silenus_thescribe

Based on the way you've described both schools, what I gather is this: School 1 offers superior resources and support, but you'd probably be happier in location 2. What I would say based on this information is that you might want to look more into the "extracurricular" opportunities in the NE school. While you clearly prefer School 2's location to School 1's, I'm sure there will be social outlets for you to take advantage of. Moreover, the advantage of the Northeast is that the states are all close together, meaning that travel to many locations in the region is easy, quick, and from what I can tell affordable. Should School 1 prove unavoidably dolorous to live in, then that's a strong claim for School 2. Since you're investing multiple years of your life into a place, you do want to be able to be happy there. But if you find that, despite all appearances, you're able to make a home you like in School 1, I'd say choose School 1. It already has most things going for it. If you're highly likely to get an R1 job after graduation, as you suggest, then I think you should choose School 1 even if you do find School 2's social culture more appealing. Grad school is also an investment in your future job, and a prospect of almost certainly getting an R1 job is the placement rate equivalent of a dodo. The only other thing I'd add is a response to this advantage you identify in School 2: "I could buy a house! and build equity! Like an adult!." I don't think renting/not owning a house is a "non-adult" thing. Lots of research has shown that the fixation on home ownership in the United States is not actually that well-founded, and in many cases home ownership is a bad move financially. Renting can be a really good deal, and if you can get a good renting lease as a grad student it's probably best, since home ownership comes with all kinds of forgotten costs (closing fees, any and all repairs, property taxes, etc) that strike me as non-feasible for most graduate students. Even with a low cost of living, 20k doesn't strike me as home-buying money (though I'm not sure if you have any other sources of income). Grad school can look like an extension of college to those outside of grad programs, but I don't think you should frame things like home ownership as "adult" in contrast to renting. As a grad student you'll be a hard working employee of a university, all the while crafting your own research agenda. No matter whether or not you choose School 1 or 2, you'll be "adulting," as they say.

With respect to the place where you got the fully funded offer: are there faculty members there working in your field? (I presume so, since you applied there.) Are there resources there to further your research interests? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then you should take the fully funded offer. Students loan debt can be crippling, and you will get less far professionally if you have to take on second and third jobs to finance your graduate education. That cuts out time for publishing and research, which are critical to a strong job portfolio. Even though you feel UO is a strong match for you, if it isn't funding you in the first year then its "fit" value is at least a little less compelling. Funding is a resource, just like faculty/library/university resources. If possible, I might try to leverage full funding from UO by bringing up your fully funded offer. The ad comm should know that you're a desirable candidate, and desirable candidates deserve to be funded. You could say something to the effect of, "I'm attracted to UO for X, Y, and Z reasons, but I am also considering a fully funded offer from Other University, and funding will be a primary factor in my decision."

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that with respect to rankings and eventual job prospects, rankings are a reflection of already existing preferences/prejudices that hiring executive committees would have, rather than things that cause people to believe one thing or another. That is to say, it's not as if hiring committees are going to the rankings after looking through a list of job applicants, and then letting their decision be swayed by whatever the rankings are. If the rankings do factor in to the decisions of a hiring committee, they do so based more on general impressions rather than a one-to-one comparison.

I took a gap year as well -- partly because I was burned out, partly because I had a great job in a field outside of academia that I'd been wanting to work in -- and it was invaluable to getting me prepared for grad school. In fact, I think a lot of doing the 9 to 5 and being disciplined is good preparation for grad school, even though it's not specifically academic. The weekly work schedule for a grad student/academic can be so scattered and weird (80 percent of my on-campus duties/classes this semester happen on Thursday and Friday), so the discipline of a 9 to 5 is quite useful, as is getting used to paying the bills and other "adult" or "real world" things. As for specific academic preparation: I tried to keep a pulse on the key journals in my field, reading articles as I could (I didn't have access to the main academic databases during my gap year). I would also make myself read novels/plays diligently and at least every day; while I do enjoy reading and usually don't have to strap myself in to do it, getting pre-ready for the discipline of grad school reading was really important. Even on days when I didn't *have* to read a big chunk of text, I'd make myself do it. I also joined some local reading groups as a means of reading accountability; somewhat masochistically, I joined a philosophy reading group for a reading of Kant's Critique of Judgment.

Me, upon seeing this thread being a thing still.

I cringed when I read the UC Davis stuff; those vague reasons do nothing to help applicants, and they actively make already despondent (in many cases) applicants feel worse. I actually think it's smart for departments to be nonspecific in rejection letters. So much of the time, it's not that applicants are particularly bad or unqualified -- in fact, quite the opposite. The dilemma that so many departments face is that they have a glut of qualified applicants, and choosing between them so often comes down to splitting hairs. To me, reasons like "less competitive academics" or "weaker writing sample" are vague generalizations that actually stand in for more complicated reasons that would require pages-long emails. For instance, you could be a killer medieval scholar with all the objective credentials a department would want from a medievalist, but it might be that the department took in a bunch of medievalists the year before, and can only accept one out of a group of similarly qualified applicants. It's much easier for that ad com to say, "weaker writing sample" than it is to go into full detail about the decisionmaking process, particularly when hundreds of people apply each year. Of course, rejections are hard not to take personally. But I think that so much of what goes into application decisions, like the aforementioned scenario or a more nebulous case like "fit," aren't strictly speaking about deficiencies in the applicant. As such, what Davis did was basically come up with an easy but problematic answer to something that in many cases probably didn't have to do with a deficiency in an application.

First of all, congrats on having the great if also tricky problem of having multiple choices to choose from, especially the two schools you're weighing. My initial suggestion to your post would be to take the offer from the NYC school, but live in New Jersey with your partner. This solves two problems, namely: (1) cost-of-living (not that NJ is insanely cheap, but NYU's stipend would certainly go further there than in the city) and (2) proximity to your partner. I echo @Wyatt's Terps comments: it is not only fine but necessary to consider your partner as one of many factors in your decision. I think your mentors might have some ground if proximity to your partner was your only criterion, but here you're clearly taking a whole host of considerations into account, plus you have a partner who's clearly supportive. That support will be invaluable during the inevitable warp and woof of grad school. I've found it fairly common to find grad students averse to having relationships because of the future uncertainty of the job market, which can be a fine choice, but it certainly is not a requirement for aspiring academics. Other things on this front: while I think that African Studies certificate from the MW school might have some value, I doubt it will be the thing that really sells your job prospects down the line. If your eventual dissertation is anchored on African studies, and you do a great job with it, then that will be more than enough to sell yourself to African Studies departments. The writing sample is such an important part of job applications, and if you've done great work in African Studies, then you can get the attention of executive hiring committees even if you don't have an African Studies certificate. Unless there's weird departmental politics, I don't see why you couldn't work with African Studies folks at NYU, or perhaps even people from nearby universities (Rutgers, Columbia, etc). It's also worth noting that because you identified the NYC school as having a greater population of postcolonial faculty, you'll be able to draw from a greater breadth of scholars in your field, which will make you more well-rounded and thus a better job candidate. I say all of this recognizing that the NJ-NYC commute is not terribly fun to do multiple times a week. I love public transit and probably tolerate it a lot more than most (I really don't like driving), but to me for all the benefits it affords, going with the NYC school seems the best option.

It really is the dream here at UT! it was my one outright PhD acceptance back in the '14 cycle (I ended up off the waitlist at Iowa), and I think it's precisely because the fit is unbeatable here for me. I'm sorry that you didn't get admitted, though I'm glad to see you have one acceptance and the potential for several more coming in! I got rejected from Brandeis during my app cycle; it looks like a great school. You aren't kidding about the people who meet significant others during their PhD. Coming into grad school I was expecting to be around more single people, but I would say the overwhelming majority of English grads at UT are in relationships.

You get at the answer to your question in your original post, when you say that despite seeing friends of yours who are "forging careers and getting married," you're still happy with what you do in academia. That lets you know that you're on the right path. There is no universal prescription that getting married and having a "real job" (whatever that means) by X age is the signpost for maturity or adulthood. I know that if I had chosen to look for a "real job" out of undergrad, I'd be pretty miserable, whereas now -- despite paltry pay and a heavy workload -- I feel fulfilled by being a PhD student. (My department also does a really good job of not treating us PhD students like "students" but more like "colleagues in training," which helps.) I have plenty of friends who moved to big cities to pursue jobs in competitive markets who are making lots more than me in pure dollar amount, but are struggling to get by because they're making like 30k in cities like San Francisco or NYC, which might as well be a grad student stipend in those locations. And though this is anecdotal, I met my girlfriend over long distance during my first year in grad school, and not only have we made it work out but she's also moving to where I live. I won't tell you long distance is easy, but we managed to make it work. For that reason and many others, I don't think you should worry about grad school being a kind of martyrdom. It's as fulfilling, in fact even more so, than I imagined it would be.

My writing sample was about an author that is central to my study (David Mamet), albeit focused on one of his films (Homicide) rather than one of his plays. Looking back on it now, I see that the argument could benefit from a thorough rewrite now that I've taken some film classes. (And given that I wrote it as an undergrad, there are plenty of other reasons why it needs rewriting.) When I wrote the paper I was still more interested in Mamet's work for the theatre, and as such I didn't much approach Homicide as a film but rather as a narrative. That being said, unlike most of what I wrote during my undergrad, I actually like and still believe in the argument I make in the paper, though it needs to be tweaked in many ways. The basic argument of the paper is that all reviews and criticism of Homicide grossly misread the film's ending, and by extension its racial/religious politics. The misreading was pretty shocking to me when I first looked through the scholarship after seeing the film. I argue that the rhetoric of conspiracy theories in the movie poses difficulties that most critics have brushed off, and as a consequence the film -- which in my reading is quite important to Mamet's overall body of work -- is stripped of a great deal of complexity.

This has been asked in various different places of this forum, and to my looking there's no standardized list a la the US News & World Report PhD rankings where MA programs are ranked. I know that MA programs sometimes publish lists of where their MA students end up if they choose to go further into academia, and if you've found any place like that, that's a good place to start. What I will say with respect to an MA, however, is that funding should be a top priority for you. There are plenty of MA programs with funding; I got accepted to Miami-Ohio's funded MA during my app cycle. For my money, getting into a fully funded MA at a school that's ranked less than an unranked program is better than paying for an English MA. As a grad student, you have to get used to the idea of not making a lot of money, and debt should only be taken on if absolutely necessary. Lots of the MA programs at prestigious schools like NYU and Chicago are known "cash cow" programs that charge top dollar, and from various reports I've read on here and elsewhere, those programs also take a lot of students, which makes one-on-one connections with professors really difficult to establish. Many are also more general "humanities" MAs, rather than specifically English. That's not to say that students don't succeed or produce great work from those programs, but it does come at a high cost, and unless you have a large cash reserve, IMO it's not worth it. A funded MA will both give you (relative) financial security, and often the chance to teach, which will be invaluable if you decide to go on to a PhD program. For that reason, I'd recommend going not off of rankings (especially since there are none for MA programs), but rather (a) programs that match you/your interests well, and (b) programs that will fund you.

FWIW, in the past UT has done acceptances/rejections in waves, so not everyone hears right away. I don't know how they're doing it this year, but I wouldn't consider the admission decisions closed yet. If anyone has questions about UT grad life, I'm happy to answer them!

The weirdest thing I saw during my application cycle is that Iowa requests your writing sample to come with a professor's comments, although it currently does caveat that requirement with "(if available)".

That's really weird. This seems to suggest that they pick out favorites before the 15 December deadline, which makes the deadline disingenuous. I can't think of another reason why a school would urge applications decently before the deadline is up.

While I've been there when it comes to test stress and know exactly how you feel, fret not! (1) Yeah, the review books have not caught up to the structure of the new GRE Subject Test in Literature. The examples I had in the book I used were all shorter excerpts with one to three questions, whereas the test I took in 2014 featured longer excerpts with six to ten questions. (2) Leaving that many questions blank isn't an inherent issue. In fact, most people leave a block of questions blank, since it's better to leave them blank than risk the negative points derived from missing an answer. I'd say I left between 30-40 blank. (3) A 170 on verbal is awesome; you should feel confident in that part of your application. The analytical writing, while not unimportant, is curiously not a feature I see mentioned in most grad program admission sites. I think maybe one mentioned an "ideal" minimum of 4.5, but that was an anomaly. (I applied to 13 programs.) That 4 shouldn't give you too much pause; the verbal section is almost universally what departments focus on as far as I understand. (I wonder if this is because the GRE favors a particular "form" of essay, meaning that if you write an excellent essay that isn't in their desired format, you could end up doing more poorly than you deserve.) My subject test score was blah (55th percentile) and my verbal/writing scores were good but not top-tier (164/5.5), and I got into one of my top programs. Don't psych yourself out too much over the tests, especially given your superlative verbal score.

Really glad you liked it! For me, it was the right book at the right time.

I am also about to finish my first year! I'm in the odd place of having known what I want to specialize in since undergrad (modern/contemporary theatre), and I am still vindicated by that a year into my program. I'm also interested in the intersections of theatre and philosophy, so I do come at the topic from two different angles (playwriting + philosophy). I don't have too much advice from my own experience, given that I've just "had this feeling" for so long now, but I had a realization recently that helps make sense of why I study drama. While I love the subject, and I love reading plays, I'm not out-and-out a theatre person; I was only in one high school play, and while I love going to plays, I'm not religious about it. I have a distance from it that makes it easy to approach the texts I work with critically. A prof of mine wrote his dissertation on one of Shakespeare's lesser plays, and he said by the end he didn't like the play very much, but that in turn made it easier to write about it, since he was removed in it. In short: the texts you love the most might not be the texts that are the best for your doctoral specialization. Novels are what I've read for the longest time -- I'm also writing one myself (as if I need more to do) -- and I realized that novels would be more difficult to approach critically than plays would, especially novels in the time period I'm most interested in (20th/21st). I get too into them for their own sake, and in many cases the "enjoyment" part of my mind overtakes the "critical" part of my mind (not to endorse a strict birfucation between the two.) So if there's a field you find interest in but aren't necessarily head-over-heels for, that might be a good place to start. I've also found that discovering areas of inquiry within a given field that are pretty untouched is also a good place to start. Where there's a gap in the scholarship, there's room for you to make your name known in a really appealing way. Contemporary drama has that appeal for me, as there's a lot that's untouched in the genre.

Congrats on making this big step! I went from a BA to a PhD program, albeit with a year taken off in between the two. I knew I would be applying to PhD programs during that year off, but I wanted to (a) avoid getting burned out and (b) take an awesome job opportunity in a field I'd wanted to work in for a long time. That being said, I have some tips: (1) There's no particular sense-making feature intrinsic to applying during your senior year or the fall after your senior year. If you truly feel you are up to the task, you apply when you are ready. The upsides/downsides vary based on your own individual circumstances, but some universals hold true for either experience. Applying during your senior year has the downside of juggling schoolwork (which you're trying to excel in) and the exhausting application process. From September to December of 2015, I was applying to graduate programs left and right (13 total) while working full-time, and it felt like a part-time job. I know I couldn't have done it as well if I was in school during that time -- although, of course, everyone's aptitude is different, so you could totally be up to the task. However, tough as it is to be applying senior year, there is a downside to not applying as early as you can, in that shut-outs are common, and the longer it takes for you to get your PhD, the longer it'll be before you get your degree. All of this is to say, aside from some generic considerations to applying during undergrad or taking a year off, the motivating factors there should be your unique circumstances. I know that if I hadn't taken a year off, I'd be burned out to a crisp by now, and I'd have missed out on a job opportunity that I know I probably won't ever get again. But I have a friend in an Econ PhD who's doing great having gone straight from undergrad; it all depends. (2) Your qualifications sound pretty solid as it is. Getting a paper published would be a huge boon for your applications, but by no means is it necessary; in fact, I doubt most applicants have academic publications, often even those with MAs. The thing to remember is that while you should line your CV with as many relevant accomplishments as possible, don't think that there is a "perfect number" that'll for sure land you in a PhD program. I probably got into my PhD program over people who had higher GRE scores than me, more teaching experience, better-repped undergrad institutions, etc. There's an ineffable aspect to the decisions of adcomms. This is no reason to not keep doing your best work, of course, but I wouldn't psych yourself out over thinking that if you get X, Y, and Z, you will get a spot. You can feel free to PM me with more specific questions if you'd like!

How is your GPA in English classes? That will be far more determinative of your likely application success than your overall GPA. I've heard stories of people who start out as science majors, do poorly in science classes, and then switch to English before applying to grad school. In those cases, while the bad grades in the science courses did drag the overall GPA down, the students did well enough in the English major to get accepted. Many websites for grad programs I saw specifically stress major rather than overall GPA. However, my_muse is right in that a 3.0 at least is desirable. That being said, almost every program I applied to stressed the importance of the statement of purpose and the writing sample. You're applying to graduate school to do highly specialized work, and as such showing your skill in tackling a specific topic will be the most likely to catch the attention of admissions committees. This is especially true since most people applying to grad school have excellent GPAs, so there's a bit of an equalizing effect there. That publication of yours also sounds quite promising. You are correct; that doesn't happen for most undergrads.

KhiCompLit, I'm in the department right now; feel free to PM me with any questions if you have any. Same goes for any other folks considering UT that may be lurking around the forum!

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.

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

I don't know that there's an exact science to this, but I think research fit and job placement should be good things to put at the top of the importance list. Overall, though, these features are hard to reduce down to any exact formula if the schools you are choosing between are really close together in ranking and job placement. My own initial (and highly imprecise) ranking of these things would be: 1. Research fit 2. Job placement rate 3. Departmental support 4. Congeniality of program 5. Cost of living/rental options 6. Ranking 7. Funding offer 8. Summer funding opportunities A couple of thoughts about this. Some might think I put funding too low. In the case of an offer that is much higher than another school's, that ranking might be higher. (For instance, full funding trumps no or partial funding.) But in my experience, the funding offers I received were all different only on the margins, certainly not enough to outweigh other factors like fit. I have also read many reports on GradCafe of students giving up more lucrative offers for schools with better placement rates and fit. In the majority of cases, you'll be making very little money in the short term, so enhancing your long-term job prospects by making sure you have (1) good faculty/research resources and (2) a killer placement committee backing you is of high importance. I rank "cost of living" higher than funding itself because, while money is scant no matter where you're a grad student, some places do make it especially difficult to get by, and I don't think it's unreasonable to turn down even a good fit if the stipend is near impossible to live on.

In addition to fuzzylogician's thorough questions, I think this point of Lindsey's has been the most true for me. It helps that I'm in a field -- modern and contemporary theatre -- where there is still much to be said, so the ones who make a big impact are quite obviously spotted. Older, more established areas will also tend to have robust critical histories that can easily be found in lit reviews in journal articles and in books. For instance, while a lit review of major playwrights in contemporary theatre will run comparatively short, Early Modern drama runs wide and deep critically speaking.