rising_star

Departmental placement statistics also aren't nearly as helpful as those of specific advisors. The placement stats for my PhD advisor are much stronger than those of the department as a whole for a variety of reasons. Placement stats are never the full story because they don't really help you understand the choices individuals made/make about what they want for their career. For example, not everyone wants to be at a R1 (or RU/VH) institution so, if you're focused on that in placement stats, you may be under- or over-estimating a particular department's or advisor's ability to get their students there. Some people want to go into industry and then are left out of placement stats. Some people decide they want to focus on family, prioritize their spouse's career, or do something besides get a tenure-track job, all of which is perfectly fine except when prospective students are looking at placement stats and viewing those students as failures.

I wouldn't mention specific works by any of them. You could say something like, "There are multiple faculty with whom I could work, including A, B, C, and D, given our overlapping interests in X, Y, and Z." If you keep it to one or two sentences where you're listing names, it should be fine.

So my PhD advisor sounds pretty similar to this POI of yours in that he gets busy, sometimes forgets to read stuff, isn't super communicative with prospective students*, but is really awesome when you get his attention and great at helping you revise your work for grants or for the dissertation. I knew all of that going in and still decided to apply to that school and ultimately to work with him. Why? Because I knew I personally didn't want or need an advisor that would be really hands-on throughout the entire program. (Note: I wasn't always that way and specifically chose my MA advisor because they were more hands-on and I knew I wanted/needed that to be successful.) If you know it's going to be a personality clash, then maybe you shouldn't apply. But, it could be worth talking to some of your POI's current grad students to see what he's like as an advisor once you're in the program. Also, I have never viewed myself as "tethered to an advisor". I have a dissertation committee, other graduate students, and the faculty from my MA program, all of whom I worked with at various stages of my graduate career. While yes, my advisor is the one I get asked about most, I'm not a mini-me or a clone of him, nor did I ever intend to be. *I later realized the reason he doesn't communicate with them much is because he gets contacted by a lot of prospective students, most of whom either won't apply or won't get in. Once I was admitted and asked questions, the communication was better.

Doing a federal government internship could help you get the skills needed to get a job with that agency in the future so, I think it's a great idea. Is it a paid or unpaid internship? You might also consider whether doing a "virtual internship", which some agencies offer, is worthwhile.

I wouldn't bother with a cover page, especially since you should include your last name in the header of each page anyway. An abstract also doesn't strike me as necessary unless your writing sample is an excerpt from a longer piece and you want them to get a sense of what the entire piece covers.

I know what you said. I guess I'm trying to figure out how it is that you think you're going to snag an invite to talk in the weekly graduate students' seminars without actually being a graduate student there. As someone coming from outside, it seems more likely that you'd be asked to give a brown bag or colloquium talk, rather than be slotted in with the department's own PhD students. I doubt you'll get an invite to present in a weekly seminar series for grad students by talking to people at a conference.

There are some big state universities which offer a lot of online courses which may suit your needs. Pennsylvania State University and Arizona State University come to mind.

philapp, the only way your proposed visit idea makes sense is if they invite you. You don't want to send an email asking them if you can give a talk or just show up and hope people attend a talk you have. That's not how things work in the US and doing that will not make you look good. If you want to open a relationship, either introduce yourself to the relevant folks at a conference or send them an out of the blue email and hope they respond. BTW, Inside Higher Ed just had a post about the value of asking questions for networking at conferences. See here.

Yea, I would use fuzzy's suggested email but modify it to indicate that the cost is an issue. So something like "Unfortunately, DATE is not a possible time for me to travel, as my MSc exam has been scheduled on that day. Would it be possible to arrange a Skype interview for another date?" rather than offering to fly in for a different interview day.

I love those "eureka" moments. A lot of mine come either in the shower or when I'm out walking my dog. They're both inconvenient, but I've gotten better about taking my phone with me on dog walks so I can call my office and leave myself a message with whatever the brilliant idea is. Glad you're making progress, TBL!

What fuzzy said! Seriously, I've got opportunities to do things solely by being at a conference and having a conversation with someone. Conferences in my field are rarely about attending the talk and are much more about who you meet at the specialty/working group meetings, the parties, and by walking up to someone you already know to say hello. And when I say all sorts of things, I include getting leads on jobs, including jobs that had yet to be advertised and for which I was urged to apply by the search committee chair (who, for the record, didn't really know anything about my publications and had heard about 5 minutes of my conference paper). I've also walked up to people after their talk and developed research collaborations which otherwise would've been difficult to establish. Think of it this way: are you more likely respond to an unsolicited email asking to work with you or an email from someone you've met at a conference/symposium/event? philapp, I think you're overestimating the distinction between philosophy and other fields when it comes to the value of conferences, particularly in the North American context.

Honestly, most English departments have limited resources. Doing a senior thesis AND an honors project is significant humanities research experience as an undergraduate and more than enough to help you be taken seriously by adcoms. You really should be applying to a mix of MA and PhD programs given your qualifications and experience.

Actually, litzzie, the end of January may not be too early! It's really department-specific though. There were several programs that I applied to by Dec 31/Jan 1 and to which I was admitted before the beginning of February. If you stand out as a top applicant, then they may offer you admission more quickly. Either way, it doesn't hurt to ask since it's likely the committee would have met already.

I don't know that you'd lose much by contacting the public university now. Depending on the response you get, that may eliminate what you've listed as option 3 here. Maybe you'll get lucky and they still have funding for you. But, if they don't, then you'll have to decide whether to make lemonade out of lemons (that is, figure out how to make your current program work) or leave with your MS and try to get into a PhD program elsewhere. The latter will be made more difficult by getting straight Bs in your coursework and because there's often a negative stigma attached to "mastering out" of a PhD program.

Honestly, I can't see how it would. It would be far more important to meet people at conferences where they can hear you talk about your research and where you can engage them about theirs. That's where I see people making connections that lead to postdocs, invitations to apply for jobs, etc. As an applicant, I can't see what you could do or say that would help someone remember you for an opportunity 4-5 years down the road unless it's something negative that you do or say.

So to me, this is a really exciting development, and one which ties in with several other things happening in higher ed these days. The explicit recognition and acknowledgment that there's no correlation between GRE scores and PhD completion is important. Why? Because it demonstrates that students who struggle on the GRE may still be very qualified for programs AND because it points out that programs which ignore this are potentially doing themselves a disservice by missing out on qualified applicants. In this way, it reminds me of why many prestigious colleges and universities have gone test-optional for high school students. Again, the same (lack of) correlation between SAT/ACT scores and graduation is at the heart of this and has been explicitly cited by some of those institutions. In addition, the timing of this proposal is interesting in light of the various student protests at many campuses. One of the things many of those students are calling for is greater faculty diversity. Anything which improves the pipeline by easing barriers to entry for diverse (first generation, underrepresented minority, female, etc.) potential graduate students will ultimately assist presidents and institutions who are seeking to diversify their faculty. Right now, such calls are difficult for colleges to act on because there are a limited number of diverse PhD students graduating each year. So, if going test-optional for the GRE can enhance the ability of diverse PhD students to gain admission, then it's entirely possible that there will be more diverse PhD-holders in the future. So yes, all in all, this is a good thing. I'm curious to see what happens in January when the AAS council discusses this. I'm even more curious to see if graduate departments will adopt this recommendation. And, if they do, whether it will be limited to astronomical sciences or will spread to related fields like physics. (P.S. YAY! Finally something I wanted to say enough to make my 5,000th post here!!)

Honestly, no. If they really wanted everyone to submit a writing sample, they would require it. In my field, writing samples are rarely required from applicants, mostly because they assess your writing skills based on your grades, your SOP, and what your LORs say about you.

Have you already sent in your applications? Not that it actually matters but, it's more a curiosity. How long have you waited since sending your initial emails? It's not uncommon for these kinds of things to be at the bottom of someone else's to-do list and, between Thanksgiving and the end of the semester rush, take 1-2 weeks to get around to reply to. I would not advise calling them.

If I were a professor in a cultural studies department and I read your SOP talking about wanting to teach and work in literature departments, I would wonder why on earth you were applying to my program.

Why are you including a literature review?

When I was in grad school and had a partner that was in grad school, we did what random_grad suggested. We ate dinner together. Or, if it wasn't dinner, we'd watch a TV show, like "The Daily Show" together at least 4-5 nights a week so that we had some time together and to connect to one another. In fact, sometimes it meant that one or the other of us would have to stop working in order to see the other but, ultimately, it was worth it to me. That said, if you think your relationship is doomed to fail, then it probably will in part due to your mindset. It's easy to get tripped up on the what ifs but, it's also really, really hard to plan for the future. 6 months before I finished my PhD, I had no idea I'd end up where I am now. You can't know or control the future, unfortunately. Anyway, my advice would be to live in the moment, enjoy what you have, and deal with the what ifs when they come. "Forget regret or life is yours to miss" is never a bad thing to keep in mind.

Sure, but this is assuming that one has tenure when publishing. In fact, some of the more prolific publishers are those without tenure, including those currently in graduate school. The journal's prestige is far more important than the author's.

I don't think that's true anymore for a lot of fields since there are way more good researchers being produced than tenure-track positions available. For example, Andy Merrifield, a pretty well-known and very highly respected Marxist scholar was denied tenure at one point several years ago and has since adjuncted and made a living as an independent scholar.

@LittleCritterB, I think you misread what I said. I said that I know professors who drink but also do not keep alcohol in their home. Consequently, I wouldn't gift them beer since they would presumably have to take that beer home.

Here's one cautionary example. I know several profs who, while not abstaining from alcohol, do not keep alcohol in their homes for various reasons. I only know this because either others have told me or because of my close relationship with those professors. So, I wouldn't buy any of those alcohol just because I know how they feel about having it at home.