Metaellipses

Hi! Cohorts are usually around 12, although they've been as large as 14 (I think they're shooting for 12 this year). We tend to recruit around two people in each subfield: so two early modernists, two medievalists (one anglo-saxon and one late medieval) etc. Our waitlist is also structured according to subfield. As for the MA: I'm thinking back to my own cohort, and I remember there being at least three people. But most incoming students are BA. I don't know if that's a coincidence or by design. We also have a pretty significant number of people who have a MFA - usually around one or two in each cohort. Hope this is helpful!

Hi fellow queer people! I'm a gay woman and I also mentioned queer theory in my statement of purpose, but didn't explicit refer to my sexual identity. The other gay person in my cohort did, however, and like you mentioned wove it into his research interests (queer performativity in contemporary literature). I didn't actually end up pursuing queer theory, but I am glad that I broadcast that interest up front, as it sparked some dialogue with other queer people who are working in that field. A lot of school also have queer professional graduate organizations that help queer academics with the particular anxieties and obstacles we have to deal with in grad school and on the job market. I think there has to be more conversation around professionalization for LGBTQQIAA students - we have relocation concerns in particular that a lot of other students don't have and depending on our presentation we also have potential job interview issues that might pop up, depending on the politics and location of the school. For example, I've had both queer graduate students and graduate students of color say that they were asked by interviewers if they could teach a class relating to their perceived identity (i.e. you present as a gay person or are of East-Asian descent so therefore must be able to teach a class on queer theory and/or post colonial literature even if that's not actually how you're marketing yourself). Being able to deal with questions like this is an invaluable skill that should be taught in professionalization workshops. I've also benefited a lot from on-campus mental health resources oriented toward the LGBTQQIAA community. I highly recommend taking advantages of these services if they're available. Grad school is tough as it is.

There's also the trickle down effect of the poor applicant pool. I know at Rutgers, which typically accepts students who have also applied to, and been accepted at, schools like Harvard and Yale, our top picks are frequently also the top picks of those schools. And frequently (although not always: we have a crazy number of people who have turned down Cornell and Brown, in particular) those students opt to choose those schools over Rutgers, which means we're reaching deeper into our waitlists. So if applicant pools are lower everywhere, then waitlists have a much higher chance of getting turned into acceptances - as long as cohort size isn't shrinking. I'm sure in some places, cohorts are just made smaller. But I know here, and at a lot of other schools in the Rutgers consortium (such as Princeton, Columbia, NYU, etc) faculty won't let cohort size shrink below a certain number, because then they'd have trouble getting classes approved (due to attendance minimums). There may be a small amount of shrinkage within a certain range (12 applicants instead of 14), but I doubt it would be too severe for that reason - even with reduced application pools. That being said, I think the net effect of the poor applicant pool would mostly be the difference between a waitlist and an acceptance, not a decline and an acceptance. As jhefflol said, a good app is a good app. Schools usually have a fixed number of waitlisted students (the number here generally matches the number of acceptances). Also, a disclaimer: I've been involved in the admissions process here only from the backend: meeting with accepted students, arranging campus visits, informing faculty if someone is likely to accept (to make room for a waitlisted person if they don't) etc. But I have no official knowledge of how applicants are selected.

It might be worth contacting grad departments, but I wouldn't fret too much about it. I know for our program, they don't expect to have all the letters of reference by the posted deadline, just the application materials that you can control. I don't know what the anticipated time to have all reference letter in is, but I'd imagine it would be the time that the faculty members convene to go over the apps and narrow down the pool.

Hello All, Just to reassure everyone applying to Rutgers who submitted their app on the 15th: the department has a longer application season this year. They've extended the deadline until the 22nd of December. So you should all be fine. The new deadline has been updated on the website.

Sure, I'll answer to the best of my ability! Just PM me.

Hey! I unfortunately don't know anything at all about Professor Dowling. The only 18th century scholars I'm familiar with here are William Galperin, Michael McKeon and Lynn Festa. However, I have heard of professors who don't normally teach graduate classes or work with grad students taking on a specific student to mentor. We aren't typically encouraged to take independent studies, but sometimes a professor will still act as a reader for a student's dissertation or work with them on an oral's list. Sorry I can't be more of a help! I hope that you're able to get in contact with him.

Hey! It's very common for our students to live in NYC/Brooklyn. Of the 3rd-7th years, almost all of them (with perhaps two or three exceptions) live in those locations or in Jersey City. I do recommend living in New Brunswick during coursework as Brooklyn can be around an hour and a half on the train. But a lot of people choose to relocate there or to Queens once they're on their second fellowship. The way our fellowship system is set up means that you can be consistently on fellowship for years 5-7. That means no teaching, no courses and really no reason to be on campus. It's a pretty ideal time to move to the city. The NJ Transit train to Penn Station picks up within sight of the English Dept. It's super convenient and you can get monthly passes with a student discount. It's still a little pricy (around 200 dollars per month) but since the majority of students in the program are doing it without difficulty, I'd say that it's definitely feasible on our stipend.

I also want to say that while the official information on eligibility for consortium classes specifies that something be "necessary," anything that is related to your field of study (or your methodology) fits that description. I have never known (nor have I heard) of anyone having an issue taking classes in the consortium. The only time I'd say that it becomes problematic is when there is a professor at your home school teaching a course in the same or a related topic. Even then, I've seen exceptions be made. For example, one of my friends wanted to take a class on contemporary photographic theory and we had a class offered here on 19th century American literature and visual culture that included a section on contemporary photography. She ended up taking a Princeton class that focused exclusively on photography and had no problem justifying it to her advisor. The Princeton student in my class right now is taking it because it's in his field (Literatures of the New World) and a class in that period wasn't offered at Princeton this semester. You may also state that you want to work with a particular scholar.

Hey! It's very common for students in the consortium to take Rutgers classes. Last semester, one of my classes had a Columbia student. This semester one of my classes has a Princeton student. From talking to other people in my cohort, there are at least two other Princeton students in Rutgers English classes this semester. We also collaborate in other ways. Princeton and Rutgers have joint graduate colloquia that feature a graduate student conference restricted to the two schools. There's an early modern one and a 19th century one (although there may be more for other periods I don't know about). I hope this answers your question!

In the spirit of the other informational threads recently posted, I thought I'd start this one for any new prospective PhD students who'd like to know more about the Rutgers English department. I'm a first year in the program and am also on the organizational committee for accepted students weekend. I've interacted with, or had classes with, most of the early modern and medieval faculty. I've also been fairly social in the program and will be more than happy to share what I think about the general atmosphere, the dynamic between students and faculty or anything else you'd like to know - pick my brain!

1. Look for happy grad students that are friendly and communicative about the program. These will be your future friends and colleagues! Run down, secretive or unfriendly grad students are the sign of a poorly managed program or are an indication of uneven funding and a hypercompetitive atmosphere. 2. Check out the area and the living situation. You should plan to live close to campus your first semester so that you can fully immerse yourself in campus life. Ask the grad students questions about the area, the cost of living, how public transportation works and where the affordable housing is. 3. Be able to sum up your interest in the field in a single sentence (believe me, you'll end up repeating yourself a lot). 4. Look for active participation, attentiveness (if it's a lecture) and enthusiasm in classes. No-one wants to go to a program where there are bored looking students. 5. Try to meet as many faculty members as possible to get a feel for the program, even if they're not in your area of study. Here are some sample questions I've compiled: What is the time to degree? Do I get summer support? Do I get health insurance? What is working with X person like? How many students does X professor have / how many dissertations are they directing? (to get a sense of workload). Will I get conference funding? Will I get private research funding? What is the teaching load like? Are there any fellowship opportunities? How many classes do students take each semester? Are summer classes covered by tuition remission? Are there paper writing workshops, conference workshops and themed working groups in my area of study? How does the school handle professionalization and job placement once I'm on the market? How easy is it to access other libraries and archives? How are the language requirements fulfilled (and will I have support for fulfilling them)? Will I be able to take classes at other schools or in other departments? What is the departmental average for job placement in tenure track jobs within three years of graduation? (make sure they give you recent numbers). Hope this helps!

We have a 1-1 for years 2-4 and years 1, 5, 6 and 7 are fellowship years. Some students apply to teach over the summer though and I've heard of students on external fellowship picking up an instructorship (but it's not recommended).

My work intersects with vital materialism and (historically situated) neocybernetics. These are some names in those fields and also in bio-ethics: Richard Doyle at Penn State, Jane Bennett at Johns Hopkins (although she's in Poly-Sci officially she has tons of overlap in the humanities and I'm sure you could find a way to work with her) Mark Hansen at Duke and Cary Wolfe at Rice. All of them have done work with post-humanism (although Doyle would specify that he's interested more in "post-vitalism"). Hope this helps!

I scored in the 98th percentile using a pretty simple strategy. I used these two sites pretty exclusively (one of which has already been linked) http://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/alison/hapaxlegomena/TheList.html http://people.duke.edu/~tmw15/ I found the second site (which hasn't been linked on this thread yet) to be more comprehensive. It was the single most valuable contribution to my test preparation because it has a mobile version that I could just send to my kindle. You can get it at the top of the page I linked - click "Mobile Mecum." I kept that document on my kindle for five months and read it for around two hours a day. Every time I finished, I'd start over again. As I neared the test date, I kept parts of it bookmarked that were giving me the most trouble (Contemporary American Prose and Poetry mostly) and I'd just review those. Other than that, I read through the Norton Anthologies. It's not important to read them through completely or to even read thoroughly. Just read the period headings to get a sense of historical context and brush up on authors you're unfamiliar with by reading their little author bio. It's also good for skimming poetry but the Mobile Mecum also has complete poems. I found the Mecum to be better for actually reading the works that will be tested. The Princeton Review's practice tests are good and there are also old versions you can find online (the two sites above link them all, I'm pretty sure). I also used this really crappy book of practice tests http://www.amazon.com/GRE-Literature-English-REA-Preparation/dp/0878913467/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369592270&sr=1-2&keywords=REA+literature+subject+test+GRE. It's HORRIBLE because it's really a lot harder than the actual test and some of the questions (around 2-3 per test) don't even have answers that makes sense. But if you've run out of practice tests to take, it's better than nothing. I took a practice test a week leading up to exam to help me focus. The greatest piece of advice I can give is to use Mobile Mecum on either your phone or your e-reader instead of making flashcards. It saves you time and it's compact and portable (I would read it on my break from work and on the bus!) Its only shortcoming is that it won't have the most recent contemporary texts that are tested. So pay special attention to Norton's contemporary sections in both British and American. As other posters have stated, this test is the least important part of your application. But by using the above strategy, I was able to nail it by doing only around 2 or so hours of studying a day for it. On your day off (if you have one - I was lucky enough to have two since I only worked a 40hr week and wasn't a student) just take the practice test and don't bother with the reading. Rinse and repeat! Edit: And I completely forgot to link a really amazing site I found when I was studying for the subject test. http://www.librivox.org is the audiobook version of Project Gutenberg. It has (most) public domain books available in audio with no ads and it's completely free. I used it to listen to the first chapter of books on my hit list while I was at the gym or driving. Listening to just one chapter should allow you to recognize the first sentence of the text (which the test sometimes asks you to identify) and give you a good feel for the author's style.

Rutgers is amazing for early modern and they have an incredibly rich program with tons of interdisciplinary opportunities (for example research going on in Renaissance science studies / women's writing / queer studies in particular). I was astounded by how much support students are given. WUSTL is strong in early modern studies. Penn State also has some things going on in the early modern. They have a digital humanities project right now converting 16th century emblem books and they have a pretty extensive Renaissance library. Laura Knoppers does Milton there. I'll also second Penn. UMass is ok, but the strength of their program is mostly in the Renaissance Center which has a very impressive archive for a public university. I was extremely underwhelmed by their faculty offerings and their classes.

I'm an early modernist and studying primarily Latin texts (emblem books and masques) not all of which are available in translation (and some that I wouldn't want to read in a translated edition, emblem books being essentially full of riddles that are best understood in the original) so I've been brushing up on my Latin for the language exam. Right now, I'm probably approaching the intermediate level and stumbling through Cicero. I don't need to have fluency for the exam - just proficiency, so I think I'll probably be ok if I keep up with the intensive study schedule I've set for myself over the summer. My second language will definitely be Italian. Since I'm comparative Renaissance, Italian is really useful to me. Not to mention that my family is Italian and I qualify for (and am partway through the process of acquiring) dual citizenship, and yet don't speak the language! Duolingo has been really awesome for casual Italian study while I focus on Latin.

From what I've been able to gather, committees generally have a pretty good idea of who is highest in priority for them. Most committees separate their waitlisted students by period, so if you're a Victorianist and their first choice in that period declines the offer, you'd get that spot as long as you're in the top portion of the waitlist. It would be useful to contact the departments you're waitlisted at and inquire about your position if you haven't already. Some schools will let you know exactly, some are more vague. But it's worth a shot. One of the schools my friend applied to actually let her know her exact chance of getting in...like the percent chance. That's a pretty rare situation but still good information to have if it's available to you.

Brown has something called the "Open Graduate Program" that's available to their PhD students. It allows you to obtain a funded Masters degree in pretty much any field as long as you can argue that it is relevant to your main degree. You complete it at the same time as your PhD and it just tacks on a year to your funding. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to make an argument for a MFA (or an MA in Religion for that matter) as either would have a pretty strong connection to your literary interests. The MFA would be awarded by their "Literary Arts" program in case you want to look it up.

I'm starting a PhD at Rutgers in English in the fall. Currently looking in the Raritan and Highland Park area for housing.

And on the topic of the GRE Subject Test, Flash Card Maker Pro is AWESOME! It lets you make your own flashcards for everything and then reads them back to you, shuffles them, and quizzes you on them. It also lets you send the card packs to your email so you can sync them across devices that way. I have an Android, but I'm sure it also works on iphone.

I had the same issue this past application season. I had been out of school for a few years, had some papers from undergraduate that I wasn't at all happy with, and had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do. I ended up working with the 10 page paper that interested me the most. But I completely dissected it and ripped it apart. It ended up being a completely different paper - with a different thesis - using none of the original material. Just starting with something made me feel a little less overwhelmed. As for the material and the topic, you're right; a lot has been written about what you're writing about. But that's just the name of the game. You really have two options here and neither is better than the other (in my opinion). You can take a pretty commonly written about text and really really really do your freakin' legwork; OR, you can take a more obscure text that interests you and get ready to do some close readings. This latter option really relies on the quality of your writing, your ability to take risks, and your innovation. I opted to go the first route. I took a really common play (Shakespeare!) and did almost two months of research. I went over probably 100 journal abstracts on my topic and read all the major theorists that contributed to the general theme of my reading (queer studies and rhetoric). My friend opted for the second route. He picked a relatively obscure play (by Djuna Barnes) and did nuanced, theoretically astute readings with a much looser thesis. We both got into top 20 schools - so judging from this very small sample size, I'd say that both ways are fine if you know what you're up against. The most important thing is that your writing reflects what you want to do. It should intersect well with your statement of purpose and be in your area of interest. It should also (again, in my opinion) reflect the work you'll be doing at the graduate level, not the work you have done as an undergraduate. I would strongly suggest starting (mostly) from scratch unless you have a solid thesis chapter to revise and polish. That way you aren't tempted to take shortcuts, and you can customize it to be as accurate an indicator as possible of your future ability. Also, (and I'm sure you'll hear this from multiple people) don't worry about the GREs. Focus on your writing and study for the tests when you can spare the time. Your GREs will get your writing read, but your writing is what gets you into the program. Just my two cents.

Hey! I'm an early modernist (not really what you were asking for, but what the hay!) and I'm starting a PhD program in English Lit. at Rutgers this fall (already confirmed). I too had fantastic contact with the faculty and also picked the brains of a few grad students (one was an anglo-saxonist and one was another early modernist). I am attending the open house (only a little over a week away!) so I can feed you information about it if you're not planning on going. So far most of my question have been about interdisciplinary options, housing, and the surrounding community. All answered to my satisfaction. As far as I can tell, the best place to live is in Highland Park since it's pretty close to College Ave Campus (where Murray Hall i.e. most of the English classes are). As far as the teaching arrangement goes, I heard that teaching intro comp classes is what most students do until they get ABD; then they teach one specialty class. I was also told that students generally only teach one summer class, since they're hard to come by. But there are so many free intensive language classes offered over the summer, that it seems we'll probably be too busy anyway! I'm studying comparative Renaissance so I need to be proficient in Latin and Italian <.< . Anyway, hit me up if you want to chat!

This kind of happened to me, and the embarrassing part was that I CALLED THEM! So I got the phonecall from a POI letting me know that I was in, but it went to voicemail. Being me, and therefore being eager to perform epic acts of self sabotage, I actually waited until I got out of work (my phone is off while I'm at work) and I called her back to find out about financials. I'm pretty sure I said that I was "excited" at least four times and there were also really awkward gaps between her information and my questions as all of the important ones I had were rapidly fleeing my head. I was just gurgling and blubbing like an infant. I also may have interrupted her dinner. But my housemate has an even better story! When he got his acceptance call, he was so shocked that he immediately decided to spend 10 minutes talking about how the program he got into (Political Theory) was completely useless and that he had no compatibility with the department and was curious as to why they had accepted him. Guess what? He still has his acceptance and juicy stipend. So there you go!