[A question about top graduate programmes in English]

All of the above is true.

I will say, however, that there's always the Unraed / Hreademus example: two undergraduate Medievalists who got accepted to several of the same top programs, and are currently in the same cohort at Berkeley. So if you're an excellent, can't miss candidate, there's always hope regardless of other field / era circumstances.

I'd actually thought about that case prior to posting. I'd wager, though, that that has less to do with Unræd and Hreað̠emus being stellar candidates (which, of course, as Berkeley admits, they were) than it does with the gamble the department takes with its offers. Some departments will only extend one PhD offer per period at a time (e.g. UMD), because that allows them the greatest control over their class size. They don't run the risk of inflated cohorts or too many students in any one field. It's a smart way of doing things, I think, but it's not the system many programs use. Most departments extend multiple offers at once, with the expectation that a certain number of the offers will be declined. This method has left some programs in a bind in the last few years, and more are moving away from it (cf. UChicago's turn to a Skype final interview round last year). I might be mistaken, but I believe Cal uses this second system, and thus may have played a part in the case you mention. They may have extended two offers, but may have been expecting only one to be accepted. 

I just think it might be assigning a bit too much agency to applicants to say "if you're an excellent, can't miss candidate, there's always hope." Sometimes things are beyond your control. Sometimes you won't have a snowball's chance in hell, no matter what. 

I will concede, though, that if you're as good as Unræd or Hreað̠emus, you're going to get in somewhere good. It just won't be the department that doesn't have a spot for you or anyone else specializing in your period.

 

[A question about top graduate programmes in English]

I can answer that last question for Ramus (though he may have additional insight): so, yes, a program may turn down a strong medievalist because they had 2 other medievalists, even if, say, the 19th century americanist that got an offer wasn't as good on paper. A large part of this is just that a human being can only supervise so many people at once--this also makes admissions even hazier since restrictions on who can take what and when are not easily available to prospective applicants. Some programs are more formal about this than others.

I'd only go a bit further to say that programs will turn down top candidates because they have a glut of students in that period who are still in coursework (i.e. not getting out of the program anytime soon). It happens all the time. And the thing is that you can't know what programs are seriously considering students for a given historical period in a given year, and they probably wouldn't tell you if you asked (they still want the app $). That's just part of the application crapshoot.

[A question about top graduate programmes in English]

Am I correct in thinking that these top departments are looking for candidates whose applications suggest innovative scholarship, very strong intellectual curiosity and cogency of argument rather than applicants who are interested in particular authors that members of the faculty are experts on? For instance, going back to Nigel Smith, whose book on Marvell I am particularly familiar with... would a candidate who was interested in researching the divine field of metaphysical poetry (Herbert and Vaughan, let's say) and whose submitted written work was incredible be treated more favourably by Smith (let's pretend he's the member of the faculty reviewing the applications) than a candidate whose work was less good, but focussed on Marvell?

Yes, I think that's correct. However, you don't want your interests to be so far removed from the faculty's that they can't figure out why you'd want to work with them in the first place. If all of the early modern professors focus on Erasmus, More, and Latin philology, they'll be scratching their heads if you say you want to study queer theory and Dryden under them. This is a matter of what's generally referred to around here as 'fit.' You and the faculty don't have to identical interests or methodologies to 'fit,' but you generally want to have (at least) either a shared interest in the same authors or a comparable methodology. 

 In the example you give, Nigel Smith would be probably more interested in the first candidate. Others may disagree, but I think most faculty are more interested in students who can create fresh, interesting work than they are in students who want to be clones. 

[A question about top graduate programmes in English]

Do you have any idea about the assessment of applications within the departments themselves? Say, for instance, somebody applies to Princeton with a SoP asserting a desire to research and write about animals in Richard Lovelace. The application then gets passed on to Smith or Dolven. Provided the candidate's grades are excellent and their submitted work is fresh and exciting, how would the faculty go about judging the proposal? Does it simply have to have a certain 'je ne sais quoi' that captures the imagination and the whim of the professors?

 

The short answer is that it depends on a lot of things, and the process varies department to department. First, it matters how the grad program simply processes applications. Does it have a four or five person admissions committee which decides everything? If that committee turns to other faculty for input, to what extent does that outside feedback matter? Or, as many schools do, do individual periods get more or less final say about who they want? This seems to be pretty common practice when the department is larger, because each period is afforded one new graduate student or so each year.

When it comes to the question of what actually makes departments/faculty want to admit you, nobody really knows the answer. Different qualities matter to different programs. But in general, I think programs are looking for the following: 1) Someone who can construct a convincing argument using evidence appropriate to early graduate work; 2) Someone who can write at least somewhat well. (This is probably not as much of a priority as it should be.); 3) Someone whose work seems innovative in some way; 4) Someone who understands what graduate work is. This final thing may seem silly, but you wouldn't believe how many people want to go to graduate school primarily because they like reading literature. Passion is by no means a bad thing—none of us would consider grad school if we didn't have it—but it's not a sufficient reason to admit you to grad school. A lot of people don't understand that. 

One final thing: American schools aren't necessarily looking for a set-in-stone proposal like UK schools are. Of course you want to show that you have a pretty good idea of what you want to research and write about, but you probably should not  submit a mini-dissertation prospectus for your statement of purpose. That conveys rigidity. Programs want you to be ready, but they also want you to be malleable. 

[A question about top graduate programmes in English]

With respect, I don't think you can classify very many programs as all one thing or all another. Even in broad strokes, it's difficult to label most departments or even individual periods within departments. I could probably say that USC or most of the University of California schools lean toward gender and sexuality stuff, but there are just as many counterexamples that suggest those departments are pro-object-oriented-ontology (can you imagine?) or whatever.

Let me illustrate this using some of the schools you mentioned. You've drawn the conclusion that Harvard's EM folks are probably more new historicist. I can't fault you for thinking that because you see Greenblatt's name, but it's nonetheless a fairly limited picture, even for the early modern crowd. Greenblatt doesn't teach very much, is often giving lectures elsewhere, and doesn't work too closely with graduate students. As a consequence, most of the Renaissance dissertations there are being directed by Gordon Teskey, who is decidedly not a new historicist. Since Teskey is working more closely with students, it might be more accurate to conclude that EM people are probably more Teskeyan (he doesn't really fit into one school very well) than new historicist. But again, that's only a partial answer.

The same is the case with Princeton and their early modern people. Nigel Smith is a hardcore British historicist. Jeff Dolven is into poetics and New Criticism (he probably wouldn't admit this outright), and his work in no way resembles Smith's. Bradin Cormack is somewhere in the middle, having a strong element of historicism combined with a theoretical approach to nationalism and law. 

So this is all to say that generalizations rarely help. Ultimately you need to research every individual within your field for each department to which you're applying, or considering applying.  A pain, to be sure, but it's the only way to get a real sense of who you might be working with. 

[Immigrant and Minority Literature Programs]

Would I be correct in assuming that most English departments would allow me to do some of my coursework in Ethnic Studies?  I was under the impression that interdisciplinary work is generally encouraged.  

You shouldn't have a problem doing some work outside the department. The real question will be how much "some" is. Programs might have an official or de facto cap on the number of classes you take elsewhere. 

Regarding interdisciplinary work: all departments pays lip service to it and nominally "embrace" it, but real practice can be hard to gauge from the boilerplate language you'll find on admissions pages. 

[Need the Real Story On My Top 5 Programs]

Given that most users on this site dial back their activity once they're done with the app season, you probably won't get all the replies you're looking for here.

It's a pain in the ass, but your best bet is to contact graduate students at these programs directly. All of the programs you've listed will have pages listing graduate student bios and contact information. You might not get a response for every email you send, but I think most people are generally willing to give you the straight biz about their program experiences.

If you decide to do this, though, I'd suggest coming up with a short list of specific questions to guide responses. If a prospective student sent me an email asking me to riff on my time in grad school, I might or might not reply, depending on how busy I am. I'd be more inclined to respond to a brief and specific request for more information.  

[Fall 2015 Status Check. How's It Going?]

 

So after one week, things are still going well...I think. There's a lot of reading, which I expected, though it turns out that one of my research seminars skews heavily toward philosophy texts (Heidegger, Blumenfeld, Nietzsche, Descartes, Pascal etc.) despite being listed as a Renaissance course. It's fine, and I'm sticking with it, but it will definitely provide the lion's share of my weekly reading material. I am a little curious about how much of the assigned readings graduate students actually read. I'm not lazy in the least, and my aim is to read everything, but on particularly heavy weeks, I may have to "skim" a little bit given the weight of the readings.

No shame at all in skimming. In fact, I think most would agree that it's an essential tool for graduate school. There are even a few professors who are explicit about not expecting you to read everything. I myself haven't mastered the art of "surface reading" (here I mean the opposite of close reading and don't mean to connote the newish surface reading of Best, Marcus, & Co.) theoretical texts, but it's easy enough—and necessary— to do with secondary texts. Read the first three or four pages pretty closely, as well as maybe the last page or so. But through much of those texts you should focus your attention on topic sentences. That's worked for me, anyway, and allowed me to have some time in my life away from schoolwork.

On a related note, you might be interested in reading (or at least flipping through) How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. I haven't read it myself (that needn't stop me from plugging it!), but I hear good things from those in the know.

[Fall 2016 Entry Applicants]

Hello, all! I'm taking a gap year this year (serious burnout from the MA) but I'll be attempting for Ph.D. placement in Fall 2016!

 

My research interests are primarily fairy tales and folklore and looking at the role gender has in influencing the editing and production of the tales. My master's thesis focused on the apparent 'ideal household' in Grimms' fairy tales that is produced by cutting out themes of female sexuality, enforcing narrative silence for women, and most notably altering the spinning tales to say something different (and male-coded) about domesticity and womanhood. 

 

With that said, any school I'm interested in needs to have a strong gender studies and folklore program. I'm looking at Comparative Literature programs because I think they would help with the interdisciplinary nature of my research interests. A sprinkling of medieval studies doesn't hurt (because literary fairy tales are so influenced by medieval ideas and themes). Right now, I'm looking at:

 

Indiana University

University of Wisconsin-Madison

University of Oregon

University of Minnesota

Oxford University (St. Hilda's)

 

My MA advisor is pushing me toward Indiana. I'm not sure why, but the thought of spending years in Indiana doesn't thrill me (maybe because I'm from Upstate New York and it feels like it may be more of the same). I did my B.A. at SUNY Geneseo and my M.A. at University of Rochester.

 

Oxford is on this list because I studied abroad there last summer when I was completing my B.A., and I loved it there so much that it would be a complete dream to do my D.Phil there. It's a tough call though because of how poor to dollar is to the pound right now and the major differences between a UK D.Phil (shorter and mostly research) and a U.S. Ph.D.

 

Anyone have any recommendations about which of these schools might be a good fit? Or any others that I might not have considered yet? And I always love input on the D.Phil/Ph.D. question. 

 

Thanks and best of luck to everyone!

 

You might check out OSU. I honestly don't know too much about the Folklore Studies program, but it has  its own, semi-autonomous interdisciplinary center that might facilitate the type of work you're interested in. In any case, there's a lot more to do in Columbus than in Bloomington, and the costs of living in each are nearly identical. 

 

As to your last set of questions: if you're interested in teaching in North America, you should probably stick with a school here. One of my former professors got her D.Phil from Oxford, and she ultimately had to take a lectureship at UMich in the final year of her graduate program because Oxford offered her no opportunity to gain teaching experience. Between that problem, and the fact that English grad programs are often paid for out of pocket —especially for international students—I'd say the PhD is the way to go. 

[Props to Washington University in St. Louis]

On 6/28/2015 at 2:52 PM, Wyatt said:

Incidentally, the DGS mentioned that one of the two areas I could / should improve is my GRE subject score. This surprised me a little, because conventional wisdom around these parts is that the scores don't matter much (you can read plenty of old posts from yours truly suggesting that they are more "checklist" items), but if it was brought up by a DGS, it's clearly important.

 

I recall UT-Austin saying they wanted scores above the 60th percentile, and one of the Ivies (I think it was Harvard?) said their bar was the 70th percentile. Not sure what WashU is looking for, but these should give you a pretty good sense of what other top 25s want. Nice to know that no one is expecting perfection on the test. 

[Fall 2016 Entry Applicants]

Is she still interested in women-writers? It's hard to tell, she has so many interests!

 

The best way to answer that question is to send her an email. If you described your interests/potential projects, she'd let you know if she might be interested in working with you. 

[Question about my area of interest]

Re finding programs in your specialty: war literature is a pretty niche subject, so you won't find a whole lot of programs advertising themselves as "programs that specialize in war literature." You'll be incredibly lucky to find a program that has more than one person a department specializing in the subject. So you'll need to look for individual people to work with. Try starting here: http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/companions/ebook.jsf?bid=CBO9780511999413.  Most Cambridge Companions include essays from the top people in the specialty. Check out the university affiliations of each of the people listed here, and see if any of the programs suits your needs. 

[Masters in English Literature]

I am going to ask for recommendations from my manager at my job, the coordinator at the children's home I volunteer at, and one of my former professors

 

Since joining a graduate program is the first step toward doing professional academic work, adcoms almost always prefer academic LORs. You might include one non-academic recommendation if the recommender can speak to specific skills that might assist or enrich your academic work, but I would have no more than one at most. It would be even better to get three academic references, one of which should be the professor who taught your upper level literature course. 

[Fall 2016 Entry Applicants]

Thanks!!! 

Wendy Wall is a great suggestion! 

I'm also checking Boston University and Vanderbilt...  do you know the English Dept. there? 

 

Both of those schools are fine options. Leah Marcus is at Vanderbilt, and she does really good work. I believe she edited the collected works of Elizabeth I a few years back. I applied to BU last year and still think highly of their program. The only downside to them is the low stipend (relative to Boston's cost of living) and their small admit class. Last year they took in a grand total of five people. 

[Fall 2016 Entry Applicants]

On 6/25/2015 at 5:43 AM, SoyCoffee said:

Hi all~! 

 

Any suggestions for Renaissance students focusing on rhetoric and women-writers? 

 

Applying for PHD (I hold a BA & MA in English Lit.), 

thinking about: 

Oxford

UCL 

Toronto

Chicago

Penn 

 

But all of these are very very selective and competitive... I haven't taken the GRE / GRE Subject yet so I don't really know what my chances are at this point but in any case I'm looking for good Renaissance programs that aren't necessarily top 10-20...

 

Just to name a few: Ohio State, Boston College, WashU, UMass-Amherst, Fordham, and Notre Dame. Northwestern should probably be on your list as well, since Wendy Wall is there.

[*Decision Help* Should I Wait for Michigan State?]

Yeesh, that's a tough one. If I were you, I'd probably delay until April 15th on the off chance that MSU got back to you, but then I'd go with the sure thing. Yes, I do think the disparity in prestige/rank matters, but personally I'd stick with the lower ranked program instead of risking an unfunded deal at Michigan State.

 

Either way, I'd delay the decision right up to the 15th. You might even see some movement in your other waitlists by then.

[Turned Down Offers Thread]

Turned down Maryland for Early Modern.

[What University And Program Will You Be Attending for Fall 2015 (English/Complit/Rhet/Interdisc)?]

I'm off to Ohio State! 

[Waiting to Exhale (the wait list thread)]

In off the waitlist at Maryland! So glad I can go to their open house on Friday with this under my belt. 

[Decisions]

To whom? Wait until you see what work you are doing before you put it on your CV, and I would just use the official terminology: "full tuition scholarship." Maybe I'm off on this, but to me funded implies a fellowship/stipend of some sort, not a scholarship.

 

Agreed.

[Waiting to Exhale (the wait list thread)]

You were contacted personally about the waitlist, right? If you're comfortable with it, I don't think it would be inappropriate to contact the DGS to see if there's been any movement on the list (I did that with another program and received a good response). I'm also waitlisted at UMD, but I was told in my case it was unlikely to convert, so I feel like they would be fortright if asked.

 

Ended up emailing the DGS yesterday and got some really encouraging news. While he said that he couldn't offer admission yet, he did suggest that it's pretty likely to convert. Hopefully that means I can forego most of the awkwardness of attending the open house as a waitlister. Or, at the very least, it'll allow me to calm down and be a little more natural. 

[Waiting to Exhale (the wait list thread)]

Has anyone gotten in off the waitlist at UMD yet? I'm flying in for the open house next week, but I haven't heard any news regarding the chances of the waitlist converting. Little bit anxious about it -- I've more or less narrowed my decision down to Ohio State and Maryland, but I don't even know if the latter is really even an option. 

[Decisions]

Chicago is the highest ranked program so far, which is the one-year MAPH - I know they place very highly. 

 

Sometimes, but it's far from a guarantee. Same with UVA -- we have a UVA alum here at Alabama, and she only received offers from Missouri and us when she applied a couple of years back. I think the cash cow stigma associated with the MA programs at UVA and UChicago is just too strong for most applicants to overcome. Of course, they're only going to advertise their placements into Ivies, the UC System, and other top programs. But that doesn't mean it's the norm.

 

FWIW, I'd say BC is the way to go, since you'd get to work with Dayton Haskin, Mary Crane, and Amy Boesky, all of whom are well-known and -connected within the subfield. The postdoc in our department did her graduate work at St. Andrews but she hasn't said a whole lot about their program. 

[Waiting to Exhale (the wait list thread)]

Just declined Fordham's PhD offer. I hope this helps someone out! 

[a couple of questions re: my chances]

My guess is that your GPA will definitely limit the places you can get into. Most graduate programs require a bare minimum GPA of 3.0, and often have de facto GPA baselines that are much higher than that. So to answer your first question: yes, I think it would be wise to focus on applying to MA programs instead of PhD programs. This can only help you: you can avoid the app costs for PhD programs that will scoff at the GPA issue, and an MA program will help you get back up to speed with your academic work. When you apply to PhD programs with a high GPA, improved writing sample, etc. etc. you'll stand a much better chance of getting accepted into a "good program" than you currently do. That's just my guess anyways. You can always send out a few PhD apps and see what happens. I might be way off base.

 

Re the recommendations: almost all programs will advise you to reconnect with former professors in order to secure letters from them. I'd send out emails to three or four professors this summer reintroducing yourself, reminding them how you did in the class, what your plan is, etc. As awkward as this might seem, they go through this all the time with students who are interested in returning to school after taking time off, so don't worry about it. At some point after initial connect you'll probably want to send them a copy of the final paper you wrote for their class and/or the writing sample you're planning on submitting for apps. But that's way down the line.