somethinbruin

I don't think 8 is all that unreasonable. That's probably pretty average. Remember, I clearly drove myself crazy. If you've got the money and two more won't tax your sanity, then it might be worth it, but if you're confident then I wouldn't worry too much about how much difference the extra two make. I'm also not very familiar with admissions practices/competitiveness for your program, so your mileage may vary on my advice. What is normal for English Lit might not be for religious studies. (That's what my degree is, btw--British Lit with focus on 21st century lit and contemporary critical theory). Best of luck to you!

I think it's incredibly hard to determine rankings, and even once they are set it's hard to extrapolate meaning from them. For example: Ohio State has a decent ranking at #26, but suppose much of that ranking rests on its work in narrative theory. So if you're a narrative theorist, then Ohio State is the place to be. But if you're interested in studying some other field that's not so strong at OSU, like (purely hypothetical here--not that familiar with the department) Milton or Spenser, then the ranking might be a pretty meaningless number in terms of your education. In the same vein, Purdue is one of the top places to study rhet comp in the country, but you wouldn't know that by their #63 ranking by US News and World report (a rank they share with 14 other programs). That's why it is unfortunate that academics seem to rely so blindly on rank as an indicator of quality. Too many variables. Of the schools you mention, I know that I wouldn't consider Maryland or Minnesota to be mid-tier. They consider themselves very much top-tier programs, and they are extremely competitive with their admissions. I was dissuaded from applying to Vanderbilt by an adviser who said the program is probably more selective than it has cause to be, whatever that means, but the city of Nashville is a vibrant, fun city. I would have no problem living there! People put a lot of stock in rank, but the reality is that not much separates programs 20-100. The top ten schools by reputation are clear (although not clear indicators of success on the job market--particularly since some Ivy league schools don't give GTAs much opportunity to teach their own classes, and a lot of smaller universities look for that teaching experience when they're hiring) but after those top programs it gets really tight. Success at that point depends largely on the work that you do as a scholar and the materials you send with your application. In the end, I think you're much better off looking for the right fit as I don't think much can be gleaned/learned from trying to parse the rankings too much. Any admissions process will be a crapshoot, so look where you think you will do best or look for places where the research and opportunities excite you. And Gatz is right. I've seen several discussions here and elsewhere of how ranking affect post-graduate employment. What I've taken from these discussions is this: If you want to teach at one of the Top 10 programs (longshot) then realistically you probably need to go to an Ivy. Outside of that, it's a toss up. Going to a more prestigious school may be one thing that moves your CV to the top of the pile, but an interesting/new research focus or an innovative teaching portfolio is just as likely to grab someone's attention. And even then, once your CV gets you an interview, you've got to ace the faculty interview, meeting with administrators and students, and provide a strong teaching performance/research talk. There are too many moving parts to really gauge how important rankings are for 98% of the jobs that come on the market. Which leads me to my final point (I promise): When you've got GTA offers and you're trying to decide where you ultimately go for your PhD, make sure you ask about professionalization programs and what sort of prep the program does/offers to get you ready for the job market. It's important and easily overlooked.

^^I just want to second what fuzzy said. The sample should showcase your ability to sustain an argument in a well-written paper. If you've got 20th century American lit papers that are up to the task, just use one of those. A 15-page paper that you write in a week will most likely do more harm than good. Go with something you've spent considerable time crafting, have had evaluated by peers and professors, and feel confident in. My writing sample was from an unrelated research area, and it served me quite well in the application process.

awells-- I am a sadist. I applied to 16 schools. I think most people apply to 6-10, maybe 12. It was a TON of work and very stressful, but I wanted to give myself the best shot since I'm a bit older than most students and waiting a year to reapply would not have been ideal. I'm not sure I recommend this approach to others. It was expensive, but in the end I did have options--and good ones at that. The final breakdown was something like: 7 rejections, 3 admits (no funding), 1 waitlist, 4 fully funded offers.* *I know this doesn't equal 16. One school I applied to (Northern Illinois) never notified me of my application status. I exchanged e-mails with their program director, and he told me that they had my files and the decision would come within a week. Two weeks later, nothing, so I e-mailed again and got the same response. When a few more weeks passed with not a word, I took that as a sign of the program's general character (disorganized and unresponsive), and crossed them off my list. So buyer beware on Northern Illinois (if that's even on your list). Good luck with your application process! Rachel

If I remember correctly, all of my applications let you start an application, save it, and come back to it later. I did this...filled in the basic info early in the semester when I wasn't so busy, then added the SOP and writing sample when they were ready to go. So I think you'll be fine if you do that.

I wish my course could be oriented like that, but it's not possible with my common syllabus. So I have to do citations/mechanics alongside writing with style/substance.

^^^Yup. But I am no longer surprised by this, nor do I dwell on it. I give an anonymous survey of their writing backgrounds when they come into my class so that I have a baseline idea of where I might need to focus. This semester I have quite a few more inexperienced writers than I have had in years past. Usually I only have one or two who never wrote in high school (out of about 50). This year my classes on the whole are at a much more basic level, and that is daunting for me as an instructor, but it can also be incredibly rewarding when you see students make improvements in logic, critical thinking, and composition in a short amount of time.

Sounds like you mediated the situation pretty well. I agree that it's important to "balance" your rubric so that it stresses what you want it to stress. I find my rubrics tend to be more weighted toward organization, development of a thesis, and appropriate support for an argument. Grammar/punctuation/citation have a place, but the higher order concerns come first, particularly since studies suggest that these lower order concerns diminish as students are taught revision skills and given opportunities to identify and correct error. So I don't like to fail hammer them on early drafts for this stuff because it should go away by the end of the course--but that's where portfolio systems and course-wide revision become crucial. We do have discussions that cover plagiarism/intent vs. source misuse and their implications throughout my class. I tweak my course after ever semester, trying to weed out what doesn't work for me and maximize what does. I think you're right to consider ways to add revision (or peer review...peers catch a lot of nit-picky citation stuff) to your next course. Some of the advice here has been helpful, while others I think have strayed a bit afield. This typifies a divide I notice between comp/rhet instructors and faculty in other disciplines. Comp/rhet long ago prioritized into HOCs and LOCs, and largely made peace with this distinction, while some faculty in the disciplines are still of the mindset that you can grade writing by deducting two points for every split infinitive and misplaced modifier. I'm always struck by the expectation gap between comp/rhet faculty and professors in other disciplines, and it makes me sad when faculty miss the forest (students trying on ideas) for the trees (comma splices), particularly when the "trees" do not affect the comprehension of the text. When I started teaching, I thought I would be really stringent about citations (ie: missing one/a few is a major failure). I found that to be generally counterproductive. It made students obsess over the citations to the detriment of the writing and the ideas. I got better results trying to give them ways to enter the discourse community (ala Bartholomae) than I did being an enforcer. We (as advanced students) take for granted understanding the intricacies and complexities of MLA format (and the like). I routinely see students come in from high school who think they just have to throw a citation at the end of each paragraph. That's what they've been taught, if they've been taught to cite at all. In my class this fall, four students responded on a survey that they had never written a paper in high school. Another five said their longest paper ever was two pages. For these students, the 30 minute run-down on MLA that I give them is the most they've ever heard of citation styles, and then we expect them to nail it perfectly right out of the gate? I think that's a bit unrealistic. We shouldn't excuse the error, but we should recognize the difference between academic dishonesty, laziness, and a student who is actively trying to approximate a discourse he or she has no experience in. They may be trying to cite, recognize it as a gesture toward their own ethos, and not quite getting there yet. I feel this is an important distinction, and one that helps teachers keep perspective on just how formidable a task it is for some FYC students to step into academic writing. An ancillary question--if you are new to teaching, does your program require you to take a composition pedagogy course? Do you have a teaching mentor? These are two things that really helped me when I started teaching comp as a master's student. It was nice to be able to run these types of scenarios by my cohort (and we did this all the time) and my mentor. They always had great advice that wasn't readily apparent to me. And having a basis in comp pedagogy really changed how I looked at my role as a teacher and evaluator of student writing. I'm glad you've come to a positive resolution here, and good luck with the rest of your semester!

As a point of reference, my GRE was 160 verbal (84%) and quant was 147. I applied widely, and got multiple funded offers. I did not get into either top 10 program that I applied to. But then again, I didn't get into 66% of the places where I applied, so I don't think the Top 10 rejections were really about the test results. If you've taken it two years running and gotten the same score, I probably wouldn't retake it. We all know top programs are a stretch for anyone in any circumstance, and I think the only problem you might run up against are thresholds where programs say applicants must hit 160 (that's the one I saw most often...used to be 600 on the old scale). But there's probably some wiggle room there since you're so close. I think it's far more important to spend your time developing your writing samples and producing a compelling statement of purpose than it is to spend more time and $$$ on two GRE verbal points. Just my two cents...take it for what it's worth, and good luck with your applications.

I like that. I am going to steal it and use it all the time.

Expanding what others have said, but basically the premise is the same: there is no safety school. The process is capricious. I applied widely (15 or so schools), and I categorized my choices as prestigious schools, strong schools, and lower tier schools (that I thought would be easier to get into). I got into many of my strong schools, and I got wait-listed or rejected at all of my "safety" schools. You can't ever tell, but you can help yourself by applying widely to a variety of schools. Bear in mind that you can do everything right in the application process and still not get in, because you have to be what the school needs. For instance, I know that at one school I applied to they really liked my application, but they weren't looking for a student in my area of focus (postcolonial) because they had admitted two postcolonial PhD students the year before. Instead, they were looking for medieval studies students because they had just brought in a new tenure track medievalist and needed students to work with him. I could have been the most brilliant postcolonial scholar in the country and still not gotten in. As an applicant, you don't have any way to know these things ahead of time, but rest assured that they will torpedo your application all the same. It's all out of your hands after a certain point. That is why there are no real safety schools. Your best bet: find a variety of programs (MA, Phd, big, small) where you think you are a fit. Then work really, really hard on your applications and hope for the best. Good luck to you!

I would be wary of choosing an MFA over a lit MA because "good writers tend to make good editors," as I have not found these two skills to be closely linked. Great editors are not necessarily great writers, and vice versa. In fact, the stellar editors that I've worked for over the years (as a magazine features writer and as a reporter...now I'm fondly remembering the days of gainful employment...sigh...) have much stronger backgrounds in literature than they do as creative writers. They know how to analyze texts and they've read widely, both in the canon and in theory. In short, good readers make good editors. These are main points of emphasis in most MA programs, whereas MFAs sometimes tend to more focused on developing the individual writer. To be clear, I am not trying to disparage MFAs, and I don't doubt that you can become a good editor while in an MFA program, I'm just trying to point out that MA and MFA programs often tend to have very different goals and produce different kinds of scholars, and you might be surprised at how differently your editing skills will develop in one program versus another. To know what kind of program you want, you'll have to be very clear on what each individual program you examine aims to do with its students, whether its an MFA or an MA. You may find MA programs that won't give you any textual editing and criticism work, and you may find MFA programs that do a ton of work to prepare editors. It's going to be very individualistic, I think. You might want to look for MA programs that have specific tracks set up for professional writing and editing as PWE programs seem to blend the two skills, or at least attempt to, in ways that creative writing programs might not. Off the top of my head, I know that Carnegie Mellon, WVU, UW-Milwaukee, Youngstown State, Northern Illinois, Illinois State, DePaul all offer MAs in PWE. Some of those are in your geographically ideal areas, others not. You should definitely look for and apply for all the funding you can--even if you think you're not interested in teaching. Almost all MAs and MFAs will require you to teach. I never thought I wanted to teach...until I set foot in my classroom. Now it's all I want to do. You might be surprised. Good luck to you!

^^I would do all of those things. E-mail again, track her down during office hours, then go up the chain of command in the department if you can't get in touch with her or don't get a satisfactory answer. You will want to get on this ASAP, as some universities have automatic deadlines after which incompletes cannot be changed. I think it's pretty unethical for a professor to not finish grading by the time grades are due, by the way. An incomplete should be given on account of the student needing more time, not the professor. She should know her semester and her schedule well enough to not need more time. Yes, it's awful to spend the whole last week before grades are due reading student papers, but that's the life we've signed up for. Unless your papers were submitted very, very late because she granted you an extension with the expectation that you would take an incomplete, she is obligated to finish her grading.

^^Just to agree with the above statement. I would NOT trust schools to provide funding in the second year and beyond if they didn't put it in writing. For example, I know of a grad student who applied to school X. She was a great applicant, but applied after the deadline to be considered for a GTA position. Then school X admitted her and told her that she should apply for a GTA position in her second year because she was a strong candidate for full funding. So the applicant accepted, paid for her first year of MA out of pocket and volunteered as a TA to bulk up her credentials. When her second year rolled around, the school did not take her as a GTA. Their reasoning: if she was already in the door and paying, she probably wouldn't transfer, so they could use that GTA line to bring in another student instead. I was privy to the adcom's conversation and I was just horrified at how they conducted themselves, but apparently such decisions are fairly common in administration, where the pressure is on them to bring in new students rather than fund existing students. Once they have you in the door and paying, the school holds much more power than the student. I think it's best not to put yourself in that position. Essential, I'm with fuzzy and everyone else above--funding matters a great deal, and I would only consider fully funded schools. Even partial funding gets too expensive over the course of a five (or more) year graduate degree.

I guess I'm an outlier because I've always received really strong GTA training. At my master's institution, you don't teach your first semester. Instead, you take a composition pedagogy class for three hours a week, attend bimonthly practicum meetings, and observe a seasoned instructor. My PhD program pays new GTAs to come in early for more than two weeks of full time training. While you're there you cover pedagogy and practical classroom topics, as well as build your syllabus unit-by-unit. I will say, teacher training was a big deal for me though as I looked at potential schools. I turned down a funded MA offer because it offered two days of training and I had never taught comp before. I really liked that I had a whole semester in my MA program to get used to being in the classroom. It made it easier to just have the two weeks of training in my PhD program because I already had a solid basis in pedagogy. I think schools that ignore pedagogy instruction do a disservice to both the undergraduates (who receive the teaching) and the instructor (who may need the teaching skills to advance their academic careers). It's something prospective students should definitely take into account.

I don't think you have to have a large list of authors or a theoretical construct in place and fully articulated in your statement. Actually, I think if you stick to one particular point that you made--the authors from the long 19th who influenced the main Victorian writers you study--you'll be in a good place that lets you draw a few connections. That really should be enough of an indication that you know a direction you might want to pursue in a doctoral program. In some respects, simplicity is your friend here. You want to give a detailed picture of your primary focus (Victorian) and then make gestures toward possible extensions of that scholarship (influential authors from long 19th). Lord, I hope I've been helpful in this thread. Every time I post I agonize over whether anything I say makes sense, and I hope it's not just making people more nervous. Let me close then by just encouraging everyone to keep chipping away at their SOP. Keep revising, seeking out opinions, and giving it time to breathe. Then when you reach a point when it's done, resist the urge to keep fiddling with it. Let it be done when it's done.

I think availability depends largely on the testing center. One testing center where I used to live was in a smaller town and had maybe 50 chairs (and remember all subject exams test together, so there will be chemistry, biology, math, etc in there as well, so it filled up quick). The room in my last city, where I took the lit subject test, had more than 300 seats in the large lecture hall and it was maybe half full. However, you might want to consider your timetable. Unlike the general exam, the subject test is paper-based, so you don't get your results immediately like you do on the computerized test. The results take at least six weeks, and they do not come early. Ever. So if you're applying to schools with Dec. 1 or even Dec. 15 deadlines, you'll want to take the test in September if you can. It eliminates concern about schools getting your scores on time. If you take the test on Oct. 19, your scores will not get to Dec. 1 schools on time, that's for sure. Dec. 15 would be shaky as well.

^^ I agree with all of the above. My best adviser was a no-nonsense, take no prisoners sort of personality. It took some getting used to, but once you got to know him, you realized that he wasn't being "mean." He was actively trying to professionalize graduate students, and that means taking criticism. My worst advisers have been the ones who never give critical feedback--everything is always fine and dandy. That approach is particularly worthless since it doesn't challenge grad students or give them anywhere to grow. If a professor reads a 30 page paper that I wrote and doesn't write at least a few critical comments, I assume he didn't read it. Also, my first experience with my MA adviser was a disaster, in my opinion. He wasn't my adviser at the time, but I still felt like a royal ass--I felt like I said and wrote all of the wrong things, and he called me on all of them. At the time, it was just my attempt to integrate myself into a higher level of academic discourse. We learn by making mistakes, and good advisers will point out mistakes but not hold them against you as long as you learn from it and don't repeat them. I soon realized that was how my adviser operates. A few months later I asked him to be my MA adviser, and we had a great relationship. He helped me get my thesis across the finish line, and I was his research assistant this summer on several publications. I will miss his (sometimes gruff) guidance now that I'm at a different school for my PhD. So take heart, collaborations that begin on shaky ground can become productive, long term working relationships once you get to know each other.

I think it's perfectly fine to not know everything. Shoot, I have a masters and I feel as if I only know a fraction of what I need to as I start my PhD program. I am expanding my focus from contemporary British to contemporary anglophone/South African lit. I will admit that I haven't read a great deal of South African lit, but I will get there throughout the course of my degree. In fact, I think it's good that you can show that you have an area of focus (Victorian Lit) but also an idea of how you will expand your focus (Long 19th c.). Programs want you to be able to connect and contextualize your focus. I would say you have to know enough to be able to converse in a decently cogent manner, but no one expects you to be an expert before you enter your program.

^^ Good for you. I think this is the right call. Best of luck.

I'm with Jazzy on this, and mostly with ComeBackZinc (although I don't think I tailored to specific schools as much as CBZ recommends). At my masters institution I looked at a lot of the new MA applicants' SOPs because I was on a committee--many of them were of the personal journey variety, and they weren't very helpful in trying to ferret out good candidates. When my cohort workshopped our SOPs together for PhD applications, it struck me how differently oriented PhD applications are. Our PhD statements were, on the whole, about straight scholarship and future goals with very little personal information. I applied to a few schools that wanted personal statements, so I did a little personalization there, but my SOP was all scholarship with one paragraph that verged on the personal when I connected my previous work experience to my current scholarly work. But that was about it. I found in talking with professors that AdComms really don't care what led you to apply to PhD programs. They're more interested in the work you do and how you see it growing as you work on your PhD.

First of all, I would say that it's a good idea in general to keep your personal finances (no matter where they come from) to yourself. No one needs to know that your parents pay for everything. If you remove this information from the equation, then much of the problem goes away and you might not feel so bad. Second, don't feel guilty about going for a TA positions. TA spots are not need-based financial aid, they are merit based and awarded at the discretion of the university. If you really want to pursue a career in academia, then it is vital that you create a CV that reflects that. Without teaching experience (at least in my field) it is nearly impossible to get a job. Regardless of where your other financial support comes from, a TA position is important to your career and professional development. You have every right to seek a TA position and you should not feel bad about that. Throw your hat in the ring.

I also did what Proflorax did, with good results. In fact, my program director (who helped me revise my SOP) encouraged the incorporation of strong connections between my SOP and my writing samples. If your writing sample is supposed to be an example of your best scholarship and writing then it should be (relatively) easy to connect to who you are as a student and what makes you an attractive candidate.

During the summer time it can be difficult to get responses from universities in the US. They can be like ghost towns. At my last university I worked all summer as a research assistant in one of the larger departments. The department had about 25 full-time faculty members, and I probably saw three of them regularly during the course of my work week (M-F 10 am-4:00 pm). None of those three were on campus more than twice a week. It's the same way at my new university, where the only people regularly in the office during the summertime are the administrative assistants. The rest of the faculty are off working on research, writing books/articles, etc, and that doesn't require them to be in the office. Some faculty even put auto-responses on their e-mail to let people know they're not checking it very often. I will say this in particular about Penn State, though. My friend applied for a PhD there, and she also had difficulty getting in touch with personnel there. They did not respond very quickly, if at all.

Yep. It is a completely frustrating exercise. I sympathize. I went ten rounds with my own brain trying to figure out how I wanted to approach mine. In the end, I parsed all of the advice I got and figured out what felt right for me (75% on my scholarship/goals, 10% expanding on my CV info, 10% my teaching, 5% how my work experience adds to my abilities as a student). Here's the thing: There are many roads to the same destination. What works for you might not work for someone else. I am sure there are people on here who wrote statements that are vastly different from mine, but who still were successful in their application process. You do you, and that will let you put your best foot forward. If you think a piece of information sets you apart or is vital to selling yourself as a scholar, then include it. I also was lucky because my department kept a set of successful and unsuccessful SOPs on file from past students. I was able to see what had worked for others and what had not, and model mine off of past SOPs. You might check to see if your department has something similar. But in the end, you have to go with what you think works to sell you best as a student/scholar. You should also ask a professor you respect and trust to read your SOP critically and give you feedback. Mine really opened my eyes to some areas where I could really set myself apart that I had sort of glossed over. Also, I *hated* the applications that called for separate SOPs and personal statements. Seemed like overkill.