iamaperson

As someone currently in a program, I don't think it's inappropriate at all to ask - I would just say that it's unlikely they'll have any kind of real answer, both because they're not the ones making the decision, and also because everyone, at least in my dept., is essentially taking things week by week, or even day by day, right now just to keep up with changes to normal business -- it's really been basically all hands on deck to respond to the immediate chaos of moving (or choosing not to move) classes online, managing reimbursements & cancelled events, phasing down research, moving all work to remote as campus buildings are closed, figuring out ways to continue grad recruitment amidst all that while many grad students are either leaving campus or helping their students figure out how to do the same, etc., etc. Maybe in the next week or so, when the first wave of disruption is past, profs, DGS's, and dept. admins, will be able to give you a better sense of what the fall semester looks like, but until then, I think a lot of programs are just as in the dark as anyone else, unfortunately.

Fit, as I'm sure you've discovered in your reading thus far, is a rather fuzzy thing, and probably involves a lot of features that can be hard to know until you get a chance to visit (which usually comes after you're admitted). While trying to put together a list (probably no more than 10 places) of places to apply to just based on websites and other accessible info, though, I'd say try to consider these things: (1) Funding. You've already noted this, but I'll say it again: Don't go, don't even apply, to somewhere that doesn't guarantee full funding in some form. (2) Faculty. You want to have a pretty clear area of interest going in--in terms of at least genre, period, and method. Once you have these set, you should look through department pages for dept's that meet the funding requirement and that have at least three faculty members who are working or have done work in your areas of interest. So, if you see yourself as working on, say the nineteenth century British novel, and are interested in pursuing deconstructive methods, you might look for a department that has faculty members who work in those areas, and these don't necessarily have to overlap (the nineteenth century-ist might not be a deconstructionist, the deconstructionist might study Shakespeare, but both could be on your committee or you could take courses with both, and so get the perspective of both a period and theoretical approach on your work. There could be potential problems with this--i.e., certain faculty members that don't work together--but this is hard to know when applying, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.) At least one (preferably more than one) of these faculty members, too, should be tenured (and preferably somewhere in the middle of their career, aka, not likely to retire soon). A second way of approaching this would be to look to the scholarship in your areas of interest that you admire, and see where those scholars work. After you've confirmed that they're still at that department, and that that department offers funding, then, again, check to see if there are other faculty members you could see yourself working with. (3) Graduate students and dept activity. Once you've identified a set of departments that seem able to support your interests, check out the pages of the current grad students in the department. Are there others working in your area(s)? Is there a working group or colloquium in your area(s)? While it does happen that departments can get oversaturated with grad students in a particular area, and so stop accepting in that area for a few years, it's generally a good sign that there are others interested in similar things (in part because you'll have a potential community to work with, in part because it suggests that the department is receptive to / at least thinks it can support that kind of work). (4) Opportunities in other departments. It can sometimes (often?) be the case that individual departments don't really collaborate or work similarly--the comp lit department might do work the English dept's resistant to, and vice versa--but it can still be good to take a look at what else is going on at the universities you've gotten on your shortlist based on departmental interests. Are there interdepartmental/interdisciplinary working groups/reading groups/seminars you'd be interested in, for example? A center for arts & sciences that seems to be doing interesting things? Because, again, departments can sometimes be islands, I wouldn't look to this kind of stuff until you've already picked a set of departments that seem to be able to support your interests on their own--but other activity at the universities might break ties or help narrow down the list. (5) Libraries and other resources. Do the university libraries have any special collections in your areas of interest (especially, though not exclusively, if you're into archival work)? Good resources for computational things if, for example, you're into digital humanities? These are things you'd probably be able to get access to some way or another despite your home university, but can also be nice to have around (and can also signal that there are people at, or often coming, to that uni working on those things). There are probably other criteria you'll find yourself putting together as you go through this process (about teaching requirements/opportunities, for example--or, I think I resisted applying to departments that didn't list grad student profiles on the same part of the website that it listed faculty profiles, out of some sense that shoving grad students into some more obscure part of the site demonstrated a less-than-supportive attitude [but that was an idiosyncratic way to narrow down the list]), but some of the decision making on that kind of stuff can wait until you've already been accepted. On the whole, in looking for "fit," again, I'd say focusing on where there's solid faculty support and signs of graduate student activity in the kinds of things you're interested in, are the keys. X,Y,Z prestigious university might seem attractive for its prestige alone, but if it doesn't have the resources/people your proposed project needs, then you'd be better off at a less prestigious university that has faculty members who have written books you find transformative. -- And as for language exams: YMMV, as I'm sure there are some depts out there that actually emphasize them, but I wouldn't worry about them (unless you decide to apply to a comp lit department, in which case, they care a little more). You'll likely have to do no more than pass two 500-word translation exams, with a dictionary in hand, which will be graded more or less pass/fail (so not hard). As long as you've a passable familiarity with at least one language among a set of generally acceptable languages--French, German, Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, or something else you can convince a dept is relevant to your interests--you should be fine.