I am currently a high school junior looking for schools good for East Asian Studies or History in general, here are some of my stats and background info:
Male Asian-Pacific Islander living in NYC
?? GPA (our school based it of 100 and my unweighted is 98 and weighted 103.5)
SAT 1-1500
SAT 2-US History 780 Math 2 -770 (def retaking it) considering world history
3 APs by the end of junior year, likely to be 5s (I already have a 5 on world history)
3 year Gold Medalist for Russian Language Olympia
Self-taught Japanese
Finalist for Stony Brook Japan Center Essay competition
History Club founder and president, taught a review for APUSH before
NHS member
Going to Cornell Summer College this summer for Middle East history (2018)
and a bunch of other leadership/volunteering related or not related…
Cost: looking for something like $50000~$60000 but not really too much of a factor as long as the school is good
Location: doesn’t matter, preferably not Midwest
I like really historical school with old buildings but it is just something additional
Typically looking for good school with East Asian Studies or history program that I can try to get in (except the Ivies lol)
Also you can name good pre-law schools
Do you guys know any good schools besides the Ivies that are practical for me? PLEASE HELP!!! THX
Tufts immediately came to mind for all your criteria bit honestly, there are a lot of options. What else are you looking for in terms of size, urban v rural, vibe.
Georgetown perhaps? Although SFS would be a reach even with your stats.
I wouldn’t completely discount the Midwest. Michigan, Chicago, Northwestern, and WashU have quality undergraduate programs in History.
Oddly enough, WashU has some experts in Asian History-my son is a dual Biology/History major and has taken some classes in imperial Chinese and modern Chinese History and there is another professor there specially in Japan post-Meiji era.
The superstar programs for East Asian History are obviously Harvard and Stanford (Harvard has its association with John King Fairbank). Yale is also good at East Asian history-Jonathan Spence is a China expert (but not at the level of Fairbank), but it sounds like you don’t have any interest in the Ivies. I would still suggest that you apply to one.
Don’t retake a 770 in Math 2. That score is good enough, even for a STEM major. Maybe take a language SAT Subject test.
The Five College consortium has a Five-college-wide interdiscipilnary East Asian focus/ concentration that might interest you. Scroll down to see various offerings – https://www.fivecolleges.edu/academics
It’s not that I am not looking into the Ivies—everyone knows they’re probably good at all fields of humanity. I just simply need more choices beside them.
I don’t know if you want to pay for OOS public schools, but Berkeley, UCLA, UW-Seattle, University of Minnesota, and UW-Madison have good history programs that you can look into. Indiana is supposed to have a good history department as well.
The WashU professor whose expertise is in Chinese History earned his PhD from the University of Washington.
FWIW, UC-Berkeley’s East Asian Library has spectacular architecture. First standalone East Asian university library and holds the second-most volume of books behind Harvard.
WashU also has a pretty significant collection of East Asian/Chinese manuscripts. Obviously it’s not the caliber of Harvard/Stanford Hoover Institution, but supposedly it’s one of the premier collections in the Midwest.
While I’m not a big fan of going to UC Berkeley for undergrad, I know people who teach Japanese in the East Asian Studies program there, and they genuinely do think they have the best program in the country.
Berkeley is great on a graduate, professional and research level. For undergrad, it’s pretty much just another big, state flagship. Huge classes, little personalized attention. Some people are OK with that, others aren’t.