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VirtualMessage, if you are still here, I am really sorry about your job search. On one campus visit, I learned the PhD students had applied to 80 jobs apiece. By the time I go on the job market, I imagine I will have to apply to way over 100--and definitely apply outside academia as well.   You are a fantastic person for making it through a PhD program, for publishing several articles, for believing in teaching and research. I agree that sometimes academia is pretentious and self-aggrandizing. I also agree that everyone should know the risks and what they're willing to give. But most of us have found that teaching and research make us better people, and that being a better person is worth the downsides. Most of us have been told "just don't go," too.    Some people on the GradCafe have been accepted to fantastic schools, and no one should start their career with a cloud of doom thundering overhead. Instead of posting once, why don't you stay here? We need more people to give us smart talk and advice from the other side of a PhD. 

VirtualMessage, if you are still here, I am really sorry about your job search. On one campus visit, I learned the PhD students had applied to 80 jobs apiece. By the time I go on the job market, I imagine I will have to apply to way over 100--and definitely apply outside academia as well.   You are a fantastic person for making it through a PhD program, for publishing several articles, for believing in teaching and research. I agree that sometimes academia is pretentious and self-aggrandizing. I also agree that everyone should know the risks and what they're willing to give. But most of us have found that teaching and research make us better people, and that being a better person is worth the downsides. Most of us have been told "just don't go," too.    Some people on the GradCafe have been accepted to fantastic schools, and no one should start their career with a cloud of doom thundering overhead. Instead of posting once, why don't you stay here? We need more people to give us smart talk and advice from the other side of a PhD. 

When I began my MA, I didn't have any set research interests, so I looked around the field and guided my interests towards PTC and rhetoric of science. At the time, I was definitely being careerist. Now, though, I've realized that these are conversations I want to be part of. And in the end if there are no academic jobs for someone like me, the things I've learned from PTC are transferable to the non-academic job market as well.
While I agree that scholars shouldn't choose a research topic just because it will lead (maybe) to a job, I think all research is valuable (or perhaps, has to be valued). I've spoken with professors who were steered into certain fields because tenure committees told them to do it--or else. Is their contribution to knowledge less valuable just because it wasn't their passion at the time? 
I just came from a seminar where the teacher pointed out the dangers of ranking paradigms, so I'm sorry if this comes off as moralizing.

Cardinal sin? Absolutely not! 10 years ago, just about no one was writing rhet/comp writing samples. My understanding is it's not generally an expectation of adcoms, even in the current climate of proliferation of rhet/comp programs.
But I sense that tides are changing and even if expectations haven't caught up with reality, you should know that now it is not uncommon for a substantial amount of other applicants to have writing samples in rhet/comp, especially for the more prestigious institutions. Everyone I knew and met during my application seasons (both MA and PhD) could speak to their specific interest within rhet/comp from taking multiple courses in the field, and this leads me to believe they also had strong writing samples. You should expect to be competing for spots alongside students who have very clearly-articulated interests within rhet/comp and writing samples that show they are familiar with the literature pertaining to conversations and studying within that subfield. 
This doesn't mean that your materials don't do this -- they very well may! All this is to say that while a number of years ago the idea of a newly-found interest in rhet/comp was the norm, I feel like it is not something you really want to convey in your application materials anymore.

Most programs will share with you their placement rates and schools, and may be a good way to start looking. I'm always going to lean toward telling you to apply to a program that has a PhD program that you would want to be in, since you'll often have a leg up on applying for PhDs, but that's not required.
That said, CompRhet is a big tent field, and some schools are more diverse than others in the type of students they bring in. Programs like Maryland and Michigan are both English/Ed based with R/C tracks, but still place people in good PhD programs and jobs. I'm currently at a top program that has people who came from linguistics, english, C/R, education, and classics.
If you want to do Comp Rhet work at the phD level, it's fine to wind up in associated MA programs, as long as your work still applies. Studying language acquisition in an education program will probably be fine, or working with classical rhetoric at a place like CMU or Penn State, as long as you are able to articulate to the PhD program you want to go how it prepared you for your future work.
 
I'll also caution you to ask the "what if this doesn't work out" question. Good programs (like Purdue and PSU) took their smallest cohorts in years this season, and this wound up being a rough job season even for top candidates (though it seems to be still shaking out as people are being hired to replace people who moved on/up), and, until the smaller cohorts catch up with the market that is unlikely to change. Because of that, you are going to want to consider what that MA will prepare you to do if you don't get into a funded PhD program right away/at all. A digital rhetoric MA may have much better job placement opportunities outside of the academy than a classic rhetoric one.
 
(I'm saying this to be kind, and, I think everyone here will attest, I'm the last one to be negative about the market for C/R folks, but I saw highly qualified people wind up with 5/5 fixed term jobs this year)

While I don't have much to contribute to the MFA part of this discussion (not experienced in this!), I would like to comment on the rhet/comp part here. I hope I don't cause too much trouble.
Comp/rhet MA programs typically DO fund students. I know that Carnegie Mellon doesn't, but a lot of other (usually state) schools do, so it's not really a cash cow in the ways that some MFA programs seem to be. Also, composition courses are the kinds of courses us comp/rhet folks want to teach. They're not something we do just to make money during grad school but are also the things we want to study, research, contribute to, etc, so it's all directly related. 
With that being said, I don't feel like it's fair to call comp/rhet MA programs just as exploitative as other programs. What do you mean by exploitative? Exploitative to the graduate student or to the students the graduate student teaches? Because in both cases, I think it works out rather well - the grad student gets to teach what he or she loves and wants to study, and the students get a graduate teaching assistant who's really into teaching comp.
I could understand you saying that all MA TAs are deprofessionalizing writing instruction because of the fact that they're not full professors and are more inexperienced, but I really don't see how you can single out compt/rhet MA students. There's also an increasing amount of students starting their MA in rhet/comp after finishing a BA in rhet/comp instead of literature or a related field, so in that case, I would argue that comp/rhet MA programs are becoming even more professionalized.
Just my $0.02, though!
ETA: When I say that composition courses are "not something we do just to make money during grad school," I don't mean to imply that other people in other programs view it as such - I just mean that it can double as job experience and research material due to the nature of the comp/rhet field. I wanted to clarify that!
 

You guessed right! Somewhere amid thesis stuff, summer funding (yay!) stuff, conference stuff, and grading stuff, I'm fitting PhD program stuff in somewhere.
I really like my school's PhD program, but I'll apply to a few others. I'm looking at the writing and rhetoric programs, as well as programs in professional/technical communication. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. 
It's nice to share another application season with you, WT! I'm looking forward to this fall (probably because it's six months away, and that doesn't even register on my panic-o-meter yet). 

I would hold off a bit. Washington State C/R just dropped the GRE, and I would expect to see some other top programs join the bandwagon soon.

Indiana just launched a program this year that you should look at. It's going to be small for the first few years, but that comes with lots of benefits, plus the B1G in general is where most of the top R/C programs are, so there are lots of connections. Not that USF is a bad program, by any means.

If you want to do Writing Center work (or really, any specific work) it's always best to go see who is doing it in the field, who is publishing/teaching/chairing/editing, and see where they went to school. For example, I know at least two of the board members of ECWCA went to MSU, while a couple others went to MTSU.

Well, it's done. I've turned down my other offers and accepted a PhD slot at my MA school. Time to celebrate with beer

I've only been here for a year or so; I don't know anything about downtown Tampa. Somewhere earlier on this thread I wrote that rush hour can be as bad as 10 minutes/mile on the streets around USF. I live about a mile away from campus, and sometimes it's taken me over 20 minutes to get back. (I'm from the middle of nowhere in the midwest, so this past year has been an exercise in city driving.) 
Of course, as long as you schedule your classes at non-rush hour times, you're totally fine. 

Wanted to let y'all know that I accepted my offer from Miami University  (MA in Composition and Rhetoric) and turned down a fully-funded offer from USF (MA in Rhetoric and Composition) and an acceptance along with a #1 spot on the funding waiting list at UNM (MA in Rhetoric and Writing).
I hope this is able to help someone on this forum out! I'm just so relieved that my choice is made and it's all over. I feel like I can finally breathe for the first time since, like, September!!!

Also, the University of South Florida and the University of New Mexico  (although funding isn't guaranteed at UNM - I got waitlisted for it yet most likely would have gotten it).

I passed my comps today! I am officially ABD and a Candidate, which is SUCH A WEIRD thing to wrap my mind around. My only regret? I didn't work in a Hamilton reference. 
I wanted to start a thread where we can all celebrate each other's achievements this semester. Are you surviving your first semester? Will you be presenting at a Big Deal™ conference in 2016? Did you get a travel grant? Let's get a dance party started up in here. 

Also -- and bringing this up goes against my love for Chicago, where I recently moved away from -- you really want to consider the status of public universities in Chicago. Lots of state universities in the US have systemic funding issues, but Illinois is in an especially bad place, with the state having just cut all public funding to universities. Thus, even beyond the individual issue of whether or not you'll get funding, there's the larger issue of whether or not Illinois universities will be able to operate in a normal way at all. That alone would be enough to sway me to BU in your situation, although Chicago is a tough place to turn down. 

You need to understand that you are in the wrong and the professor is in the right. No one is going to intervene on your behalf, and going over the professor's head and complaining to the department or higher ups isn't going to do you any good. You are the one who failed the final. 40% is a decent percentage for a final, not something that he is "at fault" for. In fact, with that weight for the final, it should actually be impossible for you to fail the class if you got perfect scores on the first 60% of your grade. Even to get a total of 80% on your final grade you will have to have gotten 50/100 on your final, which you will agree is not a good score. If failing is below 70%, you will have gotten less than 25% on your final. Again, none of this demonstrates anything but your sole responsibility for this outcome. In any event, you could talk to the professor to ask for some extra credit work to bring up your grade, given that you were doing well prior to the final. The professor might be inclined to agree if you accept responsibility and ask for mercy, but certainly not if you blame him. I don't think that saying that you're a graduate student in an undergrad class should make your case any stronger. If anything, I expect more of graduate students than undergrads, not less. You should also stop saying (and thinking) that he owes you something or that he is "ruining everything" for you. There was a published syllabus with a grade breakdown, and the only one who caused your low score is you. 

I think the first thing to do is to talk to the professor. You should frame this carefully. You should ask to speak to the professor about your grade and explain that you don't think the final grade reflects your ability and ask if you can meet to discuss this. During this discussion, it would be a good time to ask if there is something you could do to change the grade.
But remember, ultimately, the professor should have the final say in how the course is graded and you have to recognize that your performance on the final exam is your responsibility. In this post, you say a lot of things that place the blame on others. For example, you say that you don't think the professor taught the class in a good way. And you say that this grade ruins everything (I'm not sure what this even means). It also sounds like you don't think the final should have been weighted at 40%. You should make sure you do not say any of these things in the discussion. You should also stop thinking about this grade/outcome in this way. Otherwise, to me, you sound like you are entitled to a good grade because of your project performance and that will not help you. The professor didn't "accidentally" weigh the final at 40%---this was a deliberate choice because the professor wanted students to have to do well in both projects and final. I am glad that you got 100% on all your projects, but you also have to do well on your final to get a good grade and you knew this from the start. 
If you keep these ideas in mind (i.e. take responsibility for your performance), maybe the professor will find a way for you to earn extra credit (e.g. maybe allow for another try at the exam or do an extra project etc.). But I doubt a professor will be willing to give you another chance if you sound like you believe they are wrong and that you are entitled to a good grade!

Despite my initial qualms about this thread (and I apologize to the OP for my exasperated utterances), it is good to see some great thinking on this topic, other than the usual "you're making a terrible mistake" rhetoric that continually emerged on other similar threads in recent memory.
I get the sense that certain people who have made it through to having a Ph.D. in hand and then have difficulty finding work might have started out too close to the "ideal" side on the {ideal----------reality} spectrum. Six or seven years ago, that was par for the course, since the economic downturn had only just begun, and there was a wealth of optimism thanks to the election of an education-friendly president. Idealism is a wonderful thing, in a lot of respects -- it brings with it a kind of euphoria combined with ambition that can make external factors appear less important than they actually are. In the years since that time, however, the state of the humanities has gotten much, much worse, with the practicality of STEM and related fields garnering much wider appeal. This is nothing new to us, however...and that's my point. In the past several years, it is very clear that the worm has turned. It is impossible to ignore. As a result, people who are just now going down the Ph.D. path can be expected to be both idealistic and realistic. What annoys me about threads like these is that they seem to presuppose that people who are currently starting down this road possess the same over-idealism that might have prompted a surplus of Ph.D. applicants in the 2000s. I really don't think that's the case. I'm sure there are still many who believe that they can be among the rare few who obtain that vaunted-yet-elusive TT position, but I suspect the majority of people on this forum, at the very least, understand that the job market is brutal. I know that I pretty much take that as a given when posting and interacting with folks here.
The bottom line is that we all have our own, individualized reasons for pursuing an M.A. or a Ph.D. in a seemingly "impractical" field. I don't think it's fair to solicit those reasons for the sake of giving judgment and advice unless you really get to know each person's life circumstances. Likewise, I don't think it's fair to make any sweeping assumptions about anyone who is posting on these forums. It might not be a categorically excellent path to be on, but we're all on it...which should tell you something.

I guess these posts don't bother me because this is what my colleagues and I discuss constantly. Three people left the program last year (not all from the same cohort, mind you) because of concerns about the state of academia. Also, yeah, I recognize that grad school may provide more stability for some people than others. And I 100% agree: I have major problems with narratives that describe people with PhD's on food stamps as inherently more tragic than people with GED's on food stamps.
That said, I am concerned with these echoes of grad school being a great place because of funding and stability and such. Yes, it may provide more security than other positions and fields, but it's still super problematic. Mizzou grad students just straight up lost their health insurance last year. Yes, they got it back, but it's still just the mediocre grad student plan. At the same time, grad students at Emory and Arizona State lost dependent health care. So if you're a single parent and in grad school, then you're fucked. Many stipends are below the poverty level for the geographical area. As my friend says, we are overworked and underpaid and preparing for jobs that don't exist. Because adjunctification is real, and it's devouring the academy as we know it, hurting both adjuncts and undergrad students. 
In other words, things are messed up. But my plea isn't to tell folks to get out. I'd be a hypocrite to do so, and part of me still holds onto hope that we can collectively change the direction of higher education. Instead, my question is always: what are you going to do about it? Be alert to the exploitation of academic labor, and all the unpaid labor you will be asked to do in your program. Be alert so, when an opening arises, you can organize and make your program a better place for you and for future academics. Be alert because, as stipends and tenure lines decrease, these changes will hurt the most marginalized scholars and potentially dissuade them from pursuing a career in academia. But we need a diverse professoriate! We need to make sure that our grad students can feed and house themselves. And we need to situate our labor concerns with larger criticisms of exploitation and poverty: what are the hourly workers on your campus making? At UMD, hourly workers can be paid less than the state minimum wage. How can we leverage our educational privilege and our anger about the turning tide of academia to make real institutional change?

When you see that another forum with this topic is kicking off...

You all have been far nicer to OP than I am about to be.
OP, you are an asshole. What motivated you to post this? Is it some sort of patriarical bullshit (or, more likely, a fear of competition in an admittedly tight job market) that caused you to post this? Is it a desire to mansplain something that any potential PhD student already knows because no one else listens to you? I know it isn't a case of "learn from my mistake" because you've failed to critically evaluate what your own mistakes even were.
It's the worst kind of ivory tower blindness that makes people think that their situation is somehow unique. I've worked in industries that collapsed, and saw people who worked 10, 15 years in the field fail to find jobs outside of retail. I've worked with adults trying to raise kids on $8/hr without any real hope of personal improvement or job advancement. I've been on the market as both a college dropout and a college graduate, and experienced difficulty finding 9-5 work in both situations.
I'm going to say something ridiculous here, and the OP is going to hate it: Getting a PhD is the best decision for me because it provides a level of security I have never had. I know that for the next four years I will have a regular paycheck,insurance, respect and responsibility. I still believe that I'm in a field that's generally "market proof" (it's not as good as it was even five years ago, but there were still more R/C jobs than English jobs this year, for a smaller number of graduates). I'm only considering programs with 90% placement rates (not hard at the top 20+ r/c programs, while making sure that I will have opportunities to teach business and technical writing, assume administrative responsibilities, and do other work that isn't as "pure" academically but better situates me for the market as it is developing.
Maybe the question the OP should ask isn't why do we want to be like him, but what are we doing to avoid being the sort of sad, underemployed person who trolls people excited about the opportunity to go on.

I'm going to start an MA program in the fall and haven't fully decided on the PhD yet, so I know this doesn't directly apply to me (though I'll chime in anyway).
My reason for going the grad school route is a bit complicated, really. I love my field (rhetoric and composition) and have gotten some exposure to it in undergrad, but also, I want to get out of a my small town family business and have a shot at something more.
Now, I know you may be thinking "don't go to grad school for lack of nothing else to do!", but it's not like that. College opened doors for me that were never available to me (I mean, I got into grad school because of it! And I learned how to tutor students and how to help people learn). I also met a lot of amazing people who have positively changed my life, and with that being said, I'm not done yet. I don't want to stop studying this field, and I don't want to stop challenging myself intellectually. Nothing at home can do that for me, and even though I'm qualified to go get a job and start the rat race, I don't WANT to.
I'll be moving out of state for grad school (while getting paid), so it's a great opportunity for me to be my own person and pursue one of my passions. I don't know exactly what an MA in rhet comp and teaching experience can get me if I decide to forego the PhD, but still, I'll be better off than I started and will have more options - I'll have more of a chance. I'll meet people in a highly specialized field who can perhaps help me find jobs in the "real" world, and I'll just be more educated than I was coming in and will be able to further appreciate education and academia.
Of course I love working with students and learning and all that jazz as well, but this is another reason that compels me to go. I think your question is interesting  (although you do have a clear bias), and I think it's important for people to fully understand what they're doing and why.

I don't have a ton of time right now to respond, but my "gut" advice is that you need to figure these things out for yourself. Look at the top 50 programs on either the NRC or US News rankings, and pick out a few schools with faculty that you would want to work with by reading their profiles, then following up with an article or book chapter or two. I think it's important you do this on your own as this will help your applications to these schools, and, further, help you figure out your own interests. IMO, Rutgers might be a good fit (my own program, in all honesty), but I don't know you well enough to say whether or not it is appropriate. Best of luck to you!