Christian O.

This thread kind of sunk, but there must be some more folks heading to UD in the Fall. Just a few more weeks of anticipation, anxiety, and excitement now.

Salve Pluto! It's Neptune. I see you frequent this site too!

I'm going to be moving down there, most definitely. How about you?

Out of the ones not in the "Top 10 Medieval/Renaissance" (pretty big difference) on the USNWR, WUSTL has impressive placements.

I'll be attending for English. They seem to be really good about giving funding and teaching assistantships to all their students, even MAs, which is a good sign for the future of the school, I think. It's also a beautiful campus. I haven't run into many others on this board who are going there, however.

This might be because U of Maryland only accepted students with MAs to their PhD program this year. Not sure about that though. This was the note on their site for this year: please note: Applicants to the PhD program for fall 2010 enrollment must have an MA already in hand, or be positioned to complete an MA before fall 2010. Also, the MFA program is accepting applications for fall 2010.

I haven't seen much talk about this program on these boards. I recently accepted an offer to go there (funded MA) and am really looking forward to working with Julian Yates or Kristen Poole. While I am an Early Modernist, I am also very into textual studies/material culture and it looks like a great place for that type of research. Other interesting faculty are Ed Larkin and Jean Pfaelzer (whose edition of feminist utopia, Mizora, by Lane I just read for my undergrad senior seminar). Anyway, I didn't get a chance to go to the recruitment weekend, as I was accepted last minute, so I was looking for others who attend/will be attending or who know anything interesting about the program.

I have been reading this thread as if you've all been talking with the ghost of Mr. Chesterton himself. Thanks for the great read.

Just accepted an offer at University of Delaware.

I turned down a fully funded spot/TAship at Lehigh a few days ago.

J, are you going to Lehigh? Would you mind if I PM'd you if so?

Is the OSU website outdated? I didn't apply there because of what I read. here's the section that I read: "Admission to the Ph.D. program requires an M.A. degree in English from an accredited university, a G.P.A. of 3.6 or higher in previous graduate work, and a GRE score of 600 or better on the verbal and at least 4.5 on the analytical writing portions of the General test."

Just a few of the schools I've come across that require an MA in-hand to enter their PhD program: Ohio State, Purdue, Michigan State, U of Maryland I don't have an MA, but will be getting one in Fall 2010, luckily with a teaching assistantship.

I attended two undergraduate schools, transferring after two years, and I would say that at the smaller, "tier 3" school I went to, there was a healthy mix of professors produced at Ivies, "top 20 research universities," and lower ranked schools like Temple, Syracuse, Michigan State, Texas Tech, etc. At the big "public ivy," it was mostly professors from top 20 schools. I think what tends to get overlooked is how good YOU are. The best professors I've had are those who didn't come out of graduate school embittered and cynical, as many young scholars do, but who are still passionate about pedagogy and scholarship, whether they are more focused on one over the other or not. If you are a great scholar, you will be wanted somewhere. If your scholarly work is not the greatest but still pretty good, yet you are a fantastic teacher, you will most likely be wanted somewhere. However, obviously if you are good at neither and you aren't still ambitious after six or seven years of literature, you may just drift away from academia. At my small, state college there were professors from WashU, UPenn, and Rutgers who are completely dedicated to that school, it's principles, and it's community and who don't ever seem to plan on leaving. There was also a young prominent PhD (in New Media Studies) who was poached by a large top-20 California school after teaching there for just one year, and the Literature department, just as lifealive said, decided to look for someone who was interested in teaching at a college which allows its professors a great amount of freedom as far as syllabi and course topics. In essence, someone who would stick around. What I really want to say is that people are people and we are not just entering factories with better or worse processes for pumping out automatons who will slide into the appropriately ranked tenure tracks. Randall Fuller is one of the most prominent scholars in 19th Century American Literature and attended Washington University in St. Louis (a program ranked in the 30s). There are Ivy league PhDs teaching at tiny unnamed programs across the country who care deeply about pedagogy over scholarship. And yes, there are a lot of young PhDs from lesser known programs who have to take a job in editing or a non-profit or even in high schools, especially in this economy. But you know yourself and your own skills and ambitions. This is a field where people are valued for those skills and if you are damned good at what you do, the name on your degree will matter, but you will be able to find a place that values your abilities. Go to the program where you think YOU can do good work, not a program that you see as a means to an end. I have tried to always remember what one of my letter-writers told me when I first told him I wanted to do this with my life, that it's very important to pick the schools with the people, the environment, and the resources so that even if you drop to your "safety" school, it's still a place where YOU can do good work and thrive.

I know it's not the strongest or most "highly ranked" school, but I know U of Delaware is a solid school, especially in 18th century / Colonial American literature.