Ramus

Cost-of-living in Columbus is very reasonable and it's relatively easy to find housing within the budget. Personally, I'm a bit spoiled because my wife works a 'real' full-time job, so we've never had problems making ends meet with my stipend. It's obviously more difficult for those without a second income, but I gather that the majority of my peers get by okay without loans or other forms of support.

I can only speak about my own program, Ohio State. As of right now, funding is effectively guaranteed (four years for those with an external MA, five years for those without one). The stipend isn't great (my ABD stipend sits right at 18.5K), but is considered "full" by the standards of English graduate programs. The ambiguous language on the website is, I think, there as a legal safeguard in the event of draconian budget cuts or a student making zero progress toward degree completion. I've never heard of a new student getting a cut-rate or partial package from our department.

Seconding what's been said above. Very few departments can be broadly classified as singularly committed to one methodological or theoretical approach. That's just not how departments work. You may find that certain periods within a department are clustered around certain approaches—the post-45 crowd is more likely to be interested in cultural studies approaches, whereas early modern faculty are more likely to be partial to some form of historicism—but, again, that rarely holds across periods. Very often you'll find that even within a given period of study, the methodological and theoretical commitments of faculty are pretty diverse. And you shouldn't assume that faculty of certain persuasions are necessarily incompatible with you and your interests. It's also wrong to assume non-social-justice approaches are somehow uncommon. Students in those camps tend to be a bit more vocal about their theoretical and/or political investments, but you shouldn't take that as an indication of what makes a successful applicant or graduate student.

Check the Penn site for conferences in your specialization. In terms of which conference to attend, I would avoid the national and international conferences at this point in your career. You don't know enough yet to play with the big boys and girls yet, which is fine and to be expected. Regional MLAs might be good for getting your feet wet, but in terms of networking and feedback the offer on your ideas, I've found them less than useful. Ideally, you should try to find a small, focused conference on modern American literature. It's far better at this point for you to make real connections with important people (who like to attend the specialized conferences) than attending a big, relatively anonymous conference to get the name prestige on your CV. Also, avoid grad student conferences like the plague. They have some nominal value in helping you to prepare for the motions of real conferences, but are otherwise largely pointless.

Right. If you want it to work in your favor, you have to demonstrate how it lends an uncommon, productive perspective to your literary analysis. If you don't, the extra MA is window dressing, not bad but not necessarily helpful.

Nope. Fair number of people do this. Having two complementary MAs might even be a plus for you.

OSU has this information available at the following link: https://english.osu.edu/grad/ma-phd/funding. The number quoted is a bit outdated, as we've received a nominal raise for the upcoming year. The site should still be able to get a decent sense of how funding works here, though. Other schools should have funding info directly on their departmental pages. Sometimes finding it just takes a bit more digging than you'd expect. If you happen to discover funding info for graduate students, but it doesn't explicitly talk about rhet/comp tracks, I think you can reasonably assume the stated packaged is offered to rhet/comp as well as lit students. (Others should correct me if I'm wrong about this.) If all else fails, you can always get in touch with DGS if you've done your best to find funding info through department or graduate school sites. You just want to make sure you're asking them questions that aren't clearly available on their websites. That's a good way to get off on the wrong foot. You can also take a peek at the following spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H7d9iuwSL8ZWE-DmFo2013lpF2cL7hDidWcDt4mic0Q/edit#gid=0. Some of the numbers here are old, but it should give you a ballpark sense of what programs provide. I'm seeing at least a few of the schools you've listed.

With all due respect, haven't we discussed your situation at some length already? I'm not sure you've presented any new information that would lead posters to revise the advice they gave you in the earlier thread (which directly addressed many of the same issues you raise again here).

No. I did my MA at Bama and ended up at Ohio State. One of my peers in the program made the leap to Yale. The lower ranking of the program wasn't an impediment to either of our PhD applications. If you do anything with Af-Am and/or 20C lit, having T. Harris on your side is a major plus. (So long as you can keep up with her demands, which are high.) One of her mentees at Alabama just landed a TT at the University of Florida (yes, you read that correctly).

While I would love to see the city install a tram system (even a one line tram running up and down High St. would make a world of difference), the bus system isn't that bad. The routes cover a fairly comprehensive spread of the city and even a couple of the outlying suburbs. Consistency and issues with tardiness have improved in the last couple of years, too. What's more, as students, we get unlimited bus fare for $13/semester. Sure beats the prospect of paying hundreds of dollars on a parking pass and dealing with traffic on 315 every day.

I would avoid Weinland Park, an area east-southeast of main campus. It's tempting to those who aren't familiar with the area because it's fairly close to campus and isn't anywhere near as expensive as Clintonville. But it's a fairly high-crime area and has a generally bad reputation. I'd also be cautious about locations south of German Village. I actually live in the neighborhood directly south of GV right now (Merion Village) and love it, but even a couple of blocks away the area is kinda sketchy. My advice would be to go and check out those properties in-person before signing a lease, if that's at all possible. Same for Old Town East. It has a hip/hipsterish, up-and-coming vibe but is, like WP, a high-crime area.

I don't think you have anything to gain by committing this early. While I think you're probably right to assume those are implied rejections, it can't hurt to wait a few more weeks until you get final word. If you ultimately end up attending the program you're currently leaning toward, it's not like committing now as opposed to, say, March 30th, is going to score you any extra points. They know that other programs are still notifying and won't (or shouldn't, at the very least) expect you to solidify you position right now.

When I visited Bama before attending for my MA, I did so by myself, without any other new admits. I mentioned to the Strode director I was going to be in the state visiting family on a certain long weekend, asked if I could swing through Tuscaloosa, and she made arrangements with faculty and other grad students to meet with me. It was all very informal.

It would be appropriate to contact them if you hadn't heard anything by April. But not now, not next week, not this month.

Frankly, @eadwacer, I don't think they care much at this point if you respond or not -- they're too busy to sit there tallying which applicants send nice emails and which don't. But I still agree with @engphiledu. Niceties never hurt. Send a brief and polite email saying more or less what engphiledu said. You don't need to bother asking about timelines, since you can safely assume you'll know something in advance of April 15th.