Metaellipses

Yeah, I'm not referring to the placement record. Everyone has a bad placement record. I'm referring specifically to the cited lack of support and mentorship that graduate students received due to the size of cohorts and lack of official institutional professionalization on the latter end of the degree. Those were the conditions that graduate students at Columbia cited in their complaint and those are the conditions that leave students feeling isolated and hopeless when they confront the realities of the job market They also make it difficult to finish the degree, leading to higher rates of attrition, and also give students no help successfully translating academic skills into the non-academic world (which the realities of the job market require). I think it's important to distinguish between placement and a given institution's support for transitioning out of the academy (whether that's job support or other kinds of mentorship later in the degree).

Ah, okay, I get what you're saying, and I'm sorry for overreacting. No, I completely agree with this. For a long time I have been critical of the "top 10 or bust" mentality of some of these internet "getting into grad school" communities. I have been beaten out for jobs by people who graduated from programs much, much "lower ranked" than mine (in quotation marks because who really knows about the value of certain programs). I think when people peddle this narrative of "it's not worth going to grad school if you don't get into a top-10 (or top-12 or top-20) school," we not only ignore diverse career goals (teaching-focused school, community college, independent scholar) but also create kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy that carries on into the next generation. It's widely believed that "nothing good" comes out of "lower-ranked" programs because it has been decided that nothing ever has and nothing ever will. And that's BS. I mean, in some ways I'm living proof--I didn't go anywhere special (a program ranked about the 20s-30s) and have won fellowships and national awards and been published in the best journals. So obviously I was capable of producing good scholarship, even if the admissions committees didn't think so at the time (or I didn't present myself as an applicant who could do so). 
As I've said elsewhere, the job market works both ways. Slippery Rock University is probably going to be more keen on hiring someone from Duquesne or Rochester than they are someone from Princeton. Cleveland State is going to be more receptive to a Case Reserve U. grad than a Berkeley grad. The job market is very much about "fit," and graduating from a high-ranked school is not going to guarantee you employment at universities looking for someone who "fits in" and understands where the students are coming from. 
If I could wave a magic wand and turn my 30ish ranked PhD into a Yale PhD, would I do so? Probably. But I also wouldn't have the job I have right now. Moreover, I am not certain I would have worked so hard or done the scholarship I did if I hadn't been at 30ish.

I did not think you were aiming this at me. After all, I do indeed have a job. But I spent a large chunk of my life trying to get one, so I'm eye-rolling at some of the statements people make that imply that the market is self-sorting and that those who didn't get a job didn't deserve one in the first place because they made some "gaffe" along the way that ensured their unhireability, just as those who got hired somehow did everything "right" and deserve their success. Such as: 
I mean, really? Yes, of course there are hundreds of people who enter the job market every year who are published in respected journals, who win grants, who are qualified (really??? you think this comes down to who's the most qualified??), who don't make interviewing mistakes (!!! if it only came down to interviewing mistakes so that people could fix them!), who have interesting research that "matters" (always a subjective thing anyway), who aren't "narrow specialists" (my years and years of teaching at a non-Ivy League program ensured that), and who have taught a wide range of classes (lol, again, after years on the market and VAP circuit, just ... lol). 
And as far as being "over-qualified"--I mean, sit down. Honey, we're all over-qualified these days.
After my own years on the job market, though, I vowed never to engage in this kind of blaming. I realize just how insanely arbitrary the market is, and that anyone who has a job just got lucky. There were 200 people who could have gotten my job and were just as qualified, and they didn't. I'm not a special unicorn. I do not have a special brain. Yeah, I did a lot of "right things" along the way, and I worked hard, but so did a lot of other people. It almost didn't work out for me, and if it hadn't, it would not really have been my fault. 
The experience was extremely humbling. What's distressing to me, though, is that successful job seekers still want to see less successful candidates as responsible for their own lack of success. That doesn't exactly fill me with optimism for the future of the discipline. 

I’m......in at BU. What? What? I...HUH?

So here's the thing.
If you feel that Columbia (or Harvard) are great fits for you, then I wouldn't worry about the job placement record right now as much. First of all, NO ONE is placing these days. It's just really bad everywhere. Second of all, you don't know what things are going to look like in 5-7 years. If you pick a program you're not as wild about and decide to go there because they seem to have a stronger placement rate ... their stronger placement rate might not hold up over the course of six years. That actually happened to me--I attended a program that, though not a top-ranked school, had a better placement than Penn. That is no longer true. 
Third, and most important of all, whether or not a job hopeful gets placed in a given year often has to do with what schools are hiring in that given year. I was on the market for years, and there were some years I really wished I had an Ivy League PhD because most of the jobs were at high-end SLACs or elite R1 universities. Those are the schools that hire Ivy League PhDs. During other years, the majority of schools hiring were much more modest institutions--lower-ranked regional comprehensives or less elite private colleges. I ended up getting hired at an institution like that. I don't think I would have been hired if I'd had a PhD from a super elite school. Like tends to hire like, and at more teaching-focused institutions, Ivy League or elite PhDs are not looked at as "fitting in."
So, it just depends on the year. I think your chances are much better in the long run if you're coming out of an elite school, but if it's a year where UC-Irvine isn't hiring but Lindsey Wilson College is, then you're probably not going to get that job. I beat out Ivy League candidates for my job because I seemed like a better "fit"--but of course an Ivy League candidate beat me out for a job at Brandeis. 
Again, it just depends on what kind of schools are hiring that year. 

I was not speaking literally. My point was that, no, there aren't EVEN 20 "safe" programs you can graduate from that will give you a better shot at tenure-track works because oftentimes these days there aren't even 20 TT jobs in any given cycle! So of course there's no safe program, nor is there a magic bullet that will get you a job.  
This last couple years have been, hands down, the worst on record, and according to some experts we haven't hit bottom yet. 
Yes, there are anecdotal cases of people graduated from X program and getting hired at elite Y school. There are always anecdotal cases and always have been. In fact, I would venture to say that at this point ALL WE HAVE are anecdotal cases--not patterns anymore. We don't see enough people getting hired to even begin to quantify things. Some of the Ivy programs haven't made a TT placement in a couple years. The fact that someone outside the Ivy League gets a good job does not negate the overall pattern, nor should it be taken as evidence that "if you work really hard that's all that matters and you will get a job." It should more like be taken as evidence of "sometimes miracles happen, but statistically speaking they will probably not happen for you."
I mean, I also had a lot of those things--major publications (one which won an extremely elite award), a prestigious national dissertation fellowship, presenting at sometimes 7-8 conferences at year, teaching experience out the wazoo and glowing teaching evaluations, and, yes, relationships with professors, many of them leaders in the field. And oh yeah, now I've got an article forthcoming from the tip-top journal in the entire field. And I still spent six years on the market, coming in second for a lot of jobs. So no, I am not going to sit here and say that some people get jobs because they worked hard and accrued experience and made connections. A lot of us do those things. And a lot of people still go home empty-handed. 
The job market these days is about being lucky. Extremely lucky. No more of this bootstraps stuff. 

So, I don't necessarily agree with "B"--obviously some people get jobs, and those who go to the best programs are more likely to get jobs--but it is accurate to say that we have no idea what the profession will be like in six years. Six years ago we thought the market was just in a slump. Six years later, people are like, "Wow, the 2013-14 cycle was great! Those were the good old days!"
Lol. Yeah, it's bad out there. 
So I'm going to add something to what "B" said: consider where in the country you would like to be if the professor thing doesn't work out. If push comes to shove and you have to get a job doing something other than academia ... where would you ideally like to be? New York? Boston? New Haven? San Francisco? Because where you get your PhD might matter for whatever non-acc or alt-acc path you might choose, and universities have deep connections to particular areas. 
Case in point: I know someone who got a PhD at Stanford and ended up writing for the SF Chronicle by leaning on a connection they made through the English department's career service. I know another person who went to Berkeley (dropped out without finishing) who ended up writing copy for a tech company in exchange for a salary that most junior faculty could only dream about. 
Obviously these "alt-acc" tracks seem far removed from your ultimate goal right now (and for good reason) ... but this is just one more factor you might consider in making your decision. Good luck!

Yeah, I'm not referring to the placement record. Everyone has a bad placement record. I'm referring specifically to the cited lack of support and mentorship that graduate students received due to the size of cohorts and lack of official institutional professionalization on the latter end of the degree. Those were the conditions that graduate students at Columbia cited in their complaint and those are the conditions that leave students feeling isolated and hopeless when they confront the realities of the job market They also make it difficult to finish the degree, leading to higher rates of attrition, and also give students no help successfully translating academic skills into the non-academic world (which the realities of the job market require). I think it's important to distinguish between placement and a given institution's support for transitioning out of the academy (whether that's job support or other kinds of mentorship later in the degree).

I'll chime in here as a newly minted PhD to congratulate you all (first of all) but also to say that another factor that isn't often discussed on these forums is professionalization. This includes both tenure track preparation (circulating packets of successful application materials, mock job talks, handholding during the drafting process through workshops etc.) but also alt-ac and alt-track support, which might include preparing you to put together a writing program application or identifying academic journals and internships and connecting you with alumni who have successfully acquired those kinds of jobs so you can tailor your professional resume to those positions. This kind of support isn't often thought of up front, but is absolutely crucial in the final stages of the degree. This is not only important for people who want to hazard the market, but also those who want to have the institutional scaffolding that you need to leverage your degree into another non-academic or academic adjacent job. I'd be very interested, specifically, in asking Ivies if they provide this kind of support and taking that into account, especially given what we all know about the situation at Columbia.

Yeah, I'm not referring to the placement record. Everyone has a bad placement record. I'm referring specifically to the cited lack of support and mentorship that graduate students received due to the size of cohorts and lack of official institutional professionalization on the latter end of the degree. Those were the conditions that graduate students at Columbia cited in their complaint and those are the conditions that leave students feeling isolated and hopeless when they confront the realities of the job market They also make it difficult to finish the degree, leading to higher rates of attrition, and also give students no help successfully translating academic skills into the non-academic world (which the realities of the job market require). I think it's important to distinguish between placement and a given institution's support for transitioning out of the academy (whether that's job support or other kinds of mentorship later in the degree).

Yeah, I'm not referring to the placement record. Everyone has a bad placement record. I'm referring specifically to the cited lack of support and mentorship that graduate students received due to the size of cohorts and lack of official institutional professionalization on the latter end of the degree. Those were the conditions that graduate students at Columbia cited in their complaint and those are the conditions that leave students feeling isolated and hopeless when they confront the realities of the job market They also make it difficult to finish the degree, leading to higher rates of attrition, and also give students no help successfully translating academic skills into the non-academic world (which the realities of the job market require). I think it's important to distinguish between placement and a given institution's support for transitioning out of the academy (whether that's job support or other kinds of mentorship later in the degree).

I'll chime in here as a newly minted PhD to congratulate you all (first of all) but also to say that another factor that isn't often discussed on these forums is professionalization. This includes both tenure track preparation (circulating packets of successful application materials, mock job talks, handholding during the drafting process through workshops etc.) but also alt-ac and alt-track support, which might include preparing you to put together a writing program application or identifying academic journals and internships and connecting you with alumni who have successfully acquired those kinds of jobs so you can tailor your professional resume to those positions. This kind of support isn't often thought of up front, but is absolutely crucial in the final stages of the degree. This is not only important for people who want to hazard the market, but also those who want to have the institutional scaffolding that you need to leverage your degree into another non-academic or academic adjacent job. I'd be very interested, specifically, in asking Ivies if they provide this kind of support and taking that into account, especially given what we all know about the situation at Columbia.

I'll chime in here as a newly minted PhD to congratulate you all (first of all) but also to say that another factor that isn't often discussed on these forums is professionalization. This includes both tenure track preparation (circulating packets of successful application materials, mock job talks, handholding during the drafting process through workshops etc.) but also alt-ac and alt-track support, which might include preparing you to put together a writing program application or identifying academic journals and internships and connecting you with alumni who have successfully acquired those kinds of jobs so you can tailor your professional resume to those positions. This kind of support isn't often thought of up front, but is absolutely crucial in the final stages of the degree. This is not only important for people who want to hazard the market, but also those who want to have the institutional scaffolding that you need to leverage your degree into another non-academic or academic adjacent job. I'd be very interested, specifically, in asking Ivies if they provide this kind of support and taking that into account, especially given what we all know about the situation at Columbia.

I genuinely sympathize for you. It's shitty feeling like you've gotten wins in this arduous process but that those wins might not be enough to position you well for your end goal (presumably, a TT job). As one of those commenters ragging on the odds of getting a decent TT job from a lower-ranked school, I'll just say that I hope it's clear my remarks are not designed to make readers feel like shit. I get no satisfaction from that. My concern is with the consequences of the well-meaning optimism on this site. I'm all for celebrating, but the back-slapping and congratulations can obfuscate the realities of graduate education in the humanities today: those coming out of lower-ranked programs are very unlikely to get good, well-paying jobs that allow graduates the time to think, write, and teach well.
The national TT placement rate is something like 60%; it will be considerably lower than that for lower-ranked programs. If you're comfortable playing those odds, that's on you. I wish you good luck. It literally makes me sick to my stomach, however, to think that applicants are not undertaking such a big decision without considering the stark reality of the job situation. 
I hope it is obvious to all applicants that they should seek a range of opinions on these topics. The only caveat I would add is that you should take the opinions of your professors—especially if they graduated with their PhDs before 2008—with the same grain of salt you would apply to other pieces of advice. While I hope for your sakes that you have perfectly well-informed professors who can be painfully blunt with you about the relative merits of your prospective programs and the job market, you unfortunately cannot assume as much.
Let me give two examples. While a baby undergrad way back in 2012/3, I got word that I had been admitted to the University of Arizona with a "fully-funded" package. My recommenders were ecstatic for me: "this is well-deserved," they told me, "a great offer," "proof that you have what it takes to be a professor," and on and on. But their enthusiasm was misplaced. They didn't know that UA had a heavy teaching load, a wimpy stipend, and, most importantly of all, a poor placement record. (If memory serves me correctly, UA had only placed one student in my subfield into a TT line in the prior five years.) If I hadn't pressed to find this all out on my own, and had simply listened to my professors, I may well have ended up in a program that would have left me unhappy and poorly positioned to secure post-graduate academic employment.
Fast forward a few years: I'm now at Ohio State, working under smart, well-connected faculty. You'd think they'd be in the know and honest with me about jobs and the like, right? Wrong. My advisor has repeatedly expressed to me his belief that "those with the good ideas are the ones that make it" and good ideas simply "get out there"—regardless of the conditions required to create and refine good ideas, the connections needed to "market" those good ideas, and the institutional pedigrees that enable the kind of required connections to be made. This kind of pollyanaism borders on professional malpractice. Even someone like my advisor, who is closely attuned to the present job market, can indulge these habits of thought, either because they help him sleep at night or because he genuinely (if mistakenly) believes in the righteous meritocracy he espouses. 
TL;DR: GradCafe doesn't have all the answers, but don't assume your professors' words are gospel, either. 
 

Off the top of my head, I'd say that it's better to do requirements earlier rather than later. That way, you can stack more courses in your area of interest closer to when you're going to be doing exams. It takes a lot of the heat off that way, because you'll be able to cross off many texts on your exam list just from being in the class recently. Having to do required courses close to exams is (in my opinion) pretty stressful because it's additional reading that you can't double dip with on your lists. Especially if these requirements are versions of the classes/period that are appealing to you, that would be my recommendation. But I also agree that talking with your advisor is a good idea at this stage.

I'll also chime in and say that I think this is spot on in my experience. I'm a student that took five years in between undergraduate and graduate for mostly financial and health related reasons. When I applied for graduate school, I contacted the one faculty member who I thought might remember me (he was my advisor) at the very beginning of the process. I ended up getting in contact with two other faculty and sending them copies of papers that I had written for them as an undergrad. I was able to mention that I was already being mentored by my former advisor (and that he had signed off on my decision to apply). So, yes, it was more difficult to build these relationships back up when they had lapsed, but it wasn't impossible.
While applying, it didn't offer me any significant disadvantage. I would come home from work and work for a few hours on my applications at the end of every day, sending drafts to my advisor as I finished them. I mentioned vaguely in a subordinate clause of my SOP that I had researched and studied during the gap (I didn't give specifics). No-one asked me why I had taken the time off; no-one cared.  I got the sense that as long as I acknowledged it like a banal fact and didn't make a big deal about it, that others would take my cue. I did exactly zero publishing and conferences during this time. I certainly didn't put non-academic work on my CV. I stuck to things I had done during undergrad, leaving all my gap year stuff off. So there was no opportunity for anyone to judge me for working in catering. It simply didn't come up. I think only Boston University asked specifically for a work resume, so that's the only exception.
In grad school the gap has only been an advantage. As others have said, it gives me perspective; I've cultivated friendships and relationships outside of the academy and that helps tether me during times of stress or self-doubt. I have a better sense of how to prioritize my responsibilities and make time for my health and well-being. I also had a generally looser point of view on what I wanted to achieve in grad school rather than being tied to an undergraduate thesis project (which I saw sometimes happen with straight from undergrad people). That's only benefited me.
This is just my own two-cents, but I think that sometimes because we know that the process is grueling and rigorous we want to impose rigor onto all aspects of it, even to aspects that the institution itself isn't rigorous about. There's no indication (in my experience) that anyone has to worry about the gap year.
 

At Rutgers, the teaching and fellowship years are split. You're on fellowship for your first year. You teach comp as a solo instructor your second year (1/1 course load). In your third year, you do a mentored TA for an introductory lit class in the fall and either teach Comp again in the spring or hope that you get assigned to another lit class (I was the TA for my advisor's Shakespeare class that semester) - you're also reading for exams this semester. In your fourth year, you do a 2/0, usually a mix of stand-alone Comp and Lit classes (double Comp if you're unlucky or if you already got a stand-alone during the previous summer). So in the spring semester of that year you're not teaching. Fifth and sixth years you're on fellowship again (sixth year you can choose to take a fellowship or a TAship, but most people take fellowships). You teach another 2/0 in your seventh year. The administration encourages us to do 2/0s our two teaching years after orals exams, since it gives us more time to write in the second semester. You can request a 1/1 however if you really want it.
I'm in the second semester of my fourth year, and I really like this system. If you can switch a 1/1 to a 2/0 and you're the kind of person who would benefit from that, it might be worth doing. I find that teaching is such a strain on my time and mental resources that I'd rather do it all in one semester and pick away at an article or a chapter I've already written, then do all my serious work in the spring with no other responsibilities.
I wouldn't worry about teaching. I got tossed into a classroom first semester of my second year with maybe a weekend of Writing Program pedagogy training? It's fine. With most introductory classes, the syllabus is designed for you and you're given a selection of texts to teach. You develop pedagogy skills by being in a classroom and using them, so you'll become a much better teacher by the time that first year is over! It's also worth contacting Writing Program folks (who know so much more about this stuff than we do and are actually properly trained) and they can put together a list of pedagogical resources for you. I also get a lot of of reading Composition and Pedagogy journals (many of which are open source and available online).

haha!  It would definitely be okay for you to post the questions list, but here it is.  Also, I'd just be honest with the programs, especially since the money they're giving you won't be enough to cover either visit individually.  
 
-PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK
-Where do most people do their writing and reading?
-What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office?

-LIBRARY
-What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed?
-What are the library hours?
-Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research?
-Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research?

-FACULTY
-Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon?
-Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work?
-Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests?
-Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well?

-FUNDING
-Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t?
-How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships?
-How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably?
-Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding?
-If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.)
-Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips?
-How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?)

-COHORT
-Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive?
-Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey?
-How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class?
-Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially?
-Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned?
-Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice?
-What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time?
-I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program?

-JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION
-What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track?
-What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed?
-How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks?
-Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves?
-If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?)
-How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications?

-SUMMER WORK
-What is encouraged/required?
-If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer?
-Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money?
-Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t?

-LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT
-What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding?
-What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it?
-Given my research interests, what languages should I study?
-When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.)

-LOCATION REQUIREMENTS
-How long are students required to be in residence?
-How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?)
-How is funding affected if you don’t stay?

-Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program?

-TEACHING
-What sort of training is provided?
-What types of courses do people teach?
-Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp?
-How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field?
-How many courses do you teach per semester/year?
-How many students are in your classes?
-How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study?
-How do students balance teaching with their own work?
-Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes?
-How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes?
-What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them?

-METHODOLOGY
-Is a theory course required?
-What methodology do most people use?
-Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading?
-Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken?

-Typical graduate class and seminar sizes

-What should I do to prepare over the summer?

-Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me?

-Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program?

-Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements?

-What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required?

-What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating?

-What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field?

-Ask professors: what have you been working on lately?

-Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students?

-How long are class meetings?

-How often do professors teach graduate courses?

-Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)?

-Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see?


-QUALITY OF LIFE
-Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in?
-Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment.
-What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing?
-When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look?
-Is it easy to find a summer subletter?
-How close to campus can—and should—one live?
-What grocery stores are there in town?
-How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open?
-What do people do to make extra money?
-Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)?
-Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide?
-How far does the stipend go in this location?

Commenting here because it doesn't really fit with any other threads, but...

Would the person or persons who are creating "other" entries on the results page to ask questions of other results posters please stop doing that? The results page is just a results page...it's not really conducive to having back and forth questions and answers.

Sorry to sound like a net nanny, but it really misleads the eye when looking at the results page...

This is a very unusual question, quite frankly. Collaboration is key in professional writing. You certainly can write in a vacuum, but when you think about the entirety of the academic process, it's clear that your work will always be passing through revisions or other forms of review -- formal or otherwise. The same should be true of your writing materials when applying to graduate schools. In other words, getting external feedback is not only not "cheating"...it's almost essential!
 

I think it would depend. In my case, I had a workshop with two other students from my undergrad. We all read each others' drafts and gave verbal feedback. We were also all getting feedback from the two professors who put the workshop together (generally written feedback). I would say that you should get as much conceptual and compositional feedback as you possibly can. But I think the important distinction to make here is that all the work has to be your own. Having professional researchers and editors look at it and give suggestions is valuable, as long as it's still all your work (I'm not quite sure what 'pimping' implies, but to me it evoked pay-for services where professionals rewrite your essay to improve it. I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I'm just distinguishing for others). TLDR: solicit any and all suggestions from people you respect who have done academic work at or near this level (taking the useful suggestions and discarding the ones that aren't useful). But the implementation should be all you.
 

Also, just to reassure - almost every English PhD program has some representation in post-colonial, and Anglophone literature from South-East Asia is one of the most popular regional literatures represented in it (probably because the field as a whole was largely responding to British decolonization). I'd start by looking in English departments for sure, since you're more likely to poco scholars there who work on Indian anglophone (Comp Lit would probably combine Indian anglophone literature with readings in Hindi or Urdu). Also keep a look out for departments with strong representation in "World Literature," and "Global Anglophone" as those are the hot fields right now. Indian literature in English is represented strongly in both. Poco as a theoretical framework isn't as popular as it used to be, but the literature that Poco brought into the canon is still being studied from the perspective of world and global lit.

If only I could wave my magic wand and get all you great GCers acceptances!

If only I could wave my magic wand and get all you great GCers acceptances!

If only I could wave my magic wand and get all you great GCers acceptances!