woolfie

I love your signature.

In my signature for the schools, and I'm applying for early American (1600-1865) literature.

All of the above is sound advice, so I'll only add my two bits briefly:

1. The Chronicle of Higher Ed. has a useful list of tips, here: http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Write-a-Statement-of/45133/

2. Don't get bogged down in a "lack of teaching experience." Remember, you have been in classrooms for years, and one approach to take to this is to consider the things that do and do not work for you as a student. Ask yourself what your professors and teachers have done that really worked well for you or your class as a whole. Why? How would you reproduce those (in a discussion course? In a larger lecture?). Could you improve on them? What absolutely flopped? How would you change it/fix it/avoid it? How have your experiences as a student shaped your idea of the role of the teacher in the classroom? Be concrete--if you want to "teach critical thinking," what would that look like in terms of assignments, the ratio of student- to teacher-generated prompts, discussion topics, feedback, etc? If you want "students to take responsibility for their learning/the material" does that mean you give flexible deadlines? Does it mean they lead discussion (even if they sometimes do it with less depth than you would have)? What about large lectures (keep in mind your audience--a small liberal arts school might involve different teaching needs or expectations than a larger school)?

Yes, this statement is about what you as a teacher will bring to the class, but it's also about how you expect your students to respond to that philosophy--don't be afraid to include your hypothetical class, and don't feel like you lack experience. Standing up in front of the room is a *different* experience and involves a lot of troubleshooting, but the adcomm isn't looking for anyone spotless right out of the gate. They want someone who's given serious thought to how a distinct set of values might affect the day-today experience of learning and who's willing to grow as a teacher.

I love your signature.

"Just how much do they need to align" and "What if they don't align" don't seem like the same question.

"Just how much do they need to align" and "What if they don't align" don't seem like the same question.

A related question is: just how much do the writing sample and SOP have to align? The writing sample I'd like to use (because it's my best work) is on Milton, and in my SOP I discuss my (growing) interest in early modern lit., but also say that my primary focus is on Romanticism (although I'm considering tweaking this to suggest that I'm equally interested in both). So this presents two problems: 1) Is it a problem that my writing sample does not discuss Romanticism, when it is my stated area of interest; and, perhaps more seriously, 2) Is it problematic to claim that you have two distinct subjects of interest (while at the same time being quite specific about your interest in at least one of those subjects). Any thoughts?

I've been talking to a lot of MA students I know here, and it seems to be unanimous that they all got rejected from PhD programs without any graduate experience. Now they are all reapplying with MAs and I'm competing with them. I feel like there is no chance of getting in. Thoughts? I've been working on applications for years, and now I can see why I got rejected last year and I feel like my project is so much better outlined this year. Though I can't but feel it's hopeless as I'm competing with people who will inevitably have more experience than me. Do you think that MA holders and BA holders are judged basically on the same level?

Thousands and thousands and thousands of applicants before you have done it just fine.

Are you really *that special*, that YOU are the ONE person who can't be compressed into 500 words? If you really do think you are that Special Snowflake, those 300 extra words better be damn good.

(The upside is, those same thousands and thousands and thousands of applicants have complained about it bitterly, too. )

Can anyone help me make sense of the new NRC rankings for English programs? More importantly, can anyone tell me if these rankings are worth paying attention to?

I guess I'm mainly looking here: http://graduate-scho...______________U

and here: http://chronicle.com...English/124728/

I guess I'm just utterly mystified. I know that the US News list we've been going off of for years has a weakness for "big names" and undergraduate reputation, but I'm pretty surprised by some of these results. I never thought I'd see a world where University of Kentucky and Arizona State are considered better than Cornell and Chicago, and where UConn is considered better than JHU and Duke. (I'm not knocking those programs. I'm just saying.) Also, U.S. News favorite Berkeley's so low-ranked it might as well just pack it in (it's now behind Oklahoma. I didn't even know Oklahoma had a PhD program). What's going on here? How important is this list when deciding to apply to programs? When on the job market?

I would just like to point out something that no one has mentioned. The "people" reading your GRE AW essay are actually a person and an "e-rater®," i.e. a computer. From the ETS website:


The essay score is assigned by a trained reader, using a 6-point holistic scale. The essay response is then reviewed by e-rater®, a computerized program developed by ETS, which is being used to monitor the human reader. If the e-rater evaluation and the human score agree, the human score is used as the final score. If they disagree by a certain amount, a second human score is obtained, and the final score is the average of the two human scores.

http://www.ets.org/gre/institutions/scores/how/ This is all to say that one person glances at your essay, then a computer glances at your essay to confirm the score. As an instructor who has had to grade mountains of freshman comp essays for department-wide semester assessments, I can tell you that the "6-point holistic scale" is basically a snap judgment system for categorizing the masses. You do not "read" essays, you look at them, keeping an eye out for key requirements which include (in this order) 1.) Word count, 2.) Organization, and 3.) Coherency (sentence structures that are complex but not too complex are best). If the human reader is using a programmed approach to scoring your essay, you can bet the e-rater® isn't mulling over your thoughts with a glass of merlot.

I paid for that silly ETS ScoreItNow! http://www.ets.org/gre/general/prepare/scoreitnow online writing practice service (which is graded only by an e-rater®-- no homo sapiens involved) and it did help me in that that it drilled into my head the fact that in evaluating my essay, no one would be agonizing over my words, so why should I? In a nutshell, the higher the word count, the higher the score. A few other things, like organization and sentence structure, can hurt or help you, but not as much as you’d think. As for creativity, razor-sharp wit, and scholarly incisiveness, they’ll get about as much appreciation as a great novel at a NASCAR rally. I know it’s not a pleasant reality, but there you have it.

Indeed I do, my sister did American Studies for undergrad so I've stolen hers - but, I haven't had a chance to really look through it yet, what with my job, my MA thesis and the normal GRE to study for, bleurgh. I got a pretty good score on the practice test, so I'm not overly worried. It really is the American Lit' I need to learn, even if all that entails is learning a bunch of names and dates and vague stylistic badges so that I can guess with slightly greater accuracy.

Part of the reason I want to come and do my PhD in the states is to get greater exposure to American Lit' - it's just not on the radar here (except in American Studies departments and a few progressively integrative English departments) but, frankly, why should it be? I've had a fantastic grounding in British Literature, and then continental theory (esp. psychoanalysis) through my MA, I'm hoping a PhD in the States will broaden my knowledge base and really round me out, making me more attractive come employment time.

Just rejected a spot for the MA at Kent State, if anybody cares

Hmmm, I'm not sure what that means. If it helps, I was notified of my BC waitlist spot at the end of February and they told me it was a short waitlist. I've seen others post BC rejections on the results board; however, so maybe they are waiting to see what happens with the current waitlisters before deciding on your app? I should also mention that I'm talking about the PhD program; I'm not sure whether they have started notifying people on the MA waitlist yet.

If it's any consolation, I'm still waiting on schools too (Penn State, University of New Hampshire, and Northeastern). I propose a new law that states all applicants who have not received a decision by April 14th be awarded a full refund of their application fee and additional fees for pain and suffering.

Goodluck!

English PhD, University of Virginia.

I didn't have anywhere to decline, so, uh, there.

Many programs have brief profiles of their current grad students online; usually that would include previous degrees. You could skim the students' profiles from schools in which you are interested to see how many have an MA from another school.

Also, just as Pamphilia noted the prevalence of MAs among comp lit people, I think it may also vary by time period--medievalists, in particular, often have a master's degree, due to language training and interdisciplinary background.

I just thought it was a funny picture. I didn't say "look what I've never done."

I just thought it was a funny picture. I didn't say "look what I've never done."

I hope he brings his pillow.

R

Fair enough, but are strong recommendations and a polished writing sample worth $40,000? If money is no object, maybe. But very few people can afford to pay that much for a one-year master's degree. I, along with everyone else in the world, was admitted to the MAPH, and I received a frankly insulting email telling me that I should choose the MAPH because a Ph.D. program would offer me "no reasonable hope of a future." Because taking out $40,000 in loans for a terminal MA would promise me a brilliant future.

Luckily, I had three Ph.D. acceptances, so I was never tempted to take Chicago up on an offer that seemed more like a slap in the face. I still respect the U of C and its English department, but the MAPH business left a bad taste in my mouth. Go if you can afford it, I suppose, but it seems like a bad idea otherwise.

I spent the past two years living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan, and I second all the wonderful things people have to say about both. I've only spent a few days in Chapel Hill, but I loved that area as well. Something to think about that people haven't mentioned thus far is how the urban vs. college town setting changes the campus culture and students' relationship to campus. I'm engaging in some generalizations as I make the following statements, but these thoughts are based on direct observation. By and large, students at the New York schools are spread out all over the city in all directions, and thus, their grad school experience becomes more like any job: they commute to campus, often according to a particular schedule, and usually have a social life that exists largely outside the program and is often based on previous ties to the city. In a place like Chapel Hill, students are more likely to have moved to that location specifically to attend grad school (and so are looking for community), and people usually live in close enough range to campus to spend more time in its environs. In Chapel Hill, you're likely to run into your peers on the street, at the grocery store, etc.; in New York, such sightings will be rare.

When I was making my decision, I knew that even though I loved New York, there would be too many distractions--the food! the plays! the parks! the friends!--to make it productive for me as a student. Not to mention, I had nightmare visions of hauling a stack of library books and a gallon of milk up the stairs of what would inevitably be a fifth floor walk-up. I also need silence to do productive writing, and that's much harder to come by in the city. I chose to go to school in a college town because I wanted grad school to feel more like a lifestyle than a job. I know many, many people who have the opposite preference, though, and would thrive in the environments that I would find difficult to study in.