Metaellipses

It's course based. There's a master's paper between my MA and my PhD that I have to turn in to get approved to move on. Other than that, it's just the 30 credit hours (over two years) and a language requirement.

I love my Kindle Keyboard for reading PDFs and taking notes on them. It's an older model but I like having the physical keyboard since I annotate a lot. It's still thin and fast and has an insane battery life. While it's true that PDFs are usually too large to be displayed in full size on the screen (without making the text too small), the trick that I use is just to switch my Kindle to landscape mode and that basically turns each 3rd of a PDF page into its own "page" in the kindle, making the font nice and large. Yay for digitizing humanities! We waste too much paper as it is.

I have a question regarding number of classes per semester actually. And this is probably just me being a space cadet, but in my offer letter it listed a table of minimum credits and maximum credits graduate assistants are allowed to take. The minimum per semester is nine. Does that mean I'll be taking three classes in addition to teaching a class? That could get a bit hairy during the semester I teach two classes. I have no idea if you get credits for being a TA, in which case that would be 2 classes + a TAship.

Hey, I'm a Northampton townie leaving for Penn State soon to start a PhD. I thought I'd post here to let people on this forum know that my housemates are looking to replace me and another housemate who is also leaving for grad school. They're replacing him in June and me in August. We live in downtown Northampton about a 10 min walk from the bus line to Amherst. My housemates are quiet bookish people. I'll link our Craig's list ad! http://westernmass.craigslist.org/roo/3613004901.html Also, the new High Horse in Amherst is the best bar in the valley in my opinion - the upstairs specifically. No under 21 people allowed up there. The bartenders are all super awesome people. I know them all personally. If anyone wants any more info about Amherst or Noho just PM me. I've lived here for years!

Currently I'm down to deciding between these two schools and the decision is extremely difficult. I'd appreciate any information from other people who have been in either of these programs or know people who have enrolled. My issues: Ranking: for English, the NRC ranks both of these programs in the top 20 but Penn State is in the top 10. That's not an astronomical difference but given how dismal the job market is, phd.org rankings are something I am factoring into my decison making. Location: I live in Boston so UConn would be a lot closer to my existing support infastructure and is in a community where access to outside scholarship is extremely accessable. From what I've seen of Penn State's location, they are relatively isolated. My research is fairly specialized (I work with 16th century anatomy manuals and emblem books) so having the Yale medical history library close to hand would be incredibly beneficial to me. Faculty: Penn State's graduate director (Garrett Sullivan) has published work very similar to what I'm working on and seems extremely enthusiastic about working with me. There is really no single faculty member at UConn that stands out to me. That being said, I've met all the early modern faculty there, and some of the medieval faculty and they're all awesome, helpful, and smart people who (according to the students I met) routinely do independent studies tailored to a student's interests. Funding: This is the big one. UConn gave me a fellowship AND a juicy stipend AND summer support (totally around 33k a year for the first three years and then around 20k after that) along with full insurance coverage. Penn State is offering me a TAship with tuition remission and a measly 16.9k stipend with no summer support. Additional Concerns: When I talked to Garrett Sullivan, he assured me that Penn State was NOT a feeder program (i.e. that over 90% of their MAs interested in PhDs got approved). But there is still this odd stopgap between their MA and PhD programs that worries me, and they seem to have a LOT of current MA students compared to the number of active PhDs for a program that's not a feeder program. Does anyone know anything about this? Any advice, opinions or feedback would be helpful. The "courtesy date" for declining my fellowship is in two days.