loads, etc.</p>
<p>So if other data is more useful, please share, I’d be interested (though I don’t suppose we want to totally sidetrack a “history graduate program” thread).</p>