rising_star

I think you can tell them that they are your top choice without sounding desperate or picky. Focus on explaining to them WHY they're your top choice (the curriculum, the faculty, the training opportunities, etc.) and leave out the fact that you'd take a year off if you don't get in to their program. FWIW, I told my top choice MA program that they were my top choice in the SOP. Granted, this was what now seems like eons ago but, I was admitted with full funding.

If the school does rolling admissions, then applying sooner could lead to hearing backs sooner. But if there's one deadline for all applications, then it's unlikely anyone's applications get read before the deadline. So they're probably sending out the first round of offers based on the entire applicant pool.

These are the first ones that come to mind. There's certainly more... 1) What support is there for students applying for external fellowships (e.g., NSF GRFP, NSF DDRI, SSRC, etc.)? Are there successful applicants within the department who are willing to share their materials? 2) Specific placement record and trajectory of recent alums of the department in general and your POI in particular. 3) Summer funding. Are there opportunities to teach a summer course as instructor of record? Is there summer funding available for preliminary fieldwork/data collection if your project requires that? 4) If needed for your work, what are the opportunities for language training? How common is this among PhD students? 5) What is the mix of MA and PhD students in courses in the department? 6) Are there any requirements to take courses outside of the department? If you're interested in courses outside the department, can you take them or are there restrictions on this? 6a) Can or should you have a committee member from outside the department involved in either your comps or your dissertation? If so, what's the protocol for doing this? 7) (Again, this is only if you're interested in this kind of thing.) What professional development training is there for teaching? Are there workshops, a graduate certificate, a 1-2 credit course, etc.? 8) More broadly, what professional development opportunities are there for graduate students? 9) How often and how closely do grad students get to interact with invited/colloquium speakers? Are there regular brown bag or colloquium talks in the department? Do people go to talks from outside the department? 10) Conferences. Is there funding available for travel and, if so, what are the requirements for getting it? Do students travel to regional conferences or only national ones? Do profs co-author presentations with students? Are there any conferences on campus where you can present your research? That said, I wish I'd asked more about the department's culture/atmosphere. Some of this changes year to year as people graduate and a new cohort comes in but, it's still good to know what the overall department atmosphere is.

There are definitely ways to get their attention but then the question becomes whether you want positive or negative attention... I would not reach out to them. Surely, there is a reason you applied to the program that's already admitted you, right? So why is it that the program is unacceptable if it's your only admit but it was fine to spend >$100 applying there?

For my MA, I only visited my top 2 programs after being admitted with full funding to each. For PhD programs, I visited 4 out of the 7 (one was my current department so that doesn't count). I ended up going to one of the two which I didn't visit.

1) Neither of these things makes a letter unprofessional. 2) This is why applicants should totally waive their right to read letters because you're stressing out about this unnecessarily.

Your first part is fine. The second part (about waiting to hear from other programs and funding possibilities) is something your POI already knows and which you don't need to state outright.

I think this expands beyond English, FWIW. Several people in one of my fields have been discussing the decline in tenure-track and other full-time positions advertised in the past couple of years. I haven't actually counted but I'd say that it's also down ~30-40% overall. Even worse (for some of us), a lot of the advertised jobs are in one specific subfield so, if you don't have those skills, then the decline is probably ~50-60%. Many of my friends and I consider ourselves just plain lucky at this point. I could throw out the usual advice that you should apply for everything, but you're probably already doing that. You could try to work your network to see if you know anyone at any place that's hiring and can put in a good word about you/your application with the search committee. As a job applicant in academia, I used to think that was unethical until I realized that people do it all the freaking time. It doesn't always work but I doubt it ever hurts. Depending on your family situation, you might also want to consider the 1 year VAP positions which pop up everywhere. Some have abysmally low pay and working conditions but others are actually reasonable and a good stepping stone to a TT job, though maybe not at that institution.

I would not do this. If they wanted to meet with you in person, they would've invited you for an interview. You're in the lucky position of having already been told what you need to do to boost your chances of being accepted. I would take your potential advisor's advice on work on getting a higher GRE score so you have a better chance next time you apply.

I would redo the survey if I were you. There's no statistical test that can help you figure out the effect of gender if you didn't specifically ask about gender. Also, without knowing the form of the data (type of various [ratio, interval, etc.]) and what you're hoping to know, it's really not possible to tell you what statistical tests to do. You should consult with your professors about how to proceed.

It does sound like an interview. But, if I were you, I'd stay in the school-provided lodging, rather than driving home each night. There may be important social time or information that you miss out on by not being where others are.

This is absolutely true. I'd just add that, depending on your career goals, going to the top 10 and not living in your preferred location now may make it easier for you to live somewhere you like later on once you graduate and find a job. If you go to the lower-ranked school but are able to match or beat the CV of someone from the higher ranked school by the time you graduate AND you build up a solid network, then you should be fine.

Have you previously visited your top choice program? I ask because when I visited PhD programs, what had been my top choice before the visit dropped in my personal rankings once I got there. Similarly, other schools rose in opinion after visiting. So, I'd visit because you never know how your opinion about the programs will change.

It depends on what your post-PhD plans are and the quality of the POI at each institution. If you want to get a tenure-track faculty position at a research-intensive university, you probably should go to the top 10 program. But only if the person you would be working with has a good track record of their students getting the kind of position you (think you) want.

@TakeruK, the 4-day visit may be because they want to make sure everyone has a full day on campus. Depending on where people are coming from, Thursday may be largely a travel day where they're hoping everyone will get in by lunch or early afternoon and activities don't really start until 2 or 3pm. I definitely went on visits like that and appreciated having the full day to meet faculty, get campus tours, see the facilities, etc., rather than having it all crammed into the same day that I arrived.

Hi @geography_homework734, this forum isn't for people seeking help with their homework. It's for future and current graduate students seeking advice and support. I'm locking this topic.

Have you considered taking one unpaid personal day and one sick day?

Don't beat around the bush. Say, "I need to talk to you specifically about my research." And then have a list of specific things. Hell, send an agenda in advance if you're worried she'll be blindsided. If you aren't willing to have a direct conversation about your career now, when will you be?

This is definitely discipline specific. In the humanities and socials sciences, it is incredibly rare for a department or advisor to pay for everything for a trip to conference, unless they have specific grant money to do. Since most students are funded by TA positions, they don't have any dedicated grant money to draw on for conferences. Instead, you apply for funding from the department, the graduate school, etc., and hope that they combine to be enough to cover your expenses. If I refused to spend any money out of pocket for conferences in graduate school (or even now, to be honest), I'd either only be able to attend the major conference for 1-2 days (it's 5 full days long) or be restricted to attending 1-2 regional conferences which I could drive to or fly expensively (<$200 round trip). Just to give you an idea, combining departmental and grad college funding would get one about $1100 maximum for conferences. Depending on where the major conference is, flights and registration alone would cost about $500, without considering food or a hotel room.

Have you actually sat down with your advisor and talked about this? Because it could be that you think you're talking past each other and your advisor doesn't and that a simple conversation would clear some of this up.

The program or department ranking matters far more than the university ranking. I definitely prioritized where I wanted to live, but I also didn't really apply to programs in places I wasn't willing to move to for 5-6 years.

I wouldn't be that worried two weeks out.

You may want to see the advice here:

At that point, you should pay more attention to placement, funding, publishing and grant opportunities, and the track record of the POIs you'd be working with.