<p>Which colleges on this list have the best history programs?
Amherst
Bowdoin
Brown
UC Berkeley
Dartmouth
Duke
Georgetown
Middlebury
UNC
Northwestern
University of Notre Dame
Princeton
USC
Stanford
Vanderbilt
UVA
Wesleyan
William and Mary
Williams
Yale</p>
<p>The answer will vary depending on the subfield(s) of interest you want to consider and on the criteria you apply.
If you are interested in Tang Dynasty China you may find the best instruction at one school; if you are interested in Colonial North America, you may find better instruction at another. It is hard to single out a few colleges as having consistently, categorically better undergraduate history programs than anywhere else.</p>
<p>US News and the National Research Council both rank university history departments.
<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/history-rankings”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/history-rankings</a>
<a href=“NRC Rankings Overview: History”>http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-History/124736/</a>
These two rankings are graduate program rankings. They have some relevance for undergraduate programs, to the extent they reflect the quality of history teaching that may be available to undergraduates. However, especially at large research universities with relatively high student:faculty ratios, the most distinguished professors (whose publications tend to drive up their schools’ graduate program rankings) may not often teach undergraduates. Even when they do, they aren’t necessarily as good at teaching as they are at research.</p>
<p>Undergraduates probably are most likely to be taught by distinguished historians in small classes, where the professor leads discussions and grades papers, at very selective private research universities (such as the Ivies, Chicago, Duke, or Johns Hopkins.) Undergrads are even more likely to be taught by experienced history professors (though not necessarily by the most distinguished history scholars), in small classes with a high level of student-faculty engagement, at liberal arts colleges. At very selective colleges and universities you are likely to get a relatively high quality of classroom discussion, which can be an important part of undergraduate history education. </p>
<p>Two schools not on the OP’s list, the University of Chicago and Columbia, have smaller undergraduate classes, on average, than nearly any other research universities. They attract very good undergraduate students and some of the best history scholars in America. Both emphasize frequent classroom discussion of primary source materials (not textbooks). At Chicago, at least, some of the most prominent historians on the faculty often do teach undergraduates. Professors are rewarded for excellent undergraduate teaching (<a href=“Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching | University of Chicago”>http://www.uchicago.edu/about/accolades/35/</a>). Both Chicago and Columbia have long-established Core Curriculum programs that provide undergrads interdisciplinary breadth in humanities and social science disciplines related to history. Both have massive library systems (important to attracting top historians.)</p>
<p>So these two universities may be a cut above some other selective colleges in the quality of undergraduate history education, in general. However, many other schools offer similar advantages, and in some cases even better programs in some subfields. If you aren’t interested in a specific period and want consistently good undergraduate classes, I’d say you are least likely to go wrong by choosing a selective liberal arts college. From 2006-2010, according to NSF/webcaspar data, LACs whose alumni earned the highest number of history PhDs were:
Carleton College
Oberlin College
Swarthmore College
Reed College
Amherst College
Smith College
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University</p>
<p>I’ll disagree with tk21769 to some extent. See my post on your question about English Departments. The most important things to learn either in history or English are not material but method. Yeah, there are some of the premier scholars of colonial America in your choices, but are they teaching undergraduates and to what extent are they teaching methods at the same time they’re teaching their period. A good research library can be found at any of these schools, but you need to learn archival work, for instance, from someone who has you doing archival research in your courses. You need professors who have the time to spend, for instance, on improving your writing because they’re not expected to produce 2 articles/year and a book every six. I think in history as in English, the tip has to go to the LACs, so in that I agree with tk.</p>
<p>Yale history is phenomenal right now.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that the most important things for a history major to learn have to do with method, although you don’t learn that tradecraft in a vacuum. You learn it through close examination of documents and artifacts associated with particular periods and places. It is very desirable to have professors on the faculty who have the depth and breadth of experience to recognize materials most suitable for undergraduates. At Chicago, primary source materials are compiled by the faculty collectively for publication by the university press as instructional material for undergraduate classes. Example: the Readings in Western Civilization series edited by historian and Dean of the College, John Boyer and emeritus history professor Julius Kirshner. (<a href=“Book Series: Readings in Western Civilization”>http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/series/RWC.html</a>) I don’t think a series like this could easily be produced at a small college, nor at a big impersonal research university by a team of young postdocs. It couldn’t be used effectively in large lecture classes, nor (usually) in 1 hr/week “recitations” led by TAs. It is best used by mature professors who “know their stuff” as historians and who also can guide a classroom discussion away from the preoccupations of American teenagers into the mindset of people living in those other times and places. </p>
<p>I don’t doubt that Yale, Stanford, or Berkeley have phenomenal historians who are also good teachers. If you happen to be interested in particular periods/regions covered by those professors, and can get into one of those schools, great. However, it seems to me that what has been developed at Chicago and Columbia, or at many of the LACs, is more of an “ecosystem” for undergraduate education that is not so dependent on luck-of-the-draw in getting classes with star professors. Maybe some other research universities have that, too. It is hard for any of us to be personally familiar with approaches at more than a few colleges.</p>
<p>History PhD Production Rates, Adjusted for Undergraduate Program Size
Method
M = number of graduating History majors per school, 2012
P = number of History PhDs conferred on alumni per school, 2007-11
Rate = P / (M*5)</p>
<p>Data Sources
IPEDS (<a href=“Use the Data”>http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/</a>) for M, number of graduating History majors per school, 2012
NSF (<a href=“NCSES”>NCSES) for P, number of History PhDs earned by school alumni, 2007-11</p>
<p> Rate … P … M … School
27.7% 18 13 Wellesley College
26.3% 21 16 Reed College
21.7% 13 12 Bryn Mawr College
17.6% 44 50 University of Chicago
17.3% 19 22 Swarthmore College
17.0% 52 61 Brown University
15.6% 7 9 Pomona College
15.2% 22 29 Carleton College
14.3% 20 28 Amherst College
13.6% 74 109 Yale University
12.8% 16 25 Grinnell College
12.5% 40 64 Stanford University
12.5% 15 24 Wesleyan University
11.1% 42 76 Princeton University
10.4% 12 23 Macalester College
9.4% 72 153 Harvard University
9.2% 30 65 Northwestern Univ
8.7% 13 30 Kenyon College
8.6% 19 44 Oberlin College
8.0% 12 30 Bowdoin College
7.8% 9 23 Johns Hopkins University
7.8% 38 98 College of William and Mary
7.4% 74 201 University of California-Berkeley
7.2% 17 47 Georgetown University
7.0% 8 23 Haverford College
6.7% 43 128 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
6.5% 17 52 Washington University
6.1% 39 128 Columbia University in the City of New York
5.9% 8 27 Brandeis University
5.8% 9 31 Middlebury College
5.6% 22 78 Duke University
5.3% 4 15 Hampshire College
5.3% 37 140 University of Pennsylvania
5.3% 21 80 Dartmouth College
5.0% 9 36 University of Southern California
4.8% 14 58 Vanderbilt University
4.1% 12 59 Williams College
3.6% 34 187 University of Virginia, Main Campus
3.0% 33 217 University of Wisconsin-Madison
3.0% 38 250 University of Texas at Austin
3.0% 7 47 Gettysburg College
2.3% 20 177 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2.1% 6 57 University of Notre Dame
2.0% 43 428 University of California-Los Angeles</p>
<p>See this:
<a href=“Privileging History: Trends in the Undergraduate Origins of History PhDs | Perspectives on History | AHA”>http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2005/privileging-history-trends-in-the-undergraduate-origins-of-history-phds</a></p>