History Major Looking for College

College Search & Selection
21

Rice, Georgetown, USC, Vandy and Emory. Rice will be the least preppy and Emory second. I second JHU which gives solid FA. My favorite college professor got his degrees at JHU.

1 Like
22

Rice, Vanderbilt have great history departments if you want American history. Emory is solid. JHU is excellent. Tulane is not so good except maybe in Latin American history. Any of the Ivies will have great departments. Some of the major flagship universities are wonderful too. If you are interested in politics or international history try Berkeley, UT Austin, U-Wisconsin. USC in LA has a decent history dept.

2 Likes
23

As a former history major, I loved what I studied. Job prospects weren’t so great after college, but I went back and got an MBA (after trying and not liking law school).

I would recommend going somewhere that will give you lots of money for those excellent grades and test scores for two reasons:

  1. Your job prospects won’t be great if you study History
  2. Save the money for law school if that’s truly what you want to do.

Look at either private universities like liberal arts colleges, or public university honors colleges. Some you might consider are ASU, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Miami of Ohio (but it’s preppy), UT Austin, Univ of South Carolina. With the exception of UT, the others throw a lot of money around to attract students like you. The only city schools of these that are enclosed are ASU and UT Austin.

Our friends’ daughter is at JHU. Net cost this past year was $30K, and they’re fairly affluent.

It won’t matter for law school or grad school where you go as much as your grades and test scores.

4 Likes
24

Regarding employment prospects for humanities majors, including those who studied history, graduates from some colleges appear to perform significantly better than the average for these fields:

2 Likes
25

Well, you said you’d like a city, so I don’t know if you’d like Williams College. But Williams has a truly outstanding history department.

It also does extremely well in admissions to T14 law schools.

You can major in absolutely anything in college and go on to law school. But the very top law schools often explicitly voice (right on their websites!) a preference for intellectually oriented majors (think liberal arts) as opposed to pre-professional types of majors.

Here is a quote from Harvard’s website: “Harvard Law School considers applications from all undergraduate majors. There are no fixed requirements with respect to the content of pre-legal education. The nature of a candidate’s college work, as well as the quality of academic performance, are reviewed in the selection process. However, in preparing for law school, a broad college education is usually preferable to one that is narrowly specialized. The Admissions Committee looks for a showing of thorough learning in a field of your choice, such as history, economics, government, philosophy, mathematics, science, literature or the classics (and many others), rather than a concentration in courses given primarily as vocational training.”

Also, you asked if an undergrad college “matters.” If you love learning and the life of the mind, it matters immensely
 for those four years can be a magical and mind-expanding experience in and of themselves, not just as a hoop to jump en route to a career.

Yes, history departments will vary school to school. Explore not only your department’s offerings and professor’s research backgrounds, and whether these match your interests, but the general strength of the college. Will you be in classes that work with primary sources and have engaged students discussing the material actively, and engaged professors meeting with you to discuss it and providing extensive feedback on your papers? Or will you sit in large lectures, read mostly secondary sources, complete tests without much feedback beyond the grade? All that will affect your experience as a history major.

Good luck!

4 Likes
26

All the universities you named (Rice, JHU, Emory, Vanderbilt) should be fine for history. I remember attending a JHU info session on campus and my son’s being impressed by a student speaker’s enthusiastic discussion of her (obscure) intellectual interest as a history major! It was reassuring to hear that, though JHU is known for being strong in STEM, a history major could thrive there as well.
But check out the catalogs! Look for breadth, depth, and how much the course topics appeal to you.

2 Likes
27

Yes, JHU is arguably stronger in the humanities than the sciences aside from biology. It has always been top-notch for history, art history, English and writing, biblical studies and archaeology, etc.

Humanities majors at universities like JHU often get the best of both worlds – the small classes and faculty attention of a LAC but the resources and advanced courses of a university.

1 Like