bhr

Good luck. I took the more standard route of MA-PhD, so I'm watching this year before applying for PhDs next year.

The biggest challenge for me is learning how to read/notate academically. I didn't have to do that in my undergrad, while the younger members of my cohort all have these elaborate databases for tracking readings. It's a hard thing to learn on the fly, how to read without a specific goal/paper in mind, and I'm not doing well with it.

Don't worry about it quite yet. Some of your programs (Az/ASU/GSU) are supposedly very slow notifiers. Are you a PhD or MA applicant? (I'm assuming PhD because of the number of programs)

I understand the culture just fine, I simply feel like saying that people in the academy need to do push ups to learn respect is both offensive and simplistic. I'm also a bit surprised that anyone pursuing an advanced degree would consider the term "butt hurt" appropriate in conversation.

This is one of the things that really bothered me about this article when I read it this weekend. Yes, English majors have gone down, but that doesn't mean that fewer students are studying what would have been called an English degree a decade or more ago. For a variety of reasons (and I put a lot of this on the traditional lit folks), PW/Rhet/Writing Studies programs have either split off of English departments, developed parallel to them, or been merged with Communications or another field. Those are all growing fields at the undergraduate and graduate level, in part because they prepare students for jobs that actually exist outside the classroom. I did my BA in an English department, and was constantly an afterthought as part of the PW track. My degree required 12 credits of lit, I had to do a literary analysis as part of my capstone, and most of the funding and outside activities were based on literature or creative writing (we had a cw clubs, STD, and a reading group, but no RSA chapter or the like).

I think it's important to talk to people in the field about how they view schools. The Ivies/Hopkins/Stanford/Northwestern are almost always in the top tier of rankings, but that doesn't mean that they are best for you at this time. In my field, for example, the top programs tend to be at the land grants (for a variety of reasons), and that is rarely reflected in the rankings. Sub-specialties sometimes thrive in corners of academia that you wouldn't expect, and the ranking systems are rarely that detailed. Look at the jobs you want, figure out who is doing that work now, and look to see where they were hired out of (especially those in the last 5-10 years).

I find this whole thread a bit offensive. Just being ex-military doesn't give you some special knowledge about how to relate to people, and sure as heck doesn't give you the right to insult others or assume that they are something lesser than you. Just as I have a problem with people in the academy who look down on military members and vets, I find some of the posts here are pretty dismissive of those who have not served. This idea that grad students who aren't vets need to do pushups to learn how to respect professors is either an insult to their discipline or their professionalism. I've worked for and with vets, had employees who were vets, sponsored plebes at the USNA and hung out with active duty military officers. I understand that it's an adjustment to seeing people as equals regardless of rank, but your comments here are just rude.

I'm in Lansing now, and anyone who portrays the city as dangerous is delusional. Yes, the city itself has the normal crime problems that you see in other mid-size towns (Lansing itself is the state capitol, and has good and bad areas), but the area around the campus is relatively safe. There was one student-involved incident early in the semester, and the school did a good job of pushing out email/phone notifications on it. Find a decent apartment complex and you will be fine (especially if you avoid the undergrad party scene) In comparison, I came from a small school in a small town, that happened to have two student on student killings in the last five years, along with a number of brutal assaults. I've heard nothing like that here, though there are the normal fights you see elsewhere, and the school did land on the Title IX list from the DoJ (along with 50-60 other schools).

Start with anything from Henry Jenkins. http://henryjenkins.org/. I just finished Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, and it was filled with theory while still being a fun read. Participatory culture rubs right up against advertising (which I don't know well), so it should give you some stuff to go off of. Also look at digital rhetoric (anything by Selfe/Hawisher is a good start), visual rhetoric. I would guess that if your nd goal isn't teaching at a 4 year (or, even if it is), that you look at PW or Tech Comm programs, which will give you a good mix of theory and practical applications. Someone more steeped in the coursework can probably offer other suggestions. I'm tackling my two theory seminars next semester.

What do you want to do? There are a lot of tracks you can take in RhetComp, from a cultural rhetoric base to more of a pw or digital rhet track. Honestly, you aren't going to be expected to come in to rhetcomp with foundational texts, because, as you said, there aren't undergraduate programs in it. I'm only in my first year (and older than you), but I was no more acquainted with the theory than you are (In fact, I spent my first three months telling people that I didn't get their Foucault jokes, right up until the day that someone called me on it and handed me the books).

I get that, completely. I went from a 4000 student campus (that didn't seem that big), to a 50,000+ campus, and it's overwhelming. There are freshmen lecture classes that are larger than my graduating class. The thing I'm realizing, however, is that there are opportunities that a large school provides that my small school never could. In addition, if the department/grad program is close than it doesn't feel that big, as you don't really branch out as much as an undergrad. The biggest adjustment to me was learning that I couldn't just get to campus five minutes early and get to where I needed to be.

As far as I know, Purdue and OSU both guarantee funding for all accepted MAs in Rhet/Comp, and MSU (and others) do their best to do so as well. The nice thing about R/C is that we can usually TA FYW for full funding, or, in your case, work in the writing center. I applied/got in to three of the programs on your list, (and am in a cohort with an Oakland grad) so feel free to PM me with any questions.

I gave my LoR writers thank you gifts once I got in. Booze for a couple, books for the non-drinkers

I'm working through my course readings for my PW Pedagogy course, and mixing in some "pleasure" reading by going through my professors' publications. I bought about 20 of the the $5>used books at Amazon, and am giving myself a crash course in theory. Foucault, Henry Jenkins, Selfe and Hawisher, ect.

I opted not to accept an offer from Purdue, but their package for the MA was slightly larger than I have here (I think ~$1000 over 9 months). FWIW, I took a small ($5k) loan out when I started, mostly to cover relocation/startup cost and with my stipend and a little side work I'm getting bills paid and living less hand-to-mouth than I expected.

This is for an MA, right? Honestly, any of those programs will be fine, as long as they fit what you want to do. I'm biased against programs situated inside English departments, like UO, which at least until last year required a LitCrit class for Comp/Rhet. I'm in a tech-heavy program, though, so that's where my bias shows. I think, at least at the MA, it's far more important that you do good work than where you are doing it. For what it's worth, Purdue has the best "name" value on that list. Heck, I can think of three or four programs that probably don't exist without Patricia Sullivan.

Not to come off as critical, but what have you done in the last four years to make yourself a better candidate? I think, almost universally, that those who reported success in this thread had bolstered their GPAs with presentations, publications, internships, work experience, research, or additional coursework. I think it would be worthwhile to ask yourself what you can do to supplement your lackluster GPA.

I wrote a lot of "work with Professor X, whose research/courses on Y fit with my interest in Z" type lines, usually three or four for each program, with Z changing each time. I can tell you, having just picked both my focus and committee in the last week (I'm finishing up semester one), that I'm doing something that wasn't on my letter for this school, with a Chair I hadn't mentioned before. Hell, my first two months here I told people that my thesis was on the rhetoric of fantasy football, just to have an answer for the question that you get all the damn time.

So, my path to "English" (Comp/Rhet) is different than most. Marketing major, dropout, career in industry. The last few years of work I made a living as a writer (top ten lists, sports writing, random internet content, site design, app content), and decided I wanted to go back and finish my degree. Lucked into a professor with deep roots in the field who opened my eyes to all the cool stuff being done in comp/rhet programs. I want to teach, not just do research, and I want to teach all the fun stuff with real world (and disciplinary) applications. I love tech writing and digital rhetoric. I like encouraging students to blog, tweet, pin, and post as supplements to classroom discourse. I want to look for different spaces and places to compose (augmented reality, infographics). The theory is fine, and I know I need to be grounded in it in order to teach, research and publish, but mostly I want to be able to get my hands on young writers and show them that "English" isn't just close reading, argumentative essays and literary criticisms. Also, I want a job after finishing.

Not only is it ok, most programs have people who are dedicated to reply to interested students (I spoke to people at about 1/2 your list when I was making my own last year). PM me and I can give you my thoughts, though you need to put a bit of a rush as the first deadlines are in two weeks (and with the holiday coming up, getting everything together can be a challenge).

It means you took the GRE, most likely, which sells your information to schools. I've been in my program for three months, took the GREs a year ago, and still get spam mail for a handful of program.

Bowties! Long time, no chat. DM me sometime so we can catch up.

I may sound like a broken record here, but I would look at C/R or Digital Studies programs over Lit programs.

Jealousy is something I deal with pretty much constantly. I'm older, fatter, and less qualified than the other members of my cohort, so it's easy to be envious when one of the shining stars gets a step ahead of me. What I have had to do is force myself to be happy for them, as much as possible, while asking about how they accomplished whatever it was so that I can learn from it; For the more personal stuff, I think it's probably worth seeing someone professionally. If you are so anxious about some of that stuff, it may be worth talking to someone in a safer space. As to the past relationship stuff, I think most people are pretty respectful if you just tell them that you would prefer not to talk about it. I'm surprised that there is that much social pressure to talk about personal lives, to be honest. The only members of my program who really talk about that stuff are parents with kids. The only reason I even know who is dating is from a few outside social gatherings or Facebook (or in one case it's two people in the program. We're two months+ in and I just learned that one of my officemates is married.

Also worth checking to see if you can take some CS/Programming classes for the language requirement. I know that won't work for something like a Lit or History program, but I've seen it for many others