RydraWong

Congrats to all who've heard good news lately! And to those who are still waiting, hang in there because it's still early and I believe in all of you! My first news last year was a rejection from Duke, which pretty much ruined my day and a few days after that but I got an acceptance from Wisconsin shortly after the Duke rejection and now I am happily settled in the PhD program here at Madison. If any Wisconsin admits want to talk about the program with me, feel free to send a PM! I know the department sent out most of their acceptances today so just let me know if someone wants to talk Wisco with me. Best of luck to everyone who's still waiting for news - this is the worst part but hopefully after you'll all get to do the fun and exciting job of flying out to programs and deciding where you want to spend the next few years!

I am currently a first-year in a PhD program and came straight through from undergrad. During my application season, I applied to a mix of MA/PhD programs and had a lot of the same reservations you named — not feeling like I wanted to commit right away to five/six years of graduate work, not thinking I was really ready for graduate coursework, etc. I ended up getting into all the MA programs I applied to and four PhD programs and still considered just doing the MA because I still wasn't sure I was ready. However, most of the PhD programs I was accepted to allow you to leave with a MA in hand after two years and that really helped my decision making process. It's hard to know right out of undergrad if you are right for/ready for six years of intense graduate work but I don't think that's just for people that go straight through — I've seen a lot of people question whether they want to do grad school/whether academia is for them and these are people who have taken time off too! I decided to do the PhD because that was six guaranteed years and honestly if it ended up not being for me, I'd leave with a funded masters and figure something else to do. People leave programs all the time for all sorts of reasons. So I guess my advice would be if you're on the fence about whether you want to apply to PhD programs also and if you have the funds, apply and see what happens!

For what it's worth, in my MA applications, I briefly summarized my writing sample and then wrote "I would like to use this project, [insert clause about my research project], as a starting point for further research." Then I talked more specifically about why I thought my proposed research interests would be a particularly fruitful site of study. The SOP was by far the hardest part of apps for me and it helped when a professor told me to look at it as my intellectual history/biography. I think it's important in the SOP to show that your past work has prepared you to research in your field of interest and that you intend to build on this past work in interesting ways, so summarizing your writing sample and then talking about the future seems like a good way to do this. Also, I agree with urbanfarmer, including a line about why you want to do the MA at this stage instead of going straight to the PhD would be a good idea. In my own MA apps, I wrote that I wanted to pursue a PhD but I also wrote "I feel that the two years spent in a Master’s program would be help me further refine my research interests. I also remain open and eager to complicating my initial ideas as I take graduate courses on a wide range of topics." As far as fit goes, I found it helpful to look on program websites and see what was unique about a program. For example, one of the schools I applied to had a required PhD minor, which none of the other programs I was applying to had, so I made sure to mention that in my application and used that to show the school was a good fit for me because I was interested in interdiscplinary work. Some schools will have research clusters/centers that other schools don't, some will have archives that might be useful to you in future study. You obviously won't know a ton about what a particular research center/archive has available for your research but if you think there is even the slightest chance of it being related to your interests, I think it's worth it to find a way to bring it into your SOP because mentioning something like that shows adcomms that you've done the research and can envision yourself being a part of their intellectual community.

@lit_nerd Welcome! I'm starting a PhD in literature at UW-Madison this fall - the faculty all seem lovely and it's certainly a good place to do 20th century American lit. Do you know if you'll be applying to Madison's program? Also, you've already gotten a good answer to your question about publications/conferences so I just wanted to add that I didn't have any publications and the only "conference" I'd presented at was my university's undergraduate research conference, and I managed to have a fairly successful application season so I wouldn't stress about not having lines for these things on your CV! As far as fit goes, you've again received excellent advice re: contacting professors and such, so I'll just add that one really helpful thing that helped me narrow down my school choices / figure out "fit" was talking to the professors at my undergraduate institution, especially the professors who were working in the same area of interest as me. If your professors are up-to-date with research in your field of interest, they will definitely know who's publishing cutting-edge stuff, which programs are generally strong, etc. When I was making my list of schools, I'd go to professors, show them my list, and then they'd rattle off a few people they knew at other institutions that were doing similar work, so that was extremely helpful!

A broader area of study might be speculative fiction; in all of the science fiction classes I've taken, we've read at least one dystopian novel, if not more. There are plenty of English programs that would be good fits for someone with interests in science fiction/speculative fiction so you could frame your SoP as a general interest in science fiction and then go in more depth about your interests in dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction. Also, maybe looking at dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction through an eco-criticism lens? I almost took an environmental lit class this quarter and just took a glance at the reading list and there are a couple of dystopian novels on there.

I'm starting a PhD program at UW-Madison in the fall, with a focus on feminist science fiction, and I second all the recommendations made thus far. I'd also recommend Indiana University, the University of Washington and UC Davis. These are the other programs I was deciding between and they each have at least one faculty member who specializes in science fiction. I also went to UC Davis for undergrad and got lots of great mentorship for my research interests in science fiction; the faculty members there are truly excellent. Definitely shoot me a PM if you want to discuss the Davis program in depth.

I'm going to be declining my Fulbright ETA grant to Malaysia so if you're an alternate on here, I hope you get it!

Hi sorry to hijack this thread but I had a question along the same lines. I've recently received a Fulbright ETA grant but I think I will end up declining that in order to accept a fellowship from a PhD program and to start my program in the fall. Would it be acceptable to still list the Fulbright ETA on my CV as declined, like putting it as "Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Grant (declined), 2017-2018." I know the Fulbright ETA isn't as prestigious as the research grant and that a lot of the benefit of it comes from actually doing it and the cultural exchange aspect, but I did put a lot of work into my app and I feel like it's still an accomplishment to be selected so is it worth it to put on my CV?

Malaysia ETA just notified and I'm in Unfortunately Malaysia's ETA term starts in January and I've already committed to a PhD program so I have to figure out what i'm doing now but jeez wow i was not expecting a notification for a couple of weeks

Oh my gosh, how excellent!! So stoked that you got the fellowship, it really was a nice offer and I was sorry to turn it down. Will you be heading to Bloomington for sure in the fall?

Just accepted a PhD offer from the University of Wisconsin-Madison! Thrilled to be done with the decision making process at last, and even more excited to start graduate studies there in the fall. Time to start looking for apartments and to go shopping for an actual winter wardrobe!!

Hey there from an English lit person. Just decided on Madison and couldn't be happier - I also really enjoyed the campus and city when I visited. I am worried about the cold and current political climate there but it should be interesting...Where are you coming from?

I recently turned down a fully funded offer from IU with a first year fellowship. Will also soon be turning down a fully funded offer from the University of Washington, also with a first year fellowship. I've also withdrawn myself from the UCSB wait list. Hope people waiting from these schools see some movement!

@NiLaBee Your sneaking suspicion is correct! That was indeed pretty epic, especially considering it's currently a sweltering 75 where I am in California and the frozen lakes of Madison seem a world away. I think @NiLaBee covered everything really well, there was one current faculty member (Nirvana Tanhouki) who had recently accepted a position at another university but most of the faculty members we interacted with seemed committed to staying in Madison. Additionally, it seems like the English program has cut down on acceptances/cohort sizes in recent years to ensure that they can fully fund everyone in case of possible budget cuts; they're aiming for a cohort of 8-12 this year where everyone gets funding whereas in previous years, I think their cohorts were a bit bigger.

Speaking for myself, I really enjoyed the welcome days! I was a bit apprehensive coming to the Midwest as a Californian but the weather wasn't too bad when I visited (the lake was frozen but thawing on the first day I arrived and it was completely thawed out and blue and beautiful on the day I left). Madison itself seemed like a nice city, large enough that there seems like there's plenty going on and a decent place to for someone in their twenties to live. I'm coming from Davis so Madison reminded me a lot of Sacramento, CA - a mid-sized capitol city with some cool bars/restaurants but definitely not anything urban. As for the program itself, it was clearly an academically rigorous place but not cutthroat - all the grad students I met did say your first year is really tough because you're taking 4 classes a term but they all seemed happy to be there, genuinely friendly/friends with each other, and laidback/not pretentious at all. I met with the POIs I named in my SOP and they were all kind and brilliant and seemed to take mentoring students + teaching seriously. I was equally fascinated by the work being done by people outside of my particular field (20th c. American lit); Monique Allewaert talked about her research during a panel and later at the potluck dinner at the DGS' house, I got the chance to speak to her more and she just seemed both incredibly smart and warm. The fact that Madison is such a big public university with so many resources was also a draw for me; for example, Madison has a stellar history of science program and as someone interested in science and literature/interdisciplinary work in general, it was good to hear that a lot of people do interdisciplinary work, take classes outside of the department, etc. It also seemed like they have a pretty vibrant public humanities scene, which made sense after someone explained to me the Wisconsin Idea and what that all entails. There were a lot of different panels on student life, teaching, etc, which got a bit tiring but was really helpful in giving me a sense of the department atmosphere. I liked that there seems to be a lot of emphasis placed on training the doctoral students to be good teachers and the fact that there's a well-established writing center also seems like a good resource. There also seems to be a lot of flexibility with designing the English 101 comp course to fit your own research interests, which was a plus, and the 1/1 teaching load seems quite doable and reasonable. I was again a bit apprehensive about teaching in Wisconsin and how the student body might react to certain topics (this is just coming from my impression of the state/Scott Walker/the fact that it went red this election/the undergraduate demographics), but a lot of people reiterated that the students at Madison are really earnest and eager to do well and learn so that was helpful. These are my thoughts off the bat, I've probably missed something because I feel like so much happened over the span of a few days but definitely feel free to PM me with any more specific questions you have!