Great post Bill, especially about finding spots that fit with our interests and research. I am entering UA's Ph.D. lit program this fall. UA only admits a few outside the Strode Program, but they have a good number of Americanists among their faculty and a couple of Southern lit professors, both of which drew me. My area is contemporary American lit with a sub-genre of Southern lit and my thesis was titled "The Disillusionment of Cormac McCarthy." That will give you an idea where my scholarship interests lie. I'm very interested in the ways in which McCarthy challenges American ideologies, which then leads to study within early American writings, as well, to look at the beginnings of those ideologies. So I'm really all over the canon with my research and readings. I needed a school that had a more generalist feeling of the American text, which I believe I got.
I will add to your idea about when to begin thinking about getting a Ph.D. Undergrad is not too soon to begin to think about getting a Ph.D. for an English major. Unless one is preparing to work in publishing or something similar (non-teaching), an English major should not stop at the master's level. One can only teach lower levels of English, with a master's, including rhet/comp or introductory classes of literature. That, in and of itself, is not going to satisfy the literature concentration person's thirst to discuss texts. As such, designing the BA to be geared toward an eventual Ph.D. in literature makes sense. Intense preparation in a single foreign language is also necessary. Many universities have gone to a requirement of a single language (although there are still two-language requirements around). UA just removed the two-language requirement so I no longer have to figure out how to get two additional semesters of intermediate Spanish ( I have six semesters of French and two of Spanish). If one knows they are going to apply to Ph.D. schools, the entire MA can also be geared toward it, as well. It's good to figure out what your thesis will be on and work on a chapter that will suffice as a WS for the Ph.D. apps and provide a chapter for the thesis. Make sure that you discuss in the SOP how the WS is a chapter of your thesis and fits within your research goals. I think that committees like to know a student can write a thesis and will then be able to write a dissertation. During the writing of the dissertation is when most students abandon the quest for a Ph.D. Knowing that you can put a thesis together is important for consideration of the overall greater picture of getting admitted to a Ph.D. program. Don't know what you really want to focus on for a thesis as you begin your M.A.? Most of us don't have a clue, but gain a perspective in that first year and start reading. If the focus is too large, then you have to find a way to narrow it to a manageable one. Save the big picture for the dissertation. You can't begin to discuss something like the origin of the American text in a 100 page document (like I imagined I could ). However, you can discuss one tiny corner through an author like McCarthy, becoming fascinated with the author in the process and decide that author deserves some serious scholarship.
I love that question!
One thing is really think about if you would go to a school if you were accepted there. It sounds silly, but hear me out.
When you´re applying, you´re a mixture of desperate and day-dreamy. You´re thinking, "I want to be an SLP so badly I´d do anything and move anywhere!" and you´re also thinking, "I´ll get a great job with a good salary after. I want to dream big" and you sort of throw pragmatism to the wind. SO, I applied to 6 schools that perfectly fit my profile. Two of them are private and crazy expensive. I knew the chance of getting financial aid would be pretty much zero. But while I was applying, I just told myself, "Get in first... pay for it later..."
So, when I got my acceptances, and I really looked at the price tag I thought... there´s no way I´d be willing to accept this much debt. It was pointless applying there because $100,000 of debt was not acceptable to me. "Pay for it later" was a bad mentality that lead me to wasting around $200 in application fees plus paying to send 10 transcripts, and 2 GRE scores. So... about $300+ dollars total were wasted. I should have put that money towards schools I would have realistically considered attending.
Hope that helps!
