Ironman1214

Did the same on one of mine. Sigh. Also forgot to change the school name on two during my 2016 round, but strangely got accepted into one of them. Go figure.

Could not agree more! Well said.

Yes--thank you for bringing that issue up. The program that I attend also does not use a wait list. Two of the three programs that I applied to (in addition to the one I now attend) also did not waitlist students. I think in a way that I like the idea of accept or reject better. The students are not left wondering what is going to happen. When they finally hear from the uni, they know exactly where they stand.

Our program is 'front loaded,' meaning that we do a lot of our coursework up front. My first year, I took 4 classes each semester, with no teaching. In addition to the 12 hours in class each week, I would say that I worked anywhere from 2 to 4 hours each weekday and pretty much morning till night each weekend. Our program is fully funded with a generous stipend, so no worries about holding an outside job. The work load is somewhat reduced this semester, but I am also starting to prepare for QEs, so it is still a bit intense. Grad school is definitely NOT for the faint of heart, but I can unequivocally say that it is the best thing I have ever done!

Still not seeing that tagline, but that is not really the point, is it? And the university did--and does--invite 12 students each year for a campus visit. I did not make any assumptions whatsoever that anyone chosen for the program had only that acceptance, but admittedly, I did not word my statement regarding the 5 new students this year properly. I had intended only to call attention to the usual size of the cohort. However, I think that by the same standard, perhaps "research design" would have aligned better with "Digital Humanities Research Designer." SMU hired one professor that specializes in digital humanities this past semester, although her name is not yet listed on the "Faculty by Area of Interest" page, and the school is in the process of hiring another digital humanities professor. And as far as your statement that it is "time we stop looking at high school and community colleges as backup," it is certainly true that both of these types of positions typically entail a considerable teaching load which would at the very least make research more difficult, if not impossible. However, the current job market does not appear to have the availability of the jobs most of us want when we graduate. The plain truth is that people need to eat, pay rent, etc., and holding out for the perfect job (if that even exists) is not always possible, ergo the high school and cc jobs. Some academics have other considerations as well--children, elderly/ill/ disabled parents, or other factors that restrict their job searches. Adjuncting is even worse. Sadly, many adjuncts much work at several different schools in order to barely survive. And more and more graduates are taking international or non-academic positions. Until the job market changes (and I do think there will be some positive changes relatively soon--we are due for it if you look at historical trends), future graduates need to learn to keep their options open and to consider (or ever prepare for) a wider range of work within the academy.

I also looked up SMU and came up with a startlingly opposing view. Of the 20 PhD completions listed on the SMU website, there were 5 lecturer/ instructor placements, 5 assistant professor placements, 3 associate professor placements, 3 post-doc positions, 3 unknown, and the placement at Strayer that you cite. While I do not claim to know much about Strayer, I do know that it is not an 'online only' school. The enrollment ratio of online to campus students is about 60/40. The SMU graduate who was placed there was listed as an adjunct instructor for Strayer, and there could have been a myriad of reasons why this person chose to teach there. As far as the 'unknowns' go, a black space below a name does not necessarily indicate that the graduate has not been placed. It is much more likely that the person has not updated the school as to his or her current status. I did not see a single one that listed "design research" as you say. I also looked up some placement listings for some of the 'top schools,' and found that (at least for the ones that I saw) only include actual placements on their lists. A few of these are at private and public secondary schools, some are post-docs, and some are non-academic positions. Yes, the English PhD program does have a short history, but that can be an advantage in many ways. From what I have heard, the program is rigorous, selective, and fully funded. The department typically choose 6 of the 12 interviewees; however, this past year, they only chose 5. Anyway, I am a 'glass-half-full' kind of guy, so that is my take on SMU. And you do know that the methodology used for those rankings is completely skewed, right?