Applying for Admissions

Students wishing to apply to the History M.A. program as a matriculating degree student or a non-matriculating student must apply online at this link: www.qc.cuny.edu/admissions/graduate/which_application. Paper applications are no longer being accepted.

Non-Matriculating Students

As stated above, all students who wish to apply for non-matriculated status must submit an application online through the Graduate Admissions website. In addition, if you wish to apply for non-matriculated status, you must submit to Dr. Julia Sneeringer, the History Graduate Advisor, a personal statement of 300-500 words stating your qualifications, background, reasons for wanting to take the course(s) for which you wish to enroll, and any other relevant information.

Master of Arts: Program Requirements

A student who is formally admitted to the Master of Arts program of the Department of History, Queens College, CUNY, should confer with the faculty advisor during the first semester of study within the program.

All students admitted to the history MA program must fulfill the following requirements to receive an MA degree in history:

• Completion of 30 credit hours of history coursework, with a 3.0 GPA.
• As of September 2008, all incoming students are required to take History 791 (currently being offered as History 799: Research Methods in History). This course should be taken during the first year in the program and must be taken by the end of the second year.
• All students must take History 796. This course should be taken as the final course in the 10-course sequence.
• Before signing up for History 796, students must develop a potential thesis topic and secure a thesis advisor.
• All students must write a thesis consisting of a major research study that must contain a significant amount of primary source analysis, as well as analysis of the secondary literature. It must meet the standards of the history profession concerning format, citations, and bibliography. Recommended reading at this stage: Wayne C. Booth's The Craft of Research, which is available at the Queens College library in paperback and as an e-book.

• Before starting on their theses, students must do the following:
• Submit to their thesis advisor a 12-15 page thesis proposal which will cover the following: 
  (1) problem identification and research question,
  (2) a review of theoretical and substantive literature,
  (3) a discussion of primary sources, and
  (4) a tentative outline of research paper and table of contents. Consult the department's prospectus guidelines for details about these requirements and read this model prospectus that a past Queens College history graduate student submitted to the department.
• If the written proposal is acceptable to the advisor, the advisor will schedule a 20–30 minute discussion/examination with the student and a second faculty member who will have read the proposal. The student will receive a pass/pass contingent on requested revisions/fail on this examination. The two faculty readers must fill out and sign the department's thesis proposal examination form and return the completed form to Dr. Julia Sneeringer, the Graduate Advisor. The student may not retake this examination more than once. After passing the examination, the student will inform the graduate advisor in writing about the name of the topic.
• A satisfactory thesis answers a well-focused question and offers conclusions based on a thorough investigation of pertinent evidence. The thesis is conducted under the general supervision of the graduate advisor and the specific direction of a member of the History Department. A thesis generally runs from 65 to 85 pages, with 75 pages considered optimal.

Procedures for Completing a Master's Thesis

 Form

• The MA candidate must submit two (2) copies of his or her thesis with a title page.
• All front matter, all text, all notes and all appendices must provide for a margin of 1.5 inches on the left side of the paper. All text must be double-spaced.
• The title page, as its top line, displays the title of the thesis and then, two or three spaces down, the student's name. Further down on the title page, the following sentence must appear, arranged in a multi-line block: "Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in history, in the Graduate Division of Queens College of the City University of New York," followed by a thesis advisor signature line and a date line. See sample title page here.
  
• Unless otherwise specified by the thesis advisor, all notes should follow the "humanities" or "documentary note" system as specified by The Chicago Manual of Style or the same system presented by Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations.
• Plagiarism is not tolerated. All cases of plagiarism involving any stage of the master's thesis will be reported to the Dean of Students, in the case of MS students to their Education Advisor, and will result in a one-year suspension from the MA program as a minimum and dismissal from the program as a maximum.

Procedure

• The signature of the thesis advisor, written on the title-page signature line, signifies final approval of the thesis as complete in all respects. The advisor must sign two copies of this title page, one for the college and one for the History Department.
• In addition, there is a separate M.A. Thesis Approval Form, three copies of which must be signed by the thesis advisor after he or she has signed the thesis title-pages.
  • Two (2) copies of this form go to the Dean of Graduate Studies, Richard Bodnar, and a third copy is kept on file within the History Department. Dean Bodnar will submit one of the copies he receives to the Registrar's Office.

Required Student Action to Complete the Thesis

The MA student must pay a binding fee of $25.00 at the Bursar's Office and take the receipt and three (3) copies of the thesis to Rosenthal Library for binding (Room 201). One copy is for the Library, the second is for the History Department, and the third is for the student. The student may submit one or more additional copies to be bound for his or her personal use, but must first pay the Bursar $15.00 for each additional copy.

Graduate Honors

The History Department awards three yearly prizes, for which graduate students are eligible:

• the Arnold Franco Award, the recipient(s) of which are announced in the fall, for the best paper treating the subject of historical revisionism,
• the Michael Wreszin Award for a superior history paper, and
• the Frank Merli Graduate Student Prize.