Hello,
I just recently finished this program at The Graduate Center. The price is right, but I have mixed feelings about the MALS program and what it can offer to someone who aspires to attend a PhD program. The flexibility you have to do your own research and work is quite high, but the preparation and skills training to succeed in academia is largely left up to you. This is quite an undertaking when you are expected to write a thesis by the end of the program with little guidance on research methodology. Basically you have to come up with your own methods to pull together a lot of disparate ideas and schools of thought. That flexibility comes at a cost, namely in finding any semblance of a caring and supportive environment. There is minimal to no support from the program to guide you towards scholarly expectations, and the people who work in the MALS department are quite cold, unhelpful and unfriendly. There is little help from the department to bring students together and to have any semblance of a cohort or a shared dialogue. Most of the professors in the English and sociology departments are friendly and helpful, but also overworked and have high teaching loads. Most sociology classes are 15-25 people, and the English classes are 6-20 people. The scholars in women's, gender and sexuality studies are some of the top people in the country, but you will have to do a lot of your own research and self-reflection to find the professors who are the right fit for your goals. I can give you some recommendations if you message me.
I recommend you take some of my comments as coming from my own perspective, and not as a global reflection on the program. This is coming from someone who is quite disillusioned about the role academia plays in society. That is, I think it is a shame that so much excellent reading material is housed in what I find to be a deeply elitist and insular institution. You will likely get introduced to reading material and discussions that will enrich how you see the world. In addition, you will get a deep understanding of how budget cuts affect a deeply overworked faculty. The graduate students and faculty at CUNY are mostly overworked too and have high teaching loads, so forming meaningful and lasting relationships with people is difficult to do.
I honestly would look into English and Sociology MA programs at Queens College and City College, both of which house graduate center faculty. You will have room within a discipline to do interdisciplinary work, have access to women's/gender/sexuality studies courses, and likely be able to take a course or two at The Graduate Center. You will also get a level of disciplinary training that will help with your writing and be introduced to reading scholarly texts. I would also recommend that you look into a program that has some sort of exam process or thesis defense process. Neither of these are offered in the MALS program, and I think that is detrimental to gaining an understanding of how one would want to move forward as a scholar.
