GoneWilde

Yay, finally one of these threads I can be a part of after lurking for years!
I'll be applying to 8-10 schools for Fall 2020. I'm not as far in my preparations as I'd like to be (thanks to working full time during my gap year), but what can you do? I've definitely done a lot of brainstorming and have at least read some for the GRE...
In terms of subject area, I'm into British 19th century literature, especially the movements of the late 1800's (aestheticism, decadence, arts & crafts, etc). I've also dipped my toes in the Late Romantics and some of the turn of the century Irish writers. In terms of methodology/questions/etc, I haven't quite figured out exactly how to describe what I do but a couple things I dig are: medical humanities, esp. addiction & drugs, queer writers and their experiences with catholicism, how texts converse with each other, and how texts engage with other art forms.
Some schools on my list are: Ohio State, Indiana Bloomington, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, and Rutgers. If any of y'all have particular thoughts on those schools/my interests I would love to have a chat!

Yay, finally one of these threads I can be a part of after lurking for years!
I'll be applying to 8-10 schools for Fall 2020. I'm not as far in my preparations as I'd like to be (thanks to working full time during my gap year), but what can you do? I've definitely done a lot of brainstorming and have at least read some for the GRE...
In terms of subject area, I'm into British 19th century literature, especially the movements of the late 1800's (aestheticism, decadence, arts & crafts, etc). I've also dipped my toes in the Late Romantics and some of the turn of the century Irish writers. In terms of methodology/questions/etc, I haven't quite figured out exactly how to describe what I do but a couple things I dig are: medical humanities, esp. addiction & drugs, queer writers and their experiences with catholicism, how texts converse with each other, and how texts engage with other art forms.
Some schools on my list are: Ohio State, Indiana Bloomington, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, and Rutgers. If any of y'all have particular thoughts on those schools/my interests I would love to have a chat!

Yay, finally one of these threads I can be a part of after lurking for years!
I'll be applying to 8-10 schools for Fall 2020. I'm not as far in my preparations as I'd like to be (thanks to working full time during my gap year), but what can you do? I've definitely done a lot of brainstorming and have at least read some for the GRE...
In terms of subject area, I'm into British 19th century literature, especially the movements of the late 1800's (aestheticism, decadence, arts & crafts, etc). I've also dipped my toes in the Late Romantics and some of the turn of the century Irish writers. In terms of methodology/questions/etc, I haven't quite figured out exactly how to describe what I do but a couple things I dig are: medical humanities, esp. addiction & drugs, queer writers and their experiences with catholicism, how texts converse with each other, and how texts engage with other art forms.
Some schools on my list are: Ohio State, Indiana Bloomington, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, and Rutgers. If any of y'all have particular thoughts on those schools/my interests I would love to have a chat!

I noticed some ambiguity on Yale's website with regard to the subject test, so I emailed the DGS about it. He reported that the subject test is not required for the 2020 app cycle. The test is still listed as a requirement on the general page for Yale's grad programs in the arts & sciences, but I assume that will change. I thought this would be good information to pass along.  

A few things.
1.  Your in major GPA isn't bad.  People have gotten accepted to good programs with worse, I'm sure.  In any case, GPA doesn't even really rate in the top three most important aspects of an application. While you correctly cite that this board is filled with people who have 3.9 or even 4.0 GPAs, some of those folks get shut out (for example, I had a 4.0 and I was totally shut out my first time around).
2. You should consider all schools that genuinely interest you after thoroughly researching the subject (this number should be between 8 and 13).  There are people doing absolutely fascinating work at schools who aren't household names.  Off the top of my head, none of the major citations in my dissertation work at "Ivy/Ivy Equivalent" schools.  If you are casting a truly wide net, and really being diligent about picking schools that are a good fit, your list will likely contain a healthy mix of schools whose names will impress your aunts and uncles, and schools whose names contain "State" or at least are named after states. As you are likely to learn, the academic job market is largely a crap shoot, and a scholar's level of brilliance does not necessarily correlate with the prestige of their workplace.
3. Relatedly to #2, If your goal is to be a university literature professor, that should be the uncertainty that really terrifies you! However, specific prestige of school - I think - matters less in getting a job, than who your advisor is and whether you can make the case that your dissertation is compelling through your cover letter and a strong publication. People in the field are aware for example, that some schools lack a general prestige but have excellent reputations in sub-disciplines. This is not always apparent to outsiders or undergrads, but is (naturally) common knowledge within sub-disciplines. I attend an English program that is top 40 on USNews but well regarded in a pair of subdisciplines that don't get ranked, we've recently placed people at Stanford, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Cornell, among others.
4. Nothing is likely to cut down on uncertainty. I can honestly say that applying to graduate school was one of the top three most anxiety inducing and miserable experiences of my life. I spent most of that time attempting to struggle against uncertainty, the best thing is to find some way to embrace it.
5. One way to embrace the uncertainty is to realize that you have almost no control over the most important aspects of the application process (the makeup of the committee, their current needs/desires, the composition of graduate students already attending, and the pool of other applicants) and that your admissions results have nothing to do with your level of brilliance or worth as a human being (I say this because I wish somebody had been there to tell me this when my shiny 4.0 failed to secure me any admissions my first time around).
6.  Contained in all of this, is that the most important thing is to think really hard about the schools you apply to, cast aside all biases and preconceptions about the names of schools and the rankings of their department. If your list only contains "Ivy or Ivy equivalent," go back to the drawing board and look harder. 

There's a difference between the *intended* reasoning behind fees in a hope that it leads to more tailored applicants (this is the optimistic reasoning which we hope programs have) and the reality--which is that those with money generally have more resources and time to apply to far more programs thus increasing their chances of being accepted and increasing competition for those who can't afford more than a handful.
 
We should also recognize that fit does not always mean research interests. There are many individuals who do not have the privilege of applying to just a handful of programs that are the best fit. Some applicants are
limited geographically (perhaps limiting them to schools that even though aren't a perfect fit they would still thrive in), they have partners who they are applying with (thus narrowing their choices and simultaneously adding in another factor- both partners being accepted to the same school), they might have a weaker portion of their application such as spotty grades from when they were younger, gaps in their school due to family problems, health issues, or financial reasons, they may be unable to take a subject gre test (or even the regular gre) due to money or work schedules.  they might have niche research interests that don't have a clear "fit"  They might not have the resources, support, or mentorship at their undergrad to help them figure out what a good fit would be Applications are complicated. They take time and require a myriad of factors. When money is an issue or one of the above situations factor in, individuals would benefit from having lower application costs, because they'd be able to apply to more programs. My husband and I are both applying to programs. Of course I applied to programs that were a good fit for me, but some schools were a compromise (good fits, but not the best) because we both had to like the program. We also had to reduce the amount we applied to because of $$$. Had applications cost less, we could have afforded to throw one or two programs in that we loved, but didn't know if we were competitive enough for. Let's face it, there are programs we are great fits for, but on paper many institutions throw candidates out due to good, but not amazing GRE scores. I wanted to apply to Purdue so bad, but my husband's gre scores were not at their recommended score. Sure we could have risked it and applied as a reach school (a good fit, but not a sure thing), but we're barely could afford the schools we did apply to. We saved for months for these apps, and we didn't want to waste the money. Let's stop using fit and labor as an excuse for gatekeeping policies. 
 

I think what makes me the most sour is how so many departments talk about promoting diversity and making education accessible and equitable, and yet they continue to stick with traditional, outdated application methods. I'm sure the answer is that it requires labor and time to change these systems, but I also feel like faculty are so distant from this process they have forgotten what it feels like- or else they remember and feel like it is something everyone should go through because they had to do it.

Can we talk about the GRE please? ETS makes so much money off of us. They know that most of us are applying to more than four schools (sometimes 10, 14, 17...). $27 to send scores electronically is absolute garbage. 

DO AWAY WITH THE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH GRE!!! 

There's been a lot of good points made in the thread, but I wanted to highlight this question because it seems to me that it hasn't gotten as much attention. While the others are certainly right to suggest applying to the best programs with people in your field, to point out that "fit" is often only clear in hindsight, and to highlight the importance of flexibility and willingness to engage with other topics and perspectives as a grad students, I don't think fit should be dismissed as a factor in narrowing down programs to apply to. The thing is, however, is that "fit" is hardly ever captured in terms like 'Victorianism', 'Romanticism', or 'Gender Studies'. All of those terms are broad umbrella terms that cover a wide range of research. If you start digging around in the secondary literature, you will probably quickly discover that a Victorianist is not a Victorianist is not a Victorianist.
The upshot of this, is that making sure a program has a few people working in your field is an inadequate way of determining fit. At best, it's useful for a first pass of eliminating potential programs. The next step is to spend some serious times reading CVs, abstracts, and if something catches your attention reading the article or book chapter. In doing this, you will probably find that many people who are ostensibly in your field, approach their texts in ways that are irrelevant or at odds with what you want to do. Certainly, there's something to be said for being pushed in new directions be a professor, but I also think it's good to avoid situations where people are entirely unsympathetic to your approaches. Doing lots of reading, I think, is the only way to discover these nuances as an applicant. Even then, it's insufficient. In entering a program, you will almost certainly realize things about fit that you couldn't have known as an applicant. But I do think some research beyond labels of fields can help narrow down the programs that it makes sense to apply to.
Fun exercise: take a look at the CVs of scholars who have broad ranging interests. In my experience, most of those professors started out working in a well defined area of study and branched out later in their careers (probably when they got tenure but maybe later too). For better or worse, literary studies is a field based discipline and scholars typically need to prove their chops in a well defined field before they have the liberty to expand to broadly beyond that. That doesn't mean you need to ignore your other interests though. I think looking at other fields is often a useful way to develop question to bring new light to your own field.
Also, in terms of wide-ranging scholars, I bet that in many cases their research interests, while broad, are perhaps not as eclectic as they may seem at first. Often scholars who come a broad period of time or geographic region are nonetheless motivated by closely related questions even if they manifest themselves differently in different places. To use Isaiah Berlin's terminology, I think that successfully broad ranging scholars in the humanities today are far more likely to be hedgehogs than foxes.

You don't have to find professors who research just what you want to do. The professors I've spoken to are against creating replicas of themselves. If I were you, I'd broaden your scopes a bit and look for scholars in Victorianism/Modernism and gender studies. (Also, I agree with you about Romanticism; I'd argue that it belongs to the long c18, though many, I'm sure, would disagree.)

Don't know about all the rest bc I am a lowly undergrad but I too have looked at MFA/PhD programs and there's one at Indiana Bloomington, and then the University of Houston and the University of Southern California have PhDs in both. I've also heard on this forum that some people can get into one and then create a hybrid program while at the school, even though one might not be published.

I think you will be fine. There are tons of people who have lots of different backgrounds in Student Affairs programs. My background was in Physics and I had colleagues from English, Business, Engineering, Math, etc backgrounds when I did my Master's program. I think having your involvement history is crucial as you have already gotten some exposure to student affairs and the step to a professional life in that field is a logical one. In the program you will do a TON of critical analysis of case studies and research articles that focus on ethnographic, quantitative, and qualitative data sets. It will vary greatly on the individual program. Like I said, having a background is crucial as it will help you relate the readings and discussion to your own experience. Lastly, try to work as a student affairs professional part, or full, time while in the program, or secure a on-campus graduate assistantship in a student affairs office. (I recommend something you haven't done yet as it will give you a more holistic experience and make you more marketable to a multitude of different jobs).
As an example, I came into my Master's program with experience in housing, university marketing, student involvement, honors college, academic advising, student government, admissions, peer mentorship programs, and greek life. I did my graduate assistantship in financial aid because I felt it was one of the areas of Student Affairs I was lacking the knowledge in. Unfortunately, I chose not to pursue a job in student affairs after my program, but I definitely found the information extremely helpful and I will take it into my academic affairs life after my Ph.D. to be able to better support my students and be able to advise if my institution asks me to.
Hope this helps!

Don't know about all the rest bc I am a lowly undergrad but I too have looked at MFA/PhD programs and there's one at Indiana Bloomington, and then the University of Houston and the University of Southern California have PhDs in both. I've also heard on this forum that some people can get into one and then create a hybrid program while at the school, even though one might not be published.