Additionally, all students are eligible to apply for travel funding from the GSS, which automatically funds $600 in travel expenses per graduate student each cycle so long as they apply by the deadline. Our department typically supplements, in the form of reimbursements for additional expenses, any travel funding a graduate student receives, whether from the GSS or from external funding sources.

You do not need to apply for funding. All students who have applied to our graduate programs, or who are currently in our graduate program unfunded and plan to continue the following year, will be fully considered for funding without any special application or expression of interest in funding.

Students on fellowship are reviewed annually for renewal. Assuming appropriate performance, MA student fellowships will be renewed for a second year. The fellowships will be canceled, however, in cases of unsatisfactory academic performance.

Go here to submit your graduate application. International students follow the steps for "Graduate International Students." Domestic students follow the steps for "Graduate Degree Students."  You will request your undergraduate transcript.

This document should be around 500 words long and should explain to us why you would like to study in our department. We use the document primarily to determine whether you are a good fit for what we have to offer, though the Statement of Purpose also gives us a sense of your writing, research, and reasoning skills.

You should also decide what you might want to submit for a writing sample. This should be at least 12 pages long, should have a thesis, and should draw on both primary and secondary sourcing. Usually, this is a history research paper. This paper should demonstrate that you can write clearly and well, that you can develop an interesting thesis, and that you can defend it with a combination of well-selected primary and secondary research. You can feel free to improve on a paper that you have already submitted for another purpose before using it as your writing sample.  

About three months before you plan to apply, you should reach out to potential writers of letters of recommendation and ask if they would be willing to write you a letter for our program. Letter writers should be people who are familiar with your academic work, and who are capable of judging whether you would be likely to succeed in a graduate program in history. Usually, these letters are written by history faculty members with whom you have taken classes.

Once you have ideas of a person or people you may want to work with in our program, you should reach out to our program. It is customary to contact our graduate coordinator first, though you can also reach out to a potential supervisor directly if you have questions that you think they could best answer. 

Review our History Department faculty. Any faculty member on the Kent campus can serve as your advisor. You will work with many faculty members during your time at Kent and you may choose to work with faculty in other departments at Kent State if you have an interdisciplinary focus, but your primary faculty advisor must be a History Department faculty member.