Best schools for a history major?

[Anonymous]

William and Mary for US history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All SLACs are good for this generally, in that you are taught almost exclusively by tenure track professors. This is especially true at SLACs with a consortium, so you have other SLACs to choose from and possibly even graduate courses as a senior: the Claremont Colleges, the Five Colleges, and the tri-co consortium come to mind.

As for larger schools, the top Ph.D. History programs don’t typically provide the best undergraduate experience. Best bet is probably mid-size schools with lots of resources and smaller classes.

THIS^^^. Go to a smaller school with a good history dept where your kid will be in smaller courses and able to engage with the professors. whether they are headed to law school or any other PHD program, they will benefit from this and with recommendations. It will be easier to engage with profs and be more involved in research, etc at a smaller school.

This is a horrible idea. Once Republcans take over these schools will be worthless.

They are private schools. Worry more about the publics.

[Anonymous]

My husband went into software. He was hired at Arthur Andersen straight out of college. And in 5 years went out on his own consulting business and was making $300k (back in the late 90s). And then more…

The skills and brain it takes to write, absorb all those facts and analyze and communicate translate into a person that is incredibly valuable in the workforce.

My kids, like my husband and I, are equally strong in STEM and humanities. That helps—in law school, in the real world.

People Pooh Pooh history majors -ignorance. The same people that can’t get a 4 or 5 on a history AP exam. When you can get 5s in all subject areas—then talk.

[Anonymous]

Yale

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:William and Mary for US history.

That’s what I was going to suggest, but OP already commented that W&M is “too provincial” for her kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband went into software. He was hired at Arthur Andersen straight out of college. And in 5 years went out on his own consulting business and was making $300k (back in the late 90s). And then more…

The skills and brain it takes to write, absorb all those facts and analyze and communicate translate into a person that is incredibly valuable in the workforce.

My kids, like my husband and I, are equally strong in STEM and humanities. That helps—in law school, in the real world.

People Pooh Pooh history majors -ignorance. The same people that can’t get a 4 or 5 on a history AP exam. When you can get 5s in all subject areas—then talk.

This is great, and there are many successful history majors to this day. But it's no longer the late 90s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was a history major at Cal and am now in finance.

Me too. I am a lobbyist (with a JD). ALL of my history major friends from college - save 1 - went to law school. They now work in various law-related fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:William and Mary for US history.

That’s what I was going to suggest, but OP already commented that W&M is “too provincial” for her kid.

Op here. I think you're confusing replies to this post with replies to another post (the parent with the kid who lives overseas and caked William and Mary provincial). That was not me or my kid. Mine would definitely consider W&M.

[Anonymous]

Does he know what era and area of history he is interested in? If so, he should look at what professors have written papers on those topics (google scholar is great and free for searching) and see what university they teach at. History gets very specialized very quickly!

If he is interested in history more generally, then honestly any university or SLAC is probably fine. He could also look at factors such as what social science research opportunities the school offers, any interesting travel abroad history focused programs, grad school acceptance rates, and class sizes to form close relationships with professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does he know what era and area of history he is interested in? If so, he should look at what professors have written papers on those topics (google scholar is great and free for searching) and see what university they teach at. History gets very specialized very quickly!

If he is interested in history more generally, then honestly any university or SLAC is probably fine. He could also look at factors such as what social science research opportunities the school offers, any interesting travel abroad history focused programs, grad school acceptance rates, and class sizes to form close relationships with professors.

This was going to be my recommendation. Does he have a particular era/focus of interest?

I am retired and take a lot of online history courses through Wondrium (formerly The Great Courses). There are some truly amazing history professors who teach these courses and I would absolutely love to be a student attending lectures in person/participating in class discussions. For example, Dr. Jennifer Paxton is at Catholic University in DC (she specializes in Medieval History); Dr. Robert Bucholz is at Loyola (I’ve taken several of his courses—Tudor and Stuart England, History of London); Dr. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius is at University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Eastern European History)….these are just a small sample of the many courses I’ve enjoyed.

Another young historian I love is Jared Frederick (I cannot recall his university, but I believe it’s in Pennsylvania). He specializes in military history. He has a great series on YouTube where he analyzes popular media and puts into historical context (for example, the Band of Brothers series). He seems to have a very engaging personality and I suspect he is beloved by his students.

Hope this gives your son food for thought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He will have to compete with all the students masquerading as History majors who will immediately switch to CS or engineering the moment they get accepted. Our school has quite a few of them. You can immediately spot them because they apply for their "true" major to the state schools where you cannot switch easily.

Not in SLACs or other schools where it is not expected to declare a major on application.

[Anonymous]

My niece had a great experience as a history major at Swarthmore.

A suggestion when looking at any small college: check semester-by-semester course listings over a few semesters to see how many courses are actually being offered. The quality of the learning experience is likely to be super in any teaching-focused department, but you want a big enough department that the student has a chance to study a range of courses during an undergraduate career, even with faculty leaves.

[Anonymous]

Once you’ve narrowed down the list, it’s also worth checking the common data sets for those schools because they list the percentage of bachelor’s degrees awarded by major—a super-small number of graduates cannot sustain a history dept of much breadth, as a general rule, and also gives a sense of the size of the kid’s major cohort at the school at the undergraduate level.

Using some of the schools tossed out here (percentage of degrees conferred in History for 2022-23):
Brown 3.8
Williams 7.2
Richmond 1.2
Yale 5.6
Virginia 2.3

Must consider size of school, too, e.g., Michigan had 1% but 91 students (it looks like) bc it’s a big school, JHU had 0.6% but with 6000 undergrads that would be about 9 students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My niece had a great experience as a history major at Swarthmore.

A suggestion when looking at any small college: check semester-by-semester course listings over a few semesters to see how many courses are actually being offered. The quality of the learning experience is likely to be super in any teaching-focused department, but you want a big enough department that the student has a chance to study a range of courses during an undergraduate career, even with faculty leaves.

Agree.

Almost exactly what I conveyed in a much earlier post in this thread.

I attended a large LAC (over 2,000 students). History major. Too few history professors and very limited course offerings. I had to attend other schools over the summer or for a semester abroad in order to be able to take history courses that were of interest to me.

Nevertheless, some small schools do have more than adequate offerings for History majors:

https://gettysburg.edu/academic-programs/history/courses/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a history major at Cal and am now in finance.

Me too. I am a lobbyist (with a JD). ALL of my history major friends from college - save 1 - went to law school. They now work in various law-related fields.

+1 though a few were cross-disciplinary international relations/government and got work in those fields.