lifealive

I wouldn't read too much into it. It's not a terrible sign, but it's also not from the department. Sounds like you've made it onto some mailing list maintained by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. I've been rejected from a lot of things only to make it onto their mailing list. Annoying and a good reason to then go in and strengthen my filters.

No program is "easy" to get into, but many programs are more open to candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. My own program was one of these. I came from a nontraditional background (older than the average applicant [30 when I applied]) and not from an elite school. My program accepted me despite these "flaws" in my application, and they accept many candidates that are slightly older and hold less prestigious BAs. Four years later, I hold a prestigious postdoc. I'm so glad I decided to just go to the less elite program and work hard from there rather than applying and applying over and over again to get into my dream school. I feel I wouldn't have been able to have the opportunities I have now had I turned down this school with the thought that it wasn't good enough. But that's my personal take on things, YMMV.

I honestly don't think you need to do an MA, and doing one might not necessarily translate into acceptance. There's definitely a learning curve that goes along with all of this, so your applications next year will probably automatically be better. I also noticed that the programs you're applying to are all EXTREMELY selective. Like, none of these programs is easy to get into at all. If you apply again, you might consider looking beyond the top 20 or 30. There are a lot of good programs out there with solid placement rates, and sometimes it's better to take an offer from one of those than to apply over and over again. For me reapplying over and over again wasn't worth it--I just wanted to get started on my graduate degree. And I'm glad I did, because over two application cycles I never did get into the programs I really wanted, but I was still able to go to graduate school to study what I liked and publish. That said, it's still early in the admissions cycle, so you could still get some good news.

True, it does mean a potential loss for them, but I'm more sympathetic to the grad student hopefulls who shell out 80, 90, and sometimes 100 bucks to supposedly have an application reviewed when the committee has almost no intention of reviewing that application. It costs me nothing to apply to a job, but $100 application fee, for a student or underemployed person, is a loss of several hours' wages. I know that English departments are strapped--and I also recognize that admissions committees have the power to make decisions for whatever arbitrary reason that suits them on any particular day--but I think it's somewhat fraudulent to pass down the costs to a class of people that are even more marginalized. Anyway, I'll stop pontificating now. My point in ringing in here was just to help people see that rejections have nothing to do with your potential as a scholar because this process is a big black box. I was rejected from an overwhelming majority of programs I applied to--and twice from some of my favorite programs--and I still went on to do okay.

Without giving too many gory details: she inquired about the status of her application to discover she had not advanced beyond the first cut. Now, she had near perfect numbers (and ended up getting accepted to a few very good programs) ... so take a guess why they decided to not forward her application to readers. Was it "basic profile"? Did they already have too many applicants who had connections? Who knows. Maybe it was area of interest. And if that's the case, then these adcoms need to be more upfront if they're not taking applications for a certain area during a given year--like, don't bother applying if you're a medievalist, we already have too many, etc.

I have no problem sharing, but obviously I'll omit details. Basically, academia is no different from any other business. It actually might be slightly better. But there are still good old boy networks and systems of privilege. Almost everyone I know who got into a top program has a "back story"--an advisor who advocated for them, a connection, invaluable advice from someone on the inside. I have a friend whose statement of purpose was written for her by someone at her target program. (She was admitted, obviously.) I have another friend who discovered that her application was actually never even read at her dream program--despite the fact that she far surpassed all minimum standards regarding grades and test scores. Sometimes people do get lucky. I have certainly gotten lucky in my own career, especially regarding certain fellowships and other opportunities. But I find it very important--and humbling--to remember just how precarious success in this field can be. That's why I think it's just really necessary not to congratulate or beat yourself up too much about the outcome here. People who get in often talk about their writing samples as being the key to their success. No doubt this is true, but for every person who gets accepted, there are probably 15 or 20 who had equally compelling writing samples.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the "implied rejections" are almost always certain rejections. During my two years on the application market, during which I fielded eighteen applications and got fifteen rejections and a slim three acceptances total, I was almost never surprised. Well, okay, I was surprised once. But this program has a reputation of accepting people in waves. Other smaller programs do not typically do this, and it's much easier for them to notify everyone all at once. Moreover, if a program notifies both acceptees and waitlists at the same time, you can pretty much make peace with it and move on. The job market wiki follows the same rules, I'm finding. If you don't hear when other people get interview requests, you're probably never going to hear. This game is pretty rigged. The more familiar I become with academia's insides, the more I see that there is a lot of "insider trading" that goes on. Just have faith in yourself as a scholar and realize that this incredibly messy process has nothing to do with you personally.

I didn't mean to sound harsh about your style--obviously, this is the system that works best for you. and you are the one who gets to decide such things. So if polling your class works, more power to you. I do disagree that work and teaching shouldn't be separated. It's perhaps unfortunate that they are separate, but that's the way grad school is. Again, maybe this varies by program or even country, but you do not finish your dissertation and get a job by teaching. As a professor explained to me one time, you need to prioritize finishing your degree so that you can get that job and continue teaching. I've seen a lot of grad students fall by the way because they spent too much time on teaching (it's easy to do). But it's really not good for your long-term prospects. You shouldn't abandon your students to the wolves ... but get your degree. Just get it. If getting your seminar paper done means forgoing a special trip to campus because Jimmy couldn't make your scheduled office hours ... I hate to break it to Jimmy, but he's going to have to deal. I also want to bring another less-glamorous aspect into this--and that is that teaching and service commitments are often evaluated differently according to gender. Women in the academy regularly take on more service commitments and feel a lot of pressure to be more available to their students. As a result, women tend to get passed over for professional advancement (which requires research output). So, I would urge women to be especially vigilant by those hidden expectations about being more "accommodating" to students at the expense of their own research. Finally, I think that 8 am is a perfectly valid time to hold office hours. It might not be particularly appealing to undergrads, but 8 am is part of regular work hours. If someone wants to hold their office hours at 8 am, that's okay. Students are going to have to get up at 8 am anyway ... when they graduate and get jobs. My advisor holds very early office hours. I am not a morning person, but when it's important enough, I get up and go. Her undergrads do the same. 8 am is not 6 am or 10 pm. It is when the world is in the office. My only concern with holding office hours so early is that you are inevitably going to get a lot of students who will try to pin you into coming in other times especially to see them. And if you're a pushover like me, it's difficult to turn them down.

It's difficult to assess merit in such complex circumstances, but not impossible. Do the most brilliant people automatically find themselves in the top programs while the late-bloomers and duds find themselves at Ding Dong State? Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe some combination of things. But that's why I would rather see a study that takes into account the kinds of professionalization people do in graduate school--or, in other words, where and what they publish. Publication is a bit of an equalizer in that it's something you have to do on your own, and because reviewers can't see where you went to school. (I know this isn't true 100% of the time ... but yes, generally.) If people from less-prestigious programs with publications are getting passed over for Duke PhDs with no publications, with all other things being equal, then I'm going to have to do some side-eye. (And frankly, I do a lot of side-eye because I see it all the time.) Now, you can make the argument that it's possible for people at top programs to produce more research and publish because they have better resources, more time away from teaching, and more advisors who take their work seriously. In my own case, it was very difficult to get published because I had to teach so much--80 students a semester, summer teaching, no fellowships, and a very limited 5-year plan in which to complete coursework, pass exams, and write a dissertation. Publishing is the thing that takes a backseat with all of that. But I still managed. So I'd personally like to see a study that takes these kinds of efforts into account.

The authors actually address that in the appendix: One should be careful when interpreting the results in Tables 1 and 2; incomplete data and biased reporting may have resulted in overstatement of placement results into tenure-track positions in lower-ranked schools. For example, none of the thirty lowest-ranked or unranked graduate programs reported comprehensive recent placement results, and this lack of data may have made the placement results for tier 4 graduates seem better than they actually are. In addition, even if some universities in the lower tiers report their placement record, the universities would only publish the ones that hold tenure-track positions, or only those graduates with good placement results would update their current positions. The bias resulting from such reporting can give a false representation of the placement data as well. My methodology that includes placement within two years also results in a slightly more inflated placement rate overall than what the MLA data show. (I use this time frame because some schools did not publish the graduation year of students placed; thus, a number of students who obtained placement had been in the job market for one or two years, if not more.) Shoddy reporting no doubt, but this information is indeed extremely difficult to get. They were working from schools' websites, and programs are often very cagey with this information, listing the students who got placements but failing to list the numbers of those who did not or--as they point out--the number of students who dropped out along the way. I disagree again with the idea that 2008-2011 is too narrow to provide any real insight. Again, I would say that focusing on these years provides the most relevant and up-to-date data. If your program placed people in 1999, no one cares. If your program placed people in 2003, no one cares. You're only as good as your last placement--the recent stuff is what determines the currency of your degree. In real estate terms, we're talking comps. Where people in your sub-field were most recently placed is what determines your probable outcome. The tricky (and somewhat paradoxical chicken-egg) thing is that program prestige is relatively stable, even as your program's most recent placements determine its viability. Higher ranked programs tend to still place their students well enough during tough times and therefore continue to perpetuate their own success.

Ah yes, you're right. There's a reason my PhD is in English, not in math, and I did not realize the study was available freely online. However, in the article the authors of the study actually paint a bleaker picture: Of those in the top six programs, 12.4 percent land jobs at universities whose graduate programs are ranked among the top 28. For those in the bottom half of all doctoral programs (who collectively make up nearly half of new English Ph.D.s), only 0.21 percent land jobs at those same 28 universities. In the actual study, the authors point out that: The results, reported in Table 3, provide a similar picture and reinforce the earlier results. Top-six programs get almost 60 percent of their tenure-track professors from other top-six programs and over 90 percent from programs ranked 28 or higher. They get no professors from programs ranked below 63. The professors at programs ranked lower than 63 come from programs of various rankings, including 17 percent from top-six schools and 21 percent for programs ranked below 63. Since graduates from top-six programs comprise only 8 percent of the total graduates, whereas 46 percent of graduates are from schools ranked below 63, few graduates from programs ranked below 63 get jobs focused on academic research. I truly don't understand the rationale of wanting to open data up to include pre-Recession numbers. The discipline has not recovered at all since the Recession (it might actually be worse right now), so giving your potential grad students numbers from 2004 or 2005 is pretty misleading. I would actually recommend for anyone deciding between grad programs to look exclusively at the data from 2010 forward or so, and to ignore completely placements from the beginning of the 21st century. The post-Recession job market is the new normal. And even if it's not, better to go in thinking it is and be pleasantly surprised than the other way around. None of this is to say that I agree with the study's overall recommendations. The recommendation that graduate students of certain programs should "know their place" is insulting. Of course anyone who goes to graduate school should be prepared to take on non-R1 or non-TT jobs; that's just the reality. But telling people not to have certain (research) goals because of where they were accepted is pretty egregious. Moreover, it would be nice if someone would do a study with better controls--to figure out, say, if published graduate students from less-elite schools face the same long odds at a TT job as their non-published peers. The study's recommendation itself also seems a bit pointless, since it points out that graduates of non-elite programs are already getting jobs as generalists or non-academic editors; if they're already in these positions, then why the push to train them for the work they're already landing? In other words, why re-focus these programs when their graduates are already working in these fields? One could argue that their research-oriented work (writing a dissertation, publishing articles) has been valid preparation for non-academic work. Having said that, I honestly wish that people wouldn't dismiss studies like this out-of-hand simply because they reveal a bias, or because they don't clarify their terms as well as we would like. Even if the study is flawed, it speaks to hiring biases in this field that are very real and very unfortunate.

As a graduate student, your primary responsibility is TO YOU. You should hold your office hours when they are most convenient for you. This has nothing to do with which students are "worthy" of you. As an underpaid TA with limited funding and precious little time to get through school, you need to do what you need to do to get through your program. That doesn't mean shirking your duties or shafting your undergraduates, but it also means setting clear boundaries and making it clear that you don't offer your services on demand. There is a difference between being hostile to undergraduates and simply prioritizing your own work. You are not a bad teacher or a bad person if you prioritize your own work. No graduate student is called upon to be endlessly accommodating and giving while they are collecting a stipend and trying to get through school. When I was a graduate student, I would personally have never polled my students to ask them when I should hold my office hours. My time was precious, and my office hours unfolded on my terms. I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to hold hours when they were completely inconvenient for students, but I also made it clear that students needed to work around my schedule, not vice versa. If someone could absolutely not make my hours because they had an immovable commitment then yes, I would do my best to meet them at another time. But I certainly didn't tell them that they were the ones who had the power to set my schedule.

I'm also not clear on how tiers were divided, or how rhet/comp figured in, or why "foreign universities" was a category while liberal arts college and community college were lumped in the same category. There is a huge difference between landing a job at a community college and a liberal arts college--liberal arts jobs can be just as difficult to procure as jobs at R1 universities, and I wish that people would stop looking at liberal arts jobs as "teaching gigs." (Most these days have serious research requirements for tenure.) I would like to know how these determinations were made. However, I think the study still holds weight. If it is true that graduates of the top 6 programs make up only 8% of those getting PhDs, and yet they land 40% of TT jobs at schools with graduate programs, then indeed there is a conclusion here that can be made. I'm not exactly sure why it's a problem that the study is focusing on 2008-2011. These were crucial post-recession years. The problem cited most often with these types of studies is that they're lumping pre-recession data with Recession-era data, therefore obscuring the trouble that graduates are having right now. My university, for instance, had a pre-Recession placement rate of 80%. The numbers from the last few years, however, are far less rosy. But my alma mater is not as forthcoming with these numbers.

I think the data they collect shows the truth: that there is an enormous bias in hiring. (And don't kid yourself--the same bias runs through the admissions process. Where you got your BA is a great indicator of where you'll get into grad school.) What I find particularly galling are their conclusions--that lower ranked programs should prepare their students for a life of more remedial teaching (or other types of non-tenure track employment), since that's the absolute best that their grads can hope for. That just smells of classist idiocy. For one thing, everyone who goes to a lesser-ranked program already knows this. I don't know anyone at a less prestigious school that honestly thinks they have a crack at the national job market. These grads already are filling positions at regional and community colleges--often times their teaching experience prepares them for that already (they don't need extra help there), and often times they're actually sought after to do those jobs. Second of all, the authors of the study don't encourage any measures to combat this obvious elitism; they just accept it as a way of life, end of story. It's not. There's no reason why search committees should limit themselves to candidates coming only from the top 6 or 8 schools. It's ridiculous in this day and age, especially when publication and other measures of professionalization (often achieved by "blind" review and with no consideration of where a candidate is getting their degree) are where candidates can really set themselves apart. If someone at school #35 is publishing in top journals, then there's no reason why they can't hang at a top job. If someone from school #50 already has a book contract, there's no reason to think that they can't have an illustrious research career. Unfortunately, search committees rarely see it that way. I've seen a lot of job searches come down to two candidates--one from the top school in the country with a so-so record, and the other at a school in the 20s with an ACLS fellowship and a record that makes you blush. The job almost always goes to the candidate from the best school. Unfortunately, this kind of cronyism is all self-perpetuating. People from top schools get top jobs, and they think that coming from a top school is an indicator of talent. So then they hire people who go to the same schools that they did. And on and on. And even large state schools refuse to consider candidates from their own school's peer institutions, which sends a message to other schools not to hire their grads. For instance, if University of Minnesota only hires out of the top private programs and doesn't consider candidates from peer institutions, then what incentive does University of Maryland have to consider graduates from Minnesota? Etc. etc. More disturbing were some of the comments (always) where people on search committees admitted that they weed their applicant pool solely by looking at where people got their degree--not by dissertation topic or publication or teaching experience or any other thing that might indicate their abilities as a potential professor. But again, that's not surprising. It really should be unethical, but it's not. I post this here not to scare people away from applying to grad school--or from taking on that "Ivy or bust" attitude--even though I know that such an attitude is smart in today's climate. Really, I wish that people would stop perpetuating this elitism altogether. Again, I know that's not realistic, but I wish that people would recognize that grad students outside the top 6, 8, or even 20 schools are just as talented, and that the reason why someone didn't get into a top program is not because they're not as smart, but because they weren't as lucky, or because they weren't set up for that kind of success early on.

This isn't a terrible idea. However, know that if you schedule your office hours at a completely inconvenient time, students will regularly ask you to meet them at different times (usually with the excuse that they have a class during your office hours or an athletic practice). And unless you want to get evaluations that say you were completely unavailable to help outside of class (a KOD on evaluations), you will be meeting with them outside your normal office hours. And you will end up holding office hours at 8 AM and then meeting with students at 3 PM or something like that. And the more inconvenient your office hours, the more after-class chats you'll have to endure. I think it's just better to schedule your office hours for right after class. You're already on campus anyway.

No new information here, but it's nice to see that someone has finally spelled out with hard data what everyone has known for years: that the academic market is not a meritocracy, and that the name on your degree is the number one qualifier for certain kinds of jobs. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/08/economist-offers-critique-job-market-phds-english

If it makes you feel any better, my second quarter teaching was at 7:30 in the morning. 5 days a week. When we had to list our preferences for teaching, I put down on the sheet that I preferred not to teach at 7:30 in the morning. The director put me at 7:30 in the morning. The reason? Because I had expressed a desire not to.

I was wondering about the same issue. As an Americanist, I've also read different sides of the classroom n-word debate. One side says that the word is traumatizing and dehumanizing, and we should avoid using it if possible; the other side says that avoiding it is a kind of erasure--or, worse, a kind of fetishization of the word. (There are, of course, more than just these two sides; I am simplifying for the sake of brevity). I personally don't use it, even when teaching 19th-century American literature. I am uncomfortable with it and the pain it has caused. However, I sometimes wonder if my own "comfort" (and all the privilege that connotes) is a valid enough reason to avoid confronting a long, ugly history that is very much with us today.

Take whichever class you want and whichever you think will be more interesting and relevant to you and your goals. To be very honest, I don't think that coursework was all that important ... to a point. Yeah, certain classes were really instrumental in filling the gaps in my own sub-field. But the classes that were unrelated to my sub-field? I just don't even remember them now. I don't even remember what I wrote seminar papers about. Some of them felt a lot like busywork. I could never credibly say that I could teach X simply because I took a class five years ago in X. And yeah, in an ideal world, your seminar papers could be used to lay the groundwork for dissertation chapters, but this didn't happen for me at all. I ended up doing my dissertation on a completely different topic, and I ended up focusing on works that I hadn't even put on my exam list. Three or four of the authors I focused on didn't show up at all in my coursework or exams. One thing I really do regret, though, is not taking a class in digital humanities. One was offered my first year and I switched out of it. Bad, bad.

Don't stress about your CV. It's probably the least important aspect of your application. Just list your degrees and thesis title, teaching experience (or other work experience), awards, and service that pertains to academia (chairing a committee at your grad school, for instance, or helping to bring speakers to campus). You might also list the seminars you've taken. For applicants, CV is not a big deal.

Absolutely not. My friend poured coffee for a year and got into Harvard. I ran a non-profit and didn't get into any of my top choices. They honestly don't care. Unless you've got *amazing* work experience that intriguingly intersects with your research (and you can write about in an SOP in a way that doesn't sound hokey or forced), it really won't make any difference.

You're overthinking the process. Adcoms really don't care what you did during your time away from the university. In other words, they don't care if you were running a successful business or working at Starbucks or writing serious pieces of journalism or saving whales. None of that will affect your application for better or worse. To be honest with you, they probably won't even notice what you did. Taking two years off is no big deal either. Your degree will still be considered "fresh." When more than 5 years go by, then things get tricky. The field often changes in five years, making your research less up to date. Columbia even recommends that people who have been out of school for 5 years should take additional classes to produce up-to-date research and get recent letters of recommendation. But two years is considered a short span of time.

I don't know which schools your recommender was telling you to slash, but it isn't necessarily true that prestigious degree = a job. People with elite degrees are regularly shut out of jobs where their degrees are considered too elite. Right now, there are a few schools in my field conducting interviews, and the candidates I've seen so far are from schools ranked #60+. It honestly depends on how the job market shakes down in any particular year. One year might have jobs at top R1s and SLACs, and they'll mostly be interested in people from top schools. Another year might see a lot of jobs open up at smaller regional colleges or branch campuses, and they probably won't be bringing Ivy League grads to do campus interviews. In this field, like generally hires like. And the job market is currently so unpredictable that you never know what kind of job openings you're going to get in any particular year.

It's interesting; the year I applied, people were thrilled to get into Florida or UMass-Amherst or something thereabouts. Now I don't see too many of these schools on people's lists here. I don't know if that's because of the way the job market has tightened up or because people who seek out places like Grad Cafe are generally very motivated. But I would encourage people to look beyond the top 20 or 30 or 40. Had I refused to go outside of the top 20, I wouldn't have gone to graduate school at all--or at least not without several rounds of applications. I'm glad I decided to take the chance and go to the program that accepted me rather than apply multiple times to get into my top school. I know someone who applied three years in a row. Eventually they got into their dream program, but they're still slogging through grad school. Anyway, I have recently met people who go to University of Kentucky and University of North Carolina Greensboro, and they've really enjoyed their programs.

I definitely agree with you; I just think that an F in a grad class might trump even the best stats simply because it is an F in a grad class. Like, even if your numbers are otherwise perfect and your GPA is high (which might not be mathematically possible, as you pointed out), an F in graduate-level coursework is still a rather urgent matter that might undermine other aspects of a really-good application. So that's the point that I wasn't expressing all that well: these programs don't simply put your numbers on a spreadsheet and slash everyone who doesn't make the cut. They do look at things like your transcript and letters of recommendation too. It's hard to get anything by them, especially when the applicant pool is so competitive these days. I was responding to the idea that you could "offset" an F by working really hard on other aspects of the application. I'm not so optimistic that that's possible. And I'm also not sure if GPA really shakes down by "top 20" or "top 50" groupings. It's just impossible to tell these days what a "top 20" or "top 50" GPA looks like. I'm guessing there really isn't much difference. (All major programs are competitive.) Also, your grad GPA is held to a much higher standard than your undergrad GPA, if only for the fact that you're supposed to be really good at English at this stage.