Kilos

Seconded.
Unless you've been in contact with them and they've agreed to work with you, it's highly unlikely that they'd be around enough to take on any kind of advisory role. I'd shy away from even mentioning them in passing, like "I really enjoy Professor XXXX's work" because you never know how that professor was viewed within the department, or whether the department is moving in a different direction, so on and so forth. Others may feel differently, but I've always heard that you should avoid name-dropping any faculty members, period, unless you've been in contact with them and they've at least implied that they might like to work with you. All of my successful applications avoided mentioning specific people.

Hi hi hi! +1 for the username "CatBowl." Not sure why. 
Reading through your post, it's clear that you're doing everything you can to maximize your chances heading into a PhD application. Having a 4.0 MA and 3.8 undergrad GPA is fantastic, having strong letter-writers will be a huge boon, a great writing sample is key, and your full-time teaching experience will likely seal the deal if the program fit is right. The GRE, in my opinion, is probably not that important in your situation; with all of your experience and the fact that you've already completed a graduate program with a 4.0, I'm not so sure the GRE will devastate your chances. How "laughable" are your scores? You don't have to answer that if you don't want--but consider that your scores probably aren't that bad if they got you into a M.A. program. By all means, retake, but I find that most people's scores aren't as bad as they think they are. If you've got a... 160 V and a 5.0 AW, maybe it's not worth it. That's just my two cents, and higher is definitely better if you have the money and confidence that you'll improve.
That leaves your SoP, which is the hardest part for almost everybody. Good luck. With your personal experience and education I don't think it will be too hard to weave a compelling tale. You've already figured out what your interests are, just lay it out convincingly and don't stress.
To try and chime in on your questions:
1) My opinion is that 14 schools is too many. Many people do the shotgun approach, but I think it's prohibitively expensive and a bit absurd. If somebody can't narrow it down to 6-10 on fit alone, maybe it's worth vetting the fit of the schools they're putting on their list. Some hold fast to the notion that the more applications you throw out, the higher chance you've got of getting accepted. I'd argue that's poppycock. If you're putting together 14 applications you're likely half-assing most of them, and more than a few will get cut because they're cookie-cutter. Find 6-10 schools you love. Look at location, funding, placement, and most importantly FIT. Spend real, hard time putting those applications together. Reach out to people you'd like to work with. Make them shine. Show the adcomm that you're clearly applying to their school and not 14 schools with the same SoP. I only applied to three schools this time around. I got outright rejected by one of the most prestigious English departments in the country, accepted by my UG alma mater, and accepted into the fully funded PhD program at my top choice school (which, please note, was not the super prestigious school). Also, you're definitely not shooting too high, because there is no such thing. If you're a top-prospect scholar they'll see it in your writing sample and your SoP. The only caveat to that is that some schools are hyperselective, and even if you belong there, you might not get in. Keep this in mind, and make sure to hedge your bets with a few schools that accept more than 1% of applicants. Less "prestige," maybe, but just as good. Prestige is overrated anyway--fit, program, opportunity, and placement are where it's at.
2) Yes! My undergraduate niche was ecocriticism and environmental literature. Love it. It's where I feel comfortable, and it's where my passions lie. I'm also a huge rhet/comp nerd, and I want to research the rhetoric of science/writing across disciplines--so I ended up seeking out a perfect fit, top-tier research school where I could do both within an English program that had great multidisciplinary ties to many other departments. From an ecocriticism perspective, I think your list is great. University of Oregon is wonderful, and at the top of the field, but if you're applying as a declared ecocriticism candidate, be prepared to knock their socks off, because it's competitive. Oregon was my top choice school for a long while, until some perspectives shifted. The same goes for UC-Davis, UC-Santa Barbara, and UCLA. I hear UC-Davis is a tough program to get into. Iowa's a great choice! There are a TON of other strong ecocriticism programs (or programs that have strong ecocriticism wings) that don't make your list. Look up Carnegie Mellon's English or Rhetoric PhD programs (Dr. Linda Flower is a hero of mine, and she teaches environmental rhetoric there), University of Idaho has a great program (but Idaho, you say? It's gorgeous! And ISLE!), University of Michigan, University of Montana, and don't forget Ohio State (you can design your own program if you convince them to let you in).
Also, a tip that was given to me when applying--find a specific interest within the broadening discipline of ecocriticism. Consider something like ecofeminism, environmental history, animal ethics, environmental ethics, etc. Even if you change your mind after entering, show them up-front that you can find a wonderful little niche to blossom in.
Hope I didn't ramble too much. Best of luck to you! 

I have never even seen any emeriti faculty around at my last campus. I would avoid appealing to emeriti.

Hi all! 
I am a newbie to Grad Cafe, but I've been reading every word on this forum for the last few months since I decided to apply for a PhD in English. This space is so helpful and yet so overwhelming! 
A little about me: I graduated with an MA in English Lit from a small public liberal arts university in 2016. I have since been teaching full-time at a technical college (comp & American lit classes). I am interested in ecocriticism/environmental lit, Southern lit, and/or more broadly, American lit (post-war). GPA in my MA was a 4.0, major GPA in undergrad was a 3.8, but my GRE scores are laughable. I'm retaking the GRE this summer (twice if need be) and still considering taking the Subject test in September/October (depending on where I apply). I foresee having very strong rec letters, a solid writing sample, and (hopefully) a strong SOP – this seems to be the hardest part for me. I am fortunate to have the help of several of my former professors, but I still have loads of questions/concerns. Here are my biggest worries at the moment:
1) I have 14 schools on my list right now, and I think I'll be able to apply to 10. (Or should I bite the bullet and apply to all 14!?) I am worried that I'm not competitive enough for the schools to which I'm thinking about applying: UT-Austin, UCLA, UC-SB, Vanderbilt, U of Oregon, UC-Davis, Duke, UNC-Greensboro, UNC-Chapel Hill, U of Virginia, Princeton, U of Iowa, Emory, and Ole Miss (in no particular order). Does anyone have any insider info on these schools/programs? Am I shooting way too high here? I know a lot of this process has to do with fit, and I'm still figuring out that part. (Yes, I have been looking into profs of interest and their research and trying to narrow down my list based on that...)
2) Any ecocriticism/environmental lit people out there? I'd love to get feedback on the schools listed above. Have I forgotten some? I'm sure I have; please don't hold it against me. ☺️
Thanks, all, for your insight. This process is already 10x more anxiety-inducing than I ever thought it would be. At least I know I'm not alone! 

I'd like to add a small note here that a lot of programs that consider you for their master's program are unfunded ones or ones where funding is very competitive at the MA level. Several programs that come to mind are Colorado, Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Rochester and SUNY Buffalo.
 

Agree with Kilos, especially about the "uninhabitated space in the void of academia." As you dig deeper and deeper into the fields that you enjoy, you'll inevitably start to see gaps where you wish there were more scholarship, but there isn't. That's where you as a burgeoning doctoral student come in: your job is to fill those gaps. If I tried to study every single thing that I find interesting, I would go insane because I'm interested in just about everything! Instead, I focus on what hasn't been said or what is still underdeveloped. For your SoP and WS, you're trying to name that gap and how you would attempt to fill it. Have two areas not been in dialogue with another? Has an area neglected certain authors or approaches to their texts? As jrockford27 noted, your dissertation is not going to completely upend a field or subfield, but you need to find a way to contribute to it.
And don't forget – if you're planning to go into academia, you have a whole lifetime for your research interests to shift and modify. Just because you're focusing on one research interest now doesn't mean you can't explore adjacent ones later. For the purposes of getting into graduate school, you choose one niche where you feel like something is missing from the discourse and that you wouldn't mind exploring for at least five or six years.

I always feel compelled to address people's impostor syndrome fears before anything else: Everybody feels this way. If they claim they don't they're lying. Academia is an enormous, nebulous, vague, intimidating, initially uncertain place, and it's absolutely normal to feel this way. I'm getting ready start a Ph.D. program this fall after sinking 10 years into two divergent careers and another half-dozen into two undergraduate programs. I'm now in my early thirties and I've felt like an impostor in every career position I've held and every program I've attended. In some cases the feelings tapered off after a while, in others they hung around and plagued me--and I've ultimately excelled in all venues. I feel like impostor syndrome is a healthy, productive (albeit completely terrifying) mental tempering tool. It keeps you humble, it drives you to keep up and keep relevant, it reinforces the notion that you should never stop learning and growing as an academic or as a part of society. If you can harness these feelings of inadequacy to motivate yourself and not let it tear you down, it can only make you stronger and more prepared. My advice is to simply be the intelligent, inquisitive person who was awesome enough to make it this far, and let the rest fall into place.
As to your question about research interests--I'll keep it as short and sweet as I can:
Work on what fires you up. Do what you love. Pursue your passion. Grab a shovel, dig yourself a nice little niche (with room for a bookshelf), and let the field settle in around you. There's certainly something to be said for bolstering or fleshing out existing research within the academic boundaries of a field/subfield that has already been well-defined--and if that's where your interests lie, that can be a win/win situation. If you don't fall directly into one of those molds, that's great too; find a vein that piques your intellectual curiosity and follow it until something unique catches your attention off to one side or another. If you don't fall anywhere near any mold, refer to my advice about the shovel. Choose your field based on your strengths and interests, but choose the trajectory of your research within that field based on your passions. Following your passion will lead to a happier life, as well as a stronger, more inspired body of work. This advice won't work for everybody, and I'm positive that some people disagree with the stance (because they have before)--but what is the point of dedicating our lives to the pursuit of knowledge and empowered education if we're not absolutely enthralled with what we're diving into?
This advice might also be a bit dangerous to take when initially applying to graduate programs, because you really have to watch your audience and make sure you're not flying off on a lark. In that case I'd recommend taking a more tempered approach and only revealing the depth of your lunacy after you've been accepted.
Personally, I've always known that my passions are splattered across a broad spectrum of science disciplines, as well as linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, ethnography, climatology, and a number of other fields. I've also always known that my skills, strengths, and general interests are deeply rooted in English and composition. So, because I always felt like an academic outsider that never really belonged any one place in particular, I just grabbed a shovel and dug myself a niche in the Rhet/Comp wing of a great English department, and I now plan to spend a huge chunk of my life trying to deep-dive into rhetoric of science for the good of humanity (or so I tell myself). Without getting into too much detail, my primary research goals involve the intersection between climate change, ecocriticism, rhetoric, public policy, and writing across the disciplines. When I arrived at this conclusion and wrote my SoP and writing samples, I often felt like this was an uninhabited space in the void of academia--which was both gratifying and petrifying--but I've since encountered a solid handful of others whose research interests and published works align very closely with mine, and I could tell they also used shovels to get where they were. I also have about ninety thousand other interests that will inevitably try to swallow me whole, but I've been told that a huge part of graduate school is learning how to pare down your scope to focus in on a sensible, defensible topic, and I look forward to that. 
TLDR version: Stop trying to cram yourself into a sardine can with five million other people. If you like that sardine can, that's wonderful--but why try to block-format your intellect to fit a mold? Find your niche and stand your ground. Figure out how to shape your interests to fit the field you intend to enter. Find a program or department that aligns itself with the way you see the field. Figure out what truly excites you academically and chase it. You'll either succeed splendidly or you'll crash, burn, fail, be miserable, and give up on life. What do you have to lose?

I always feel compelled to address people's impostor syndrome fears before anything else: Everybody feels this way. If they claim they don't they're lying. Academia is an enormous, nebulous, vague, intimidating, initially uncertain place, and it's absolutely normal to feel this way. I'm getting ready start a Ph.D. program this fall after sinking 10 years into two divergent careers and another half-dozen into two undergraduate programs. I'm now in my early thirties and I've felt like an impostor in every career position I've held and every program I've attended. In some cases the feelings tapered off after a while, in others they hung around and plagued me--and I've ultimately excelled in all venues. I feel like impostor syndrome is a healthy, productive (albeit completely terrifying) mental tempering tool. It keeps you humble, it drives you to keep up and keep relevant, it reinforces the notion that you should never stop learning and growing as an academic or as a part of society. If you can harness these feelings of inadequacy to motivate yourself and not let it tear you down, it can only make you stronger and more prepared. My advice is to simply be the intelligent, inquisitive person who was awesome enough to make it this far, and let the rest fall into place.
As to your question about research interests--I'll keep it as short and sweet as I can:
Work on what fires you up. Do what you love. Pursue your passion. Grab a shovel, dig yourself a nice little niche (with room for a bookshelf), and let the field settle in around you. There's certainly something to be said for bolstering or fleshing out existing research within the academic boundaries of a field/subfield that has already been well-defined--and if that's where your interests lie, that can be a win/win situation. If you don't fall directly into one of those molds, that's great too; find a vein that piques your intellectual curiosity and follow it until something unique catches your attention off to one side or another. If you don't fall anywhere near any mold, refer to my advice about the shovel. Choose your field based on your strengths and interests, but choose the trajectory of your research within that field based on your passions. Following your passion will lead to a happier life, as well as a stronger, more inspired body of work. This advice won't work for everybody, and I'm positive that some people disagree with the stance (because they have before)--but what is the point of dedicating our lives to the pursuit of knowledge and empowered education if we're not absolutely enthralled with what we're diving into?
This advice might also be a bit dangerous to take when initially applying to graduate programs, because you really have to watch your audience and make sure you're not flying off on a lark. In that case I'd recommend taking a more tempered approach and only revealing the depth of your lunacy after you've been accepted.
Personally, I've always known that my passions are splattered across a broad spectrum of science disciplines, as well as linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, ethnography, climatology, and a number of other fields. I've also always known that my skills, strengths, and general interests are deeply rooted in English and composition. So, because I always felt like an academic outsider that never really belonged any one place in particular, I just grabbed a shovel and dug myself a niche in the Rhet/Comp wing of a great English department, and I now plan to spend a huge chunk of my life trying to deep-dive into rhetoric of science for the good of humanity (or so I tell myself). Without getting into too much detail, my primary research goals involve the intersection between climate change, ecocriticism, rhetoric, public policy, and writing across the disciplines. When I arrived at this conclusion and wrote my SoP and writing samples, I often felt like this was an uninhabited space in the void of academia--which was both gratifying and petrifying--but I've since encountered a solid handful of others whose research interests and published works align very closely with mine, and I could tell they also used shovels to get where they were. I also have about ninety thousand other interests that will inevitably try to swallow me whole, but I've been told that a huge part of graduate school is learning how to pare down your scope to focus in on a sensible, defensible topic, and I look forward to that. 
TLDR version: Stop trying to cram yourself into a sardine can with five million other people. If you like that sardine can, that's wonderful--but why try to block-format your intellect to fit a mold? Find your niche and stand your ground. Figure out how to shape your interests to fit the field you intend to enter. Find a program or department that aligns itself with the way you see the field. Figure out what truly excites you academically and chase it. You'll either succeed splendidly or you'll crash, burn, fail, be miserable, and give up on life. What do you have to lose?

Happy to say I will be attending the program at Edinburgh! I absolutely can't wait to live there -- I studied in Ireland during undergrad and visited Edinburgh for just a few days on what I believe were the only sunny, 70-degree days of the whole year, and I loved it so, so much. This is saying quite a bit for me as I am generally not much of a city person at all. Definitely reach out if you come for a visit!

I feel that it's worth reiterating what @Dogfish Head brings up just to emphasize that there's no defined, recommended path to a PhD program (or graduate school in general), and most admissions committees are cognizant of this throughout the process. Even in PSU's own response, while they admit they have a preference, they state that they take people from all walks. I've heard similar things from other programs, and the program I'm joining said that they try to bring in a mix to maintain a diversity of perspectives. Some people go directly from high school to undergraduate and then apply to MA/PhD programs with a full academic year left before graduation; others take years off after high school, years off after undergraduate, and even years off after a MA; still others make mid-career shifts and successfully apply to MA/PhD programs in unrelated fields. There's definitely something to be said for checking all of the important boxes on an application, but, in general, I think that people need to back away from the notion that unless you've freshly popped out of the mold you're going to be outclassed or under-qualified. Everybody knows that these programs are hypercompetitive, but what matters most isn't that you followed some socially acceptable educational timeline--it's that you're bright as hell, you have a strong grasp on the field you want to be a scholar in, you're passionate about devoting a huge chunk of your life to academia, and you're adept enough at your craft that you're able to demonstrate to a group of complete strangers, in writing, all of the above. 
Poring over these forums for years now has only reinforced this perspective; I've now read countless stories from more people than I can recall, and although there are certainly a lot of traditional students, there are just as many who take their own paths and succeed. I'm one of those oddball stories. I'm a nontraditional student with undergraduate degrees in two fields from two very different universities from two points in my life that now feel like distant worlds. I was several years into my second serious career when I applied (last year) and was accepted directly into a PhD program. I applied to PhD programs because I knew (beyond a shadow of a doubt) that my end goal was to get a doctorate and teach. If I was less sure about that, I might have applied to a bunch of MA programs instead.
To segue back and try to answer @katie64's original question: The only person who can answer the BA to MA or PhD question is you. I know it's a cop-out answer, but it's true. If you're unsure about whether you want to spend the rest of your life as an academic, the MA is probably the best choice (if funded). It gives you a bit more exposure, it lets you get a better feel for what you're doing within the field, and it gives you a bright red "EXIT" sign after two years; it also has the added benefit of making you a (theoretically) more appealing PhD applicant down the road. Contrarily, if you're dead-set on a doctorate and you know that's where your career goals lie, why NOT apply for the PhD programs? As people have mentioned, it's typically possible to bow out after getting the MA, you usually have a better shot at funding, and some programs prefer applicants straight out of BA programs. The downside? Way more competitive. There are countless factors to consider, including location, prestige (arguably not that important), funding (arguably the most important), climate (both academic and meteorological), research specialization, on and on--but all of these are rooted in questions that only the applicant can vet and answer.
In my opinion, the bottom line is that anybody asking themselves this question needs to do some serious soul-searching about where they see their lives headed and which degree best supports that direction of travel. 

Me too! What a ride. Thanks for all of your insight and support, Warelin. It's been great having such a sage resource around.

Congratulations! I'm really happy and excited for you. It certainly sounds like a perfect fit.

Holy expletive. After four months of anxiety, I finally got my answer: Accepted at UConn off the waitlist (English Ph.D. with Rhet/Comp research specialization, full funding for six years). I'm completely overwhelmed. I got an email about fifteen minutes ago, followed by a phone call from the DGS (what a genuinely nice conversation that was). Now all that's left is to wait for my wife to get home so we can have the discussion we've been putting off because it hasn't been real until just now.
Thanks to everybody who's shared their experiences over the last four years that I've been a lurker/member. This group has made the entire process bearable.
Just FYI, if anybody's still waiting on UConn, the DGS said that they had an "crazy (unusually crazy) admissions cycle" with a lot of people not responding to their initial offers until the last second. He said my email was the first of three that would be going out. Best of luck to anybody still waiting.

See you up there! Congrats!

Me too! What a ride. Thanks for all of your insight and support, Warelin. It's been great having such a sage resource around.

Holy expletive. After four months of anxiety, I finally got my answer: Accepted at UConn off the waitlist (English Ph.D. with Rhet/Comp research specialization, full funding for six years). I'm completely overwhelmed. I got an email about fifteen minutes ago, followed by a phone call from the DGS (what a genuinely nice conversation that was). Now all that's left is to wait for my wife to get home so we can have the discussion we've been putting off because it hasn't been real until just now.
Thanks to everybody who's shared their experiences over the last four years that I've been a lurker/member. This group has made the entire process bearable.
Just FYI, if anybody's still waiting on UConn, the DGS said that they had an "crazy (unusually crazy) admissions cycle" with a lot of people not responding to their initial offers until the last second. He said my email was the first of three that would be going out. Best of luck to anybody still waiting.

Holy expletive. After four months of anxiety, I finally got my answer: Accepted at UConn off the waitlist (English Ph.D. with Rhet/Comp research specialization, full funding for six years). I'm completely overwhelmed. I got an email about fifteen minutes ago, followed by a phone call from the DGS (what a genuinely nice conversation that was). Now all that's left is to wait for my wife to get home so we can have the discussion we've been putting off because it hasn't been real until just now.
Thanks to everybody who's shared their experiences over the last four years that I've been a lurker/member. This group has made the entire process bearable.
Just FYI, if anybody's still waiting on UConn, the DGS said that they had an "crazy (unusually crazy) admissions cycle" with a lot of people not responding to their initial offers until the last second. He said my email was the first of three that would be going out. Best of luck to anybody still waiting.

Just got an email/phone call from the DGS at UConn. Accepted off the waitlist for the Ph.D. in English (Rhet/Comp specialization). I'm bouncing off the walls.

Holy expletive. After four months of anxiety, I finally got my answer: Accepted at UConn off the waitlist (English Ph.D. with Rhet/Comp research specialization, full funding for six years). I'm completely overwhelmed. I got an email about fifteen minutes ago, followed by a phone call from the DGS (what a genuinely nice conversation that was). Now all that's left is to wait for my wife to get home so we can have the discussion we've been putting off because it hasn't been real until just now.
Thanks to everybody who's shared their experiences over the last four years that I've been a lurker/member. This group has made the entire process bearable.
Just FYI, if anybody's still waiting on UConn, the DGS said that they had an "crazy (unusually crazy) admissions cycle" with a lot of people not responding to their initial offers until the last second. He said my email was the first of three that would be going out. Best of luck to anybody still waiting.

Holy expletive. After four months of anxiety, I finally got my answer: Accepted at UConn off the waitlist (English Ph.D. with Rhet/Comp research specialization, full funding for six years). I'm completely overwhelmed. I got an email about fifteen minutes ago, followed by a phone call from the DGS (what a genuinely nice conversation that was). Now all that's left is to wait for my wife to get home so we can have the discussion we've been putting off because it hasn't been real until just now.
Thanks to everybody who's shared their experiences over the last four years that I've been a lurker/member. This group has made the entire process bearable.
Just FYI, if anybody's still waiting on UConn, the DGS said that they had an "crazy (unusually crazy) admissions cycle" with a lot of people not responding to their initial offers until the last second. He said my email was the first of three that would be going out. Best of luck to anybody still waiting.

Holy expletive. After four months of anxiety, I finally got my answer: Accepted at UConn off the waitlist (English Ph.D. with Rhet/Comp research specialization, full funding for six years). I'm completely overwhelmed. I got an email about fifteen minutes ago, followed by a phone call from the DGS (what a genuinely nice conversation that was). Now all that's left is to wait for my wife to get home so we can have the discussion we've been putting off because it hasn't been real until just now.
Thanks to everybody who's shared their experiences over the last four years that I've been a lurker/member. This group has made the entire process bearable.
Just FYI, if anybody's still waiting on UConn, the DGS said that they had an "crazy (unusually crazy) admissions cycle" with a lot of people not responding to their initial offers until the last second. He said my email was the first of three that would be going out. Best of luck to anybody still waiting.

Just got an email/phone call from the DGS at UConn. Accepted off the waitlist for the Ph.D. in English (Rhet/Comp specialization). I'm bouncing off the walls.

So happy to see waitlist dreams coming true!

I got in off the waitlist to my program!!!
I contacted CUNY first thing this morning to decline my offer, so I hope someone gets some good news today if not tomorrow!

Just got an email/phone call from the DGS at UConn. Accepted off the waitlist for the Ph.D. in English (Rhet/Comp specialization). I'm bouncing off the walls.