I'm currently a Senior at Hofstra University and am in Pi Gamma Mu (Social Science) and may get into Omicron Delta Epsilon (Economics, which I want to major in) and Pi Sigma Alpha (Political Science, which I want to minor in).
Somewhat offtopic - where do university fraternities and societies in the US get their Greek-alphabet names from? I've never really understood the tradition.
Basically when they are founded, the choose the letters. When you are initiated, the " al properties" of the letters are explained to you. On a side note, I am a member of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. I am also a member of Delta Sigma Phi social fraternity. Basically the only real use of the honor societies that I've seen is some of the activities are ok, at least you get to meet people who are studying the same things as you are. Phi Alpha Theta has regional conferences in the spring every year where you can present papers, even at the undergrad level, which is actually kind of nice. Oh and when you graduate, you can wear the honor cords of whatever honor society that you are part of.
I know the history one sponsors panels at a lot of conferences, but I can't remember ever going to one of those panels.
Phi Alpha Theta was just a way to discuss history with other geeks. But I can't imagine anyone looks at a resume and gives a rat's ass. Not that this is the only reason to join.
If you are planning on going to grad school it helps in admissions, otherwise, no. The conferences are similar to a graduate seminar type thing, so again, if you are going to grad school, it's a great thing to join, otherwise, pretty pointless.
I can't imagine an admissions committee at any history grad school that you'd want to go to favoring someone because they were in Phi Alpha Theta. Now, it might help in terms of getting advice on statements of purpose, writing samples, potentially giving papers at conferences, and cultivating relationships with faculty, but just having Phi Alpha Theta on the cv wouldn't help anyone's application (wouldn't hurt either, of course). In my experience, the writing sample, GPA, and the letters of rec are the only things that matter in admissions.
Unless you totally screwed up the verbal to an under 600 level, I don't think it would hurt you at all. I don't remember looking at a single GRE score when I served on Michigan's admission's committee. I know one other person on the committee did, but he was more interested in how the scores between those accepted and rejected in the last round of deliberation differed. IIRC, they didn't. It does matter for the cross disciplinary fellowship competitions for incoming students. It certainly doesn't carry anything approaching the weight that the LSAT does. Well, it did, UM now offers all incoming history grad students a 5 year funding package.
When I was an M.A. student applying for Ph.D. programs (a couple years ago), I asked the DGS about what mattered for admissions including GRE scores. His answer pretty much aligns with what needs says. It will hurt you if the score is really low and may help slightly if you're off the charts high. For most students, once you make it to or over the average for the program, your recommendations and fit in the program count more. BTW, five years guaranteed? Nice.
Yeah, that happened after I started. The package does require 4 semesters of teaching, IIRC, but that's a lot less than I did.
I was kidding - I know law schools are far more interested in the LSAT than grad schools are in the GRE (with some valid reasons, imo). I had considered going to grad school for history, but to the disappointment of a couple of my professors, the law won out. Although, to be fair, for what I wanted to do I would have had to learn two brand new languages beside the 3 I knew at the time. That seemed a bit much to me.
Damn internet sarcasm. Let me guess, you knew Latin, Russian, and something else and you would have had to learn ancient Greek and German. The bliss of American history, 2 hours in a room with a spanish language passage and a dictionary and I was home free.
It's going in the opposite direction here (Minnesota). Three years guaranteed if your M.A. is in the same field, otherwise it's four years guaranteed. A fifth year used to be easy to get, but now you have to apply and it's certainly not guaranteed. According to my current DGS, this is a push from University and College of Liberal Arts (house pretty much all social sciences and humanities).
If only. Russian, English and Spanish (well, English does count!) and would have had to learn Latin and Greek. My Latin is poor since I've only cobbled it together from my books and from Spanish grammar. Learning Latin and Greek while trying to keep up my Spanish and Russian would have been a bitch. And there's not enough historiography on Rome in Spanish or Russian to justify that route (its German or else for ancient history in that sense).
Well, we just broke ground on our new football stadium, so it can't be a money problem. When we talked about it he said it was a push from the university and that it's not so much funding as it is that university-wide there is an emphasis on "on-time" graduation that's spilling over to grad students. I'm not worried, because he said they would find a way to fund me a fifth year if I need it, but I thought it was interesting (and totally appropriate) to commit to five years up front.
"On time graduation" at 3 years with a masters? What total crap when applied to anything involving in-depth research. That would give you, what, one year after exams to write a dissertation? Yeah, that sounds reasonable. Of course, I only had one year guaranteed money, yet got funded every semester I was in grad school, including a couple of fully funded research years.
Yeah, I agree. I'm still not convinced it's not just saber-rattling as the entire class in front of me will take five years and only one of them is shaping up to be a decent researcher. So I think part of it is to put pressure on my class and the class behind me to keep moving. I will say, though, that one of the programs that accepted me was post-master's three-and-out. The same is true of at least one other respected program in my field. If I didn't come into the program with some good research completed while I was an M.A. student, I would be sweating it right now.
What field? In history, no one expects your masters to necessarily be on the same subject as your diss. Historians do tend to take longer than say, English PhDs because of the archival research component. I think the average time to completion is something like 8 years.
I think five years is more standard in my field. My hunch is that one way fields try to cope with an abundance of Ph.D.s is by lengthening the time (and increasing the expectations) to finish the degree. Back on topic: One value that you might get from a subject honor society is more direct contact with professors and perhaps you may strengthen relationships with peers who can help you down the road.