thepeeps

Thanks so much. Yeah I always feel bad about my gpa because I did super well in my English courses but it doesn't really reflect with my gpa. I feel like I don't have a chance at getting a PhD but I kind of just want to go out it with my best foot forward you know? I''m glad to relate to someone and someone understands.

I guess my worry was that without my grades from my MA, they would be looking at me from my undergrad background. I know I was not someone that was good enough to go from an BA to a PhD just like that, so I guess I'm kind of insecure about that. Despite the fact my low gpa comes from when I studied engineering and not English. Yeah when I read the email I was kind of...upset? The program said English PhD but it's clear it was lit focused. In the FAQ they only specified an MFA would not be enough to apply. The fact that I asked if coming from a writing background would not allow me to apply for the program and got kind of a rude response was odd to me.

Sorry I should have specified. I'm doing my MA at the same school where I earned my BA. 3 of my professors who I was close to during undergrad will also be teaching my graduate courses, so I will already know them and have that relationship established. I know for sure I will have strong letters since I'm pretty close to a lot of the professors in the department regardless.

HI everyone, It's been hard for me to find an exact answer to this problem, and even schools have been having a hard time getting back to me. I just graduated with my Bachelor's in English, and will be starting my Masters in the fall. I have the option to finish my Masters in one year, but then I ended up getting curious about how this would work with applying to PhD programs. There's two schools on my list that look like their deadlines are in early Jan, so worst comes to worst I could always apply after fall grades are entered (which for my university is always mid December). But there's another school on my list that has their deadline right when fall semester grades will be posted. So I'm not sure how it will look to just submit my application with no fall semester grades. My undergrad gpa is low (3.3) but I was a student that didn't know what I wanted to do until I was a junior. I always did super well in my English courses, but I spent some time studying engineering, so that has brought my gpa low. My major gpa is of course a lot higher. So that's why I'm hesitate to just submit an application using only my undergrad work/transcript. Also, instead of making a second thread, I thought I might just ask here. Does anyone know how strict literature PhD programs are regarding qualifications? My Bachelor's concentration is in Writing, Rhetoric, and Communication while my Master's is in Professional Writing. I emailed a school the other day and got kind of snarky email back where they just bolded "MA in English required". Of course I knew that, but my MA isn't in literature. I didn't want to go through the whole process and pay money just to be automatically DQ because of not having a lit background (despite taking lit classes undergrad). I've lurked on this thread for a while, so hopefully I could get some help