jrockford27

You'll be busy enough with work (and lacking in money) that you might not notice that you've moved to a substantially smaller town! Bloomington is a substantial sized university and a substantial sized college town though, and it's a 90 minute drive from Indianapolis which gets major concerts and shows and has a wonderful art museum. I'm from a medium-large city and now doing grad school in a medium-large city and have always been impressed with Bloomington when I've had occasion to visit. My fiancé has a saying, she says, "Bloom where you're planted." It's pretty good advice for this profession, because you might end up on the market and only get interviews in Topeka, Tucumcari, and Tallahassee. You generally get fewer options as you move up the professional pyramid.

1. It is worth it to apply to any program where you think you have a decent fit. It is not possible for you to truly evaluate your chance of getting in because there are a number of factors totally outside of your control that could greatly help or hurt your application, most importantly, who happens to be on the adcom that year (also, for example, the current disciplinary makeup of their grad population, the disciplinary makeup of the other people who applied, and so on). 2. There is no such thing as a "safety" school. All English PhD programs have low acceptance rates. There are people who get accepted to top 10 schools but get rejected by schools in the 20s and 30s. If you truly look at all schools that seem to be a good fit for your interests you are likely to come up with a list that has a broad cross section of school rankings. That said, if you find your list reads something like "Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Berkeley, Chicago, Stanford" you might consider wanting to cast a wider net. Don't treat any school like it's a "reach" or a "safety." 3. I think most people who come through here apply to between 7 and 13 schools. You do have the odd outliers who apply to 20 schools, and some folks who apply to only 2 or 3. 4. "Pedigree" matters in hiring but it is not the most important thing. There are people doing fascinating, high quality work at all manner of schools. Oftentimes the reputation of your adviser can be more important than the reputation of the school. Think about sub-disciplines you're interested in, as you might be surprised. A few years ago SUNY Buffalo, a school in the 30s overall was listed in the top 10 of literary theory, though they recently fell out (presumably owed to the loss of Joan Copjec). Schools with better "pedigrees" tend to have a lot more money to throw at you for stipends, travel grants, research, etc. That said, as a person at a school that ranks in the 30s overall but is a top school in my subfield, I have never really hurt for those things (though more money for conference travel would be nice, but most grad students go to too many conferences anyway).

Edit: didn't realize this was bumped by a spambot from 4 years ago.

I live in a reasonably priced mid-sized major metropolitan area. I have no kids. I have lived with my fiancé the last four years. My experience is that we manage to live almost as nicely as we'd like, we aren't starving, we eat well, we can run our heater at a modest rate in the winter. We also are unable to put aside any money for savings. If one of our cars broke down we wouldn't be able to fix it probably (losing a shoe for want of a nail, comes to mind). To buy a new dress shirt is a major luxury. I've been able to buy one new suit (a relatively cheap one) in five years of grad school, and while you might think of this as trivial, I'd ask you, what do you intend to wear to your job interviews/conferences? Things like new shoes become major investments. You learn to take care of what you have, and to fix things yourself. Let us say nothing of what happens when your computer inevitably dies. So to sum up my experience. Day-to-day we live like fine, reasonable adults, but you have little room for error or extras (or savings), which definitely creates a nagging subliminal stress on our day-to-day fine living.

Absolutely not! A visit will start your formal relationship with faculty who want to work with you, as well as your future colleagues, and also give you a sense of the city so you can better prepare to move there.

I would say roughly 85% of the people in my program held MAs or MFAs when they were admitted. BA only folks are definitely in the minority in mine. Obviously different programs have different particularities. Obviously if the program you want more than any other explicitly says they don't take MAs then don't do an MA, but all things being equal I can't imagine a world in which an MA will hurt you as long as you maintain a high level of academic achievement. I would do research on program's opinions toward MA applicants, and contact programs directly, rather than relying totally on what people here say. @Warelin is certainly correct that an MA alone will not get you a better PhD admission. However, my argument is that being in a funded MA program will position you to do things that will improve your admission prospects. @punctilious's husband seems to have achieved a really impressive work-rate outside of a funded university setting. I know that during the two years I had between BA and grad (one because I didn't resolve to do grad school until after the deadlines my last year of undergrad; and the other because I was totally shut out), I couldn't have managed it. I would still suspect that your husband got into Harvard on the strength of his writing sample, proposed research, and letters of rec rather than the publications. For what it's worth, I've been in an English PhD program for five years now, and have had a lot of conversations with my colleagues and even with faculty about admissions, and been on some hiring committees (though they aren't exactly the same), and been the grad rep on my department's graduate program advisory committee. The most important things for your application are your writing sample, a clearly defined SoP, and solid letters of recommendation. I cannot imagine a situation in which those things can be more advantageously improved by taking a gap year than by spending two funded years writing and doing research under the supervision of experienced graduate faculty. Nothing will help you clearly define your research goals like doing a ton of research. I think an MA program will put you in better position to get a peer reviewed scholarly article on your CV as well, if you decide to do so, as you will have faculty to help you develop one (many programs hold workshops and so forth).

Yeah, @boopbop, I'm searching trying to figure out what you could possibly do in a gap year that would be more advantageous for your PhD applications than doing two years of funded research/teaching/coursework in an academic setting. I mean, we can talk about the value to your life overall, and the development of your overall self as a separate issue, but in terms of academic credentials I'd be really curious. While extracurriculars and interesting CV lines you can gain in a gap year may not be totally ignored, they'll be a lot less significant than the type of application building you can do in a funded MA program (for example, working on a new writing sample under the guidance of your advisor/mentors, conference presentations/publication [which will be much easier to do within a program], improvement of GPA, getting well developed letters of rec that attest to graduate level accomplishments). If your goal is to "improve yourself for reapplication" then the advantages of doing a funded MA over a gap year are pretty much boundless in my opinion. Indeed, improving one's PhD prospects is one of the handful of reasons why funded terminal MAs in English exist. Funded MAs aren't super common and represent a great opportunity.

With regard to imposter syndrome, there is a relevant proverb from the Analects of Confucius (3.15): "When [Confucius] went inside the Grand Temple, he asked questions about everything. [Later] Someone remarked, 'Who said that the son of the man from Tsou understood the rites? When he went inside the Grand Temple, he asked questions about everything!' [Confucius], on hearing of this, said, 'The asking of questions is in itself the correct rite.'" The whole Analects is actually really great reading for meditations on grad school, and on teaching when you come around to it.

My father was not full of great life advice, but he had a few useful things he used to say frequently. One of them was, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." That is, don't let go of what you've actually got for the outside chance you could get more of the same thing. Admissions decisions can be very capricious. Those who are enjoying an embarrassment of acceptances this year may be doing so because there happened to be a lot of programs looking for talented folks in their subfield this year. Those shut out may be shut out because people in their subfields happen to just not be on the adcoms this year. It is a very risky assumption to assume that you'll do better next year because these kinds of admissions criteria/variables can change wildly year over year.

If it makes those dealing with partner issues feel better, I've seen quite a few examples in my program of people making it work, and coming to perfectly reasonable compromises. Often times these compromises can make life more difficult for one or both partners, but they make it work nevertheless. One of my committee members and his partner lived apart for 10 years before they were finally able to land jobs at the same university - indeed, they had to live apart for a long time so that they could develop their careers so that they could eventually achieve that particular dream. He told me that it was a wonderful thing for their relationship that they were both willing to accept the distance for a little while in order to be able to spend the rest of their lives together. They're in their 40s, they've both got tenure at the same place, and in 40 years when they retire that 10 years will probably seem like a blip. Your life is a very very long time. This is a very very tough business to be in if you're going to have a romantic life, it strains relationships. If your partners aren't academics, they need to be able to understand and accept that, and you should be very honest with them about it. You aren't going to have a lot of say in where you get to go for your first job out of school (even less than your say in where you go to grad school!), or if you remain geographically rooted, that will potentially bring its own struggles.

Rule of thumb, address them as Dr. until they tell you not to (they should do this very quickly unless they're way into titles).

I don't have any advice other than if you are, for example, assigned to read a 250 page theory book in a week (not a terribly outlandish reading assignment for a grad seminar) that it's unlikely you're going to be able to actually read and usefully retain all 250 pages. So do a little bit of reflection, take a look at the table of contents, read the intro and then ask yourself 1) which portions sound like they're most relevant to the seminar; 2) which portions sound most relevant to my own research interests. Read those portions carefully, and skim the rest, marking pages that seem worth coming back to. That doesn't mean skipping them, it just means gliding over them a bit more easily, taking only sparse notes. While you might feel like a slacker at first, you're really not, your brain is a pretty impressive hard drive. I've been writing papers years after a seminar when it crosses my mind, "hey, didn't I read something about that in that section I skimmed from...?" I don't know, some faculty may think this is utter heresy, but this thread is about self-care and it's one strategy I developed.

Wow, that's a truly impressive acceptance! All of the MCM folks I've met have been impressive, interesting people. Congratulations. Who are your PoI's there?

Yeah, my dog ate the covers off of two library books, set me back $50 in repair fees. He will eat virtually anything, and so the first few months he required pretty perpetual vigilance, which likely colors my experience of dog ownership as a grad student!

Maybe I was too strong in my dog advice. Mine has been sleeping peacefully all morning while I've been avoiding looking at my advisor's notes on my chapters.

My partner and I adopted a dog two years ago, and while we love him and don't regret him, I think we would both definitely be further along in our dissertations if we didn't have him! Dogs don't care that you're just hitting your stride, or that you've only written 300 words in a whole day of work, they demand validation. However, if you have a dog sized hole in your heart and you simply wont make it without one, it would be terribly hypocritical for me to stop you! The first few weeks you will get zero done, and you wont sleep much, it will get better, but you'll never be able to work as much or as consistently as you are accustomed to (though in light of my previous post, maybe that isn't such a bad thing).

Sounds like Pitt dodged a bullet. I'm sure with their stellar credentials they'll go on to terrorize some other program.

I guess I was thinking more about dissertation/comps phase, but I think we can say a similar thing about coursework with the caveat that in my experience the labor involved in the coursework phase of grad school is a bit less demanding and so it's possible to put in more hours. I mean, I find myself to be a pretty slow reader (I can read about 20 pages of academic carefully, with some notes, in about one hour). For me, effective skimming was an important skill to develop in grad school (I was at a meeting the other day where several full time faculty discussed the importance of skimming for grad students). If someone finds that they are working 10-12 hours a day on their coursework, reading everything with a magnifying glass, and still living their best life, then more power to you. My anecdotal evidence suggests that this is not the case for most grad students (including myself). On top of my snailspace with regard to careful reading, I would also say that there is a definite cap on what I retain and if I had to guess it probably tops out at about 3 hours, and then I need a break to do something else (there have been studies that show diminishing returns for intellectual exercise after about this amount of time). So I'll switch to writing, or grading, or schedule my day around a talk. All I'm trying to say is that a great self care tip for grad school is to not get enveloped in pissing contests (with other academics, or with your sibling who does some other kind of work with a completely different set of demands) about how many hours a week you need to work, and don't get intimidated by grad students who claim fantastically long and productive workdays, because evidence suggests that short, intense periods of intellectual work are much more productive than long, grinding days. I highly recommend the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, it completely changed my approach to my studies, and confirmed through evidence a lot of things I'd believed for a long time, and made me feel better about my habits of mind. I think the "look how exhausted I am, isn't being a grad student cah-razy, here's an instagram picture of all of the books on my desk, can't believe I'm gonna read those #crushingit" really traps us in the postmodern "Love what you do" ethos that makes us easier to exploit (and we're already really easy to exploit). I think if most grad students saw people in any other profession working overtime hours for minimum wage with very little promise for substantial upward financial mobility, and then bragging about it and aestheticizing it, they would decry it as exploitation and false consciousness (they'd write a 30 page paper citing Althusser, Rancière, and Derrida), but when grad students do it it's apparently just "the academic life." After five years of PhD study, I'm pretty sure this is the most important self care advice I can give. Also, drink plenty of water, take walks, beware of credit cards, learn to cook/bake, and don't get a dog..

I know several people who have come through the NC State English dept.'s MA program and they speak very highly of it, albeit, these are students in their Film Studies concentration. I've never heard them report anything negative about how it was to live on the stipend (though I never asked). For what its worth , among film studies folks, that English MA program is very well regarded.

The most important thing is also perhaps the hardest to gauge: that is, do you have the sense that the program's grad students are well treated, and that they feel supported by the program. I think you should really ask this of a variety of grads in the program if you have the opportunity to meet them. You can have a first class funding offer, but if the grad students tell you that they feel like the faculty aren't invested in them and their success, that should be a major, major red flag. You might also be able to sense this, as I've written elsewhere, in the quality of the program's recruitment. Do they go out of their way to actually, y'know, recruit you, or do they treat you like an afterthought. Do not be afraid to ask these questions. You'll probably find that grads will give you honest answers, and if the answers aren't 100% honest, you might still be able to read between the lines. As many of you already well know, most grad students will not pass up an opportunity to lament a terrible situation. Remember, this is 5-10 years of your life (depending on the program, you should also DEFINITELY ask about average "time to degree") that you will never get back. You may take an offer at that school whose name will really impress the folks back home but find that the actual experience of that place isn't so great.

While this thread has focused primarily on exercise and nutrition, which are important, don't forget that self-care includes hobbies, socializing with friends, and plain old enjoying things that aren't work. For example, this academic year I started a new ritual where each morning I wake up, make myself some coffee, and spend the first hour of my day reading something that has zero to do with my work. I feel like this improves my morale substantially, and gets my brain "spun up" to think about important things. I wish it hadn't taken me until I was 33 years old to realize that mornings aren't just for rolling out of bed, stuffing food in my mouth and rushing into work. Make time for things that aren't work or exercise! You'll probably meet people in grad school who brag about 60 hour work weeks and wear their exhaustion like a badge of honor. It is so ridiculously unnecessary, and these people are probably vastly overstating their workload, or have an exceptionally broad definition of what constitutes academic work. While we all inevitably find ourselves putting in a few 10-12 hour days at crunch time, if you're working smart you do not need to be doing that on a weekly basis.

You MUST be from Minnesota. I'm also a grad of "The U" and I was totally shut out my first round of applications. I spent a couple of months floating around Northeast doing a lot of karaoke, and then got back to business. Ended up someplace I really like. As an aside, one of my letter writers was J.B. Shank from the history department, and one of my favorite classes was Daily Life in Early Modern Europe with Carla Philips, also in that dept. Should have done a history minor heh.

I'll share the narratives of my two campus visits, which were on opposite ends of the spectrum, and which might help you in planning your visit. School A: I was admitted and attended a "Recruitment Weekend" with every other admitted student. In groups we met with one faculty member for lunch, who may or may not have been in your area (mine was not). The planned itinerary consisted primarily of events with grad students, apart from a party which was attended by grads and faculty. It was only after I arrived that I discovered that it was incumbent upon me, beforehand, to have set up appointments with professors of interest if I wanted to meet with any faculty individually! Since I had not made arrangements ahead of time, and at the time I was quite shy and nervous, I had very little interaction with faculty. School B: Prior to my visit I was issued a (pretty much) to the minute itinerary for a two full day visit which included scheduled appointments with professors I'd mentioned in my statement, and even some professors I was unaware of who happened to be interested in my application, a brief meeting with the department chair, as well as some seminars to attend, lunch and dinner with grad students, etc. I didn't really need to prepare at all. It would be worthwhile, once you start talking to the DGS of programs you were admitted to about your visit, to ask if the visit will be more like School A or more like School B! Keep in mind that everything may not be taken care of, and you may be in charge of planning your own visit to some degree. My other advice would be: if you attend you'll have 5-8 years to sit with these folks and show off how much Lacan you've read, but you may only have a day or two to decide whether you like these people, this environment, this city. You've already been admitted, so you don't need to prove how smart or well read you are, focus on getting to know whether or not you want to live and work in this place. Likewise, your future colleagues are more likely to want to find out who you are as a person; while research interests are a good conversation starter, yours are likely to change a half-dozen times in the next few years anyway! By the way, I attend School B now. While School A is a fine program, B definitely made me feel more like they were invested in me, and cared about who I was, which was an important factor in my final decision. These are things to think about as you visit a campus, as I'm sure you've heard enough tales about grad students who feel adrift, neglected, or abandoned by their programs (and if you haven't, believe me, it happens).

Definitely write a thank you e-mail back in the case of an acceptance or a waitlist. It lets the administration know you've received the decision. Something as simple as, "That's wonderful news! Thank you! Please let me know if you need anything from me." They know that you're probably waiting for all of your offers to come in and they definitely know that you have until April 15 to make a decision.

Every school has a waitlist, fear not. I attend a program very similarly ranked to tOSU and we admit off the waitlist every single year (I got into my program off the wait list!)