BLeonard

It's a funded PhD at Brandeis for five years.

So here's my current dilemma; I really appreciate everyone's help with my decision. My decision is still about 80/20 towards not going/going, but I want to see if I can make it work if possible. That's not what I'm concerned about at the moment. My problem is that I have a mentor at my UGI who's supported and encouraged me through the entire process, and they are advocating very strongly for me to attend Brandeis. They've said that they will support whatever decision I make, but I feel like if I turn it down, I would be letting them down. I don't want to do that, obviously, but I also am having a hard time illustrating why turning the program down would be the best move at this time. (Particularly since, months after the fact, this person has indicated that my writing/portfolio/project is not nearly strong enough to get me into a top program, even with a year or an MA to work on it.) Part of that might be just because I hate letting anyone down, but it was because of this person that I seriously considered grad school in the first place. I think I'm just thrown/lost/whatever.

It looks like it's a student medical plan/credit against the plan. My mistake.

I was speaking to a professor about my dilemma, and she said that to have a college fully fund a PhD with a stipend and medical is rare. But that doesn't seem to be the case on the spreadsheet. I thought most places offered some type of stipend?

Congrats!

Congrats, wetheplants!

Congrats!

Another question I have: When considering programs, how much weight should I give to offered classes? For example, the courses offered in the fall and spring at Brandeis are in line with what I'd want to study as PhD/grad school candidate, but the courses offered in the fall at my current institution in their MALS program are not, to the point where it would be hard for me to get enthused about any of them. I have no idea if I'm looking for reasons to go to Brandeis rather than weigh my options logically and reasonably.

Congrats! Beautiful region, fantastic school! You're going to do so well.

That's something I've been considering, too. If I don't take Brandeis up on its offer, some professors at my UGI have recommended that I get a job at my UGI and take advantage of employer benefits to get my masters from the UGI. It would allow me to stay in the city, study and take the GREs again, and work with some professors I wanted to study with as an undergrad but didn't get the chance to -- as well as continuing with some of the professors who I've gotten close to. But now I'm hearing that an MALS might be worse in two years than taking the PhD now. Is there a way to look into these programs and find out how well-regarded my UGI is?

Thanks for all the advice! I really appreciate it. My other question, I guess, is this, and would require a bit more research on my part, but my other concern is that if I am commuting/arranging my schedule so I'm on campus a couple days a week, that I wouldn't get as much out of the grad school experience as I should. It seems like networking and being available for reading groups, panels, presentations, or just hanging out with people in the program is a big part of any grad school and vital to getting employment after graduation. Should I consider going home during the weekends only because of this? If I commit to a program, I want to fully commit and participate in as much as possible. I worry if I have to be concerned about getting back to New York all the time, that will cut into that.

Yeah, they offered me a fee waiver, but I guess I didn't apply "on a whim," more like the fee waiver led me to consider the school when I hadn't before. There are a lot of positives about the English department there and I think I could do good work/explore the kind of scholarship that interests me, both at the school and in other schools in the Boston area.

My concern with travel is this -- neither my wife nor I drive, so unless I get licensed and find a car before August, we would be relying on buses and trains. I would have to run the numbers and figure out whether the cost of gas and insurance would be less than the cost of train/bus trips every week/every other week.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions regarding transferring. It seemed very odd when the person I've been doing a lot of scholarship with at my UGI mentioned that that was an option.

Hello everyone. I am posting in hopes that you will be able to offer some thoughts on the grad school decision process. This may be long, so I apologize! Previously on... I applied to 10 programs, and was rejected from nine and wait-listed at another, Brandeis. I applied to Brandeis because it seemed like a good program, but they offered me a fee waiver and I honestly didn't think I would get in. Although the POI at Brandeis who contacted me about being wait-listed seemed to indicate that I was near the top of the waitlist, my wife and I made the decision to basically "write off" grad school for the fall. A combination of the job market and my being in school full time had led to us eating into our savings, so we thought it would be best if we both worked for a bit before trying the grad school process again. My professors at my undergraduate institution encouraged me to look for work at my undergrad school, because I could attend their masters program free of charge if I did so, possibly in the fall. I began applying for jobs, as did she, and she was able to find full-time work in her field pretty quickly. (My wife is only licensed in her profession in NY and NJ.) Then, I got into Brandeis, with from what I understand is a pretty generous financial aid package (22,000/year fellowship for five years, medical, full tuition). That was on Wednesday. On Thursday I heard back that I'd made it past the first round for an interview at one of the positions at my undergraduate institution. Due to my wife's job, we would be living apart if I attend Brandeis, except in the summers when I could work. It also seems to me that commuting to Brandeis, even if it's every other week, would quickly eat into that stipend between rent and travel. That said, everyone I've spoken to at my undergrad institution or who have navigated through the process says that a) Brandeis is a fantastic program, particularly in English and 22,000 a year plus medical is a fantastic offer. As I see it right now, I have these options (in no order): 1. I don't accept the offer. 2. I accept the offer, do a year or two at Brandeis and then transfer closer to NYC, where we live now and have worked hard at establishing a life here. (I was told that transferring is more common than it seems, but I would like, if possible, additional support for this.) 3. I accept the offer, and after a year or two, my wife gets licensed in MA and moves to the area. 4. I accept the offer and we do five years apart with the knowledge I'll be working summers. 5. I use this offer to solidify my future, either as an employee or as a master's candidate at my undergraduate institution. I guess the biggest issue here is that I'm dealing with certainty vs. uncertainty. If I had heard back from some of the jobs, including that I applied to, or I was a little more confident in the knowledge that I'd be able to start in the graduate program at my undergraduate in the fall or spring, then this would be a much easier decision. I would love to continue my education and relationship with my UGI, and continue collaborating/working with professors there. My other concern is that my test scores weren't great, and I worry that they could hurt my application for an MA. I think I'm just worried...

Thank you! I have studied the 19th century -- Hawthorne, Poe, Melville -- but I'm more centered around authors of the period rather than being able to consider the overarching period as a whole. However, I am really fascinated by Civil War literature. My ongoing argument/thought about King is that while he's a fantastic storyteller and composer of horror/supernatural fiction, particularly in the short story form, his place in the "canon" is important in a different way. I think he functions as a regional writer -- much like O'Connor -- and he also should be considered as someone who's able to capture working class life in the late 20th/early 21st century better than most. I think much how we read Dickens less for the story and more for his portrayal of Victorian England, King will be looked at as someone who was able to capture what it was like to be alive in that historical moment. (Crime fiction does this as well.)

Hello! I was accepted off the wait list today, but have not yet made a decision. I would be an English PhD candidate.

Americanist here, focusing on early American literature and 20th century/contemporary lit, with a subspecialty in "genre fiction." I've done a lot of work as an undergrad trying to bring together canonical works with works considered less so -- connecting Faulkner to Lovecraft, for example. I was recently accepted into a PhD program, and am still trying to figure out what my next move is.

Congrats! That's a fantastic school!

Haven't been posting lately because my focus has been on school and since I was rejected at every place I applied to and waitlisted at one, I was waiting for it all to pan out. Well, it panned out. I got accepted into the PhD program at Brandeis with a package of around 22,000/year (exempting summers) for 5 years. I was thrilled -- but my decision is more complicated than it would have been a few months ago.

Got rejected from Brown and Rutgers this week, but I feel pretty good about my backup plan at this point, so I'm not stressing too much.

Thank you for posting about this; union solidarity is super important to me, as is the adjunct issue. I actually just signed up for more information about the union for student employees at my school this week.

I wanted to ask a quick question of the group. It looks like I'll be rejected from the PhD programs I applied to, and, as a backup, my undergraduate institution is sort of courting me, suggesting I take on a full-time job at the university and feed right into their M.A. program. This would allow me to keep studying without a real break in my education, continue to work with the faculty I admire, and further prepare me as a PhD candidate. Additionally, the professors who are encouraging me to pursue this suggest that it would be fairly easy to get full-time employment at the college, allowing me to pay for the degree much more cheaply than an M.A. from another institution. My question is -- does this sound like a good back up plan? I have a couple of concerns, chiefly that if I do this, I wouldn't start a PhD program until Fall 2017 at the earliest, and I'll be 33 when I do. (The comments/discussion about age in another thread really got into my head, haha.) The other concern I have is I know schools look down on people that get their MA and BA from the same place -- is this really true? How much would that hurt my chances?

Yeah, I was more talking about the PhD programs acceptances, not the job market. I know that if I do get into a PhD program, I'm going to have to work harder than my peers to make myself a more attractive candidate to search committees after graduation.

Yeah, I have to push back on this as well -- I spoke to a lot of professors in my department at a well-ranked school, and several of those professors are nationally known. All of them knew I was applying at an age older than most candidates, and not one mentioned that my age would be a problem down the line.