Ramus

As evidenced by this thread, you'll find examples of those who do well outside the top 20 as defined by US News (or top 30, or whatever your threshold is). That's not really the issue. The issue is whether a program consistently places its graduates into tenure-track lines. And, of course, we haven't even started the discussion about whether a program places its graduates into good tenure-track lines (with a livable wage, livable teaching expectations, etc.) But it sounds like you may have already made up your mind, OP. In all seriousness, I wish you the best of luck. I just don't want you to be disappointed if you put in the time for a PhD and don't find a tenure-track job waiting on the other side. That is the fate that will await most of us completing a PhD, but, fairly or unfairly, that is almost guaranteed to be the fate awaiting doctoral graduates of Miami or Ball State.

That may be so—though I'd caution applicants placing too much stock in this kind of anecdotal claim—but it isn't especially relevant to the present discussion about Miami University of Ohio and Ball State University. As I've said elsewhere, the ranking systems are by no means perfect. My concern is that critiques of them, like yours, @Regimentations, might lead young applicants to believe they don't measure anything or that they can be outright ignored. In fact, they are especially important for cases like OP's. In the present case, the US News ranking system, even with its warts, helps support the conclusion that the two schools OP is considering would leave her/him/them with at or about a snowball's chance in hell of getting a tenure-track job. For the sake of OP, let's not have yet another quibble over the methodology of US News distract us for that reality.

ETA: Now that I'm in front of my computer, allow me to elaborate. The most common (if much maligned) ranking system is the US News one: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/english-rankings. People like to grumble about it, but it's a decent approximation of prestige within our field. According to this list, Miami ranks #77 nationally. Ball State does not place in the top 153 programs surveyed here. Make of that what you will. I'll just say that if I knew the realities of the academic job market when I was applying for schools, I wouldn't consider programs outside the top 20. Here's some more information about the PhD placements at Ball State: https://www.bsu.edu/-/media/www/departmentalcontent/english/pdfs/graduateprograms/graduate program alumni.pdf?la=en&hash=B292055CC6E80F7A38700693FC0A09C595B4453D. The long and short: they've placed two Literature PhDs into professorships in the last ten years. Neither of those appointments was in the US. Here's some more information about PhD placements at Miami: https://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/departments/english/academics/graduate-studies/literature/lit-grad-achievements/index.html. There's little long term information listed on their site, but they Miami place someone into a high-teaching-load TT line last year, along with a couple of VAPs. That's better than Ball State, but not much better.

With all due respect to you and others considering these programs, I wouldn't seriously consider either of them if you want a TT job teaching literature. Neither are highly ranked and neither will lead to a tenured position on the lit track. (The outlook may be slightly better for rhet/comp at Miami.)

If by better or lesser "known" you mean more or less prestigious, go with option 1. As I've said elsewhere, prestige is the name of the game if you're looking for work in higher ed. That should be your priority over the other things you mentioned (including the money). I'll also add that "vibes" are usually a bad way to gauge a program, especially given that whatever vibes you can discern at this point in the application cycle are going to be superficial markers of faculty and program quality. If you go to an acceptance day at a program and the faculty members are total dicks to you and blow you off, that's one thing. But if you're just talking about the few sentence emails from faculty that you may or may not have received, then don't read too much into those one way or the other.

Eek, I should have read your message more closely -- I somehow managed to skip over the part of your message that said you'd applied to the NELC program. Since that's an entirely different department, and individual programs determine how they run their grad admissions, I can't tell you how NELC conducts their admissions. I also don't know what their funding package is. I suspect it will be comparable to English's, but funding packages are set at the departmental level. Sorry for my screw-up!

There is always a gap between when OSU sends out admissions and when it communicates funding info. You should get a phone call or email from the DGS a week or two after the first notification that you've been admitted.

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Congrats to all of you OSU admits! I'm happy to answer questions about the program in general, and I can provide more detailed information on the medieval and Renaissance faculty, programs, etc. in the department.

I'm reading the Penguin/Allen Lane translations. I don't know how they compare to the Scott Moncrief translations, but I like them in their own right. It's hard to pinpoint a favorite volume. On the whole I think I liked In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower / Within a Budding Grove best overall, but each book has its own sections or passages that will stick with me. For example, the party scenes in The Guermantes Way and Sodom and Gomorrah can be pretty dry, but the hook-up scene between Jupien and Charlus at the beginning of the latter is one of the most beautiful passages in the novel. And, more generally, I love all of the ekphrasis scattered throughout -- the descriptions of music in Swann's Way and The Prisoner left me shook.

Having read very little in the last couple years not related to my dissertation, I decided to read all of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I'm on pace to finish the thing about nine months after I started. I've been absolutely floored -- it's no exaggeration to say it's been a life-altering read. Definitely worth the time and effort.

Nope, doesn't matter.

Frankly, I wouldn't even consider having anyone that old serve as an advisor or dissertation director. Even if you do ask them straight up if they're going to retire, there's always the real possibility that they change their minds (happened to a guy in my cohort who came to work with a dude that retired a year later), take ill (an unfortunate reality), etc. But, more importantly, it's a bad idea to have someone that old direct your thesis because profs that old don't have to give a shit anymore. There will be no repercussions if they take too long to email you back, devote little time to you and your development, or act like a jerk to you. They may or may not be up on the most recent scholarship, let alone that in your area of expertise. Chances are their professional connections are dated, too. And don't forget that they haven't been on the job market for literally decades, and almost certainly have very little sense of what's needed to be successful on the present job market. So, in short, just don't put yourself in a position to depend too much on the old faculty. By all means, chat them up, ask them the questions about the minutiae of literary cruxes, talk about how their careers developed, etc. But don't take them on as an advisor or a dissertation director.

I want to push back on this a bit. No offense, but when I see someone with an MAPH degree from Chicago, I see someone who has attempted to buy prestige that they couldn't attain through 'merit' alone.* Having an MAPH is not the same thing as having another graduate degree from Chicago; hell, it doesn't even approach the prestige accorded to an undergraduate degree from Chicago. And if I know the circumstances surrounding the MAPH degree, you can be assured that admissions committees do, too. They may indeed respect Chicago, but they won't look at the MAPH program the same way. As I've said earlier in this thread, this does not mean that the MAPH necessarily bars you from later academic success. You can get the degree and advance to a good PhD program. But the people that do that are the smart ones who would have gone on to be successful anyway. I have serious doubts that the nominal prestige of the Chicago affiliation has much, if anything, to do with that success. You might think of the MAPH as something of a prestige trap. You go there because you want to get a prestigious degree, but they very fact that you've paid for such a degree communicates that you're not entitled to the prestige you sought in the first place. (* 'Merit,' of course, includes not only the 'actual' merit of an individual's work but also the many other factors, including class-related ones like where you did your undergrad, which affect admission into a PhD program.)

I'm a big fan of MA programs. More prospective students should consider them. But applicants should only consider fully-funded MA programs (and there are many of them). Telling someone to pursue "the best education they can get," without considering anything else, is, with all due respect, irresponsible advice. OP, I implore you to ignore this line of reasoning. To put a finer point on this, if the choice is between the MAPH and not going to graduate school this year, don't go to graduate school this year.

For the love of sweet baby Jesus, do not accept the Chicago MAPH offer. It's not that doing so would doom your academic prospects (and no doubt you'll find examples of MAPH grads who have gone on to do well). It's that no one should pay for an MA in the humanities, let alone one as expensive as Chicago. The entire premise of that program is using Chicago's prestige to prey upon naive, enthusiastic kids who don't know they could go to another school for free. It is a deeply fucked up, shitty practice, and Chicago should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to host that travesty. Aside from money, you should know that it is very difficult to get the full MA experience in one year. It takes time to develop intellectually, and the very fact that Chicago tries to compact a program into a year tells you that they are not interested in your academic maturation.

And not to pick on you, because plenty of people do this on this forum, but noting the fact that the rankings are flawed probably does more harm than good. Sure, the rankings are not perfect, and they shouldn't be taken as scripture. But they are a rough approximation of prestige, and that, above all else, is what matters in academe. While you shouldn't be so foolish as to think the difference between, say, schools ranked 32 and 33 is sizable, you'd be making a big mistake to discount the rankings' general insights because their methods are flawed.

Yes, basically. The only potential surprise on the list is Duke, and that's only surprising if you know nothing of Duke's reputation as the theory powerhouse. Sometimes people don't realize Michigan is on that same level, but it's often classified as a "public Ivy," so it shouldn't really surprise either.

That makes the decision even easier. Go with the top 10.

Personally, I wouldn't attend a program outside the 30s. Others will, of course, feel differently. But once you get out of the 30s, you're looking at places like Iowa or Ohio University or LSU, and those places, while having great faculty, won't place you at the kind of job you deserve. The caveat here is that I'm speaking of lit/literary history tracks. Rhet/comp tracks are a different ballgame, and the prestige of those programs doesn't square with the prestige of traditional literature programs. (E.g. Purdue = good for rhet/comp, not great for literature)

Yes, you need to have a bit, no more than ten or fifteen seconds in length, that you can rehearse. You're essentially giving your initial identifying markers, not delivering an oration. Keep it short and simple and completely void of BS. That means do not cite who you've read or how they're influenced you. And no BS-y jargon (for the love of Christ, do not use "material" just because you want to sound smart). You need to remember that these are informal events and you want to come off as a real person, not a grad student robot. When it comes to speaking with potential advisors, I agree with @urbanfarmer that short and direct is still the way to go. Treat your talk as a genuine conversation, not a performance. That means leaving room for questions, and moments where you can ask questions of the POI in turn. In my experience, early in graduate school professors are far more interested in your ability to ask interesting, penetrating questions than they are in your ability to have all answers ready at hand.

A better and more nuanced approach than mine. @urbanfarmer is right that when the schools you're comparing are 2, 3, and 5, or whatever, the exact ranking matters less. My comment was primarily intended for those applicants seriously considering a 40ish school over a top-ten on the grounds that the former is a better "fit" (whatever that useless, nebulous term means). This happens every single application cycle, and it pains me that so many do not understand what actually matters to the hiring committees you will eventually be trying to impress. A perfect example is a student that was part of my cohort at OSU. They had a full ride to UMich and turned it down for OSU because the professors at UMich didn't voice immediate enthusiasm for their undergraduate thesis (and thus, their feeling that OSU was a better fit). That was a poor decision indeed, and one that I can only pray those of you reading won't emulate.

Great question, and I can't stress this enough: go with rank! Yes, there are all the caveats about the rankings and the methodology that informs them. But they're essentially a loose measure of prestige, and *that* is what drives departmental hiring decisions above all else. Prestige is the name of the game, and if you're in higher ed, that's the game you're playing. (Even if, as some on this forum claim, they're not considering it.) When I was fielding PhD offers during my MA, I got a swanky fellowship from UConn on the order of $35K per year. I nearly fainted. But my advisor at the time was quick (and right) to talk me down. That money would have been nice while in grad school, but it would have only bought me short-term happiness. The comparatively higher prestige of an OSU degree will be with me for much, much longer.

Yes, I did. It's really as simple as emailing the DGS and saying, "Look, I have this other, better offer, but I really would like to join your program. Can you match X's offer?" The answer to that question might be 'no,' but they'll at least let you know if there is some wiggle room. ETA: Obviously, you want to massage the language of that a bit—something less blunt than "better"—but you get the idea.

Honestly, no one is going to care about how you dress, so long as you wear more than a hoodie. As others have said, I would opt for business casual, but a slightly elevated casual isn't bad either. For men, slacks, chinos, or non-ratty jeans, paired with a button-down shirt, would be fine.