So I am currently looking to get into an American Studies program. I will be applying to several schools this upcoming fall but I am a little worried about where I might be able to go. I went to a small school in Southern Utah and majored in history. Where I had decent grades for being a non traditional student with a full time job. I think I had a 3.2 as my overall GPA but in history I managed to maintain 3.4. I’m also a Native American with, what i would like to say, good ties to all my history professors.
What I want to do a majority of my research on is the Assimilation and Americanization of the Native American people and how it has come to effect that population. Being Native American I think its important to understand why we are the way we are. That is to say why we have been so under represented In almost every aspect of American Culture. Those fields being Music, Athletics, Film, and literature. That’s not say there aren’t outliers in each field. I am very aware of some of them Jim Thorpe, Frank Waln, and Sherman Alexie to name a few.
What I’m worried about are the schools on this list I have made for myself and my actual chances of getting into them. These schools include Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Michigan, NAU, Utah , Umass Boston, and possibly Brown/ Cornell. I’m looking for outside opinions on this.