CommPhD20

So many more details needed...

Yeah, it seems pretty hard to predict with a school like NW who likes to just call people out of the blue -- I'm just irritated since it's the only remaining variable in my equation (I do have a SO to worry about)

Not sure how helpful this thread can be when we know the most important things are SOP, LOR, and writing sample, the very things that can't be shared.There will be a correlation between the above and the GPA/GRE/institution/pubs/confs types of things, but probably not to a helpful extent

Yeah, the only thing holding me up is that I haven't seen any applicants to the RPC program report anything, including visits/interviews, nor have I seen any RPC folks report interviewing past years

OSU is certainly the leader in the clubhouse, but I'm going to wait for all the chips to fall.

Congrats everyone. I've now heard from all of the MA programs I've applied to and am almost done with everything. Time flies.

Seems like all of the Northwestern programs are totally erratic in their notifications.

I'll share a very pertinent link: http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/03/22/dont-go-to-graduate-school-an-inadvertant-guest-post/ some excerpts:

I've been a lifelong UIUC fan, so I've been unable to muster any positive feelings for OSU athletics and I predict the same if I get the same love from N'Western, I'll still hate their teams. Some of these other places, like Syracuse, I could manage it I think and I have taken an interest in those teams. Any non-Big Ten school has a shot at my heart.

Yes, I got an acceptance email on February 7 - mine was personally written, so I'm not sure if that might mean that there are acceptances that have not yet come out. I know that they intend to make funding decisions this week, so they might have held off with some notifications until then.

You'll hear this, that, and the other thing about each brand based on people's anecdotes. Here's an example - I've had a shitty CS experience with Apple that turned me off of them as well as a very positive experience with Dell. These both contradict the prevailing narratives about those brands. Aggregate customer satisfaction ratings put them both near the top - FWIW, Dell ranks fine among its competitors in customer service satisfaction. Here is another resource - http://lifehacker.com/computer-manufacturers-ranked-how-to-pick-a-laptop-tha-1467145338 Another thing to consider is that you can help predict your customer service and overall satisfaction by knowing what you're buying. A huge portion of the reason Apple has an easy time satisfying its customers is that they don't sell low-end computers. You get something that is very expensive and thus unlikely to start out so marginal in performance that any little thing renders it unusable. Dell had dominated the low-end for a long time and this is how they got the reputation for being a bad computer maker...well, they used to be the brand with the cajones to do their best with a $200-$300 computer...but there's only so much you can do and corners will be cut. Anyway, I've been going with Lenovo lately and have had good experiences all around. Good design, good computers at competitive prices, and I've had some nitpicky requests for CS that have been dealt with wonderfully. IMO, their Yoga 2 Pro is the best consumer laptop available. Perhaps not for your needs, though, since you want something a bit larger. As someone else suggested, though, it might make sense to get something that is portable and just connect it to an external monitor for when you want that screen real estate.

Since I tend toward political communication, it isn't too hard for me to communicate the basic aims of my research. Oh, you want to know whether people really learn from Jon Stewart? Or if watching the news makes you want to vote? These are questions that lots of people ask.

FWIW, business students at OSU manage multi-million funds (I know this from browsing Wikipedia yesterday!)

I was contacted by a current UIUC in my field offering advice on living and studying there. He mentioned that he could offer insight on living in "a small midwestern town" - ha! I grew up not so far from UIUC in a town of 10,000 people that was the largest town for about 30 miles every direction. Chambana might as well have been NYC to us!

I wish Northwestern RPC would release decisions...then I can just sit and freak out about what to do

I'd like to add to this, since it is good that we don't simply respond to the bummer that is the job market by bowing out. The above advice works, but just like you have to fully embrace being a grad student as well as your subject matter before entering grad school, you have to really embrace these outcomes. You can't just say that you're okay with these non-TT outcomes just to alleviate your worry. It must be something that is totally okay. The system tends to make you feel like whether or not you get a tenured position in academia is the absolute verdict on your entire value. Don't tie your self-worth to that career outcome while paying lip service to being open to other possibilities. You need to consider what your life will be like if you get the PhD and don't get the good professorship. Are you okay with the life of the adjunct? Do you know what that life is like? Are you okay with the idea of spending nearly a decade studying literature and going on to a career that is quite a large departure from your studies? It is okay if you say yes to these questions, but don't go through the motions as you consider them.

I wish Northwestern RPC was at all predictable in what they are up to

Easier? Yes. Cheaper? No.

I got that too, and I'm thinking I'll go. I can probably drive...it is about 9 hours away, a tad longer than home, but I think the $250 would cover my gas costs. It is so likely to be the place I go that I was probably going to go on my own dime if they didn't have a visit. It's obviously a lot easier to pull off driving from my middle-America location than it is for you from CA.

Don't need a second language (though this is serious added value at many institutions), definitely don't need publications (some say this adds little value unless it is single-authored in a high-impact journal -- either way, its absence isn't damning), and interviews are the exception rather than the rule, though my intuition tells me it seems to be getting a little more common.

Won fellowship at OSU, which is great news. It was already at the top of my current list of acceptances, but it's up there even further now. If my SO could just get accepted off the waitlist to their English PhD program...

I have whatever four years of unsubsidized Stafford Loans are...somewhere in the upper 20s, plus around $1000 of accumulated interest.

While I'm not normally keen on defending Schuman, Katie Roiphe is about atypical a case as anyone. Her mother is Anne Roiphe and Katie grew up with a great deal of privilege. She is on a tenure line at NYU after getting her PhD from Princeton. Katie has made a name and money for herself by writing a book that blames date rape victims for their rapes. She doesn't really have the ethos for the kind of argument she is making.

Unfortunately, MLA's last study covered things right up until the economic downturn. At that point, about 50% of Lit PhD grads were on TT by 2-3 years later. http://www.mla.org/pdf/survey_phdplacement_0607.pdf For 2007-08, there were 1,876 job postings in English. For 2008-09, that dropped like a rock to 1,100 and the portion of those that were TT dropped considerably as well. Those recovered slightly in the following years, but most recently dropped down to 1,142 (TT portion of that number has improved, but not to pre-recession levels). 2007-08 had 1,224 TT job postings. In 2009-10, 628. This past year was 713. http://www.mla.org/pdf/rptjil12_13web.pdf Also troubling, the PhD issuance market has hardly reacted to this tremendous change in the job market. You see a tiny dip at first and it quickly recovers as schools need the cheap labor. http://www.mla.org/pdf/sed_report_2010.pdf So we're looking at the number of available jobs coming dangerously close to being cut in half and remains that way over several years (hasn't yet done much recovery at all) while PhD production remains steady. When things were "good," you had just over half of literature PhDs finding TT positions. Now you had the jobs cut nearly in half without a correction to the supply over those same several years. How few of this year's PhD recipients will find positions? 30%? Worse? Even worse, the real fly-by-night programs aren't responding to these surveys.

I upvoted to help right the wrong for you.