Ramus

I'm a fourth-year PhD at Ohio State. Has your PhD so far been what you expected it to be? The first two years were about what I was expecting and looking for. The seminars I took were, with a couple exceptions, fabulous and interesting. Reading for comps was even better -- I felt like I could finally do what I'd come to do, namely, sit and read wonderfully intricate, complex literature. The last couple of years, after I reached ABD, have been more difficult. I had a major "fuck this pointless shit" moment after my comps, and didn't do anything for a solid six weeks afterward. Morale has improved somewhat since then, and I've enjoyed working on my dissertation when I give myself the time to sit down and work on it. But the isolation and lack of motivation can be difficult. When you're in coursework or studying for comps, those things come from outside: you are around other smart people, and in order to keep pace, you push yourself to keep up with or exceed others. When ABD, in the absence of those things, you just have to train yourself to work regardless of motivation and the nagging suspicion that what you're doing doesn't matter. Overcoming that anxiety is half of the battle. And, to be frank, I wasn't prepared for the shift toward a structureless work life. It took me the better part of a year to write my first chapter, and far more time was spent on those process issues than the actual ideas of my chapter. What are you impressions of your program? It's okay, though not fantastic. The size of the program makes it very easy for a painfully introverted person like me to be more or less anonymous. The department is so large that you will know a fraction of the people in it. If you come in with an MA, there's a good chance that you might get lost in the mire, because you're out of coursework so quickly that you don't have the time to build connections with faculty and other grad students. Has anything about your program surprised you? The general lack of active interest people have in you or your project. They're willing to help you if you seek it out, but no one is concerned enough about you to "touch base." It can be easy to fall through the cracks. How are you feeling in general about your experience? Not great, though I think that has less to do with my experience at OSU than my general sense that graduate education in the humanities is kind of a shit show. It's unconscionable how many admits programs make, knowing full well that a small fraction of them will get the jobs that they're all working toward. That's not right, and the pollyanna-ism that supports it ("You have got what it takes to make it! Your project is especially great!") is both pervasive and unbelievable, given how otherwise intelligent and aware of structural/systematic problems faculty are. Have you found your research interests changing? Yes, of course. Your interests should change, because when you enter grad school, you really don't know much about what professional literary study involves. Personally, I found myself moving from the study of rhetoric and logic to premodern ecocriticism, the subject of my dissertation. Are there any hardships you've faced that you want to share? I've already mentioned the isolation and motivation issues above, and to that I'll add crappy interactions with others. Don't get me wrong, there are a number of great, super cool people in grad school—other grad students, faculty, and staff. But there are also a lot of assholes in grad school, especially professors, who can be aloof, callous, and simply rude. Because I had such personable professors in undergrad, I wasn't quite prepared for the lack of "humanness" coming from some faculty. And, of course, this isn't meant to be an absolute statement. But the bad interactions seem to stick out more memorably than the good ones, unfortunately. How about any successes you'd like to celebrate? Institutional fellowships, well-paid internships, well-received papers delivered at national conferences. It's not all bad! I think my big question for current students is: what do you wish you had asked about or known when making your decision? Anything undergrads wouldn’t have the foresight to consider about PhD life when applying? I would have asked more pointed questions about money and the longer arc of the program and how it imagines its advisors to operate. For the first, I would ask more about the actual conditions enabled by the funding you receive. Does it allow you to do the things you enjoy outside of school? (To stay sane, you must have a life apart from school, some thing or things that have nothing to do with textual criticism or departmental politics or the eccentricities of this or that professor.) Are vacations out of the question with the money you earn? (Probably, but still worth asking.) What kind of apartment can you get with the stipend? Can you go out and do things socially with the money? Etc. etc. etc. In short, you just need to think about your priorities beyond your education, and try to get a sense of how the material realities of grad school will allow you to stick to those priorities. Regarding the second, I would ask current students about how things have changed over the course of their tenure. How is life different in the coursework period from the exam reading period or the dissertation period? How has your dissertation advisor's role changed in that time? Has s/he continued to offer the same level of commitment or guidance, or has their interest in you or your project waned over time? If you already have a solid sense of the literary period you're going to be working in, you might start asking about how individual advisors work with their mentees. Which are the people who can never find time to meet with you? Which are the kind who will go out of their way to oversee and develop your work? Who will be honest with you about your shortcomings? (This is really important -- you ideally want to find someone who is both kind and honest. Many can be brutally honest, and many—most, even—will be too chickenshit to tell you when something sucks and why.) ---

Glad to hear it! A word of caution, though -- you probably will get more than one blank stare in response to your inquiries, especially at the two programs you've been accepted to. NYU and UVA are among the top programs, and they consider themselves as trainers of the professoriate exclusively. Things may be changing now, but I wouldn't be surprised if places like them still treat alt-ac as what the "failures" end up doing.

Take it from someone nearing the end of the PhD: if you haven't considered alt-ac, you should start immediately. I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but the vast majority of those posting here will not get a tenure-track position, even if you finish your respective program (and, statistically, half of you won't). Period. Those of you in that position will invariably be smart and have worked on super cool, worthwhile projects. But the reality is pretty simple: there are far too many qualified candidates for too few jobs. As a result, hiring departments can be super choosy, demanding a top-ten-program graduate when their own department is nowhere near that prestigious. A handful of people from, say, Illinois or Ohio State or fill-in-the-blank-middling-school, might end up accepting crummy 4/4 positions that pay 45K/year. The rest of us will confront the prospect of adjuncting until the end of time or, if we're lucky, working as the nominally better lecturer, a position won't clear more than $35K/year. I know that, from y'all's position, labor and pay conditions feel cheap, dirty, or irrelevant. Believe me, I get it -- at twenty-three, fresh out of undergrad, I said exactly the same thing. But when you're pushing thirty and you have little savings, no chance of buying a house, and no money to start the family you discovered you'd like to have—then, these things start seeming important. I raise all this hullabaloo as preface to this: you don't have to accept shit pay, shit working conditions, and no job security. Hell, if you've committed ten years to higher ed, you'd be crazy to think those things are fine. Instead, you can—and will, if you try—find valuable work outside of higher education. I can confirm this from experience. While ABD, I've completed graduate internships with the Government Accountability Office and a nationally-recognized education nonprofit. Both gigs made me realize a few things that I wouldn't have known otherwise: first, that there are smart people outside academia working on really important, consequential issues; two, that those same people recognize the value of having someone with our critical thinking and communications skills; and three, they're actually willing to pay what we're worth. I'm very happy to report the last. Both of my internships led to substantial job offers that I'll be weighing when I graduate in a year. It would be virtually impossible for an academic job, were I offered one, to compete with the other two offers I have in my back pocket. I'm telling you all this not to poo poo grad school or make you feel bad. There's plenty of reading out there on the job market that'll do that just fine. Rather, I'm telling you this so that you might see alt-ac as an opportunity that needn't be relegated to the "I'll do it if I don't get that job at Yale, or Emory, or Southwestern Oklahoma Baptist..." In fact, it might be the only option you have that will properly reward you for your intelligence, hard work, and writing skills. So, please, please, please, keep it in mind as you start your work in graduate school. Don't wait until you've graduated and been spit out of higher ed before you position yourself for success beyond the campus grounds. Avoid the grad school mindset that you're an amateur that doesn't know much and can't do much, either. Recognize your worth and refuse to accept a miserable working life.

A fair amount of work (though by no means exhaustive) has been done in this area of late. Take a peek at Vin Nardizzi's "Shakespeare's Queer Pastoral Ecology: Alienation Around Arden," ISLE (2016). This recording of a panel at SAA a couple years back may also be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVgx9-6wTOE. Joseph Campana's paper, the first on the panel, is especially good.

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.

Congrats on your offer! You can find out about the standard funding package here: https://english.osu.edu/grad/ma-phd/funding. Aman Garcha (our DGS) will be calling you sometime in the next week or so, and one of the things he'll discuss is your funding offer. If you've been nominated for a fellowship, he'll let you know, and you can find more about them here: https://gradsch.osu.edu/funding/fellowships/eligibility-requirements.

That may very well be true for many programs, but I doubt that those mentioned above would be flexible enough to consider OP's scores. Cornell, Brown, and UPenn will all almost certainly receive applications from ESL students with better scores, so I imagine they would have little reason to extend OP the latitude he or she needs.

Kidding aside, no one can really provide widely applicable answers to your questions, even if they have experience serving on an admissions committee. Different programs review application materials differently. Each will have its own "disqualifiers," each will dedicate different amounts of time to different written materials, etc. In general, though, I wouldn't assume all that much time is dedicated to reading any given piece of your application. Keep in mind that there are usually hundreds of applications for a committee to review and the amount of time dedicated to reading application materials closely is time lost on the committee members' own work. Regarding your SOP: yes, you should have narrowed the scope of your declared interest. As you'll see reported elsewhere on this forum, and as you may know from experience, English departments are almost exclusively organized around literary periods (that's partly why so few people do genuinely transhistorical work). If admissions committees can't quickly "label" you, that puts you at a disadvantage.

wut

Everyone here is being kind in saying your GRE scores are low but that they won't necessarily shut you out of top programs. I'll go out on a limb and say there is little-to-no chance of being admitted to a top-20 program with your scores. A 155 on the verbal puts you at the 68th percentile of all test-takers, not simply those applying for English programs. A 4 (59th percentile) in the analytical writing suggests basic competence in writing but no more than that. A 135 (1st percentile) on the quantitive, while the least of adcomms' concerns, will only confirm a program's decision to reject you on the basis of GRE scores alone. Of course, I may be wrong about this, and you may be radically underselling the quality of your writing sample, statement of purpose, letters of rec, etc. But you shouldn't get your hopes up.

I'll second the recommendation for Hayot's book. It should be required reading for everyone entering a doctoral program in the humanities. In addition to doing the things @lesabendio mentions, it explains the structure of article-length essays, which a lot of early graduate students struggle with. And in general, it does a good job of answering your questions about the formal features of academic prose directly, without the hazy bullshit ("your article's introduction should be as long as you think it needs to be") you may get from some of your professors.