ExponentialDecay

Do you think that being a doctor in something is going to make waiting tables more enjoyable?

I think this will replace "I used to walk to school 20 miles uphill both ways" as the seminal marker of millennial entitlement

That's not a thing and the person who posted that is butthurt that they got rejected. IHEID does not discriminate based on nationality. It's full of Europeans because, guess what, it's in Europe, and Americans are everywhere.

You are just as competitive for jobs in comparative literature departments with a national literature degree as you would be with a comparative literature degree. Source: look at the degrees of the professors who teach in the comp lit departments you are considering. Like with any interdisciplinary degree, you will be judged on your skillset, which means that, if you're a good enough German scholar, you will probably end up teaching 100 level language classes at a German department, and if you're not, you will probably be unemployed. There are very few comp lit departments out there, especially at teaching schools, and many of them will share faculty and courses with national lit departments rather than hire on their own staff. I'm actually not sure that either comparative literature or a national literature is the more practical option, especially if we're talking an impacted language like German or Russian. I mean, dude, whatever you choose, you'll still end up with a literature degree. I think your decision is better guided here by the strength of the programs you get into, the funding they give you, and your research focus. If you actually want to do research on German and English modernism or anything else that would fit in in a comp lit department, go for it, but if you're just throwing the English modernism in there because you think it'll get you a job at the end, I wouldn't bother.

I agree that safe spaces, circumscribed properly, are a necessary thing, but how do you know that having a safe space doesn't mean that, and to whom? And who will be doing the circumscribing, and will everyone else agree?

My view of this is informed by the shitshow that happened at UMass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triggering I feel that student activism has become a performance and nothing more than a performance. The event I refer to above is an extreme, but it illustrates in bright colors my impression that, at this point, people are effectively trolling. I mean, a Republican campus club invited three gutter journalists to provoke a bunch of 19 year olds into becoming reddit memes, and the administration allowed it to happen. And I don't mean provoke in an intellectual sense. What does a guy saying "feminism is cancer" have to do with civil debate and intellectual inquiry? Nothing. It's one thing to have an educated conversation about social justice issues, but this gloating circus freakshow had no goal other than to create a base scene aimed at people who didn't have the wherewithal and maturity to stay away. I don't think it's as simple as, am I for safe spaces or against them. I don't think it's as simple as paternalism or being more consumer based. I think that university is a very specific social space that serves a very specific purpose, and this is a question of determining which forms of debate uphold that purpose, and which debase it. For this reason, I have a problem with things like boycotting Israeli academics because of their nationality, or not including necessary readings in a course because they may be triggering, or running speakers off campus when those speakers are there to present an intellectual idea that you disagree with. Yes, that means that, if an abhorrent idea can be couched in academic discourse, then it should be allowed to be on campus. That's because, at the end of the day, all knowledge can be learned from books; the purpose of the university is to train students to engage with ideas through academic discourse - to become citizens of a civil society. It is an institution that is distinguished by this very important social mission. If you want to engage with ideas in a non-civil form, there are many spaces out there for that: the internet, the street, social gatherings of various kinds that are geared towards discussing the ideas you are interested in in the way you want to discuss them. The university is not that. Of course it will be restrictive, or "elitist", if you want, because behavior correction necessitates some level of restriction. But that's the point.

I don't know anyone who switched from finance to literature, but I know people who made similarly extreme changes. In terms of the admissions process, it doesn't really. The expectations are exactly the same, and few professors are going to care how you meet them, or that it was harder for you to meet them because you didn't major in English. It's not uncommon for people to take time off to work in an unrelated field before going back to school, but that's really for your own edification rather than for any effect on your application to a PhD.

I don't sit on an admissions committee. That said, for the purposes of formal academia, it's only a publication if it is published in a non-undergraduate peer-reviewed journal. As a method, it may be cheaper than a conference, but it is also more uncertain and takes a much longer time. Keep in mind that, even if it is accepted at a journal, you will most likely be asked to make revisions, and the turnover for the whole thing is six months at minimum. I would also check with your professor if he thinks the specific paper you have in mind is publishable, and is not just saying "a publication is a good way to get something solid on your C.V." in a theoretical in a vacuum sense. tl;dr if you have a publishable paper, of course you should send it out to journals. But your PhD admissions strategy probably shouldn't be wishing really, really hard that it gets accepted, if you know what I mean.

We're talking past each other. I never stated that OP's paper was bad, or "terrible", or "not publishable". I stated explicitly that I have no way of knowing if that is the case. I asserted no such dichotomy, and you can check my first response to you for evidence that I contradict the existence of such a dichotomy. I completely agree that OP should take advantage of this massive opportunity and that professors who offer to help are rare. I am a bit surprised at your assertion that MA students who cannot write seminar papers are so common, as I was under the impression that writing at least one seminar paper would be a graduation requirement in most undergraduate humanities departments, but this is also irrelevant to OP's question, as is imho 90% of the speculation going on in this thread. I stand by my advice to have some independent work to show before approaching the professor again, because in my experience, being proactive is overwhelmingly the best strategy to get people to work with you. I don't think I'm being provocative anywhere here. @Bumblebea come on why can't we just be friends?

@Wyatt's Terps I guess it should be said that I have never met OP before, I have never seen OP's work, and everything I say here is YMMV because it's a general comment. I commented out of a general sense of lol at the general consensus that a professor telling OP to revise her paper with a basics worksheet means that she thinks OP's paper is OMG publishable. If I were OP, I would revise the paper out of a sense of scholarly integrity and approach the professor with a completed draft in hand (professors tend to respond better to people who have demonstrated an independent effort, whereas a request to help me from scratch can be interpreted as needing hand-holding), but I also don't have 3 kids.

It is entirely possible that the professor sees something worthwhile in the OP's work without thinking that OP's work is remotely publishable. In any case, all this reading on tea leaves is perfectly irrelevant - OP needs to walk before she can run, and until she can write good essays, a priori nothing she writes will be publishable.

I may be caustic and suspicious, guys, but my first thought upon receiving generic paper-writing guidelines as revision help from a professor isn't that the professor thinks the paper is publishable, but that they're gently telling me to practice the basics over the summer so that I don't end up with Bs in the second year. If they gave me a B for the course and then emailed me generic guidelines, I would take that as a particularly cruel diss.

Take any feedback or advice from anyone who is not on an admissions committee with a huge grain of salt, but imho the first 2 are non-issues and the third is a correlant rather than a causative factor. Prizes and publications, unless we're talking Rhodes or a publication in an actual peer-reviewed big-girl journal, are of marginal importance. If your department regularly sends students to US PhDs and if your recommenders studied in the US (though it is better if they are known in US academia), your LORs should be at a good level. Applicants with UK credentials are no rarity. I don't know what a "file" is, but if it contains your work with that professor, then that should be fine. They're writing a letter based on your past performance with them, after all, not on what you want to do in the future. I'm sure you are a strong applicants, but lots of strong applicants get dinged every year because there just aren't enough spots in the programs. Your best bet is to be an exceptional applicant, which, who knows what that is, but it's not simply being a good student who got good grades, or to focus heavily on fit with programs that will value some niche competency you have, like a language, or a technical skill e.g. for digital humanities.

Ask him to put it in writing.

Can I ask, if your whole family is here and you have a boyfriend, is there really no way you could live with someone rent-free while you're in school? It just seems strange to limit yourself geographically (and therefore limit the opportunities you have to get a funded position) for the sake of family when your family won't let you crash on the couch, you know?

jsyk you will need to submit all of your higher education transcripts, including ones with the bad grades from the professional program you withdrew from, so technically those matter too. You should also post this on the literary studies subforum, not here, because that subforum will have more knowledgeable people and may be more active. But, just off the top of my head, two things. English MAs really aren't super competitive, so as long as you meet their minimum requirements (which may not be the case for Columbia, from what I remember, but you can check that yourself), go ahead and apply. The other thing is, I'd recommend against judging the quality of an MA program by the brand name of the university it belongs to, especially since brand name is the least of your problems. Many academic MAs in the US are cash cows for the university (definitely the MAs at Columbia and NYU, not sure about your other schools), meaning you're there to pay exorbitant fees to attend graduate classes, but you don't get any attention from the professors, who are exponentially more concerned with their PhD students, any research or conference support from the department (because that again is earmarked for the PhD students), or any opportunities to fund yourself and get relevant experience with RA or TA positions (again, those are for the PhDs). This would be fine if all you needed was a reconstructed transcript, some classes relevant to your discipline, and a loud institutional name, but you also need strong LORs and research experience (which in English means working closely with a professor), so imho it's not the right option for you. If you can't pay for this degree out of pocket, it is 100% not the right option for you. I would focus on finding a small, intimate program with maybe not superstar but solid faculty that has explicit opportunities for master's students. Ideally a masters-only program (other disciplines have very prestigious masters-only options at elite LACs like Williams or Bryn Mawr, but sadly, English does not). Getting into an elite PhD with a 3.0 GPA, no research experience, and no good recommenders is going to be an uphill hike even with a good master's, and the NYU name isn't going to save you.

I did a structuralist reading of a text once in sophomore year.

CGU doesn't fund their students. Abort abort abort.

Afaik all UCs give funding to all admitted students (my hesitation is unrelated to international status - I'm just not sure if the lower-ranked UCs are fully funded or not). However, your visa status will have an effect on your competitiveness for admission, since it's true that international students cost more to all public universities, not just the UCs. Overall, I would recommend you focus your apps on privates, even if you are a very strong applicant, because attending a public could have an impact on your eligibility for funding or work at that institution down the road, not just when you apply

I think people need to stop imagining academia as a vacuum of perfect rational objectivity. Because it's bad for science (in the German sense). To be a good scientist, you need to understand that you cannot be objective, because you are a person, and the work you do is affected by your biases, whether consciously or unconsciously. Of course your political and religious leanings will affect your job application, as will your syntax, or the way you dress, or what Professor X heard about you from Grad Student Y at a conference they attended. Job applications are a holistic process, which means that they look at everything. It is the same in any other industry. If you do dumb shit, like go out with your political views like guns blazing in places where this is neither needed nor appreciated (like your application materials), or write incendiary tweets under your real name, or attack students of your university at protest rallies, your views will affect you more than is necessary. On the other hand, if you can express yourself clearly and respectfully and, generally, do what Kipling recommends in his famous poem, you will ceteris paribus be in the same boat as everyone else.

As a fellow F1 student from a developing country, I understand your pain, but international students get work experience in the states (which is the hardest country by far to work in on a student visa) regularly and consistently. Here are some common avenues: working for your university as an RA or in some other capacity (allowed by F1 if under 20 hrs/week), getting CPT (for which your university needs to award you class credit for your work, which you can negotiate with your department/international student office in the unlikely eventuality that your university doesn't run such a program already), using your OPT, volunteering, working in your home country... Most internationals have comparable work experience with domestics, rightly or wrongly. Getting work experience is hard, but without a doubt easier than getting a green card - unless you plan on getting married. I doubt schools will take you any more or less seriously than any case with lacking WE. I'm also not sure that it's wise to sink all this money into getting a public sector job that you are currently fundamentally not eligible for.

No, they probably wouldn't, and I doubt any literature department in the country would. If OP wants to do linguistics, surely they must apply to linguistics programs and concentrate on Romance languages if they so wish. In my understanding, a career in linguistics academia is a different animal from a career in literary studies.

Harvard and Princeton have Romance Languages departments; if my memory serves me, so does Brown. If you want to work in multiple languages, any Comp Lit program will accommodate you. However, I don't understand why you need a PhD in multiple Romance languages. It is unlikely to be helpful to you on the academic job market, compared to a PhD in one language.

I'm kind of stuck wondering what gave you the idea that I know anything at all about soil science. I don't even know what discipline that is. Biology? Geology? You should probably ask someone on one of those forums. I can only say that you should probably retake the GRE and do about 10 points better in each area, and that if you're looking for cheap grad school, the US is not your target market.

You're a dude!!! Dude, I like your accent. Standard Russian accent. Perfectly understandable.