Regimentations

All of the schools listed are no-doubt excellent. (And there are a few more that haven't been listed yet) However, each school also has different areas of Victorian Literature that they're more interested in exploring. Likewise, some are listed in mega-metro areas while others are located in smaller towns. Would you be comfortable living in both? What about funding? Even if a school is ranked well, it doesn't always mean that students are giving up something to live there or living with multiple roommates. Weather is another factor. I urge you to consider all these when selecting your list because depression and mental health are leading factors as to why students drop out of their program.

From my understanding, universities with a creative writing major or an MFA degree are more likely to understand and see the value in an MFA degree and willing to take a "chance" on a person with an MFA degree. It's not an automatic acceptance but it beats being eliminated during the first round. I do think some admissions committees are looking at the whole application and person as opposed to whether or not you received an "A" in an field that may not be your specialty.

I think one of the things that also impacts funding are grants. The sciences are more likely to receive grants for their works so departments are able to give more funding. I imagine a part of funding is also determined by what the "major players" of the field are doing. I'd wonder what would happen if people started listing schools that were either the "highest stipend amount" or "best cost of living". I wonder if that shift would result in some colleges redetermine what certain colleges are doing and who they're paying attention to. It wasn't too long ago that a number of (now) top colleges weren't funding all their students.

I think it has a lot to do with current students and resources. Each school devotes different resources to different areas. A lot of it can be quickly gleamed from its information page. On the Graduate Programs page: Notre Dame states the following: Ph.D. students are trained to combine scholarly expertise in a research area with the literary range necessary to be effective professionals, teachers, and colleagues. The English Department has close ties with Notre Dame’s other leading humanities departments such as Theology, History, and Philosophy as well as deep bonds with strong record of collaboration with world-class programs such as the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the renowned ND Medieval Institute. Key alliances and opportunities include the following: On the about page, Notre Dame also lists Related Programs and Institutes. Gender Studies gets a mention early on, but doesn't do anything to grab attention elsewise. Second on the list is the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies; interesting because it's name which usually means the school is heavily invested in it. They also have a Medieval Institute (this is also the second mention for both the Medieval Institute and the Keough-Naughton Institute; they want you to pay attention to these) and have a John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values page. They also make mention of a Screen Cultures Graduate Minor and make mention that it is research in the study of film, television and other screen-based media. ND could have highlighted anything they wanted to, but this is what they chose. On the English landing page, ND also highlights some new faculty being hired. These faculty have expertise in global and multicultural literature and also mentions that they have close ties to Notre Dame's Latino Institute. To me, this showcases that this is an area that Notre Dame might be looking to expand in the future. Recent hirings are useful because it helps showcase where a program is considering going. It might also showcase where the university might believe that there are more job openings to be had in the future. Looking at another school ranked nearby, Washington University in St. Louis paints a different picture. WashU's second paragraph states the following: " While our program is rooted in the materials of literary history, medieval to post-postmodern, interdisciplinarity is more than an aspirational slogan here. It is no accident that English faculty members founded both the university’s American Culture Studies major and its Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities, or that our professors have headed the campus-wide Center for the Humanities and the Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry postdoctoral program endowed by the Mellon Foundation. Many of our classes are designed to promote movement across humanities units and disciplines, from History to Comparative Literature, African American Studies to the recently established Center on Religion and Politics. As a complement to their grounding in Anglophone literature, our PhD students may earn certificates in American Culture Studies, Film and Media Studies, Translation Studies, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Early Modern Studies, and Data Science in the Humanities. The Humanities Digital Workshop, co-directed by an English professor, offers summer fellowships during which graduate students design and build digital humanities projects alongside Washington University faculty." From the way they stress things, Interdisciplinary seems to be a big thing there. I'm led to believe that they encourage their students to pursue a graduate certificate in any of the fields they've listed. Looking through the Faculty Listing by Field, I see a description of what each subfield is focused on. I also see that the faculty list is smaller because the department is smaller. I see lots of names for the following fields though: Modernism (8), Theory and Criticism (8), Poetry and Poetics (6), Literature and Religion (9), Literature and Politics (7) Gender and Sexuality (7), Drama (4), Book History (6), African-American Literature (4) 20th/21st Century/20th Century and Later American Literature (9), 19th Century American Literature (6), Early Modern Literature (5). There are other things listed but with the exception of Book History and Early Modern Literature, the focus here seems to focus on the 19th, 20th, and 21st Century. This is the second time they've made mention of Gender and Sexuality so they might want people to take notice of that. It's also their second mention of African-American Literature. They also seem to have more people employed within American Literature (at least during the later half) and they have a considerable amount of people mentioned in Modernisms. Theory and Criticism could expand to just about anything. Drama usually is a blanketed term for Shakespeare but they've expanded it to include contemporary drama, which a lot of programs won't go as far. The biggest takeaways here are interdisciplinary, modernisms, gender and sexuality and American Literature post 18th Century. African-American Literature and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies also seem to be encouraged as do other interdisciplinary fields. This sounds like a place where dual appointments might be possible.

I'll bite here. How do you recommend reaching out to other professors that may not be in your university but that you believe have overlapping interests? How would you recommend that someone in this situation determine who serves on dissertation committee if interests have changed since you first started? Assuming that there are several people who might make a good fit, what factors would you consider when choosing your primary?

I'm not quite sure the increased chance of landing an academic job applies to all schools. It might help at certain R1 schools but the competition for those schools are mostly people from other R1 schools who have spent a considerable amount of time networking with others as well. I have also experienced that there are some universities that will not consider hiring a PHD from the ivies because they've been burned in the past because the individual was always chasing the next big thing. Hiring can be expensive so I can understand why they would want someone to stay at their university. Part of the reason why Harvard and Yale place so well is because people with Type-A personalities are applying to them and choosing them over the same schools. Once upon a time, those schools might've been one of a few places that could offer you instant success. But graduates from those schools are now found in so many different places that your adviser is more instrumental in your success than the college you go to. It's often said that people who turned down offers from the Ivies at the undergraduate level are able to do just as well as those who accepted their offer to the Ivies. I imagine the same is true at the graduate level because those students are the ones that are most often applying for those grants, fellowships and postdocs. It might require a bit more work if you choose not to attend because it might not be required to apply for funding as part of the program, but I think support from your adviser, family, friends and partner are all crucial elements to succeeding.

There are a few schools in the top 30/40 who do not guarantee funding. In recent cycles, the following come to mind: University of Wisconsin offered a 3 year package to multiple phd students. The University of North Carolina doesn't guarantee first year funding. Penn State University doesn't guarantee funding to international students. The University of Illinois has had 3 strikes in the past 5 years due to tuition waivers being threatened to being withdrawn. The University of Colorado doesn't fund all PHD applicants. They make it known on their page that they only fund 4 spots and the remainder of acceptances are unfunded.