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  1. It's important to understand the structure of Ph.D. programs: there's usually a back-and-forth between the department and the graduate division concerning admission and funding. Most (ethical) programs won't admit you if they can't fund you, and most graduate divisions give out merit awards based on GPA, GRE, and other evidence (publications etc.). Some programs don't follow this pattern, and for them your scores may not matter. Grad GPA's are inflated, so having a 3.8 simply indicates that you can handle graduate work. It, unfortunately, won't make you stand out. Most English M.A.'s who go on to the Ph.D. have a 3.8 or higher. Your letters of recommendation and statement of purpose are your greatest assets right now, it seems to me. Your SOP is by far the most important part of your application. Your GRE will clearly be a hindrance. As I explained above, it may quite simply exclude you from some programs because the graduate division, not the department, has a funding mechanism based on a combo of grades and GRE. While studying again, don't worry too much about the math. Acing the verbal is what really matters to programs. And, if it's an option, TestMasters' GRE course really does help. Good luck!
  2. @milestone13 - I didn't mean to imply, and don't think I did imply, that programs discriminate against older applications. I think older applicants have more complicated lives, often including children, spouses, and spouses' jobs (or jobs of their own that are paying for the program). hence, they sometimes end up at schools close to where they live (that may be more mid-tier schools) because uprooting their lives to travel across the country for a program is too difficult (though obviously plenty of folks do just this and continue doing it on the job market). and, of course, there are plenty of older applicants who get accepted to top knotch programs, go there, and end up with great jobs. my other point was that the older a person is when he/she completes the dissertation, the harder it often is (or perhaps the less they desire) to do a national search for jobs (for the reasons stated above). the 32 year-old with ph.d. in-hand and no family--or a spouse and no kids--often finds it much easier to drop everything for a tt job 1500 miles away from their ph.d. institution (where they presumably had their life for 7-10 years) than does a 40 or 45 year-old with ph.d. in-hand. Many of your points seem perfectly reasonable. I just wanted to clarify what I was saying in my previous post. I think it's much less about discrimination than it is about the rational choices of older applicants (and certainly comments about departments preferring younger people for TT jobs seem to have some validity), who--in my experience--often have different and equally laudable goals than younger, mercenary careerists (which I sometimes consider myself to be). it's just that when we talk about placement statistics, we often assume a monolithic, homogeneous group in order to infer the "efficacy" of a program at placing applicants. that is: we assume everyone who gets a ph.d. wants a TT research job or prestigious LAC job. lots of folks don't (and for those just starting out grad school on here, many will probably find out in five years that they'd rather spend their time teaching than doing research). so, we sometimes perceive a department--like mine--where a good chunk work at CC's or M.A. institutions as somehow failing its grad students when the reality is that lots of people who come through my program had those goals when they came in. it seems like a placement survey comparing "desired position" versus "type of position obtained" would be valuable.
  3. amen to this conversation. i sometimes wonder: is it just english ph.d. students who act like the sky is falling because they may end up making a middle-class salary to read books and teach? i echo everyone's sentiments here: give me a CC job with a little security, and you'll find me grading papers in a park on the weekend, happy as can be.
  4. If you're on the quarter system, then two seminars is standard. most programs will explicitly bar you from taking more than that. That's what I took. Here's the average workload you're looking at for a grad seminar: Reading = ~400 pages a week (usually a novel and secondary materials). Writing = 20-25 page paper due in final week Other = usually an annotated biblio or in-class presentation of some kind But, many students in our department take a language course on top of this load for a few quarters. Generally, I'd avoid doing that your first quarter. Just get used to grad seminars and get adjusted to grad student life, then gauge your time constraints and do what you're comfortable with. A word of advice if you're used to the semester system: you should ideally have a topic in mind and begin working on your final paper by week four or five. I went from semesters (where you have this nice lull about midway through the semester) to quarters, and it was a rude awakening. Quarters are full throttle from week 2 'til the end. Once I got used to them, I actually preferred them. But, it took some adjustment.
  5. I applied with an M.A. from a non-ph.d.-granting state U. Got into a UC and U Florida. My reasons were precisely the reasons others have noted: I punted undergrad with a 2.8 and had no direction in life. After working for a while, I realized English was something I wanted. So, I went into an M.A. program at a state U, nailed all my coursework, nailed my GRE's and got into two U's a liked with full funding. I will say though that having an M.A. was a liability at many programs (BU says it only accepts M.A.'s into the PhD program, failing to mention that they mean they only let M.A.'s from their own program into their Ph.D. program...or so I was told). Places like Columbia and other top programs don't even accept coursework from the M.A. from another U. Though, obviously, my biggest liability was a nightmarish undergrad gpa. Luckily, sometimes a person gets a second chance. Anyway, I'm happy and healthy now in my program, which has a good representation of M.A.-holders from other institutions along with people straight from undergrad.
  6. Waldorf, I agree with you. Unfortunately, nearly all departments use grad students as affordable labor and will let in more students than they will place into academic jobs. Unless you get internal dissertation fellowships or external funding, you'll be working for less than a lecturer (even accounting for tuition "wavers"). Also, I would urge people not to go to grad school in the humanities if it means taking on loans. Even if you get your dream job, you'll start at 50-60K. Grad school (at very least the Ph.D. portion of it) should be funded. If you didn't beat out other students for funding in grad school, the chances you'll beat them out for jobs later on isn't high either.
  7. I agree with just about everything greekdaph wrote. I would just add that it's pretty impossible to give an absolute cutoff that isn't dangerously artificial. But, as a rule of thumb, if it's outside the top 60 and/or you've never heard of it, then odds are probably poor for academic work of any kind. This is just a common sense rule-of-thumb, obviously. Unfortunately, there just aren't adequate or reliable numbers kept about these things. Standards about what counts as "placement" vary from U to U. At my institution, if you counted only R1 and SLAC TT jobs, then our placement rate 3-5 years out is roughly 15%, maybe. but, lots of people chose before coming to the program that they wanted to work at a CC or public master's institution, so that's not necessarily a "fair" standard either. That said, as a rough gauge, if you look through USNews, after 38 the frequency of schools that might give you even a prayer of an R1 job plummet quickly. If you then talk about general "placement" rates, meaning any academic job, including CC's and random, non-select liberal arts colleges, then it's a crap shoot. The most important issue, imho, then becomes where you'd like to live. There tend to be closer regional relationships when it comes to less prestigious schools. So, if you go to UFlorida (great school, no disrespect at all), you'll have greater odds of finding work on the east coast, especially the southeast (you can see this by reading their recent placements). This is a function of networking more than anything, I think. But, again, this is all shoddy and somewhat random. Go to the best, most comfortable place that gives you funding. That's always good advice.
  8. I have a friend getting his doctorate at U of Newcastle. Full funding is more or less unheard of for international lit students in his department. There are one or two spots floating around. Anyway, there are some scholarships and such that he was able to compete for. But, his situation is rare in that he has the money--through working at a family business--to afford to pay the tuition and take the few months off a year he needs to actually be in the UK. Great school though, and he loves the program. Good luck.
  9. Yes, if you will only be happy with an R1 or SLAC job, then you probably ought not go anywhere outside the top 10 or 20, max, unless your specialty is top five at a non-top 20 school. the unlikely sometimes happens; that doesn't make it any less unlikely. but, let's do a little dirty math. There are, what?, 50 or 60 R1 jobs people would consider suitable (I doubt the person who desperately wants an R1 job at all costs will be happy with U of Kentucky, no disrespect). Maybe another 40 or 50 SLAC's. So, we have 100 departments, roughly, with faculties averaging around maybe 12 or 15. We're talking about 1500 jobs. In any given five year period (the time most are willing to look for work before 'settling'), maybe 10% of these open up (optimistic, i know)? so, 150 openings. in a five year period, the top 50 programs graduate about 2500 students (average of 10 ph.d.'s graduate per department per year). the top 20 graduate roughly 1,000 students. this doesn't take into account fields outside english hired into english departments, folks from foreign departments, etc., making the numbers even tighter. what do we learn from this: if your goal is to get an R1 or SLAC job at all costs, you probably shouldn't go to grad school at all even if it's at penn or ucla. you're praying against hope. now, if you'd be happy with any U.S. college in any region granting bachelor's and above, you have about 2,339 options according to this: http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/ . If you'd also be happy at a community college anywhere in the country, the total number of institutions in your job search pool increases to 3,658 colleges. my point: you should be clear about what sort of job would make you happy compared to what sort of job you have a fair chance of getting. those who would be happy with a CC job probably can't go wrong with a Ph.D., so long as they get funding. those in the top 50 who would be happy with any job but a CC job are probably in good shape also. But, if you barely squeeze into the top-50 and have your heart set on an R1 job, you should probably cut and run. in my program over the past four years (top-40), every single degree-earner has a full-time job, 3/4 being tenured. why? because half our grads take TT jobs within nearby CC districts. the other half muscle it into state U jobs, and one or two lucky souls each year get lucky at a peer institution (from rank 20-70). on placement statistics: keep in mind that most samples are so small as to make these numbers of limited use. most departments graduate maybe 10 or 15 people a year. once you get out of the top-20, you start getting a lot more students who, as those on here have noted, have complex autobiographies. some simply can't move outside the county/region (meaning they'll probably end up at a CC). some never intended to get a job with their ph.d. some will move out of country and never be heard from again. some are well into their 40's when they entered grad school. the folks in my program who fit the model of the average top-20 grad (under 34 when they get the ph.d., published, willing to do a national search, etc.) tend to get pretty good jobs. those who don't have fewer options. people with english ph.d.'s are a fairly small group. about 1400 are given a year. it's hard to provide anything but anecdotal predictions about a group this small and specialized. of course, if the Ph.D. is for self-fulfillment (which ought to be at least a partial reason for anyone doing it), then none of this matters, and you should just make sure you stay true to yourself while pursuing it.
  10. Lots of good suggestions on here. I'm currently beginning the dissertation phase at a lit program at a UC, and I remembered visiting this site when I applied many years ago. I was waitlisted at a UC and UFlorida. I thought all hope was lost. Then, I was published in a graduate journal, notified the departments where I was waitlisted, and wammo, I got pulled off both and offered full funding. So, my advice to people entering a second or third year of apps: seek out publication in a graduate journal. Nothing will move your application to the top of the pile faster than a publication. consult: cfp.upenn.english.edu for opportunities.
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