After falling in love with literary theory, I’m pretty convinced that I’m going to go for it and at least try out a Master’s before inevitably going to law school. But I do have one question: because my only sincere goal is to pursue academic inquiry for a few more years on a level I know will never afterward be attainable, merely as a brief detour from my eventual goal to practice public interest law, will that hurt my application?

Also, considering that I have a 3.89 GPA and got a 169 on my practice LSAT, I think I may be insane to bypass this (extremely viable) chance to get into the top law schools in the U.S. But–and this might be painfully idealistic–I think I’ll always regret it if I don’t pursue this.

I have read time and time again that someone has gotten a PhD from a decent institution, and considers it a tragedy that they are now teaching at some Community College. This is ridiculous. I plan to use a PhD as a way to get my writing published, and on top of that I will be glad to obtain a teaching position at a high school or community college.

Now, I’m not sure what to write on my applications. Obviously, if I write that my goal is to teach at a high school – well, the committees are going to look down on that. I just write “teaching” because I figure they assume that I am a snotty person that thinks PhDs have a god given right to teach in the university setting.

Honestly, I just think that I was born to do this. I don’t care what it costs or how long it takes. I want to be a historian of the highest caliber – and believe me, I know all about historiography and the difficulty of acquiring source materials. I am confident that I can do this!

As for funding and financial aid: again, there is no one prescription for getting what you want or need. After reading through various grad programs’ web sites, I would contact the graduate studies director (or chair) and ask her or him your questions about interdisciplinarity and financial aid. The more specific you can be about yourself, your interests, and your questions, the more helpful the grad studies directors can be in their replies to you. Their responses–or lack of responsiveness–will tell you a lot about whether or not you’d be a good fit for those programs.

In general, though, Ph.D. students tend to be better funded than M.A. students–there are some programs that offer TA-ships to M.A. students, but it’s my impression that those goodies (if they exist) tend to be reserved more for the long-haul students. As for your GRE scores–one of the questions you should ask is if there’s a cutoff for a minimum GRE score. (Some large and well-funded departments get so many applications that they may decide that they don’t need to look at anyone with below a 550 or 600 on the verbal GRE, for example.) It might be worth your while to re-take the test, to see if you can get the scores up if you’re at or below the cutoff. Your grades, admissions essay, and letters of rec. will be more important overall, but only if your application gets a look, and it might not if your scores are very low.

Good luck!

i am thinking of applying to a phd program in either history or social sciences. i am more interested in interdisciplinary studies, but isn’t history at the graduate level taking on more of an interdisciplinary form as well?

also, how can i secure an assistantship or other aid from universities that i apply to? i graduated with honors from an ivy league college, but my gre scores are a little weak. what are the main ingredients (including specific scores and gpa) that would help secure financial aid that does not need to be repaid?

I’d give one more bit of advice for prospective grad students: shoot a well-thought-out e-mail to a professor at each school you’re considering applying to. Not because it will help you get in — it won’t — but because if you ask the right questions, it will help you weed out a lot of schools that just don’t fit for you. I ended up knocking out about 7-8 schools based on the useful information I got from the responses: the prof who was rude to me, the one who wouldn’t tell me whether or not he was retiring, the ones that told me they were retiring, and the one that told me his school was no longer admitting any students in my subfield. These contacts saved me a lot of time and money that would have been wasted otherwise.

Brett and Judith, thanks for stopping by to comment. Good luck, Judith–but I’m not sure Panera pays well enough to pay down your law school debts! You could do worse than a Ph.D. in legal history–I’m sure your law degree will go a long way towards getting you in the door, and probably with funding, too.

And Geoff: you started grad school a few years before the job market took off again in the mid- to late 1990s, only shortly after the recession of 1991 put the brakes on hiring until 1994 or 1995 again. Things were pretty good in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was on the market for my first and then my second (and current) TT job. I’m wondering if we’re entering another deep freeze for a few years.

The only good news about the hiring ice age is that for those of us who have jobs we like, we’ll be able to hold onto talented young faculty a little longer than they would necessarily like to be held onto. But, that’s thin gruel indeed for those who don’t yet have TT jobs, or for those who are unhappy where they are. So get comfy everyone–you might be where you are for a while longer than you had planned.