ExponentialDecay

Considering literary scholars work with text as their primary medium, I believe it is more important to have experienced the actual text of a literary scholar than of a social scientist. After all, all OLS regressions or surveys are effectively made equal.

Okay, here's what's weird about this. Your professors' excuse sounds like an excuse, and a bad one, and that could be for a lot of reasons besides you appearing flippant. It could also be because of the way you worded the letter, or it could be, sorry, because they don't think you would do well in a grad program. That said, that both professors used the same excuse is, you probably understand, highly unlikely unless they are in collusion, or it genuinely is too late. Here's what I think you should do: send emails to all of the English professors you've had, including the two that rejected you, asking for tips on applying for grad school (not something inane like "how do I apply to grad school", but stuff that shows that you've thought about this and researched things, like "do you think these programs are good for speciality x" or "how should I word the fact that I'm a math major in my SOP"). That may incite your two professors to be more forthcoming with their reasons for rejecting you, if they are indeed under-the-table. It will also built ground with the other professors you've had, because they will have you in their mind as a serious potential grad student, and it won't seem like you're asking for letters out of thin air (they may even offer to write you letters first). Professors tend to form opinions of which of their students have a likelihood of going to grad school in their field, and they do treat those students a little differently.

There are plenty of good MAs that don't have funding, MAPH being one of them. If OP cares about the practical side of things, I would advise he stay the course and get a doctorate in applied math. That said, this is all kinds of shady. It's not even November yet - most people won't have started writing their recommendation letters at all. Ask other professors in English, try to get at least one.

Nobody cares about your non-major classes or the grades you got in them. That said, that may be school-specific (as in, your-undergrad-school-specific).

Basic Italian is extremely easy to learn (and to pronounce, compared to French). However, the literary language has a lot of tenses that are barely distinguishable between each other, other grammar woes that you also encounter in French, and very exact constructions. Italian is more regular grammatically than French is, but it also has more nuances, many of which people who don't read at a very high level have no idea about. I've been doing it for 10 years and my Italian friends still make fun of me. For reading knowledge, that depends on what kind of documents and what era (there are different styles, and the further back you go, the weirder it gets - try reading Dante in the original). I don't do scholarly work in any romance languages, but I don't anticipate it being any more difficult than French.

Where does one even read about the program? Is that the "welcome" page of a department website that says like, "we are the English department and we give our students critical thinking skills" or whatever? I mean, is there anything to a program (academically) except the faculty that make it up?

Brown? Yale? If your interests are, as you state, primarily in TV and film, I think you should ditch the English Lit situation and package yourself as a straight Film applicant (i.e. apply to straight Film programs). What program you go into is primarily determined on what kind of scholarly output you will publish (i.e. what you will later teach), not what methodologies you use or interdisciplinary leanings you want to incorporate.

If I wanted to work on continental philosophy as an academic philosopher in the US, I would also be worried. That said, a reading knowledge of German is insufficient language preparation for comparative literature programs. To be a comparatist, you essentially need to be as good as a specialist in a given national literature, but also have the ability to branch out into other literatures, especially the way the discipline is trending right now. You can do memoir and gender in literature or whatever you want in a straight English Lit program, which will take your reading knowledge of German and be happy with it (ps I am assuming you are at Tufts - are they really letting you get away with a mediocre level of preparation in just one foreign language?). I would also look at those interdisciplinary programs like at Berkeley and Brown that work with continental philosophy. But keep in mind that, when the time comes, your only leg to stand on will be the merit of your work, and as you said, nobody's gotten hired into aesthetics since forever. The only way you avoid the competitive nightmare as you put it is if you get out of academia.

I mean, it depends on where one wants to be placed. American is not Princeton, but it's not the worst program out there. Besides, in the broad terms of job opportunities for PhD economists, the WB and IMF are... not great, and they're going downhill. Compensation is relatively small and there's a lot of bureaucratic bullshit. Somewhere like Cornerstone or some quant finance firm will pay far better, have actual bonuses, and opportunities to exit into an R1 professorship some kind of fund where you basically sit around for the next 10 years before retirement and watch money trickle in. Economists who end up in academia, in fact (especially at prestigious liberal arts colleges and the other places that people in the humanities consider to be the holy grail), are either looking to semi-retire or stay home with the kids more, or they really love teaching. At the really strong programs, students need significant research experience and ideally something published, and at that point coursework becomes kind of obsolete. The weaker programs don't have the pick of the cream of the crop, and one gets all sorts of backgrounds (including, anecdotally, someone who hadn't taken a single math class in college and went on to a decent econ PhD, but I don't believe it). The reason coursework in economics is not necessary is the same reason that economists make bank in industry and the rest of y'all social scientists don't - the entire discipline is neatly described in mathematical language which is immediately apparent to anybody who understands mathematics. The whole point of economic thinking is the mathematics, which is why competent mathematical skills are immediately necessary, whilst economic skills can be learned by osmosis.

Ah, environmental economics! I know something about that! By "economic feasibility" do you mean how much it would cost to implement a certain type of energy considering the constraints, etc etc? That's not really what economists do. Economists are concerned with cost as a more comprehensive concept - cost to society, cost to the environment, etc. Economic valuation (look up hedonic analysis or shadow pricing) is indeed a fascinating field, as is various types of resource economics, but I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for. I think it's best to look at the PhD as a professional degree (which it is). You do need a PhD in economics to work at the IMF, or to be a professor, or to work in one of the many other areas where academic economists are recruited. If so, go ahead and apply (try to get research experience beforehand - if you are familiar with statistical packages, that shouldn't be hard). Keep in mind that the young professional programs at the IMF and WB cap at 32. The IMF is a great place to work at, but they're going through major budget cuts right now, and in general, the future of global ventures like that is unclear.

Your GPA is the overall grade you got for your university studies. Your major GPA should be the same as your GPA, but I would check with the universities you are applying to as well as some diploma conversion agencies in the US. I find it very strange that your university cannot help you with your application. Has nobody from your university ever applied to the States? I've literally never heard of such a thing, especially in a western country.

Economics PhDs, at least in the US, screen for mathematical ability first and foremost, so I suspect that his engineering work will indeed speak to his ability as an economist. This is becoming less common at top programs, but it's actually not necessary for OP to have ever been in an undergraduate econ class (except to make sure that he actually likes econ, but that's more for his own benefit) to get accepted into a program. In contrast, the equivalent of a math major is quite necessary. Research experience that uses mathematical methods is necessary. The Quant score needs to be 165+. B grades, if they are in mathematics or core subjects like macro and micro, may tank him at top programs. Economics is extremely competitive and most programs don't give people much leeway to make up for bad grades in core subjects by other means (except good grades in more advanced versions of the same subjects). A 3.75 is absolutely fine. I don't think an MA is necessary if OP is content going to a good program, and if OP will only be content with Princeton, well, an MA is not at all guaranteed to help. I hope that OP is on urch by now though. The wealth of experience there is staggering.

Comp Lit programs will expect you to have a focal interest in working with more than one language, which in practice means both strong language preparation and existing literature coursework in the relevant area. The weaker programs will admit you with leeway to make up language comprehension ground provided you show a good knowledge of the canon or write well in your sample and so on, but the top programs will expect legitimate fluency in your primary language(s), and your competition has that and some more. I would not recommend applying to low-ranked Comp Lit programs over low-ranked English programs because the funding is much more itinerant, TA options are hard to come by, and at least in regards to Russian, the faculty is almost exclusively imported from the USSR and on the brink of death retirement. Basically, don't manufacture an interest you don't have just to apply to Comp Lit. That said, however, if you are planning to work with continental theory, it's still a good idea to pick up some French or German (depending, obviously, on where your interests lie). I second echo on Berkeley. It should probably be your first choice.

go to urch.com None of the economists hang out here

And by that I mean, damn, OP got majorly trolled by his department lol.

That doesn't negate a difference between okay and 50% youth unemployment. If you get dual citizenship, your opportunities open up significantly. If you have a friend who is doing what you want, you should ask him for advice.

Do you have EU citizenship? If not, Italy is impossible. There are no jobs in general, but especially for people who need visa sponsorship. Germany and the UK are better ideas, but in the UK you have to go to a prestigious school or nobody will look at you. In general, Europe isn't in a great place economically right now, and I'm not entirely sure what you intend to do with a degree in International Relations that doesn't have to do with government work. If you want flexibility to work wherever you want, you need an in-demand skill set. In the social sciences right now, that means math.

If you're hoping that MAs will offer financial aid to international students, your hope is misplaced. If you are a good student, it will be much easier to get funded in a US BA program as an international student (it's still not at all easy, but many people do it). However, from what I understand, you are about to graduate with a BA, which will make getting a second funded BA in the States difficult-to-impossible. I have a few friends who came to the states after having done some years at university and basically started over at community college, but none of their university years back home officially counted for anything, of course. It's not very realistic for a student with a degree from a third country to make it into a PhD in the west without doing time at a western educational institution first, especially in the humanities, even if they are an exceptional student and they're not changing fields, and in that light, your situation is even more precarious. In general, every international admissions question needs a bespoke answer. I would dig around alumni from your university or friends or mentors and see if anyone went on to a PhD in the humanities in America, and ask them for advice. That will be far more valuable than anything that anybody here can give you.

I am not an expert, but in my understanding, most schools don't harvest funding for research from undergraduate tuition. Typically that funding comes from research grants or endowments. Undergraduate tuition goes to the benefit of the, you know, undergraduates. And damn, if you go $200k in debt to get a teaching job, you're gonna have to make a lot of sacrifices to pay that off...

Get a degree in the country you intend to work in. But yes, employers will recognize degrees from Europe. How much name recognition they will garnish is a different question.

I get the feeling you're an international applicant from a non-English speaking country. If so, your GRE may weigh more than that of applicants with domestic degrees, so, whilst it's not absolutely necessary, it may be worthwhile to retake especially when aiming at top schools.

I refrained from commenting yesterday, and boy am I glad that I did. This here is why every humanities job search in the country gets 33% of its applications from retired lawyers who decided they want to "give back to the community" and "teach a class on something or other I've been pursuing as a hobby on the weekends for the past 3 years". Yes, law school is different from literary scholarship. I've never set foot in a law school, and I can already tell you that you didn't spend the last 3 years building encyclopedic knowledge of a distant corner of some literary canon, maturing your ideas through planning, completing, and revising lengthy projects intimately connected to the matter of your scholarship, developing a relationship with major and minor literary theorists, and trying the daily bread of the trade, such as conferences, teaching, department politics, and which invited talks have the best doughnuts. Of course the skills you learned in law school are transferable - most skills are. Of course you're going to have an easier time transitioning into literature than into physics. But the same reason law school doesn't qualify you for any kind of work but law is the reason it doesn't qualify you for grad school in literature - because the really important ingredient to forming a sophisticated argument, besides being able to form an argument, is having something to form an argument about, and that comes from experience, which is a word for a lot of time spent working through a specific subject matter, which is the piece that many unsuccessful applicants don't have. Being a good writer or whatever is kind of the necessary but not sufficient piece; likewise, being a good mathematician is the best predictor for success in a math or economics program, but good mathematicians don't always make good physicists and economists because math is neither physics nor economics. Math is math, and law school is law school (I will have no Magritte jokes, please). Oh boy. Tell you what, I don't know how much control over their lives lawyers have, but I do know that all academics but the likes of Hawking and Chomsky have very little control over their lives, and they are moreover not paid shit for it. An academic in the humanities usually can't choose where they will live, because they have to accept whatever position of employment is offered to them, even if it's in Bumfuck, New Jersey, they have little leeway in deciding when to work on things simply because they have to be working all the time, and the what and how are often limited by grant funding, department politics, and getting fucked in the ass by the administration for any attempt at non-compliance with the party line. You remember that guy who tweeted something untoward about Israel this time last year and immediately got fired (which, in academia, is the same as having your forehead branded with DO NOT HIRE, EVER - other offenses with similar punishment include going to a non-fancy school and adjuncting to pay your bills)? That could be you. When academics finally get control of their lives is when they are tenured, have made a name for themselves in a profession, and can show up on campus maybe1 day a week to teach a graduate class and do nice things like give invited talks and write op-eds for the NYT, which happens when they're like 50 (in law, I think this is called "making partner"). Don't go into academia expecting to have a good work-life balance. Don't go into academia expecting to live the "life of the mind", chill out on the quad green, and make conversation with attractive undergrads and get paid for it. Professional scholarship is signing up for Investment Banking hours for months at a time, for the next 20 years of your life (if you're lucky - if you're not, you're thrown out and have to start your life over at 35, married, with two kids). Sigh. Sometimes I am annoyed at the VM thread, but other times I see posts like this and I understand the importance of VM's work.

I mean, you could just make a poll for who is a native speaker of English... One's nationality doesn't always coincide with one's linguistic ability.

I mean, why are you complaining that you cannot dissuade people who have chosen to walk off a cliff in full knowledge of how many feet they will be falling and how many pieces they will splatter into? It is immoral to deny a person the freedom of their choice, and in that you are less right than they are. I'm not sure that anybody here is threatened by you as much as they don't give a shit about your experience.

Yep, I would definitely be interested. Where can I see your work?