unræd

Yes. A lot of this discussion has assumed that going to a top ten school somehow magically means the doors of the job market are flung wide for you. I don't mean to imply that the effects of prestige aren't real and pernicious, or that it doesn't replicate other systemic, structural inequalities, but the Slate article especially makes it seem as though all these top ten grads are getting jobs by sitting on their laurels. First of all, not all the grads from those schools are getting jobs, at all, and secondly, those few that do get jobs are having to bust their ass and hustle and sweat and go through years of postdoc-ing/adjuncting to do that--just like everybody else who's getting jobs, from any sort of institution. And Ap(howevermanyps)lication brings up a vitally important point: in a statistical sense, none (okay, very, very few) of us are going to get jobs. Once again, I'm obviously not saying that to discourage anyone from going to graduate school in the humanities. I'm going to go to graduate school in the humanities. But to pretend that that's not the case, or to go in thinking you'll be an exception and without considering any other career option besides being a TT prof at an R1, or to blame that on nepotism within graduate programs and not consider the vanishing scarcity of jobs, period, caused by large-scale changes in university hiring, misses how awful it is out there. ETA: I probably shouldn't even have posted this; I'm not sure how constructive this discussion is at this point. It seems like there's an awful lot of talking past each other, and a lot of our discussions about privilege--and I didn't mean to imply with my comment on my own background that I haven't been the beneficiary of enormous amounts of privilege in my life, and continue to be--ignore the fact that this whole conversation, on all sides, is positively marinating in it, as is any of us with the ability--in terms of intellect, prior education, time, or loan worthy credit--to go off and read books for six years. I think that the idea that people going to a small state school instead of a top ten to get their PhDs in literature are somehow necessarily engaged in a revolutionary project that fucks the system is a particularly hard sell.

My knowledge is all secondhand, and restricted to the UK, but I have a friend in a humanities field with an Oxbridge phd who's just taken himself off the market to teach secondary school after a long search. He says the market for permanent academic work there is just as bracing, with an added wrinkle: while UK PhDs tend not to do as well on on the US market and don't look for work in the US quite as often, the UK market is full of people with American phds, too. Double whammy in terms of oversupply, but it does appear that they're more comfortable importing people than many US schools.

Well--OSU is still sending out acceptances, apparently!

No, it was the Acceptances thread, but it's worth quoting here: As long as we're talking about respecting people's feelings and not using language like "podunk" and "dinky," let's cool it with the Ivy bashing, yeah? There are a lot of people on these fora who got into Ivy League schools this year, and presumably they're all pretty happy about that--I know I am. No, of course I don't take it as a pure measure of merit; yes, it has a lot to do with luck, and there are loads of brilliant people outside Ivies and dullards within them. But neither did I coast in on gilded wings of privilege alone; I never graduated high school, and spent the majority of my twenties working in foodservice. So yes, actually: I am damn proud of that. I have no interest in returning GC to the horror days of flame wars of yore. So let me just say this: if we aren't able to critique elitism and the inappropriate ways that higher education is structured without constructing arguments that manage to abject people at both satellite campuses of state universities, and at Ivy League ones, maybe that's a sign we need to be a little more careful with the language of our critique.

I know this isn't your point, and it's not to say that it should be the case (it definitely shouldn't), but I think we greatly underestimate the enemy if we think teaching in the modern university--whether adjunct or tenure track; whether at an elite private university or a public community college--is somehow vastly different from working for a corporation.

Look, I don't mean to be a downer, really. But for every one person on a faculty webpage there are a dozens (hundreds, really) from schools of all calibers and ranks who didn't get that job, who are adjuncting, or who left academia entirely. I'm not saying people shouldn't pursue graduate education, I'm not trying to make one more post about how soul-crushing the job market is right now, and I'm not trying to take ComeBackZinc's job from him. I mean, hell, I know how awful the job market is, and I'm still about to enter a PhD program in the fall! But still, I don't think it does anyone a service to hold up these success stories as proof that it can happen. Of course it can happen. No one says it can't happen. It's not a discussion about possibility; it's a discussion about likelihood.

I started formally declining because the deadline for the RSVP for visit weekend was coming up, and I wouldn't have felt right not being upfront about why I wasn't now going, given how obviously excited I'd been for it previously. I also knew that, as much as I really, really loved the program and the people (and it's one of my absolute top choices in terms of pure research fit), given some of my other acceptances and the job market, there was no realistic way I would have chosen them over a couple of other equally-fitting choices I have. I've heard from all of my schools at this point, and I've been lucky enough to have seven acceptances; while I would have been absolutely thrilled to attend any one of those schools, there are naturally some I'm more excited about than others. I won't formally accept an offer until the latter half of March, though (when my visits are complete), and I think that's far too long for me to be tying up the resources of a couple of other places I'm pretty sure I won't attend, so, for me at least, yes: it's time. Here's hoping somebody got a call off the wait list!

YEEEEEESSSSSSS.

Yes, very much so! I have one school that's one of my top choices that is incredibly hardcore about their welcome--I got four different emails from four different people in the course of one day, and they're rolling out their faculty emails in what must be (I've compared notes with another applicant, and they're getting emails from the same profs on the same days) military precision. A couple of my other programs have been positively tight-lipped in comparison!

Has anyone else turned down any programs yet? I'm very conscious of the fact that other people are still waiting on good news, and so I know that in the grand scheme of things, it's a good problem to have, it'll open up a spot/money for others, they don't take it personally, etc etc etc, but that doesn't change the fact that it feels like it sucks, and that you're tuning someone down. Especially when it's a program you really like, and that has been so incredibly warm and welcoming. Ugh. Unpleasant.

Ack, yes--I tried to make it clear that I was just picking those things as examples, not implying that you were providing advice. I'm sorry if I didn't quite succeed!

In re "felt I wasn't in the same league" and "SO behind my peers": forgive my language, but that's horsepoo. Everybody's got strengths, everybody's got weaknesses, everybody's got different experiences and backgrounds that shape them and their scholarship. You're a peer, period! The ND visit was sort of amazing--the program is just as rigorous/intense/interdisciplinary/cool as you'd imagine (or more so, even!), but the community was extraordinarily warm, welcoming, and supportive (of each other, and the interviewees), and the OE grad students there (both at the MI, and in the English dept) are doing some really, really cool work. And yes: coming from a state school background myself, the sheer amount of financial resources available to fund research there is jaw-dropping. It felt like very other meeting was some (delightful) variation of "let me tell you about all the money I get for my students"!

Oh, hey, wow another Anglo-Saxonist--hello! I know you've been posting; did I just completely miss you're an OE person? We (and hreaðemus and hannalore) should chat! I was just at ND's interview weekend for the Medieval Institute, and one of the grad students in Old English there was a South Carolina MA, in fact! And working with Gwara--you're a lucky duck. ETA: and another had come straight from USC undergrad, so that's a transition that happens--there's a USC-ND pipeline!

Congrats! And I think South Carolina does really well placing their people in PhD programs, don't they? I at least know three medievalists who did MAs there who are in great PhD programs now.

There are indeed plenty of places that still take people straight to PhD from BA, and even in programs that don't grant an "MA along the way"; I've been accepted to a few this cycle (as have plenty of other people in this year's GC cohort), and in the interview weekend I was just at, only two of the six candidates being interviewed for the spots in a PhD program had MAs. Both "people can go straight from undergrad to a phd program" and "MAs provide valuable training and professionalization" can be true at the same time. (And this is field dependent, too, right? I hear that in rhet/comp the MA first is much more the standard path, but I'm not in the field, so ProfLorax and comebackzinc would know better than I.) I think it's hard to generalize about what makes an applicant successful, and while these discussions are interesting, I'm not sure how useful it is to extrapolate from personal experience to recommendation, to go from description to prescription. It's easy to say "I did this, and I was successful," and so it's tempting to slide from that to "this is what works," when it's really just "this is what worked for me, a sample of one." Pace fancypants, I didn't contact POIs; pace goldfinch, while I did work on it some over the summer, my writing sample was indeed just a reworked course paper, not a thesis at all (honors or otherwise). I don't bring up those examples because either was implying that those things are required; I just bring them up to show that there is really an awful lot of diversity in what people do in terms of what yields acceptances (and rejections). Unfortunately, that makes useful generalizations--at least ones that aren't so broad to be meaningless (i.e., "have a good writing sample!")--about the process so hard to come by. ETA: Especially when those generalizations so obscure the parts of the process that really are out of an applicant's control, as a bunch of others have pointed out.

Congrats!!! She pitched a perfect game, folks!

I'm normally a big fan of assuming that an "implied" rejection is just a regular old rejection--I've scoffed at those who say "wait until the paper's in your hand," etc etc etc. I squash my own hopes. Crush my own dreams. But I just got an email from a professor at a school I'd applied to, casually letting me know about this opportunity for extra study/funding I could take advantage of, were I to attend. It surprised me, since I'd assumed the school was an implied rejection when the acceptances went out a while ago and I didn't receive one. But nope--I write back to clarify, and turns out my notification emails must just never have been sent!

WOOT!

Thank you all! I am also a medievalist who'll be at the Berkeley and Yale weekends; so count me in for a round, too!

Congrats to all the recent admits!!! I'd write more, but I'm at an interview weekend now, and, holy s---: Stanford!

Knowing ETS, they probably only give you store credit.

YAY!!!!!

WOOT! Congratulations! I was just there for a manuscript studies conference, and the community of medievalists is amazing. Plus--word on the street is that Liuzza is coming back from Toronto, which means you'll be working with one of the absolute best Anglo-Saxonists around!

Yes! Both I and Hreaðemus (the fora's other Anglo-Saxonist) will be there. I'll PM you in re deets; it'd be cool to say hi/have a friendly face among what I can only imagine will be a ridiculously intimidating crowd!

Ugh, that sucks. This is the Milton one? In re being "unsure if you can hack it in a PhD program": rejections aren't dispositive; people get rejected for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to due with their abilities or whether or not they're suited to graduate studies. Acceptances and wait lists (since you don't wait list someone you don't want to attend), though, are. You may be unsure, and I don't mean to downplay the very real self-doubt that can plague us all, but both UCR and USC not only think you can hack it--they want you to hack it with them.