Every year the faculty of the Department of History at Brown University receives many questions from prospective students from around the world about our Ph.D. program and the process of applying to the program. The History graduate admissions director, with input from the History faculty, has developed this guide for prospective students. Its first goal is to suggest how you should think through your interest in graduate study of history and, more specifically, in the Brown History Ph.D. program, so that you can make an informed choice about whether to apply to the program. Second, we supply an overview of the application and the materials that you are asked to submit if you do decide to apply. Third, we include a brief description of the admissions process. Please read these recommendations thoroughly before contacting the graduate admissions director or specific History Department faculty members.

1. Before Applying: What do I want to study — and is Brown right for me?

It’s important that you think through carefully what you hope to achieve in a history graduate program and what program will work best for you, given your interests and goals. We recommend that, before you contact either the graduate admissions director or individual faculty members with questions about the Brown History graduate program, you be able to answer these three important questions:

a)     What particular set of historical problems or themes do I want to study?  What region(s) of the world, in what time period(s), do I want to make my area of specialization?

b)    What are my qualifications for advanced work in history, and particularly in the problems, regions, and periods that I have identified as my areas of interest?

c)     Is the Brown History PhD program a good fit for me, given my specific interests and past training in history?  Are there scholars on the History faculty who work in my area of interest?

To elaborate:

a)     In order to make a persuasive application and in order to know which faculty member(s) you would like to work closely with at Brown, candidates have to be able to explain what particular historical questions they are interested in investigating; and in what region(s) of the world, over what time period(s). Stating simply a general interest in history or even a general interest in one particular period and place—for example, the Italian Renaissance—is not enough. What is it about the Italian Renaissance that is of interest? How would your study of a particular theme or problem relevant to the Renaissance contribute in a new and original way to our understanding of that topic?

The application will ask that you identify one and possibly two fields of interest; and the personal statement (also part of the application) will ask you to explain in some detail what your specific interests in history are.

If you are admitted to the program, you will find that you will have many opportunities to explore fields outside your areas of interest. Students are in fact encouraged to enroll in seminars outside their particular specializations—the History faculty believes that much can be learned, in terms of theory, methodology, and potential for fruitful comparison, from participation in class outside a specific field. And the relatively small size of the History program means that students often have to learn from work done in fields outside their own area of focus.

But, in thinking about your career in a graduate program—and in writing an effective application—it is important to be able to write persuasively about the particular historical questions and issues that engage your interest and that motivate you to apply to a Ph.D. program.

b)    What are your qualifications for advanced historical study in your field(s) of interest? What kind of knowledge base do you bring to your topic? What kind of course work have you done in history that is relevant to your area of interest? If languages other than English are required for research in your topic of interest, what progress have you made in learning those languages? Has any research or work you have done either inside or outside the academy strengthened your knowledge or your expertise in historical research?

Your personal statement should include some reference to your qualifications. And the writing sample that you are asked to submit should be a paper of roughly 7,500 words that reflects your ability to do historical research, to analyze primary sources, to synthesize evidence from both primary and secondary sources in a persuasive historical analysis—and, of course, to write clearly and construct a well-organized argument.

c)     Is the Brown History Ph.D. program a good fit for your interests and qualifications? The faculty, in assessing applications, wants to make sure that graduate students will be able to find the resources and faculty guidance that they need to pursue their research projects. If there is no one on the faculty who can adequately advise a student, then we reluctantly have to decide not to accept them into the program, no matter how brilliant their record in history is or how interesting their questions are. It would not be right to admit a student interested in Enlightenment Europe to the program, for example, if no faculty member teaches that field.

For this reason, it is important that you learn as much as you can about the History program by consulting the History Graduate website. Look at the "Fields of Study" page to see what fields the graduate program offers. Click on the field titles to see the faculty members who work in each field; and then click on the faculty members’ names to learn more about the scholars working within each field. This kind of research will help you learn the strengths of the Brown History program and help you decide whether it is a suitable program, given your own particular scholarly interests. You might also want to look at the "Current Ph.D. Students" page, as that will give you some idea of what our students are doing now. You may also want to consult scholars you have worked with in the past, at college or university or in an MA program; they might be able to help you decide if the Brown program would be a good choice.

Remember, too, that you want to think about how the program as a whole suits your interests.  You will be working with one faculty as your primary advisor, but you will also take courses with other faculty members (some of whom will also be on your preliminary exam and dissertation committees). Do you find enough in the way of faculty resources to provide you with a broad base of intellectual support for your program of study?

After thinking through your goals and carefully researching Brown’s History graduate program, if you still have questions about the program, you may write to the faculty member(s) in your field of interest or the Graduate Admissions Director. In your message, explain as clearly as possible what your interests are. Remember that faculty members are likely very busy during the semester: try to make your questions precise and focused (that is, do not request that a faculty member tell you generally about the program—you should have done enough research ahead of time to be able to ask more specific questions). If faculty members are interested in your application, you will have an opportunity to talk to them during the interview process, to be scheduled after the submission of applications but before January 1 (see below).

2. Applying to the Brown History Ph.D. Program

The online application through the Graduate School website is due on December 1, 2023. It consists of the following components:

a)     Standard form requiring basic information about applicant’s background and educational record. On the form applicants are asked to identify their primary and (if desired) secondary fields of study.  Note that the History Department does not require GRE scores. TOEFL/IELTS scores are required only if English was not the language of instruction at the college or university granting the BA or MA degree. See here for additional information.   

b)     Transcripts from colleges and universities attended.

c)     Personal statement, 1,250 word maximum (double-spaced, in 12-point font) essay (see below).

d)     Writing sample (see below).

e)     Three letters of recommendation (uploaded separately, by your recommenders). We strongly recommend that these letters be from scholars familiar with your academic record.

The parts of the application that receive the closest attention from the faculty are "c," the personal statement, and "d," the writing sample. The personal statement (1,250 words, typed in 12-point type) should first state your particular historical interests—as explained above, the particular issues or questions that you are interested in investigating and in what field(s); describe your strengths and aspirations as a historian; and explain the ways you think the Brown History Department, both individually and communally, is suited to support you in pursuit of your interests and goals. Please note that your application will be read both by faculty members in your prospective field and faculty members outside your field (see below). It is important, then, while stating your specific interests in history, to make your statement accessible to faculty members not in your area of interest.

The writing sample should be an essay (or a chapter from a senior or MA thesis) that demonstrates your ability to do historical work—that is, to do research in primary and secondary sources, forge a historical argument from your analysis of these courses, present the argument clearly and effectively, and explain its significance to the relevant field of historical study. There is no strict page limit on the writing sample; we suggest a paper of up to 7,500 words, double-spaced.

After faculty members have reviewed the applications in their field, they will contact applicants of interest with whom they have not met already to schedule an interview (via e-mail, telephone, or Zoom) of no more than thirty minutes. Please note that you should check your email box regularly between December 1 and January 1 to see if you have received any requests for an interview. Please note, too, that not all applicants will receive such requests. During the interview, applicants are asked to reply to a standard set of questions: about themselves and their research project; their motivation for pursuing the Ph.D. degree in general and specifically at Brown; their career goals; and any challenges they have overcome in the past. At the end, applicants have an opportunity to ask questions of the faculty member(s).

3. The Admissions Process: How the History Department decides whom to accept into the Ph.D. program

We look for applicants who are asking provocative historical questions and who are interested in exploring such questions in a rigorous and inclusive intellectual community. From an applicant pool of approximately three hundred applicants, we carefully choose a class of about 8-to-12 Ph.D. students whose interests and strengths seem to fit particularly well with the intellectual configuration of the department.

Applications to the Ph.D. program are first reviewed by the faculty members in the field(s) of each applicant. For example, if you have listed Latin America as your first area of interest and Science, Technology, Environment and Mathematics as your second field, your application will be reviewed first by the Latin American faculty; and second by the STEaM faculty.

Faculty members will contact applicants of interest with whom they have not met already to schedule an interview (via e-mail, telephone, or Zoom) of no more than thirty minutes. The interview must be scheduled to take place by January 1 at the latest. Applicants are asked to reply to a standard set of questions about themselves and their research project; their motivation for pursuing the Ph.D. degree in general and specifically at Brown; their career goals; and any challenges they have overcome in the past. At the end, applicants have an opportunity to ask questions of the faculty member(s).

The faculty members in each field then decide which candidates they would like to admit and present a ranked list of these candidates to the central History Graduate Committee, which is composed of faculty from a variety of different fields. Application files are thus reviewed both by faculty members in the fields identified by the candidate and by a committee of scholars most likely outside that field of specialization. The Graduate Committee reviews all the recommended applications and selects from them a draft final admissions list. Because the Graduate School limits how many applicants we can accept into the program, the Committee cannot accept all the applicants recommended by the specific-field faculty. After this list is approved by the Department of History and the Graduate School, candidates are notified whether they have been accepted or not, usually in February.