I wrote this primarily with prospective students from West Africa in mind (based on workshops I have participated in over the last several months in Ghana and Nigeria), although much of the advice applies to anyone considering graduate study in the United States.

One of the most important things to understand at the outset is that academic systems work differently in different places. Practices that are normal in Ghana, Nigeria, the UK, or elsewhere may not be normal in the United States—and the reverse is equally true. Even within the United States, universities and departments can operate quite differently from one another. You are not expected to know all of these differences already. But learning to recognize them, investigate them, and ask good questions about them is an important part of preparing for graduate study.

First, I want to make a massive disclaimer: I am not claiming to provide information that can be generalized for all programs in the US. I’m also not a legal expert, and I do not speak/write in an official capacity as a representative of Virginia Tech. These are my tips only. But this might at least help you ask informed questions and conduct your own research.

Second, I want to be clear about my goal: I want to address some of the “hidden transcripts” in graduate education, but I also speak as someone who has spent time as a student in West Africa and worked closely with faculty in Ghana and, to a lesser degree, in Nigeria and, thus, know how different the institutional and intellectual cultures can be. There are so many extraordinary students doing great work, and I want you to be successful!

1. Understand the system you are applying to

Graduate programs work differently in different countries, and sometimes they work differently across institutions within the same country. It is important not to make assumptions or over-generalize. In particular, the US and Canada are very different from Europe, and the UK and continental Europe often operate differently from one another.

Applying to a program is not necessarily the same as applying to a supervisor

In the US and Canada, you normally apply to a graduate program and are selected as part of a general departmental graduate cohort. In the selection process, a department may have a certain number of positions available in particular subfields, but you generally are not applying directly to an individual supervisor. In many programs, supervisors are only formally assigned once you arrive, and sometimes not until after the first year. That’s partly because it is understood that you may not yet have a complete sense of your research interests when you enter the program. Your interests may—and probably will—change as you read more, encounter new approaches, and work with different faculty.

This is one reason that emailing a professor to ask, “Will you be my supervisor?” may not be as useful in the US as you imagine. The faculty member may not be able to answer that question, and their personal interest in supervising you may have relatively little to do with whether you are admitted.

Learn how the particular program actually works

University websites in the US generally contain a great deal of information that applicants are expected to locate and read. Spend time exploring the department’s website, graduate program requirements, Graduate School pages, faculty profiles, funding information, and other programs across the university that might be relevant to your interests.

If this is different from what you have been accustomed to, think of it as an opportunity to begin learning a new institutional culture. US graduate education places a high value on the ability to find information independently, evaluate it, and then ask focused questions about things that remain unclear. Those are also important research skills.

Above all, make sure that what you say about a program is accurate. For example, Virginia Tech does not have a PhD program in History. We have an MA in History. Nevertheless, I receive several emails every year from prospective students who tell me that they want to work with me for their PhD in History.

We do have interdisciplinary PhD programs in which I can supervise students, but I will not necessarily mention those programs if they do not seem relevant to the student’s interests or if the student has not asked about them. Getting the degree wrong from the outset does not make a good impression because it suggests that the applicant has not done basic research about the program.

Understand funding

Not all US graduate programs provide full funding, particularly at the Master’s level. Programs that do provide full funding will generally cover tuition and provide a stipend intended to help cover basic living expenses.

Look carefully at what each program actually promises. Do not assume that admission automatically means funding. You should also find out who the Director of Graduate Studies or graduate program director is and whether application fee waivers are available. They sometimes are, and asking about them is entirely reasonable.

The larger principle is simple: do not assume that graduate education works the same way everywhere. Learn how the particular institution and program you are considering actually works.

2. Understand how competitive admission is

Graduate programs are highly selective and extremely competitive. A program might admit only ten students in a year, and perhaps only one or two of those students will work in African history. That means you should not place all of your hopes on a single program. Applying to several carefully chosen programs is sensible, and every application needs to be as strong as you can make it.

The situation has become even more difficult as funding pressures at US, Canadian, and European universities have reduced the resources available to support graduate students. Departments sometimes have to turn away excellent applicants simply because they cannot fund them.

If you are not admitted, therefore, try not to interpret the decision as a definitive judgment about your ability to become a scholar. Look carefully at your application, seek informed feedback where you can, strengthen your preparation, and consider applying again.

Knowing a professor does not mean that you will be admitted

Meeting a faculty member, corresponding with them, attending a program they organized, or talking with them at a conference does not guarantee admission to their graduate program. At Virginia Tech, for example, even though I am the department chair, I do not control the graduate admissions process. Admissions are handled by a committee of departmental faculty who evaluate the quality of applications alongside the department’s ability to support particular students and fields.

A faculty connection can be valuable. A professor may help you understand the program, tell you whether your interests seem to fit its strengths, or answer questions that cannot easily be answered from the website. But the relationship itself does not substitute for a strong application. Understanding this distinction can save you a great deal of energy. Your goal should not be to find the person who can “get you in.” Your goal should be to identify programs where you can flourish and submit the strongest possible application.

3. Show scholarly promise, not certainty

When faculty review graduate applications or engage with prospective students, we are looking for promise as a researcher and scholar. You do not need to demonstrate that you are already a finished scholar. If you were, there would be little point in going to graduate school. Instead, show us that you have begun engaging seriously with the existing literature, that you can identify interesting problems and questions, that you recognize the limits of your present knowledge, and that you are eager to grow.

Good questions are more impressive than enormous claims

Applicants sometimes feel that a research proposal will sound more impressive if it makes very large or confident claims. Usually, the opposite is true. At this stage, intellectual humility can be a sign of intellectual maturity. Faculty do not expect an applicant to have mastered an entire literature or to know the conclusions of research they have not yet conducted. Instead of trying to persuade us that you already have the answers, show us that you can ask interesting questions.

Graduate projects also change. They change because students encounter new scholarship. They change because they learn new methodologies. They change because sources turn out to be unavailable. And sometimes they change because a student discovers a much better question.

I often see proposed research projects with four basic problems:

1. The proposed project has already been done.
2. The project is too general to be completed effectively.
3. The project would be difficult or impossible to complete given the available sources, resources, or time.
4. The project is simply too large for the degree being proposed.

None of these necessarily means that the underlying interest is bad. Often the solution is to shift from announcing a conclusion to identifying a question. Tell us what you want to understand. Explain why the question interests you and why you think it matters. Show us what scholarship led you to it. If appropriate, suggest some of the sources or approaches that might help you investigate it. For me, the ability to ask good questions is one of the strongest indicators of scholarly promise. A good question shows that you have learned enough to recognize something you do not yet understand—and that you want to understand it better. That is exactly what research is about. intellectually mature, and much more realistic about the process of graduate study.

4. Communicate with faculty thoughtfully

My personal advice when drafting an email to a faculty member is not to begin by asking whether they will be your supervisor. In many US programs, faculty do not directly control admissions, and supervisors may not be assigned until after a student enters the program. Even when a professor finds your interests exciting, therefore, that may have much less influence on the admissions decision than you imagine.

Instead, have a genuine reason for contacting the person. If you already have a connection with someone and have spoken with them before, you might ask whether they would be willing to talk with you about potential graduate study. If you do not have an existing connection, ask a focused question that demonstrates that you have already investigated the program. You might want to understand something about the admissions process, opportunities in your field, faculty availability, or funding that you could not determine from the website.

Those are examples, however, not a template to reproduce.

Let us hear your voice

There is an understandable tendency for prospective students to share model emails with one another. The intention is good: people are trying to help each other navigate an unfamiliar process. But it can produce an unintended result. In some years, I receive nearly 100 emails from prospective students in Ghana and Nigeria asking about graduate study. Many of those messages use almost identical language. When that happens, it becomes very difficult for me to learn anything about the individual student, and I inevitably find myself sending very similar responses. A model can help you understand what information an email might contain, but it should not replace your own voice Tell me something real. Ask something you actually want to know. Give me a glimpse of what interests you intellectually.

Genuine engagement is better than flattery

You do not need to flatter professors. And please do not say that you have read someone’s work if you have not. It is usually quite easy to distinguish between someone who has genuinely engaged with a book or article and someone who is repeating a description found online. You also do not need to have read everything a professor has written before contacting them. That would be an unreasonable expectation. But if you have read something and it genuinely made you think differently, raised a question for you, or connected with something you have been studying, that can be the basis of a very good conversation. Genuine curiosity is much more interesting than praise.

Build relationships through genuine intellectual engagement

Take advantage of opportunities to meet scholars who visit your university for conferences, seminars, lectures, and workshops. Attend because you want to learn. Ask questions when you genuinely have them. Talk to visiting scholars about ideas that interest you. Try not to approach every interaction primarily as “networking” or as an opportunity to establish a connection that might become useful later. Relationships in academia are often built much more naturally through repeated intellectual engagement. I remember students who had a real reason for talking with me—who asked an interesting question or engaged seriously with something I had written.

Many US academics also do not expect the degree of deference that may be customary in other academic cultures. Respect matters, but respect is not the same thing as submission. We want students to develop confidence, independence, and their own intellectual voices. Learning how to do that appropriately takes time. Watch, listen, ask questions, and learn.

5. Your application has to be your work

Because admissions are so competitive, faculty will evaluate the quality of your application materials closely. Writing styles and scholarly expectations can differ considerably between North America and West Africa. That does not mean that one tradition is inherently better than another. It means that writing is shaped by intellectual and institutional cultures, and you need to understand the expectations of the academic community you hope to enter. Seek feedback from people who have direct experience with that system, and take their feedback seriously.

Be thoughtful about whom you ask for feedback

Asking professors at programs to which you are applying to review your application materials can be difficult. Some faculty may be willing to provide feedback. Others will not. I am personally reluctant to do so because I cannot possibly provide careful substantive feedback to everyone who contacts me. There simply are not enough hours in the day to give that work the attention it deserves. This is not necessarily a sign that a professor is uninterested in you. Faculty receive many requests and have to make decisions about what they can reasonably do. Instead, try to develop relationships with mentors who understand the system and can provide informed, honest criticism.

Choose your recommenders carefully

Think carefully about your letters of recommendation. The best recommender is usually someone who can speak directly and specifically about the quality of your work and your potential as a scholar. The faculty member who supervised your thesis, a professor for whom you worked as a teaching assistant, or someone who employed you to conduct research with or for them can often write a stronger letter than someone who taught a large course in which you earned a good grade but did not get to know you well. A detailed letter from someone who knows your work is often much more valuable than a generic letter from someone with an impressive title.

Do not use application brokers

I strongly advise against using application brokers or companies that promise to manage the process for you. We have encountered graduate applications from West Africa containing apparently fictitious recommendation letters—for example, cases in which a supposed recommender did not appear to exist or a letter incorrectly identified the writer’s own institutional affiliation. I cannot know how every such case arose, but handing control of your application to a third party creates serious risks. Your application is your professional introduction to a scholarly community. Protect its integrity.

Do not outsource your intellectual work to AI

The same principle applies to generative AI. Application materials that are intended to demonstrate your writing, reasoning, historical knowledge, and scholarly potential need to reflect your own abilities. Generative AI can produce factual errors, invented information, generic arguments, and prose that sounds plausible without demonstrating genuine understanding. Someone who is just beginning to enter a scholarly field may also have more difficulty recognizing those weaknesses than an experienced faculty member. But the most important reason not to outsource your application to AI is simpler: we are trying to evaluate you, not the tool. We want to know how you think. We want to see what you notice. We want to know what questions occur to you. We want to see how you handle evidence and uncertainty.

Graduate programs are also increasingly incorporating interviews and other forms of direct interaction into admissions. Whatever you submit, you should be prepared to discuss and defend it in your own words.

Graduate study will involve enormous amounts of reading, writing, thinking, revising, and learning. Developing those abilities is not something to postpone until after admission. The application is already part of that process.

6. Prepare yourself for graduate level historical work

When I asked my own Ghanaian students what they thought prospective students should know, their answer was very clear:

You are going to have to work hard.

You will probably read and write more than you ever have before. You will encounter concepts, methods, expectations, and bodies of scholarship that are unfamiliar. That does not mean you do not belong there. Learning those things is why you are there. Professors are there to help you, but graduate education requires active participation from the student. Ask questions. Schedule meetings. Show up. Participate in seminars. Take advantage of opportunities. Listen carefully to feedback.

This is particularly important when you have access to mentors who understand both the academic environment you are entering and the one in which you received your previous education. They may be able to identify differences that neither you nor someone familiar with only one system would immediately recognize.

Historical scholarship may look different

US styles of historical scholarship and writing may be quite different from what you have encountered before. Read scholarship carefully and pay attention not only to the information historians provide but also to what they are doing intellectually. What questions are they asking? How do they situate those questions within existing scholarship? What kinds of sources do they use? How do they move from evidence to interpretation? What makes their argument an argument rather than a summary?

History is not simply a matter of assembling facts in chronological order. Historical scholarship requires analysis, interpretation, and insight. Producing history is not the same thing as summarizing information. Those are skills. They can be learned.

Learn how to learn

Perhaps the most important preparation for graduate school is becoming comfortable with not knowing something—and developing strategies for finding out. Graduate students are expected to work with substantial independence. You will constantly encounter things you have never done before. Find information. Read instructions. Investigate unfamiliar terms. Compare sources. Learn to distinguish reliable information from unreliable information. And when you have reached the limits of what you can reasonably discover yourself, ask someone. Asking a good question is not evidence that you are unprepared. Often it is evidence that you have done enough work to know precisely what you still need to understand.

Learn from your peers, too, but remember that other students may sometimes pass along advice that is incomplete or based on a misunderstanding. We all do this when we are learning.

When something matters, seek advice from people with direct knowledge and experience. And when someone who has demonstrated a commitment to helping students succeed gives you thoughtful advice, listen carefully—even when the advice is not what you hoped to hear.

7. Understand the financial and immigration realities

A graduate stipend is not as much money as it may appear to be

If you receive a funded offer, the stipend may initially look like a very large amount of money when converted into your home currency. But the cost of living in the United States is also much higher than you may expect. A graduate stipend is generally intended to cover basic living expenses. Before accepting an offer, investigate the actual cost of living in the place where you would study. Consider rent, food, transportation, health insurance and medical expenses, taxes, books, travel, and other ordinary expenses. Do not evaluate a stipend simply by converting the dollar amount into your home currency.

I also understand that many international students have responsibilities to family members at home. Those responsibilities are real and can be substantial. At the same time, you need enough resources to live, study effectively, and take advantage of the opportunities available to you.

Think about these questions carefully before accepting an offer. If possible, talk with current international graduate students at the university. They can often give you a much more realistic sense of what daily life actually costs.

Immigration rules require careful, current research

US visa and immigration rules are complicated and can change. Always research the current requirements before making important decisions. Do not treat this blog post—or any professor, another student, social-media post, or old online discussion—as an authoritative source for current immigration rules. Check current US government and relevant US embassy information yourself.

Other international students can be extremely helpful in explaining their recent experiences with practical matters such as securing visa appointments and assembling documentation, particularly if they applied through the same embassy or consulate that you will use. But distinguish between someone’s experience and an official rule.

I strongly recommend against using visa brokers. Follow official instructions and be careful about handing documents, money, or personal information to third parties who promise that they can make the process easier.

Also recognize the limits of what universities and individual professors can tell you. We may be able to explain university procedures and connect you with the appropriate international-student office, but faculty are not immigration lawyers and may know relatively little about the practical realities of applying for a US visa in Accra, Abuja, Lagos, or elsewhere.

Use the most authoritative source available. Read carefully. And if something remains unclear, ask. Always ask rather than assume.

8. Come ready to learn, not just to gain a credential

Graduate school is not simply a process for acquiring another degree. It is a process of learning how to become a scholar. That requires ambition, but it also requires patience.

It is good to advocate for yourself and to be bold. It is good to want to publish, present at conferences, meet scholars, and pursue opportunities. You also do not have to do everything immediately.

If you want to publish or present your work, look for opportunities appropriate for undergraduate students and early-career graduate students. Ask faculty mentors for honest feedback about whether the work is ready and whether a particular venue is appropriate. Attend conferences, workshops, seminars, and visiting lectures to watch and learn. Pursue research opportunities, language training, archives, and grants when they make sense for your development. But try not to think of every experience simply as another item for your CV. The purpose is to become better at what you do.

Be realistic about what you know and what you still need to learn. Be realistic about how competitive graduate programs are. Be realistic about how much work graduate study requires. None of that should be discouraging. No one should expect you to arrive at graduate school as a finished scholar. The entire purpose of graduate education is that you still have things to learn. What matters is whether you are ready to learn them.

The strongest prospective graduate student is not necessarily the person who makes the biggest claims, develops the most elaborate research proposal, contacts the most famous professors, or projects the greatest confidence. The much more interesting applicant is the one who can communicate something like this:

Here is what I have learned. Here are the questions that learning has led me to. Here is what I do not yet know. Here is why those questions matter to me. And here is why I want the training that will allow me to investigate them seriously.

Curiosity matters. Intellectual humility matters. Hard work matters. Independence matters. Listening matters. And the ability to ask good questions matters enormously.

You do not need to already know how American graduate education works. You do need to be willing to learn.