ExponentialDecay

Oh yeah, and Yale Law entails $150 000 in non-dischargeable debt - and that's just tuition, kids!
 
Not to mention, you can have the grades and the acumen to get into both the Harvard PhD and the Yale JD, but you might not have the skills necessary to perform in one or both of the jobs that follow from those degrees. A lawyer, besides being intelligent, articulate, tenacious, and all that, needs to be charismatic, dominant, most importantly have contacts - whereas an academic needs to be able to contribute originally to a highly professionalized discourse and be well-groomed enough to not be thrown out of the conference room. A lawyer is not a glorified teacher. The hours, the responsibilities, the skills and promotion criteria in the two professions are as different as if - as if they were two different professions! God damn, ladies and gentlemen.
 
If you read the law school blogs out there, you will find that it's not all that cut and dry in the law profession either. 

Oh yeah, and Yale Law entails $150 000 in non-dischargeable debt - and that's just tuition, kids!
 
Not to mention, you can have the grades and the acumen to get into both the Harvard PhD and the Yale JD, but you might not have the skills necessary to perform in one or both of the jobs that follow from those degrees. A lawyer, besides being intelligent, articulate, tenacious, and all that, needs to be charismatic, dominant, most importantly have contacts - whereas an academic needs to be able to contribute originally to a highly professionalized discourse and be well-groomed enough to not be thrown out of the conference room. A lawyer is not a glorified teacher. The hours, the responsibilities, the skills and promotion criteria in the two professions are as different as if - as if they were two different professions! God damn, ladies and gentlemen.
 
If you read the law school blogs out there, you will find that it's not all that cut and dry in the law profession either. 

Oh yeah, and Yale Law entails $150 000 in non-dischargeable debt - and that's just tuition, kids!
 
Not to mention, you can have the grades and the acumen to get into both the Harvard PhD and the Yale JD, but you might not have the skills necessary to perform in one or both of the jobs that follow from those degrees. A lawyer, besides being intelligent, articulate, tenacious, and all that, needs to be charismatic, dominant, most importantly have contacts - whereas an academic needs to be able to contribute originally to a highly professionalized discourse and be well-groomed enough to not be thrown out of the conference room. A lawyer is not a glorified teacher. The hours, the responsibilities, the skills and promotion criteria in the two professions are as different as if - as if they were two different professions! God damn, ladies and gentlemen.
 
If you read the law school blogs out there, you will find that it's not all that cut and dry in the law profession either. 

Some clarifications.
1. The USNWR rankings and Ivy League mean nothing, I was not referring to those rankings. WUSTL is a good example of a program that does not fare that well in the USNWR and is not an Ivy, but is clearly a top program. There are some programs highly ranked by the USNWR as well as Ivies that are overrated IMO.
2. Look at the data and talk to professors. It is well known that there is a hierarchy in hiring and there have been studies confirming that the vast majority of jobs go to those from elite programs (top 15-20 or so). Part of it is the brand, but these schools also have the best resources, faculty, and networking opportunities. There will always be exceptions and it's really not fair, but it's the general state of things. You're naive if you think otherwise.
3. The schools that can offer $30k/year stipends often own a lot of real estate too, which lowers cost of living. Columbia is a good example: the graduate school provides substantially below-market rent to its students.
4. The Starbucks comment was merely rhetorical. My point was that many of these low-ranking PhD and MA programs are exploitative, like Starbucks. The great thing about literature is that you don't need academia to enjoy it and I feel like some people applying for grad school haven't really grasped this point.
5. If you're already in a PhD program, my post doesn't apply to you.
6. If you fully understand the reality of all this and you're still committed to getting a PhD, then go for it. You have been warned.

according to USNR, there are about 140 ranked English PhD programs in the United States. Let's assume each one graduates 10 students a year. That's 1400 newly-minted PhDs.
 
According to the Chronicle, there were about 200 English PhD jobs on offer in 2007, which means that, assuming only new PhD's compete for these jobs, 200/1400= 14% of them get those jobs.
 
REALLY BRO, REALLY?

according to USNR, there are about 140 ranked English PhD programs in the United States. Let's assume each one graduates 10 students a year. That's 1400 newly-minted PhDs.
 
According to the Chronicle, there were about 200 English PhD jobs on offer in 2007, which means that, assuming only new PhD's compete for these jobs, 200/1400= 14% of them get those jobs.
 
REALLY BRO, REALLY?

I advise those who are horrified by the academic job market and academic employment conditions (exploitative! neoliberal! low-paying! no security!) to go give it a whirl in the non-academic job market and workforce for a while. Because every job I had outside of academia was basically ridiculous. But also boring. Academia is about the same in terms of its capitalistic unfairness, but it's not boring.
 
I agree that the university as a non-profit public trust has pretty much folded up and died, and that's pretty sad. It is depressing. It's depressing that administrators at my university are making half a million a year but won't fork over $50,000 for a TT line. It's depressing that college admissions and tuition is up like never before and classes are huge and staffed mostly by part-timers and TAs. We could easily give every unemployed PhD in a America a job, but we won't because that wouldn't be very capitalistic.
 
But. I've always felt that the typical academic person's outrage at these conditions is a little ... naive. I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to anyway: A lot of complaining strikes me as sour grapes--either from paternalistic already tenured people who hate the academic life or from pedigreed well-groomed ex-grad students who never faced rejection in their lives before they set foot on the job market. (There. I said it.) I really do think that people need some perspective here. Yes, any job in the world that's worth having is going to be VERY hard to get. Look at the job ads in the back of The Economist. How many people do you think apply for those jobs?
 
You really have to conceptualize the academic job market as a very high-risk venture, much like landing a job as an associate at a top law firm . You have to understand that you're going to have to apply multiple times, multiple years, and perhaps take undesirable gigs before you get something better. And, oh yeah, have something else going on in your life, or else you are going to feel really shitty. But jobs take time to get.
 
Full disclosure: I was on the academic job market this year. I lived this hell firsthand--and despite this, I think that the solution of "just don't get an education" is a horrible one and not something that I would personally say to anyone. Our society doesn't need fewer educated people.

Getting your PhD in English from one of the top 10 schools in the country (like Harvard) is probably a bad idea. Getting your PhD from school outside the top tier is just insane. Sorry, but this cannot be said enough. At least some of the Ivies offer stipends of over $30k/year so you're not totally wasting 5-7 years of your life if (and when) you have to switch careers. The schools that will actually replace the jobs vacated by retiring faculty will be elite private universities (like the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Vandy, etc) and private LACs with big endowments (Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst, etc). You need, at the very least, a PhD from a top school just to compete for those jobs (let alone teach there). And even these schools are increasingly relying on visiting lectureships. Public universities across the country are under siege and the first jobs that state legislatures are eliminating are in the humanities. I have no idea what would compel someone to slog through a poorly ranked PhD program on $15k/year with no job prospects. I'm absolutely baffled by people who take out loans to pay for an MA. In both cases, you're better off working at Starbucks and reading literature the way it should be read (for fun).

I think that, in facing the daunting reality of the academic job market, some people have lost sense of the general economic reality.
 
Middle-income earnings have plateaud in the 1970s. That means that, in real terms, a middle-income person today can afford fewer things than a middle-income person in the 1970s. Thus, the time when the statistically average person could make 50 times what his parents made is gone forever. America is back to the level of existence that other countries have never left - of most people working too much for too little pay. This is true equally for engineers and lawyers and doctors. Maybe before 2008, the humanities market was in slightly better shape - but after 2008, the humanities PhD is less of a risk compared to other jobs in terms of opportunity cost! However you cut it, most of us will end up in unfulfilling, underpaid jobs - whether we do a PhD in cultural theory, join a marketing firm, or get a CS degree. Now, to make it in the corporate or the professional world, you have to work really, really hard at shit that bores you to the skin of your teeth. It strikes me that your average English major who is successful enough to get accepted to the top 5 graduate schools isn't greatly talented at enduring grunt work. 
 
You can't be risk-averse as a humanities graduate student. But if you truly have a lot of potential, you actually lose more by being risk-averse than you do by being pleasure-maximizing.

sorry, i tend to assume cisgender heterosexuality unless otherwise indicated. but i wasn't being all stepford wife on you. what i thought was that you somehow feel that her voice in your life choices can veto yours. idk. would you resent this down the road?
 
but anyway, couldn't you live separately for the 1-2 years it takes her to do her degree? absence makes the heart &etc &etc

I'm a senior in the fall, so I am definitely looking into programs now. In hopes of at least one acceptance into a Brit Lit Ph.D. program, I've already selected sixteen schools. I spoke to a few colleagues though, you know being entirely too excited/scared about grad school acceptances, and they informed me that they won't begin looking into grad school until around October. I just think that's a little too late to begin the entire process. The whole "better late than never" statement isn't really applicable when it comes to grad school acceptances, or so I'm told. Anyway, I really do wish you 2014 applicants the best of luck, as there still is time to get accepted, but I also do think it's "better early than never" to begin this thread. 

but you have to, have to, have to read the original articles once you are comfortable with the academic style. seriously, people who try to talk about concepts they haven't encountered in the original context deserve their own special scholarly hell.

What books have you read already? Terry Eagleton's introduction to lit theory and Catherine Belsey's Critical Practice are the standard ones. If you could be more specific about which topics in lit theory you want to go deeper into, I could suggest some books.

no shit, brother. i had no idea that professors and graduate students were once people too.

no shit, brother. i had no idea that professors and graduate students were once people too.

on the contrary, theory and journal articles are the easiest to read quickly. those pesky novelists tend to hide their greatest insights in the most innocuous scenes, whereas in your average journal article, you can get away with reading the introduction, conclusion, noting down who was namedropped, and improvising the rest. the other day, i gave an hour presentation on the multicultural politics of seyla benhabib while knowing nothing but what i read in a 2-page book review.

or you could just translate chaadaev.

Most of the top-tier schools have notified applicants of their decisions, and certain forum members have had repeated success.  (I can think of four in particular, but there are probably more.)  I think it would be exceptionally helpful in many ways to many readers if those members who have been admitted to multiple schools among the top ten or fifteen or so would describe their applications in general terms, to give everyone some general idea of what it takes to gain admission to those schools.
 
For example, it might provide some context for those who were not admitted in understanding why not.  It may also provide some guidance to applicants in future years as to what their chances are, and whether it is worth the application fee.  It may also provide a sense of what "best practices" are helpful in achieving admission to these schools.
 
There's no need to provide information so specific that it identifies anyone personally.  I'm thinking of a level of generality like:  Ivy undergrad, or top ivy undergrad, highly-ranked state university or average state university, private university, SLA, west-coast-ivy-equivalent, etc.
 
It would probably be helpful to indicate your degree (BA or MA) and how many years, if any, it has been since you were last in school.  Also, if your undergraduate major was in a field other than English.
 
Some general information regarding GPA and GRE would be useful.  I believe they will most likely show that a range of numbers is OK.  
 
Information regarding letter writers would, I think, be particularly helpful:  For example, if they are well-known scholars at a top school; or if they are well-known scholars in your primary field of interest; or if they have a particularly close relation to one or more members of the faculty who may have had an influence in the admissions process (for example, if your LOR was a former student or mentor of a faculty member at a school you were applying to); or if your LOR had taught at that school at some point.
 
Giving an indication of one's field of interest and/or research perspective would also be helpful, and whether there seemed to be a particularly strong and objective fit between your interests and those of the faculty at the schools you were admitted to.  Alternatively, how you saw the fit, and whether there seemed to be a better fit at the schools you were admitted to than at those where you were not.  Also interesting would be whether you tailored your statement of research interests differently to different schools.
 
Things like "strong LORs" or "strong WS" would not be particularly useful, since most everyone's LORs are strong, and presumably everyone here is a good writer.  I think it's more helpful to say something about the letter writers themselves, since there is reason to think that not all letter writers have the same level of influence.  (A strong letter from Helen Vendler, say, might well be expected to carry more weight than an even stronger letter from someone less eminent.)  Also, it would be helpful to describe the extent, if any, of faculty involvement in reviewing and revising your SOP and WS.
 
Basically, it would be interesting to see if any correlations can be drawn between certain sorts of applicant/application characteristics and repeated admission to the top schools.

You can get a BA and an MA in it as well. They're quite popular and useful degrees everywhere except the US, where some Harvard fuck said that Geography is useless and everybody listened to him.

My college has a Landscape Studies program for undergraduates. It's like critical theory of space with some architecture thrown in.

And don't do an MPhil at Cambridge in anything. They need that money to pay their adjuncts.

Speaking of Cambridge, it offers a BA and D Phil in Land Economy, which is a mixture of economics, geography, and law. It's really cool and I was gonna do it for undergrad.

I disagree broadly with the notion that you would have to know the specific interests/facets to get a sense for where the best classics departments are as far as getting a graduate education goes.
 
There are some programs that will simply provide better philological preparation, allow you to read more, put you into better contact with more well-respected people in a variety of disciplines, not only your own, and so on. Do you have to be at one of these programs to get a great job, be intelligent, be a great reader of texts, and so on? No. Nothing is guaranteed anywhere and you can be successful from any background, but it's also a bit preposterous to claim that there are no departments that have better reputations for attracting and producing the "best" students. Perhaps if one knows exactly what one wants to study and does not care much about the general strengths of the program, his/her interests will be narrower in considering schools; but frankly, presuming that you will not change your interests at all or benefit from contact with really smart people in any number of other concentrations strikes me as either naïve or unimaginative for a great number of the prospective students.
 
I must say that I think the question of the what the "best" schools are for classics is boring, but I don't think it's an asburd one to discuss in general terms, even if it's not terribly useful. People will apply to different places based on where they want to live, based on program fit, etc., but that doesn't mean that some schools aren't generally stronger overall in classical research than others.
 
As for which and in what order--I've already said that those questions don't interest me too much. I think that the lists you've adduced, ὦ Χελώνη, suffice to give a good idea of which programs are typically thought to be strongs in classics, though I suspect one could quarrel over specific positions and perhaps a few inclusions/exclusions.

I'm going to chime in with those who have been told by our professors to avoid unpaid grad programs. My post might come off as harsh and brutally honest, so I apologize for that in advance.
 
No, you should never pay a cent for grad school. Even if you got your degree from a high ranked program and that helps you to get into a high ranked PhD program, remember that your debt will not go away the moment you start a new program. The fellowships you may and should receive for the PhD program you enter won't pay off the debt you collected while doing your MA. And we all know what the job market situation looks like. If not, buy a copy of Semenza's Graduate Study for the 21st Century and educate yourself by reading The Chronicle of Higher Education.
 
Besides, think about where you will be attending grad school at least for a couple years (or more if you got your PhD at NYU). New York isn't cheap. The cost of living is high. Do you really want to juggle your coursework, research, possible teaching opportunities with other jobs just to survive off of ramen soup every night? I don't know where you're from, but the winters back east are severe. I wouldn't want to imagine how much heating costs in the winter while I'm trying to find some extra cash to pay rent. Coming from CA and moving to the Midwest for grad school, I have to say it was quite the culture shock. I needed a full blast of AC in the summer and the heater on all throughout the winter, and luckily I have the means to pay for it without losing sleep.
 
Since I assume you've never attended grad school, it's probably hard for you to imagine how much work it is to juggle all the different responsibilities you have to your coursework and research while trying to remain sane. As much as my mentors prepared me for it as an undergrad, I was still shocked at how quickly time flew by whether I was ready for it or not. There's already so many things to worry about while in a grad program like taking the right classes, meeting the right professors, getting along with your peers, contributing to scholarship, etc. that you shouldn't let something like debt distract you from doing what you're supposed to be doing.
 
I would suggest taking the year off to do something outside of academia. Do an internship. Do volunteer work. Do something that you love as well as something that will make your applications stronger even if it means just studying for the GRE. Do research on funded MA programs if you think a year off without classes won't help make your app stronger for a PhD program. Learn a foreign language because it will help fulfill one of the requirements for practically all doctoral programs.
 
Of course, you're going to do what you want. And if you think attending an unfunded MA program at NYU is a viable option, go for it. Just do your research. Consider all your options. Imagine the worst case scenarios and decide for yourself if you can live with them. Just don't go into any program blindly.

@bhr
 
i'm not calling you a liar. i am calling your argument logically inconsistent. you might want to fix that defensiveness if you hope for a successful career in academia.
 
here's your logic:
 
1. a person is worried that their foreign degree counts for less than an equivalent degree from a US institution
2. i, bhr, believe that foreign degrees count for less than their equivalent from a US institution
---
3. U MAD BRO???
 
you're basically calling her out for observing exactly what you have observed. 
 
again, i agree with most of what you're saying. like duh, ceteris paribus, a foreign applicant will have to work harder to get where they need to be than a US applicant - i don't think you understand how much harder, really, if you're comparing their plight to the plight of an american citizen from podunk u. but you can't blame people for figuring out what affects their position. and of course she can fix it - she can get an MA in the states, which is what she wants to do. absolutely, any glaring errors in her application materials will hold her back, MA or no MA - but, from what I understand, the purpose of the MA is either to mask poor undergrad grades, or to get acclimatized to the system. the academic culture here is very abstruse for those who weren't coached in it.
 
this argument has been rehashed like 4 times on this topic, so i'll stop. my purpose in this reply was more to ask you to watch where you're going.
 
that said, what school ever has a placement rate of 100%?? that's a statistical impossibility, because to get an odds of 1 you would need infinitely strong evidence, which is impossible. i get that it will be harder for you to get accepted into Harvard because of x, y, z, but we at selective schools, for all our famous professors, track records, and salmon board shorts, we also face gambling odds.

thank you for your support of my statement, but you're coming across as very rude. i hope you're not this dismissive and xenophobic to your residents. not only do i not see how your residents would be making these comments if you're RA at a US institution, since they'll be getting, presumably, degrees from that institution - but you just said yourself that you believe adcomms to be biased towards US degrees. i believe that the latter is generally true, even if i haven't heard of a sorbonne or oxbridge BA having a hard time. but i am lost as to how that compels you to be a dick. we're just asking questions here. nobody's biting 'murica in the ass.

I don't mean to be critical, but before blaming the adcomms for having a bias against China, maybe you should explore your own resume and look for faults. It appears that you've applied to a wide variety of programs, which may have come across as unfocused in your SOP. The commenter before me also hit the nail on the head with your syntax. Now, obviously, we all write a bit "lazy" on forums like this, but if you write the same way in your application packets you are going to have problems.
 
I'm with ResLife on my campus, working with international housing, and I've heard the same argument you make from many of my residents. The fact of the matter is that you're right, your degree isn't going to count as much as one from an equivalent program in the states. The adcomms know the professors and the quality of work coming out of domestic programs, so they will carry more weight than an international program.

or you could just translate chaadaev.