silenus_thescribe

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone in this thread for your advice! I finished the document and gave it to my undergrad department last night. If I knew all of this around last April, I can safely say the application season would have gone a hell of a lot better. Might have even changed a few schools I applied to.

I did the same! As a Chicago native, I was in need of a lighter jacket because the nasty winter had finally receded, but all I had were thick coats. Functional school spirit is a thing, as it turns out.

I guess you could say UCLA's motto this app season was... *sunglasses* ...(jean-luc) gohard or go home. *YEAAAAAAAHHHHHH*

I'd say a large hooray is in order!

I'm not familiar. This a conference, I presume? On a related note: anyone know of good conferences for 20th/21st century American? There are some I know of, Post-45 being one of them, but otherwise I'm mostly in the dark.

Jealous of everyone who gets to live in California! Drought aside, it's my favorite of these here 50 states -- although as it is my home state, I am biased. Congrats to all the new acceptees!

Congrats! You'll be in a cohort with a friend of mine.

Congrats! So happy you got your dream school. Given how brutal the application process is, that's the golden ticket right there.

Saying true things doesn't make you a hick! This is a really nice hotel, never seen one like this on a campus before.

I've definitely been mining this one for assistance. The trick is narrowing it all down! I told my department that I wanted to keep it brief, but at the same time I don't want to short-serve future applicants... hence the 20 pages already. Blah.

You all on Grad Cafe have been so helpful for me in this application season; I hope it's not too much to ask that you all provide some more insight into a project I'm working on. I'm writing a "Tips for Applying to Grad School in English" document for my undergraduate department. While I was well served as a scholar in my small English department as an undergrad, nearly all of my professors had gone to grad school at minimum ten years prior, so they were unfamiliar with the specifics of applying in the present day. I wanted to write a document that breaks down the application process in broad terms for anyone at my undergrad school interested in graduate studies. Naturally, this bonkers process being what it is, the document's already 20 pages. Blah. Anyways, I'm wondering if I could solicit some wisdom from you all. What would you say are the few biggest things you wish you had known going into the application process? Any major tips you would give to any undergrads aspiring to an MA or a PhD? It can be about any part of the process at all.

The word you're looking for is "humiliating". But if my foolishness can provide levity in what I know is a stressful time, then I suppose there's some upside to all this

*realizes this* *hits self in head with wooden plank Monty Python style* I deserve all the downvotes. All of them. Downvote this, if you like.

I was just attempting to be snarky, did not expect those downvotes... oops.

Look forward to seeing everyone this weekend! In other news, let's reflect on these fascinating findings from UT. Kinda makes you wonder if certain funds could be better reallocated to certain graduate students in a certain department...

^This. While I agree there should be a candid conversation about the bleakness of the job market that doesn't couch it in hedges ("Well, it's not so bad", etc), sensationalizing the issue with tags like "Ponzi scheme" doesn't do the conversation any favors, either. That implies a deliberate maliciousness on the part of universities, and an unknowingness on the part of potential/actual PhD students. Although there are scores of schools that could genuinely afford to pay/treat adjuncts well, maybe even offer a few more TT jobs, plenty of schools are facing budget mandates that are biased against the humanities. Schools in this position often couldn't do much better pay-wise even if they wanted to. Throwing the "Ponzi scheme" label makes it seem as if the issue boils down to a centralized sinister plot, which trivializes an issue that is influenced by myriad variables in and out of academia. Moreover, if this truly is a "Ponzi scheme", it's a bad one, as unraed points out, because we're all cognizant of the theft that's happening. The better, albeit imperfect, analogy would be the immoral unpaid internship "market" in the US. Unpaid internships are essentially a socially acceptable form of theft, and the adjunct job market is a socially acceptable form of being underpaid/maltreated. Obviously there are disanalogies here; with adjuncting you're at least getting paid, and not all adjunct positions pay pittance, for instance. But the relevant similarity is that despite the major issues with both institutions that are widely acknowledged, even by participants in those systems, people still apply to work in those fields en masse. This leads to the obvious question: what are the circumstances exist in society that lead people to take the dive into what are largely acknowledged to be unfair labor markets?

Hi howdy! The Beggar's Opera is a little more than a wee bit prior to the time period I'm interested in: 20th/21st century American drama. David Mamet is an author I'm quite interested in; my WS, however, was on a film of his rather than a play (his 1991 film Homicide). I spent plenty of time diving into the major works of the American playwrights of the 20th century onward as an undergrad, though, so I'm going to have to bone up on a lot of areas of theatre history that I lack in -- 18th century being one of them. Yay! There's more than one of us!

Although the problems of nepotism and other preferential hiring practices are real, I also do think that some schools are actively trying to do their best to respond to the dwindling job market. For instance, I know when Iowa sent out rejection letters, they said they were accepting less people because of the job market. I hear my future home of UT is shrinking its cohort for similar reasons. Wanting to get a PhD to be a professor isn't a bad desire; however, an institution that preys on that desire without considering if the whole "professor" thing is plausible down the road isn't doing its students favors. Grad schools have good reason to care about the job prospects of their PhDs. Good placement results in their being more regarded, and in general they want to show off that they're able to produce reputable scholars. While there are cases of respectable institutions (NYU, Chicago, UVa) who do stuff like have MA programs that charge steep tuition and usually don't amount to academic job success, there are plenty of cases of schools actively trying to combat the terrible job market. To be sure, if one isn't willing to weather the storm, don't hop on the boat. That isn't bad advice. But the changes in the PhD job market that need to happen require just as much reciprocation from grad schools themselves. As the institutions that are dwindling their cohorts recognize, taking on significant amounts of incoming PhD candidates is irresponsible. Of course, the downside of that is that acceptance rates drop and people don't get to realize their dreams. But insofar as the counterfactual is seemingly equally likely to not result in an academic job, it's a more reasonable way of conducting the admissions process.

I have no idea how people get this impression of him. He's been great sometimes as an actor (127 Hours), but his McCarthy adaption was utter dreck, and his short stories are laughable. That being said, my fairly traditionalist American lit prof liked his Faulkner adaptation, which surprised me quite a bit. I think for me the sketchiness of someone like Franco getting his degrees is not that he's going for them in the first instance; I'm sure if he devoted himself to that path, he could do quite well. But looking at the way he presents it, it seems like it's just another trophy to add to his "polymath collection". Additionally, the laxness grad schools gave him for taking classes was insane, to the point that I'm wondering how he actually did meaningfully deep graduate study.

Couldn't help but read the initial post in Glenn Beck's voice.

*waves wand* THREAD NECROMANCY Anyways, anyone else in the dramatic lit camp? Really interested to hear if and where any aspiring folks in this subfield have gotten accepted this season.

Turned down: Miami University (fully funded MA), Chicago MAPH, will turn down U of Iowa PhD if I end up off the waitlist. Accepted: UT-Austin English PhD Areas: Dramatic literature (particularly 20th and 21st century Anglo-American), philosophy and literature, 20th/21st century American, film (especially film noir and the nouvelle vague).

So, although money is an important concern, it's worth noting that, at least from what I've gathered from this posting and others, that your only real concern with UNC is the stipend. Otherwise, it has the advantage of being both your dream school and being close to family. The fact that there appears to be only one thing that's the source of the difficulty is somewhat telling. I'm surprised at how much you emphasize how terrible UNC's stipend is, because UT's doesn't seem like much either. Even though UT was at the top of my schools for research interests, it was on the low end for stipend money. So from what I'd gather UNC must be on the really low end. But while money is inescapably important, with grad school stipends it's a matter of margins in the long run, unless you have a sweet fellowship or grant. Unless the stipend is actually unlivable, given the average range of stipends one isn't likely to be able to either save money or have tons more to otherwise spend. This ain't a game for the big bucks, as we all know. At least with the places I was accepted to, the stipends that were more expensive also happened to correlate to places that are more expensive to live, so the difference in the end would have balanced out. That being said, I don't know the specific financials of your situation, so I could be entirely wrong here, and the money could actually amount to a substantial difference. Although I'd hate to lose a potential GC UT cohort member, I must agree with morristr: you should go where you both feel most comfortable, and where you feel like your best research will be done. I'm sure you'll get some great insight come your campus visits!

Seeing rejections up on the board like this one from UConn: "While your application presented many strong points, others were stronger."

I tend to draw a lot from all sorts of thinkers, such that there's not really one I would say is one I regularly go to. Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue left a big impact on me as an undergrad, though. And I will say that two thinkers, more than any other, are always on my mind, in one way or another: Robert Irwin (Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees is the most transformative text I've read for school thus far) David Hume