Indecisive Poet

Yes! Nathan is super prompt and helpful.

FYI, I emailed the guy who sent the "we've received everything" email about this and he said that the online application system takes a long time to update but that he's very on top of things, so if he's emailed to say he has everything, then he has everything.

My NW application says everything has been received except the GRE scores, which I sent to them 3+ weeks ago. If GRE is what they're missing, they may just take a while to show up on the checklist. My scores for NYU were also listed as missing until a day or two ago, and I sent them at the same time.

This is really good to know – thank you! I opted to submit my materials as PDFs and I'm glad I did.

This is something I want to look into seriously before and when (if) I start a PhD program. A big reason that I think my current field is a mistake is that I know current (and past) scholarship fairly well now and there really isn't anything that anyone is doing that I'm seriously interested in – and I don't think I have much to say about the period either that hasn't already been said. I've felt like most of my projects weren't very good for this reason and that I haven't been passionate about them. I enjoy the period's poetry (what I work on) but that doesn't seem to me enough, especially because I enjoy most other periods' poetry just as much. But I can't say that another period is right for me yet because I don't know any other fields well. Once I finish up with applications, I'd really like to start sifting through criticism to see what people are doing elsewhere, especially C20/21, which is the poetry I enjoy most. If anyone has tips on navigating C20/21 poetry scholarship, do send them my way! I enjoy looking through SEL's year in review articles for other periods but I haven't found anything equivalent for C20/21.

@Bumblebea @Warelin Thanks both for the advice. I would never dream of choosing to study an area I'm not interested in to play the market, but I'm already torn between periods at the moment so if there were a huge pull in either direction, that could possibly have swayed my decision. It very much sounds like that's not the case, though. FWIW, the only jobs I ever see advertised on the Romanticist listserv are ecocriticism jobs – but I'm also not actively looking anywhere else.

Perhaps a tedious question, but are people submitting their statements and writing samples as word docs or PDFs?

Thanks, @Bumblebea – it's a good point that there's no way of knowing what the market will be doing 6–7 years from now. Presumably departments won't still be hiring loads of Latinx and Chicanx scholars then if they've just spent the past 6 years filling their departments with them. My thought is that modern/contemporary would be oversaturated since so many students are applying to PhD programs to study those periods, which is why I was a bit taken aback when a professor told me that those positions are most in demand since the periods are so popular with students.

From CUNY's website. My thought is that 1 page off would be fine, but don't do anything egregious. It couldn't hurt to email the programs you're applying to and ask them.

Just want to drop in quickly to thank everyone who has responded. All of your perspectives have given me (and others, I hope) several things to think about. Does anyone know if it's any "easier" to get jobs in certain periods over others? I'm currently in C18/19 but don't feel married to it by any means and would like to explore C20/21 if I get into a program. I've been told that it's a good idea to have some experience (be it in PhD or postdoc) in modern/contemporary literature since this is the period for which professors are most in demand (if any of the traditional periods can be said to be in demand). But I would've thought that since it's the most popular period for students to study at any level, it's also the most competitive for jobs since presumably there will be more graduates from PhD programs with degrees in C20/21 than in any other period.

I think it's uncommon to include a section on research experience, if anything. At least in the humanities.

US News, I would think. Those are the rankings I was referring to in my original post.

@WildeThing, @Bopie5 – this has been my perspective and it's one I've been reluctant to share on TGC because of how adamant people are that it's not worth going to get a PhD, period. My partner and I have talked a lot about this and my position has always been that I want to complete a PhD program regardless of what job awaits me on the other side. Having job security and stability for the next 6 years – not to mention being paid to do what I love for those 6 years – is more than I would get if I attempted to go into any other industry right now at age 25 with no experience in anything but academia (not to mention no real desire to do anything but academia). For this reason, and because I simply want to spend my time doing this and would regret not even trying, I plan to accept an offer no matter where I'm offered admission (if anywhere). It seemed easier to word my original post the way I did in order to facilitate a quick discussion about chances of a getting a TT job after attending a lower-ranked program. I'm curious about that because I wouldn't want to go into a program with unrealistic expectations, and there's a (small) possibility that I would wait and re-apply the next year to see if I can do better.

As in top 20? (as you might guess, my GRE quant score was garbage)

I would include those things, yes. If they're at all relevant to your areas of study, I think they're worth including – admissions committees want to know that you're invested in the period you're studying, and it sounds like the work experience contributes to that narrative, as well as your knowledge about the period. It would be great to include the tours, too. I'm also responding because your other questions are very good ones that I would like to hear others' answers to!

I'm interested in hearing perspectives on this. Given that the job market is so bad and even those with doctoral degrees from top-10 or top-20 programs are having trouble finding jobs, is there any point going to a program that is ranked below, say, 50? By "point," I mean in terms of getting an academic job. I think there is probably little difference in quality of education from one program to the next, but is it realistic to think I could get an academic job if I got my degree at, say, Boston College or Fordham?

I just looked at your original post again and saw that you wrote "suggested." Oops! In that case, I should think 12 pages would be perfectly fine – I wouldn't worry about condensing it to 10. But I definitely wouldn't go any higher, and I maintain what I said about 20 pages probably not being a good idea.

I think this is a bad idea. My understanding is that it's usually perfectly fine to go under the limit but never to go over. It might suggest to them that you haven't read their website or that you can't follow instructions – but worse, they will probably stop reading after page 10, especially because other applicants will have followed instructions. Can you condense your paper to 10 pages and talk about the paper in your statement of purpose? You could use a few sentences there to explain that it's an excerpt and discuss how the full paper fit within current scholarship in your field.

I asked an old professor of mine about this and she said not to include any citations.

Thanks all! I reached out to one of my letter-writers about this as well and she also recommended that I include them. I intend to do so!

During undergrad, I "published" a couple of articles in my institution's student-run journals, as well as several poems in its student-run literary journals. My initial thought was that I shouldn't include these on my CV for PhD applications since they are neither peer-reviewed articles nor prestigious literary journals, and it'll probably look like I'm trying to pretend I've published when I really haven't. Am I correct in thinking that they would be a waste of space in (and possibly even a detriment to) my CV, or should I include them just to show that I was engaged in these activities during undergrad? Perhaps I should add that I'll be applying with both a BA and an MA, so even the most recent of these were a couple of years ago. Edit: one of the articles was published in a journal run by the university's writing program faculty, so I suppose that one isn't student-run – but it's also not a peer-review process; the faculty just chooses the best papers written for a particular writing program course to publish.

I've emailed an assistant professor at one of the programs I'm interested in and he told me he is very much willing and able to serve as a primary advisor on my dissertation committee. I plan to mention assistant professors in my statements. @onerepublic96 – associate professors are very much able to supervise as well and usually teach graduate courses as well. The things I would be careful with are those sort of odd titles like "professor of the practice" or "teaching professor" which usually indicate that they don't supervise and/or teach graduate students. These people will usually be available for consultation when you're working on your dissertation, but won't be working with you in an official capacity and shouldn't be mentioned in your statements.

I've emailed a few faculty members who have all encouraged me to be able to articulate which period I'm interested in, which approach I'm interested in, and what a few different future projects in this area might look like. You absolutely do not need to (and probably should not) have a research proposal for your dissertation lined up at this point; what's more important is that you are able to express a genuine interest in and commitment to (based on your past work) the period you've chosen. My advice to you would be to choose 19th, 20th, or 21st-century American literature to talk about in your statement of purpose. You may well be able to write an eventual dissertation project that spans these periods, but departments are very much organized into centuries and they tend to group applicants into those centuries when evaluating applications, selecting one or two people from each period. Departments expect your interests to change as you take classes for the first couple years, so you are in no way held to the area you propose in your statement of purpose. Don't flat out lie, of course – they'll be able to spot this – but try to refine your interests to one period as best you can in your statement.

Some very good programs for Romanticism are Berkeley, UCLA, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Boulder. I don't know too much about Victorian but I know that Rutgers is quite strong in it. You will need to choose either 18th or 19th century (and ideally either Romantic or Victorian) for your statements – although this may be less the case for MA programs.

I would recommend this route too, and it may also be helpful to search for your POI in a database and limit your results to dissertations – the dissertations they have supervised should come up. I learned through this method that the only Romanticist at a program of interest hasn't published since 2013 and hasn't supervised a dissertation since 2014, so I knocked that program off of my list.