<p>I am currently a student at a local community college here in Southern California doing the 2 year transfer route like so many of us here are and I've got a year left before I transfer to a university so if I could get any suggestions that would be great!
My info/interests:
I'm currently a history major(Ya no laughing :P ) and my career plan is to be a history professor with a focus in either ancient history or irish history. My highschool SAT score was an 1800 and the GPA was like a 3.2 ( I was a lazy student :/ ) and here at the CC I would say I'm a B student but with a consistant work history and I'm planning on making this last year the 'Power Year'. I have already made a list of colleges that I plan on applying to but I would like to get either A) more info on them, such as personal experiences and how well their history departments are or B) alternative universities. My main concern is price, I have a twin sister and an older brother that will be attending university at the same time and this has put a huge burden on my parents. I would prefer a college that offers or actively helps students find a job while they study or is generous with their financial help. I would prefer to stay on the pacific north west or as my list below shows Europe XD . I like rain and I don't mind the cold, it is humidity and heat that kills me! I like smaller universities but that is not a necessity.
My college list in order of preference:
1)Queen's university of belfast : While I know the admissions rate is low (40% i believe) it is my "I have a dream" school being that their history department is what I'm looking for and that i plan to do post grad there.
2)University of Oregon: History programs look nice and it is the climate I'm looking for and I have heard good things about the college itself
3) University of Colorado- Boulder : same as above
4) University of Washington: same as above, though the amount of students and, from what I've heard , impacted classes are a turn off
Any suggestions, comments or alternative schools would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>Your first step is to decide whether you’re more interested in ancient history or Irish history. That impacts everything.</p>
<p>For ancient history, you’ll need at least four years of Greek or Latin and three years of the other. Since you’re already (presumably) behind on languages, you need to start both immediately if you expect to be at all competitive for graduate admissions. With two years of Greek and Latin, you might be able to get into a funded master’s program; you would at least be eligible for a post-bac program in classics. You would also need either German or French for a master’s or both for a PhD. </p>
<p>There are very few graduate programs in Irish history in the US. Harvard dominates Celtic studies, but it’s language-heavy. Berkeley, NYU, and Notre Dame are the other heavyweights in the US, as well as Wisconsin and UCLA to a lesser extent. With any of these, you’d be expected to already have at least a basic knowledge of modern Irish (Old and Middle Irish can be picked up later). You may be expected to know another European language as well; you’d certainly need Latin for the medieval period or earlier.</p>
<p>With this in mind, reconsider your list. Do they regularly offer the languages you need? Also, keep in mind that as an out-of-state (or international) student, you are unlikely to get much, if any, financial aid at those universities. </p>
<p>If you can get your grades up, your best options by far are Berkeley and UCLA.</p>
<p>You should check the costs associated with each university. Try “net price calculator” at the US university web sites, and look for the international student costs at the non-US schools.</p>
<p>In-state public universities may be among the most budget and financial aid friendly schools.</p>
<p>Your advice is helpful and you’re right I am very behind on languages with only 3 semesters of spanish. While I figured it would help to know latin, it was more of a passing thought so I definitely will look into that. What I really wanted to do was research into ancient irish history (combination of the 2 
) because there is so little information out, I find it very interesting and I feel like I would be paying a bit of a homage to my ancestory but if it came between the two I would probably pick ancient history. My problem at this point is finding a decent school with a decent history department that isn’t an ivy league. I have been to Berkley and while it was beautiful campus it is definitely off my list for expenses and most of the people I met while I was there weren’t my cup of tea. Most of the trouble I have run into is that the colleges that fit my budget range and have a well known history program are mainly focused on American history.Thanks for responding!</p>
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<p>First, you need to do some serious thinking and research about academia as a career. Most universities will not hire professors who did not do their undergraduate (some weight) and graduate (a lot of weight) at a university at least as prestigious, if not more so, than their own. If you get a Ph.D. from a bottom-ranked university, you will have very few options. Beyond that, even for graduate students at top-tier universities, going into any debt for a humanities Ph.D. is almost always a very bad idea. My impression from reading articles about this is that nobody should ever get a humanities Ph.D. they have to go into more than ~$0 of debt for. For all graduate students, even very top ones, finding a job is incredibly difficult and competitive. I’m trying to run off, so no links now, but the statistics of Ph.D.s per available job are very bleak, as a quick trip down Google lane will confirm. Second, more specifically, you have noticed that most of the colleges available to you with well-known history programs mainly focus on American history. Should you find a good education in Irish or classical history, what do you think the dearth of such programs will mean for your employment prospects? This isn’t to say that you can’t want to study these things, but that you need not only about where to get an advanced degree in these things, but what your options after that degree are. I don’t think there are many opportunities to teach Irish in secondary school, but secondary schools do often look for Latin teachers. I don’t know enough about the requirements for that, but they are less than to be a classics professor. (No need to spend quite so many years being educated–I don’t know whether you’d need a masters, although it might be likely. Ph.D. would be superfluous, though.) Might that appeal? It is, at the very least, not a field as small or as rapidly contracting as new hires in academia.</p>
<p>If you really do want a Ph.D., I need to respond to your academic interests. Ancient Irish history is not “a combination of the two.” Rome never touched Ireland. Latin will be helpful for you if you want to study medieval Irish civilization, from the second half of the first millennium on. (St. Patrick went over in the early fifth, but many secondary works on “early Ireland” focus on the eighth and ninth centuries. Rome had fallen centuries and centuries before that point.) Irish is decidedly still useful for medieval Irish civilization; they tended to write more texts in the vernacular than do the literate portions of most medieval countries. I am not certain even how many texts survive in Ireland from before Rome fell and before Ireland was Christianized–the Irish were pretty thoroughly pagan and uncivilized (read: not literate), from what it sounds like. In that case, modern Irish would probably be helpful to give you access to the literature, but you’d likely be doing more text-less archaeology than reading Irish texts.</p>
<p>So early Irish studies is probably a dangerous field to enter at this point, unless you’re confident you can swing a job in Europe (not a good thing of which to be confident), but classics is also a dangerous field nowadays. As the other posters have said, you would need as much Greek and Latin as you can feasibly stuff into your schedule as soon as possible. You should probably buy yourself a textbook in at least one language and start learning now if your community college offers neither and you want classical graduate school to be a viable option. (Although both languages are difficult, they are not spoken, so teaching yourself is not as great a problem as with modern languages. I have an acquaintance who ended up at a semi-vocational high school, so he taught himself the first two-three years of Latin before he managed to get into a university that did teach it. I did a few chapters of Ancient Greek by myself before I realized that the classics were not going to be my major field.) The classics have two problems for employment nowadays. First, they’re getting cut all over the place–Michigan State, for example. As with Irish studies, the problems of academia in general are exacerbated here. Second, which is the reason I turned away from them, do you have something new to say about the classical world–a world that, as its name should indicate, has been studied extensively for the past two thousand years? I didn’t. As one of my friends who also turned away from the classics (although not classical history) said, it would be impossible to get a handle on all the classical commentaries and scholarship produced merely from the 15th to the 17th centuries, let alone the modern commentaries on those commentaries! Do you know what new perspective you would be bringing to the field? If you just find them interesting, again, it might be worth looking into teaching secondary school rather than college. (Fairly sure there are many more opportunities to teach Latin in high school than in community college or other lower-ranked institutions of higher education.) That requires a love of teaching, not a love of research. Research universities want their professors to love research, whether or not they like teaching. If you primarily like teaching rather than research, academia might not be for you.</p>
<p>Good luck! I’m not saying you can’t do this, just that you need to research it more before committing to anything. I’d also like to clarify my tone–tried to fix it but wasn’t having a great deal of success, so I’d rather be overt about my intended tone in retrospect. “Academia might not be for you,” at the end of the last paragraph is not condescending. I’ve been sharing the reasons that it might not be a good fit for you, but not from a position of “oh academia is for me.” No, this is all coming from the position of “I keep looking into academia and, while there’s still a chance I will do it when I get old enough to actually have to decide, the list of “cons” keeps growing longer and longer than the “pros” so yikes it might not be for me either.”</p>
<p>have been to Berkley and while it was beautiful campus it is definitely off my list for expenses a</p>
<p>If you can’t afford Berkeley, then you can’t afford many of the schools on your list. They will cost MORE than Cal. </p>
<p>As a transfer student you won’t get much/any aid. OOS publics also won’t give you much/any aid. </p>
<p>What is your budget? How much will your family spend? If it’s less than $20k, then you’re going to be limited to CSUs in your area. You might try some of the lower UCs to transfer to. With your GPA, the better UCs won’t likely accept you. With 3 in college, a UC should give you good aid.</p>
<p>As for next year being your “power year”, that’s a bit late. Your second semester grades won’t be available at that point. All you’ll have is your first semester grades.</p>
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<p>UC and CSU will likely give the same amounts of need-based aid as they do to freshmen – see the net price calculators (Berkeley’s does not distinguish between freshman and transfer students). There are likely to be fewer merit scholarships for transfer students than freshmen.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Right…I was really talking about her OOS choices. I do think that CSUs and lower-tier UCs might work out. </p>
<p>She mentions not affording Cal, but with 2 sibs in college, her EFC may be low enough for good aid at a UC. I don’t think chances for admittance is high for Cal, but would be for a lower UC.</p>
<p>As noted above you would eventually need a Ph.d. to follow your dreams, this would no doubt be an expensive endeavor having three levels of schooling to pass through could potentially ruin you fiscally. This is unorthodox but if you are open I recommend trying a public school in a plains state, why? It is dirt cheap, and you can stand out from the other students if you apply yourself…perhaps even get into Honors College, which would look good for grad schools.</p>
<p>Take for instance, The University of South Dakota. Tuition is only $8,924 OOS which is amazing, and they offer financial aid and scholarships. And then you could get a B.A. in History and they even have a concentration in Ancient Studies ([Program:</a> History (B.A., B.S.) - THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA - Acalog ACMS?](<a href=“Program: History (B.A., B.S.) - THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA - Acalog ACMS™”>Program: History (B.A., B.S.) - THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA - Acalog ACMS™)) as well as elective courses on Ireland.</p>
<p>“That requires a love of teaching, not a love of research. Research universities want their professors to love research, whether or not they like teaching. If you primarily like teaching rather than research, academia might not be for you.”</p>
<p>To be honest I was originally going to take my history major and pursue a career in archives and saw little improvement in job outlook. I would definitely not want to work at the highschool level but lets say I get my degrees for a university level and there are no jobs, I’ll go where and open spot is. I picked university teaching over highschool level because of the atmosphere and the maturity of the students ( I wouldn’t have to deal too much with ‘problem children’). I know that a major in humanities is not a great option and I’ve pained over it myself but of all the skills or interests that I have and what career options I could take , a history professor seemed the most realistic choice. Your comments have helped 
and I guess I’ll tentatively go back to the drawing board.</p>
<p>Europe is probably unrealistic for you if cost is a factor. Where are you from - where are you in-state to? That’s probably where you should focus your search. Your state probably has several great public flagships where you can study history (which is a major pretty much anywhere) and excel.</p>
<p>Most universities will not hire professors who did not do their undergraduate (some weight) and graduate (a lot of weight) at a university at least as prestigious, if not more so, than their own.</p>
<p>This is true at the PhD level but it is not true at the undergrad level. When colleges and universities do hiring of professors, they don’t really care where you did your undergrad. What they care about is 1) your graduate university 2) your advisor 3) your publication and research record 4) your teaching experience and 5) your fit with their department, and what you can offer to their students if it’s more teaching-focused. History professors at teaching-oriented schools should definitely have a research focus but also need broader-based interests and abilities to teach, because likely you’ll get to teach maybe one section of Irish history to seniors but will primarily be teaching intro courses and some wide survey courses to majors and nonmajors filling requirements.</p>
<p>You don’t want to deal too much with “problem children”? I TA at the university level in a PhD program and there are problem students. It’s not quite the same level as HS students, but not all of the college students fold their hands quietly and listen intently to what you have to say.</p>
<p>I highly, highly doubt that of all your skills and interests, a history professor was the most realistic choice. I’m not saying you should change your major, but when you do transfer to a four year, visit the career services office and explore some other careers.</p>
<p>I’m a University of Oregon student. The U gives away lots of financial aid, and is a fantastic school. Message me if you have any questions; I’d be glad to help.</p>
<p>I highly doubt the Oregon would give much aid to an OOS transfer student.</p>
<p>My girlfriend gets ~$10k/year.</p>
<p>That could be fed aid…a pell grant, student loan, and workstudy. If so, that wouldn’t be aid from Oregon.</p>
<p>Was she a transfer? What is her EFC? Is she instate?</p>
<p>And, $10k is NOT a lot of aid for an OOS student with financial issues.</p>
<p>I would not worry so much about money at this point. Actually, you want to go to most prestigious institution as possible aka berkeley and others. Heres why. Doctoral programs in general …even history…are really hard to get into…they often accept less than 10% of applicants,which in terms of acceptance rate is more competitive tha undergrad ivies. Also, doctoral programs really do care about the prestige and the quality of undergrad ed. For you,it matters even more because you seemed to have gone to a community college. Furthermore, faculty recommendation and doing research with top faculties weigh very heavily…more than gpa and gres. Higher ranked undergrad institutions tend to have those well known faculties with research opportunities.</p>
<p>Lastly, many of history doctoral programs offer full tuition, health insurance, and stipends (at least 4 yr major research universities),so you won’t be heavily in debt because of grad school.</p>
<p>Also, I wouldn’t lock myself into history ph.d. yet just with 2 yrs of cc undergrad history classes. Full college level and upper level classes are completely different from what you have taken so far. They are a lot harder and accelerated. Plus, doing a Ph.d means that they will train you to be a researcher not a teacher, which means you will spend 8 yrs primarily doing research. Have you had a chance to write a thesis or do significant original research? If you don’t want to do research your every breathing moment, you probably shouldn’t go to grad school.</p>