Shaky Premise

This is probably a topic for another thread (if it doesn't have one already), but are there resources you're using to find out about these placement rates? I realize some schools post this information and others don't; others offer up a vague list of schools where they've placed people but don't give any specific information about when or who. Where might I look for more information?

Excellent! Thank you for the update.

Yes, I applied to ASU too, but I haven't heard anything from them. I saw that one person was accepted by telephone a while back, but I'm assuming it was either an internal candidate or someone who's been offered a fellowship. Now that Indiana has sent out acceptances (and I didn't get one!), ASU is the last school I'm waiting to hear back from. It shouldn't be much longer now before this whole business is over once and for all.

I think it depends entirely on what your goals are. If your plan is to eventually teach at a top 50 university, then you should probably apply primarily to those top-tier schools you mentioned. The vast majority of positions at such places are occupied by people who earned their PhDs at top 20 universities. If you would be comfortable teaching at a smaller, lesser-known university or satellite campus, a liberal arts college, or a community college, then you should absolutely apply to any university with faculty members, programs, and resources that fit your interests. However, you also want to consider how realistic your goals are (this has NOTHING to do with the stats you listed by the way; your writing sample and SoP are going to factor most heavily, as I'm sure you know). Keep in mind that top 20 schools receive applications from every English major with a pulse, including those who have 4.0 GPAs from top-tier universities, soaring GRE scores, *and* good writing samples. But if your long-term goal is to teach at a top university, you may as well throw your hat in and see what happens. You should also be prepared for the possibility of coming up 0/10 or 0/15. "Competitive" is not a strong enough word to describe these schools. I always feel bad when I hear from people who are crushed by their rejections, but I can't help but wonder why they *only* applied to top 20 schools. Cruisin' for a bruisin'. If you fall into the group of folks who would be comfortable teaching at a smaller and/or less prestigious university or community college, your best bet is to apply broadly. Sure, pick out a few top 20 programs that *really* fit your interests, make your SoPs for those universities as strong as they can be, and let 'er rip. There's a fair enough chance you've wasted the $60 to $100 application fees, but what is that in the long run? And then send out the rest of your applications to universities that aren't maybe as highly regarded but that have people you'd like to work with and programs that will help you to succeed. I followed this method this year, and, as you can see from my results, if I had only applied to the top 20 programs, I would be in a sad way right now. But the universities I've been accepted to have very strong faculty members and amazing programs for my particular field of interest, so I'm ecstatic about the results. When I finish my PhD I might not have the same opportunities in front of me that someone with an Ivy League PhD would, but I believe that any one of these schools will provide me with the resources to become a fine instructor and scholar so that there will be opportunities in my field that I have a realistic shot at taking advantage of. The key, I think, is to be realistic about your goals and to soberly decide where you would be happiest down the road.

Yes, it's on the apply yourself page. If you've been rejected, the admission decision will show up *below* the message about your status, at the very bottom of the page. If I remember correctly, it was in a red font. Emergency, you've been rejected! And I definitely wouldn't be paranoid. It seems to me they're moving through the rejections slowly but surely. And if you don't hear anything in the next day or so, you might have made a wait list. No reason to panic.

Sure enough, the decision has shown up on the website. I didn't receive an email prompting me to check, although I assume I will at some point. Those of you who are still waiting might check again. The decision link is at the very bottom, under the verification of your application materials. This is not a surprise at all, and I'm glad to have closure! Good luck to those of you who got in!

Just so's you all know, I haven't received any word yet either, which would lead me to agree with madhousefluent's "too many of us to still be in the running" assessment. I'm guessing there's *some* method behind the madness. Then again I was rejected by UT-Austin a full two weeks before anyone else was (I think it was about 15 seconds after I submitted my application), so maybe some of these schools determine rejections in rounds. Or maybe they're just taking handfulls of rejections, sending off the bad news emails, taking a coffee break, and then repeating the process. I've heard they had loads of applications this year, so it's bound to take time to get back to everyone. I'm anticipating that the inevitable will arrive later this evening or early tomorrow...

Thank you very much for the information! Fordham appears to be a quirky place in a lot of respects (Graduate Assistants work for a good chunk of the Christmas Break and all of Spring Break, even when classes are out?), but the moving to the city part is still the most formidable. I've since found more information about housing via the Fordham website, but I thank you for adding your perspective. Big decisions ahead...

I would have to second (or is it third?) that motion. I heard long ago that UVA had already accepted an applicant who focused on the Anglo-Saxon period, but I was holding out to the last. Now that another round of acceptances has seemingly gone out, I'm fairly certain the jig is up! Congrats to those who got in; I'm sure you'll prosper in Charlottesville!

Any chance of reviving this thread? I notice the New York City thread is pretty active, but it seems to be directed in the main to those considering NYU and Columbia. I've just been admitted to the English PhD program at Fordham and would love to attend. My biggest concerns are being able to survive on the stipend, finding a decent enough place to live, and the general transistion from the south to the northeast. Where do Fordham's grad students generally live? Is it insane to consider bringing a vehicle? I'm admittedly entirely unfamiliar with NYC, so really any information would be helpful.

These two posts represent *exactly* my path to graduate school in English, following an undergraduate degree in a completely different field. Some schools (like the one I attended) have programs specifically designed to transition non-English majors into the graduate program in English. You'll take a number of upper-division English courses to "level" your record; along the way you post high grades, establish relationships with faculty members, and improve your writing and interpretive skills. In the end you've got proof that you can succeed in upper-division English courses, willing recommenders, and, ideally, a solid writing sample culled from one of the courses you took. It certainly can be done; it just takes time and effort.

Thank you for the congrats! I'm overjoyed...I was accepted to both programs on the same day (UT-Knoxville, to clarify)! I assume from your post that you've worked with Dr. Treharne? I'm already very much torn between these two programs, so any insider info about the faculty or program at FSU would be most welcome.

This is a tricky subject. I hold an MA, so this topic is one that I've researched pretty thoroughly. Like so many other aspects of the application process, the value of an MA varies widely from school to school. Some programs, like Ohio State, pretty much require that you have an MA in hand to be seriously considered for the PhD program. Others like Virginia and Indiana do accept applicants who have earned MAs but seem to hold such students' application packages to a much higher standard than the others (As they should! Two years of extra work is considerable!). Further, they generally accept far fewer applicants from the MA pool than from the BA pool. I doubt many programs view students who hold MAs as "those who couldn't cut it in a PhD program," but they probably do want to be able to clearly see the advances you've made while earning the degree. Did you work on foreign languages? Did you hone in on your research interests more so than you had as an undergrad? Do you present yourself as someone who's already immersed in the scholarship? Basically you're not so much proving your potential as a scholar (as those do who are moving directly from the BA to the PhD) as you are proving that you already know what being a graduate student is about and already have a pretty good handle on the discourse and the requirements. In sum, I don't see it as a handicap at all, but substantially more is expected of you. Finally, I've known loads of people who completed their MAs at different universities than they did their PhDs, including many if not most of my professors, so doing so can't be *too* detrimental. Of course the more substantial downside is that very few (if any) schools will allow all of the coursework you completed for your MA to count towards your PhD. Which equals more time in graduate school. That's why for many of us, the best possible outcome is continuing on at the programs where we earned our MAs.

Yes, it does seem a bit early to be giving up hope altogether! Even if UVA has made all of their initial offers, I'm almost positive they haven't disclosed any information about their wait list. Keep in mind that such lists are a BIG part of the process. Until you receive an official rejection, or at the very least see that the school your waiting on has notified its wait-listers (as Chicago has), it's far too early to count yourself out. Of course I do understand your take; it's much easier to just give up and count on the rejection than to hold out hope, only to catch the bad news later. In the immortal words of Lloyd Dobler, "If you start out depressed, everything's kind of a pleasant surprise."

While I tend to agree and generally have very little interest in the "stats" of the folks that have been accepted, I can't help but wonder how the numbers are actually weighted. When I hear that schools are receiving anywhere from 300 to *700* application packages, I can't help but guess that a certain percentage of "low-stats" packages are tossed away outright. Do the committees really closely read 500 or more writing samples at 15 to 20 pages a pop? I guess it's possible, but it doesn't seem all that likely. On the other hand, I have a friend who was accepted into a top 50 school with full funding in spite of an undergraduate GPA below 2.5 and only modest GRE scores. Who knows?!? I'm not convinced that adcoms don't just wad the applications up, toss them into a hopper, and make their decisions lottery-style. It would certainly explain some of the people I've met in graduate school...

For those of you who applied to Florida State, I'm assuming you'll receive an email from Tara Stamm about the admission decision timeline, as I did this afternoon. I just wanted to post this little note, on the offhand chance that some of you check this forum before you check your email, to save you the shock of stumbling upon an email entitled "Admission status" and having your heart rate quadruple before realizing that the message does not contain any information on your decision, just information about the decision timeline. I found the update to be VERY thoughtful (and unprecedented), but I must admit that it momentarily frazzled me, as any message from a sender with a .edu suffix does these days. I would save you all the undue anxiety!

I agree with the others. If I had my way, I'd know about every single result from every single school I applied to the minute it came down the line. I also received an unusually early decision (alas, a rejection!) from a different school, and I think it's best to get it up on the results page as soon as possible. Doing so lets all of us know that decisions ARE being made, one way or the other, and that these adcoms aren't deliberately sitting on our applications, howling in glee as we squirm, as I sometimes fancy. For me, the deafening silence is infinitely worse than the rejection. Let the ax fall already! And like the others, I'm overjoyed to find out that people are being accepted to the schools I've applied to. Undoubtedly the people receiving the admits put in at least as much work as I did to get there, and I'm generally happy to see hard work pay off, even if it isn't my own. Congratulations!

Fair enough. I guess all I really meant to say (pardon the longwindedness) is that determining who these people you seem to so thoroughly detest actually are is difficult, if not impossible. As you conceded, even adcoms can't sniff them out. And more likely than not, they don't know themselves! Everyone who enters a PhD program intends to finish it. I seriously doubt the people you're trying to smoke out believe they're in it for the wrong reasons or believe they're wasting resources, and they probably couldn't be convinced to give up the chase anyway, particularly if they have professors agreeing to write recommendations for them (which they must). In my opinion, those who can assemble strong enough application packages to warrant admits must have *some* clue as to what they're on about. And if they're slick enough to fake their way in, more power to them. It's a rigorous process even for those of us who are 100% solid on our research goals and long-term plans. I'm just not sure what it boots to gauge our fellows' motivations and ambitions and to wonder if they have any business applying. Some applicants who are applying for all the right reasons today might drop out two years from now for any number of good or bad reasons. And the biggest bonehead in the room who has no idea what grad school is about but somehow finds an admit in his inbox may well develop into a top-flight scholar over the next five years.

I'm not really interested in getting in the middle of this exceedingly strange (to my ears!) debate, but I would caution against attempting to sum up the motivations and intentions of others. In my experience, it's difficult to know what people's endgames are, even when they appear to be transparent. And judging who these characters are that "consume funding that would have been better spent on other people" seems to be a very tricky business, perhaps best left up to the admissions committees, don't you think? They put a lot of time into sorting out those people who can hack it from those who most likely can't, and I'd like to think they make the right call most of the time. I'd also wager that most successful scholars went into graduate school looking to further research goals AND to attain cultural capital. In my experience, very few people wander into doctoral programs for lack of anything better to do and even fewer do so because they think earning a PhD will make them appear intellectual! At the same time, I've never met a college professor who didn't obviously pride him/herself on coming across as extremely intelligent; the cultural capital attached to earning a doctoral degree is attractive to every aspiring grad student, and denying it strikes me as naive. But in the end, grad school is basically extended on-the-job training towards becoming a teacher/scholar, not some sort of abstract, outdated humanist program towards becoming "cultured." Surely the vast majority of folks who see it as the latter would have a hard time garnering recommendations and an even harder time putting together a coherent statement of purpose.

Yeah, I contacted the grad secretary before I applied and was given an incredibly ambiguous answer about my chances of getting in as a Texas-Ex ("We encourage our undergraduates to do their graduate work elsewhere...but we'll take your application fee!"). But I absolutely love Austin and thought the program was a good fit for me, so I gave it a shot. And I'm an old-timer; I got my undergrad degree at UT way back in 2003, and my major was in a completely different field than English. I thought the extended absence and the intervening focus-change and degree might give me a better chance of getting in, but it was not to be!

I'm the lone reject! And I would definitely be emboldened that you haven't received an email. In the past they've dispensed with the rejects first and then moved on to the admits and the wait-listers (the opposite of most universities, but Texas is its own animal). Of course there is the possibility that my application package was so poor that they felt they had to get it out of the room before it contaminated the others! Actually, I received my undergraduate degree from UT-Austin, and though I completed an MA elsewhere, I think they might still be reluctant to admit those of us who did our undergraduate work there to a second degree plan. That might explain my seemingly premature notification (at least I hope!). Also, the email was boilerplate and suggested that they received applications from over 300 "qualified applicants," and will be offering 20 positions. After lowering that number to around 299 applicants with my dismissal, I'd say you guys still have a good chance. Good luck to you all...and Hook 'Em! I'm lifelong burnt orange even if they don't want me anymore!

Nah, from the info posted about the funding situation, it looks like they'll be putting you guys right to work. And given that grad students are the cheapest available labor, I have a feeling your funding would be the last thing to go. Your workload might go up, but you'll be paid! Also, I would be surprised if the tenure-track faculty are going anywhere. Berkeley prides itself on having superstars at the top, and I feel certain they'll do whatever it takes to keep those folks happy. A hiring freeze might be in order (if it isn't already), and more adjuncts will probably be brought in to take care of undergraduate courses, but the grad students will continue to work with top-flight faculty members. A school's reputation is built in large part by the PhDs they churn out, so you're probably the safest person on campus. Congratulations to all of you who got in! Part of me really wanted to be a part of the program, but another part wonders if I would've been a good fit out west anyway...

I wouldn't stress out too much about a 640 if I were you. That's not a bad score at all! I've known several people with subject scores WELL below 640 who were admitted to very good programs. As ever, your writing sample and statement of purpose are what really matter, but beyond that, a 640 isn't going to hurt your application package much, if at all. Berkeley's English Depatment indicates on its website that the average score of students they admit to the PhD program is 650. I can't imagine many schools having standards that are significantly higher.

Although I have no 'insider' knowledge, I would not take the silence as a rejection. My application status still reads 'academic review,' and I'm fairly certain it's because OSU hasn't finalized their decisions. Looking at the results from previous years, it seems they don't make all their offers at the same time. Plus I know from experience that your application status will change to a transparent rejection if you don't get in. At the very least it will read 'converted' to indicate that a decision has been made; you won't have to dig around to find out that you didn't make the cut. But I wouldn't give up hope just yet. They've got a huge program, as I'm sure you know, so I'm nearly certain more admits are on the way!

I HIGHLY recommend participating in one of the summer Latin programs for all of you looking to work on or improve your Latin. The more intensive the program, the better. Chipping away at the stone with a course here and an independent study there is extremely difficult. I tried to learn Latin that way and constantly found myself lapsing and having to relearn the fundamentals. I finally gave in and participated in a summer program last year, and I've got the language drilled into my brain now. Of course you won't be able to make huge strides in learning vocabulary with these programs (not enough time), but you WILL learn the grammar and morphology and probably pick up valuable tips on how to deal with tricky/unusual stuff. With the help of a Latin-English dictionary, you'll be able to translate Latin fairly well. Also, many of these programs do lead up to taking and (ideally!) passing the Toronto MA-level exam. I'm pretty sure most medievalists, whether English or History folks, will want to or have to have that exam under their belts, if not the PhD-level exam. I'm sure the best way to learn Latin is to work at it for years and years, starting as an undergrad, but for those of us who didn't think that far ahead, the summer programs are quite good!