Together with the academic transcript and (in some cases) GRE scores, the most important components of an application for graduate study in history are, for many history departments, the student’s own statement of purpose and the supporting letters of recommendation. This essay offers some suggestions for avoiding common pitfalls in the preparation of these components, and for making them as strong and persuasive as possible.

In brief, the most effective statements of purpose are those that are specific, well written, professional in tone, scrupulously accurate in spelling and grammar, and tailored to the particular institution to which the application is addressed. The statement should avoid sweeping philosophical generalizations, avowals of political or other ideology, or ruminations about the nature of historical knowledge and its essential role in bettering the human condition. No matter how earnestly intended or passionately felt, such lofty rhetoric all too easily descends to the level of cliché, especially when offered in a necessarily compressed form, suggesting an immature and jejune outlook rather than the intended profundity. Summaries of extra-curricular activities and achievements, no matter how outstanding, are usually best confined to those having a direct bearing on the professional field to which you are seeking entry.

While it is certainly appropriate to discuss how you became interested in history, and to include something about your long-range career goals, such matters should be kept brief and to the point. Remember that your application is one of many being read by busy faculty members who have numerous other time-consuming obligations as well. Keep your tendencies toward loquaciousness well in check, and observe word limits strictly.

The strongest essay is one that sums up your scholarly interests and immediate academic objectives in a clear and straightforward fashion. Your statement should be quite precise about the time period, geographic regions, or kind of history you want to study, and perhaps even the specific topic you wish ultimately to investigate. You should briefly indicate how your undergraduate reading, research, and course work have shaped your particular interests and have prepared you to pursue them further. At the same time, bear in mind that the earlier phases of graduate education involve primarily general training rather than research on a specific topic. Therefore, your statement should convey an openness to the acquisition of a wide range of historical knowledge and research skills rather than an obsessive fixation on a single narrow topic. (An application from a college senior whose sole purpose in life is to study the Battle of Antietam or the fall of Malacca to the Portuguese in 1511 would probably raise warning signals for most graduate admissions committees.)

It is entirely appropriate, indeed desirable, to tailor your statement of purpose to the institution to which you are applying. Feel free, for example, to mention professors with whom you would like to work or specific strengths—such as particular manuscript holdings or degree programs—that make the institution attractive to you. Such specificity should avoid elaborate praise or flattery and a fawning, excessively deferential tone is likely to be counterproductive.

The statement of purpose is also the place for you to address briefly any anomalies or ambiguities in your record that might given an admissions committee pause, such as a non-standard grading system or courses whose content is not clear from the transcript (e.g., “Independent Study”). If your undergraduate background in history is weak, it might be advisable for you to describe in more detail than would otherwise be necessary the evolution of your academic interests, and to make plain that your commitment to the discipline is now firm.

The quality of the essay is probably more important than its substantive content. The members of the admissions committee who pass upon your application will evaluate your statement for the evidence it offers about the quality, clarity, and originality of your mind; your maturity and sense of direction; your skills as a writer; and your capacity for careful attention to detail. A thoughtful, well-crafted, coherently organized essay can go a long way toward favorably disposing a committee on your behalf. Conversely, a shallow, formulaic, hastily written statement marred by poor organization, awkwardness of expression, or (even worse) outright grammatical errors or misspellings, can seriously undermine an otherwise strong application. I have seen application essays where misspelled words or grammatical errors had been heavily circled or underlined by previous readers, with an exclamation point in the margin. Such lapses of detail are not necessarily fatal in themselves, particularly if the admissions committee convinces itself that the applicant is a “diamond in the rough.” But they are sufficiently damaging, especially in borderline cases, that every effort to avoid them is strongly recommended.

Clearly, no single “formula” can guarantee admission to graduate school in history or any other discipline. Each admissions decision reflects a variety of factors and subjective judgments by fallible human beings. But the tips offered above should help maximize your chances. Good luck!

Boag, Peter. Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon. University of Washington Press, 2022.

Brecher, William. Animal Care in Japanese Tradition: A Short History. Columbia University Press, 2022.

Bauman, Robert and Franklin, Robert, Co-editors. Echoes of Exclusion and Resistance: Voices from the Hanford Region. WSU Press, 2020.

Brecher, William,  Japan’s Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930. Brill Publications, 2021.

Faunce, Ken, Heavy Traffic: The Global Drug Trade in Historical Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Herzog, Shawna, Negotiating Abolition: The Antislavery Project in the British Straits Settlements, 1786–1843. Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2021.

Phoenix, Karen, Gender Rules: Identity and Empire in Historical Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Stratton, Clif, Power Politics: Carbon Energy in Historical Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Brecher, William, Co-editor. Defamiliarizing Japan’s Asia-Pacific War. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019.

Chastain, Andra, Rethinking Basic Infrastructure: Urban Development and Metro-Building in Latin America, 1960s-1980s,” special issue of Comparativ, edited by Marc Frey, Sönke Kunkel, and Nancy Kwak.

Faunce, Ken, Global Drug Trade. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Heidenreich, Linda, Nepantla²: Excavating Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Northern California. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

“La Sombra y el Sueño: Looking for Queer Hope in Times of Epochal Shift,”. in El Mundo Zurdo 7: Selected Works from the 2015 Meeting of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 2019: 63-78.

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“The Parthians’ Failed Vassalage of Syria: The Shortsighted Western Policy of Phraates II and the Second Reign of Demetrius II (129-125 BCE).” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 60.1-2 (2020): 1-14.

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HGSA Minutes 2023-2024

HGSA Minutes September 2023

HGSA Colloquia

The History Graduate Student Association Colloquium Series for Fall 2018 begins in August.

Stay tuned for the 2018 HGSA colloquium poster!

HGSA Newsletter

Fall 2022-2023

Fall 2021-2022

HGSA bylaws

Last changes accepted by the committee in 2016 can be seen here.

Teaching Assistantship

The only type of financial assistance regularly offered by the Department of History is the teaching assistantship. Appointments of teaching assistants are announced each year near the end of the spring semester. Two general factors determine appointments as teaching assistants: availability of funds and the academic quality of the applicants as judged by the faculty of the Department of History. Normally appointments are for one year and are renewable competitively, if funds are available, on the basis of academic quality and satisfactory performance of assigned duties as judged by the faculty of the Department of History. Students may hold teaching assistantships for a maximum of 2 years while enrolled in the M.A. program and 4 years if enrolled in the Ph.D. program. Research assistantships and other graduate appointments are exempt from these financial assistance guidelines.

Applicants for admission to the Department of History may make application for appointment as a teaching assistant through the procedures outlined in the Guidelines for Admissions. Incumbents in the post of teaching assistant will be renewed if eligible under the limits stated above, unless the Graduate Studies Committee notifies them to the contrary prior to May 1, or unless the Graduate Studies Committee is informed by the concerned individual that he or she does not wish to be considered a candidate for renewal. Incumbents whose funding is in jeopardy will receive a warning letter in April from the director of graduate studies. Final decisions regarding eligibility will be made by the faculty of the Department of History on the recommendation of the Graduate Studies Committee. Graduate students enrolled in the Department of History but not holding appointments as teaching assistants and incumbents deemed ineligible for funding may be considered for appointment or reappointment if they notify the Graduate Studies Committee of their desire to be considered for eligibility by January 10. Such students will be ranked with all new applicants.

Each year, the Graduate Studies Committee will place all new applicants for teaching assistantships in a numerical ranking based upon overall performance. The committee will then estimate the number of teaching assistantships available for the following year and make a certain number of early offers to the most promising new applicants. All other teaching assistantships will be awarded according to the numerical ranking, beginning with the first name on the list, to the limit of the department’s financial resources. All rankings require the approval of the faculty of the Department of History. Advanced doctoral students (post-preliminary examinations) who hold teaching assistant appointments may have the opportunity to teach a course of their own. The prerequisites for such an appointment are the successful completion of History 595 and a major field in the area covered by the course. Appointments will be made by the chair of the department on the recommendation of the director of graduate studies.

Tuition Waiver and In-State Residency

The assistantship appointment will exempt you from paying in-state tuition if you live in Washington State during your enrollment at WSU. We also will provide you with an out-of-state tuition waiver during your first year of studies if you are not a resident of Washington State; however, the out-of-state tuition waiver cannot be guaranteed beyond one year.  If you are not a resident of Washington State, you must begin the process now to establish state residency (see http://www.gradschool.wsu.edu/FutureStudents/StudentLife/Residency.aspx).  Students who have not established Washington State residency by the one-year limit will be required to pay out-of-state tuition, even if they have an assistantship.  International students are not eligible to become residents but will receive the full tuition waiver to cover their cost for a maximum of 2 years while enrolled in the M.A. program and 4 years if enrolled in the Ph.D. program.

What is being tested in these examinations are 2 sorts of linguistic skills:

1. comprehension of the meaning of appropriately-selected passages in the language of the examination, and
2. the ability to find a suitable English equivalent to the language of the examination passage and to render a smooth, idiomatic translation.

The language examination is designed to test both skills; but, inasmuch as the ability to read and do research in another language is more important than the ability to translate it, in general, exactitude of meaning should take priority over fluency of expression.

In translating the test passage, students should demonstrate not only a knowledge of the meaning of the words; they should be able to put verbs in the correct tenses, words in their proper grammatical forms, and common idioms in their nearest English equivalents. The candidate should recognize the difference between negative and positive phrases, declarative and interrogative expressions, and indicative and imperative moods.

In order to evaluate graduate students’ academic performance, the Department of History requires each graduate student and their major professor to complete the department’s annual review form by following the process described below. The entire process is transparent: the student and the major professor will meet and discuss the review. The Graduate Studies (GS) Director will oversee the entire process. The GS Committee will make teaching assistant reappointment decisions based on the annual review as well as the teaching assistant evaluation form.

1. Each graduate student will complete the first three pages of the annual review form and submit it to their major professor, along with a current Curriculum Vitae (CV).
2. The student’s major professor will complete the fourth page, including detailed comments on the student’s academic progress.
3. The student and the major professor will meet and discuss the review and both will sign the form.
4. The major professor will submit the form to the Director of Graduate Studies by February 1.

Should the situation appear to merit it, a major professor may note any apparently marginal or deficient performance by a student and request that the Graduate Studies Committee review the student’s records and make appropriate recommendations to the entire faculty. If approved by majority vote of the faculty, that student may be barred from further enrollment effective at that time or be denied consideration for appointment as a teaching assistant in future years.

During the spring semester each year a student who so desires may make a written request for an evaluation of their overall performance by the Graduate Studies Committee. This will be conducted in consultation with the major professor and other appropriate faculty members. The Graduate Studies Committee will notify the student of the results of the evaluation by the end of the semester.