SilasWegg

Hey @yanicus congrats on the Rutgers acceptance! I'm a second year in the Rutgers English program. If you have any questions, send a message.

I think you might want to consider the MA at Virginia Commonwealth University. There are a number of faculty there working on Southern Lit, 19th Century, and/or African American. Definitely check out Les Harrison and Kathy Bassard. The stipend is in the ballpark of the other programs you are considering but the teaching demands are a little less. Richmond is a great city, housing is relatively inexpensive, and there is a ton of civil war history and really great resources and research opportunities for that. The department is a good size and the faculty are all lovely. I had 2 great years there. I'm at Rutgers doing a PhD now but I really miss my VCU times. GO RAMS!

I applied to doctoral programs during MA coursework. It was brutal, distracting, nerve-wracking, and incredibly time-consuming. When you are already stretched pretty thin with your time commitments, it is important to allocate your resources wisely. If you can, assemble a little squad of supportive professors who can walk you through the process, lend a supportive ear, and hopefully write amazing reference letters. Without the support of these good people, application outcomes are dubious at best. 1. When did you start preparing for the GRE Literature Subject Score? Did you study with a friend or professor? I think you should aim to get a score that breaks 600. Some may disagree but I imagine some adcomms use the subject test as a cut off. My background is in American lit so I really had to beef up on English poetry, especially before 1900. Getting a grasp on major trends in 20th century literary theory helps too. Make flash cards, take practice tests, but don't over commit your time to this aspect of your application. A lot of schools don't require it and, for those that do, it appears to be mostly a formality. 2. If you needed to retake the GRE to make your scores competitive, did you prep during the summer? I took it twice. My score only bumped 10 points on the retake despite countless hours of preparation. I might have had a bad test day but, in retrospect, I truly wish I had applied the law of diminishing returns here. Certainly, my time would have been better spent doing almost anything else. 3. How did you manage to work on your applications (i.e. writing samples and SOP) during a busy schedule? Or did you submit your applications after finishing your MA? I reworked a chapter from the MA thesis as the writing sample. This was a really good two birds/one stone scenario. Profs were already giving me tons of support in composing the thesis project so retooling for the writing sample didn't tax those relationships. SOP is a different story. Though it is a short document, it has to be air tight. Make sure to be forward looking: outline a research project, explain how the degree will aid you in developing professionally and intellectually, maybe describe how working with a particular faculty member at the program will be beneficial to you. Strangely, none of this is as easy as it sounds. 4. Is it okay to ask a professor you work closely with to look at your writing samples Get as many people to look at your writing sample as you can. More importantly, get help with the SOP. The statement of purpose is a genre unto itself, one which applicants rarely have had practice in writing. Also, you want to get a nice conversation going between the SOP and the writing sample. The support of faculty will certainly help in conceptualizing the broader connections between these documents.

I did a multi-year application thing. The first time through I was basically clueless and got shut out. The second-go-around I had the support of some amazing faculty, a clear research vision, and a much better application "strategy" over all. Even though I was a MUCH better qualified applicant on the second pass, I got served a hefty portion of rejections, especially early on. I thought I saw the writing on the wall in January but in the coming weeks I received strong offers from programs I didn't think I had a shot at. Even though its tempting to consider all the ways you could beef up your app for next year, the fact remains that you have your hat in the ring right now. Like you, I sent out apps during the last year of an MA program. It was incredibly difficult to focus on the press of here-and-now work as it seemed my future was hanging in the balance. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't been so gloomy and anxious in those brutal months of waiting. To me, it sounds like you applied to a nice range of schools, have a clear focus, and the support of some excellent faculty. There's much cause for hope and little reason for despair! This is all to say: rather than considering ways to improve next year's apps, think about the happy dance you will do when you get the phone call.

now that this thread has touched upon the great un-charted and under-examined topic of academic fashion... this year i don't have to teach but i have a ton of coursework. this is the first time in a long time that i haven't had to put on a funny little blazer or a plaid tie everyday. reveling in my new found fashion freedoms, i have begun dressing like a teenager for class. no more suede elbow patches for me! however, more and more, i find myself wondering if wearing band tshirts, jeans, sneakers, and ratty thrift store sweaters and/or third generation hand-me-down flanels to seminar makes me look like a filthy slacker who just finished huffing gas in the parking lot. is the seminar NOT anything goes fashion-wise? am i supposed to be going business casual to these class meetings? or is there a happy fashion code middle ground which i have transgressed with impunity?

The SOP is a very strange genre of academic writing, one with many field specific conventions. Consult closely with a trusted faculty member and choose each word very carefully. Said faculty member should also be able and willing to provide the formatting advice you need. I would give you my two cents but this would invite a flurry of comments decrying my unorthodox formatting techniques-- all this is to say ask for help from faculty, not the internet.

Hey this thread is way more interesting than the grad school ponzi scheme thread ive been trolling for the past 20 weeks.

Some gas for the flames... http://www.artandeducation.net/school_watch/entire-usc-mfa-1st-year-class-is-dropping-out/

ToldAgain, I'm a little confused about the question but I can do my best to answer. After the first year of coursework in the MA, I proposed the topic and formed the committee during the summer (before this past application season). Fall 2014, I composed one chapter, which served as the WS (with some tweaks). I circulated the chapter/WS among the committee as an intermediate draft and got some feedback. The committee wrote letters based on this chapter draft as well as previous coursework we had done together. I wrote all the other thesis chapters this semester (ack!). At the program PhD program I will attend in the Fall 2015, dissertation writing doesn't happen until the third or fourth year. So, in theory, the research for the MA thesis can sort of marinate, or I can build on it, or never look at it again. Regardless, the idea is that it prepared to me to devise and execute a larger independent research project before beginning a dissertation. Are you in a direct-admit MA? If so, that process is totally different and I have no idea how it works. My MA was terminal, so I had to transfer out to do the PhD.

Having just finished the MA thesis I can say that this process really helped facilitate PHD admission and may have laid some groundwork for dissertation research. Though the entirety of an MA thesis can't serve as your writing sample, one thesis chapter is about the right length and can be easily adapted for a WS. In addition, doing this kind of self-directed and rigorous project gives you kickass material for a personal statement. Also, putting together a committee helps in getting letters (and gives the LORs good material). Really, I have to say, if you do an MA and plan to go on to doctoral study, doing a thesis is a logical fit for the application process. One major drawback is that it's a tremendous amount of work. I had a heavy teaching load and some tough coursework this semester. Completing and defending the thesis has been awful. I haven't had my head above water all semester and I haven't been able to commit as much time to the thesis as I would have liked. Whatever. It's done and I passed. Still, if your MA requires you to teach or has a mandatory course load (like mine) you might want to consider an exam or directed study or something. Also, if you plan to write a dissertation, I can see how the thesis could be seen as a kind of very time consuming high stakes "practice." Hopefully, when I start a dissertation in a few years, this writing project will provide some kind of research scaffolding for whatever I take on. I'm reluctant to say I will pursue the same topic for a dissertation but maybe I can broaden the scope and sophistication of the thesis into something more? At the defense I sorta got the feeling the committee's questions were geared towards a dissertation type defense... Maybe they were trying to get me to think dissertation..

Anybody going to MELcamp?

Greenmt! You did it! Such a good program for c19 us lit.

I took myself off the Maryland wait list. I hope this helps you!

It's like a car wreck and I just can't look away!

I can address this issue only in terms of my own experiences and I'd prefer not to engage with a set of cherry-picked examples from slate.com or chronicle. For what its worth, these observations are anecdotal but I think they may substantiate the notion that collaborative efforts between and among university entities can lead to more egalitarian practices. I interact with two distinct departments: an english department and what we can call a "rhet/comp" department. In the english department, most faculty teach a 2/2 load in addition to admin duties and new hires on TT lines do the same. Adjunct pay has been steadily increasing and is far above national averages. They work with a very select group of adjuncts who are paid to teach and only teach. I've spoken with multiple senior faculty who have passed up travel and research grants to preserve these opportunities for adjuncts and new hires. The rhet/comp department is a different story. There are not enough lines of tenure here and the vast majority of the faculty are on 12-month contracts that pay at a variety of scales which seem to be entirely arbitrary. These faculty routinely teach 3/4. Given the adjunctified nature of this department and the horrendous overburdening of administrative duties, it seems as though opportunities for advancement are highly competitive and are strictly policed by what could be seen as a kind of "in crowd." However, because this department is responsible for the reading/writing training of every student in the university, they are gaining more control of hiring practices and do indeed work "collaboratively" with a variety of university entities to these ends. In both departments, there has been a move to shift some teaching duties to grad students, opening up lines of support. These funding lines for students do not seem to drive down the pay-scales of adjuncts and grad student teaching is accompanied by intensive mentoring, which faculty often undertake in addition to their less-than-glamorous teaching loads and administrative responsibilities. Basically, this system wouldn't work at all if everyone was just concerned with protecting their own professional interests. Again, I must agree that some faculty and administrators are very protective of their turf and will insulate their reputation with a set of underlings who legitimize their departmental clout. They hand-pick hires from a mysterious set of inner and extra departmental affiliations. Others bear impressive sounding titles but do very little to contribute. Admins inhabit well-appointed offices and it is unclear what they are doing in there to me. However, these examples don't indicate any kind of "ponzi scheme" to me, rather they bear out the inefficiencies and abuses of any bureaucratic entity. I should point out that this is NOT an R1 institution that grant a PhD in english. It is a large urban teaching college with a public endowment. My outlook might be influenced by the fact that I've never been caught up in the struggle for absolute power of the tenured elite at "top-tier" programs.