<p>I've always loved history and I plan to eventually get a Ph.D in that subject, so I've done a bit of research on the top departments. My feeling is that Princeton and Yale are in the Tier I category while Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia and UCLA belong in Tier II. All these schools appear to be very strong in the history of Europe, but I would say that UCLA is much weaker in American History (I would know, since I took classes there), although it has very good professors covering the nations of France (Caroline Ford), Germany (Saul Friedlander, Peter Baldwin), Russia (Arch Getty) and Armenia (Richard Hovannisian).</p>