ETA: This post assumes an American-style setting.

For someone who has made up their mind to pursue grad work in history, there are several very pointed reasons to start with a master's, and one big argument to go right to PhD.

The PhD argument is a no-brainer: funding. It is MUCH easier to get full funding--tuition remission plus livable-with-sacrifice stipend (generally with some fellowship years and some teaching/research assistant years)--for PhD work than for an MA. I'd go so far as to say that an unfunded PhD admission is actually a rejection. It's possible to do a fully funded MA, I did, but frequently (not always) MA funding is nonexistent or non-comprehensive (lower stipends, only applies to part of the time, only partial tuition remission, etc).

An MA first also theoretically leaves you two years further delayed in terms of looking for a "real job." But note a couple things there: first, in some departments, people who come in straight from a BA have to do extra coursework or just need extra time to make up the skills gap. Second, if you're looking to get a boost on a career, a PhD is not for you. My department still has an excellent track record of putting people in tenure track jobs, but NOT always immediately after PhD. People tend to spend 1-3 years doing "postdocs," which in monetary terms means more years at PhD funding level rather than a salary you can support a family on.

So why would you go into debt for 1-2 years of MA work when a PhD is "free"? First, dedication to a single topic. You say:

My main focuses are Appalachian History, Colonial, and Weimar Germany.

Typically, a PhD program will want you to have a focus, and increasingly, a pretty good idea of your dissertation topic. Although time-to-degree in the humanities is insane, averaging 9-10 years, there is a movement among grad programs to reduce that number radically. Now, some of the inflation is due to people not being able to find tenure-track jobs, so delaying their graduation. But needing to be done in 3-5 years depending on department means you need to come in with a good idea of where you are going to end up research-wise. If you're still feeling that out--I was!--an MA program is a fantastic opportunity.

Second, language work. If you're in a more language-intensive field (holler), the MA time gives you a great opportunity to acquire or improve those skills. Other topic/field dependent skillsets, like statistics or paleography, can also be useful results of the MA time.

Third, fucking graduate school. Grad school is hard. It is not "more focused undergrad". It will devour your soul and leave your empty husk of a body gasping, "Thank you, sir, may I have another" and make you mean it. The MA period gives you an irreplaceable chance to adjust to that, but also to make sure it is worth it. My department has a significantly higher dropout rate for people who come in straight from a bachelor's versus people who obtain 1 (or even 2) master's degrees first.

From an academic perspective, honestly, getting an MA first is the way to go.

But money.

Congratulations on your continued success! I wish you the best. Hopefully you have discussed this in depth with your current professors as I'm sure they can give you more personalized advice. Accolades aside, the rest of this email may be a bit depressing. But if you are really committed (or perhaps should be committed ;) )it likely won't deter you.

Most of the programs you mention like UNC-CH and Yale don't normally accept a Master's degree from another school. They might give you a few hours credit but you would be essentially starting over. They want you to learn and do things "the Yale/Chapel Hill way." My experience was that having a Master's degree played no part in my rejection or acceptance at a graduate school. Those schools are also exceptionally difficult to get into even with perfect grades, so apply to a variety of schools. It sounds like you have a solid safety school, but I would apply more outside the elite programs. You can easily spend hundreds of dollars applying to them and many state schools are just as good. In some cases better.

Given your internship and experience in exhibits you might want to focus on schools that have a strong Public History focus. Professors who are mainly interested in research will likely be impressed but not overly swayed by a museum exhibit. They want to see what you write and research. Also, look for schools that have a focus on your preferred areas of research. This will likely open a lot more doors for you. Look for schools that have institutes, foundations, or special scholarships around your areas of research because they probably accept a lot more students and give them more funding with that interest than just general Americanists.

The biggest step up to get into an elite program is, sadly, still connections. Do you know anyone teaching at the schools you want to go to? Get in contact with specific professors you want to work with and make sure they are able to take on new graduate students. Even if you are the perfect candidate if the professors are full up on grad students they won't take on new ones. I know students who have been rejected from state schools but accepted to Ivy League schools for this very reason.

Good luck! If this is really your dream then pursue it, but know that the path to an academic history career is long and difficult. I will be around to answer more questions if you have the.

If you want to be a Professor, then let me be real honest here: Don't do it. There are way too many people now and the jobs that we thought were going to be there for us when the baby boomers retired are gone and they ain't coming back. Grad school is just an unethical way for departments to provide cheap labor to departments. They know that there aren't enough jobs for the current crop of History PhDs, yet they continue to admit record numbers of Grad Students for jobs that they know don't exist. Here is a current article about how bad it sucks right now.

http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/february-2016/the-troubled-academic-job-market-for-history

If you are funded, what that really means you have to work as a Teaching Assistant in some capacity, while taking classes, studying for comps, writing your diss, as well as paying all of the fees, health care costs, ect that your University will require. Those don't get covered under "tuition waiver." There is also a limit to funding, usually five years. If you have not finished in that time, then you are basically fucked and have to spend time looking for alternative funding or are in a constant state of flux, dependent on your department. This is not a good place to be in, as your diss will take even longer and the support that you once had will dwindle.

if you do not want to go into academia, getting a Master's would be the better route. You learn the skills that you would need for Government/Private Sector jobs and you can get out, with your degree, in about 2 years. Many schools do fund MA students and my Uni actually stopped admitting people straight into the PhD without a Master's cause they just do not have the necessary understanding of the basics to compete, or even understand, what was going on in our graduate seminars.

You should also think about an MA in Public History, which is what you seem to be into with the museum aspect. There are quite a few in the South, including USC, UNC, and UGA, who all fund Public History MA students and are great programs with good job placement percentages. You do not need a PhD for many Public History jobs and the costs, stress, and time are much lower.

All in all, my advice is stick to the MA and don't even worry about a Ph.D

I do recommend getting the MA to start. I went the other way and tried to do a PhD unfunded right out of undergrad. I got to the point where I passed my quals and was basically ABD, but my adviser retired and my dissertation was very lab-dependent, and I was working 40 hours a week to try to pay bills but wasn't getting any teaching experience or anything, and I just straight up burned out. I graduated with a Masters. I highly recommend starting with that, as it will give you a bit of a slower introduction into the level of work in graduate school.

As for deciding where you want to do the PhD, that's going to depend much more on professors than on schools. Get an idea of what area you want to study (perhaps something your masters degree can help you focus), what part of the world and what time period. Take note of the top scholars in your particular area of interest, and see where they are teaching. Use these places as good spots to apply, because they will have excellent resources and good teaching in the topics you are most interested in. There's little sense in studying east Asian history at a school that doesn't actually have a professor that specializes in that subject.

Even big-name schools like Harvard, Yale, etc don't always have the faculty for each area of interest. For example, Harvard's Levantine archaeology program has gotten a lot weaker of late with the retirement of Dr. Larry Stager, but schools like UPenn and Penn State have really quite strong programs in that area. It's absolutely worth tracking where the really influential scholars in your subfield are teaching, and applying to work with them.

The TL:DR of this is that in grad school, you don't apply to schools, you apply to work with professors. So invest some time in finding out what your interests are and who is doing good research that aligns with those interests, and apply for professors rather than for schools.

No, it is not a waste of time to get an MA. Hopefully you will get some skills under your belt, some experience with the historiography, and time to produce a good enough piece of work to secure entry into a good PhD program. While I can't, of course, provide any proof for what I'm saying, I'm in an Ivy history PhD and almost everyone in my cohort has an MA. At least here they seem to want proof that you can produce research, and they seem to view that as mainly stemming from an MA.

While it sounds like you enjoy where you are and have good relations there, I would discourage you from spending too much time in one institution. My current PhD institution is my fourth, and while hopping around is a logistical nuisance it is also intellectually enriching as you get to experience different approaches to history and meet many more interesting people.

Languages are sine qua non. If you make a proposal that you want to study Weimar Germany, either show that you know German or that you have a plan to learn German. French will be useful too.

Finances: PhD funding is better than it is for the MA, but only my PhD program is in the US so I can't really comment on how the MA degree works here. Whatever you do, don't pay for a PhD. If you can, try going to Europe or Canada for a funded MA.

I would also suggest spending some time reading the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed to get a sense of what's on the other side of the PhD and whether you want that.

Since your already here App State has the best teaching school in the state. Anyways I'm finishing up student teaching and am going to take a master of library science course. It's a degree that pays and also something I like outside of teaching.