HenryJams

In Search of Lost Time is hands-down my favorite book. You're absolutely right to say it's life-altering. As for me, I'm reading The Idiot. It's the only one of Dostoevsky's big four that I haven't read (C&P, BK, and Demons being the others of the big four).

Hey there, I'm also interested in Victorian lit. I just looked back at my admittedly low-quality notes on faculty at highly-ranked schools. Your list matches up with mine pretty well. I think you might also consider CUNY (Agathocleous, Reitz, Schaffer, Yousef all touch on Victorian). And Columbia (Adams, Dames, Marcus). Also Northwestern (Finn, Herbert, Lane, Law). As for mid-ranked schools, I thought USC looked pretty cool, but that's because I have a specific faculty member in mind. Those are some schools that I found in my search; I'm sure others who've done more thorough research will chime in with great advice.

I referred to them as "Dr. X" or "Professor Y" after the initial mention. I figure that's a safe middle ground. It shows respect while avoiding the redundancy of using the full name each time.

I agree with the sentiment that scholarship should "be shared with as many people as possible or else it is not knowledge but insider secret." I do wonder about the value of adding a short summary in layman's terms to academic articles, though. I think most academic articles are written with academics in mind, with the implication being that academics are more likely to understand the technical language being employed and more likely to look up terms, theories, etc. with which they are not familiar. So adding a layman's summary might fail to reach the audience that would most benefit from such a summary (i.e., actual laymen). I agree that it's super-fun to explain complicated concepts to friends. I remember getting Gender Trouble a few years ago. I thought it was a lovely book, and I still do. And I find Butler's prose to be aesthetically pleasing, even, because her precision (or use of jargon, whichever you prefer) makes for pretty efficient writing. But I recognized that (a) I was probably the only person I knew who would voluntarily read the book and (b) the ideas in it were interesting enough to warrant communication to others. So I got to work on my communication skills by explaining gender performativity to my mom. My communication with her was less efficient because I couldn't evoke the precision of Butler's own writing, but I gained a lot by sharing a new idea with someone. And she wouldn't have read Butler anyway. So, while I think that adding a layman's summary to academic articles might not be maximally effective in terms of making academic knowledge more accessible, I agree that we should do more. Institutional outreach programs for the public might be a good idea, but idk what those would look like. Some academics have blogs where they explain things more casually, so maybe academics can engage in more independent web-based publishing. But who knows if anyone reads blogs. Also, since someone brought up mathematics: I work in law. It's a hugely complex field and is notorious for making heavy use of jargon. It's such a multifaceted field that (generalist) judges are almost always evaluating the law on hyper-specialized areas of the field. The reason they are able to do so without jeopardizing justice is that attorneys take great pains to translate jargon-heavy and complicated areas of law into terms a reasonably well educated judge can understand. All that is to say that there are indeed specialized areas of study that benefit from, and indeed require, the translation of jargon into something resembling layman's terms. And attorneys can and do achieve that translation. It's not an impossibility, it's just extra work. This is just a different perspective.

Agreed, 1000 words is brief. I think the only rule is don't turn it into a "large, loose, baggy monster."

Haha, I had the exact same problem. Glad I could help.

Unless the program specifies double spaced, you can single space SOPs. It's on the program to specify if they want double spaced SOPs, so if they don't then any kind of spacing you want to do is fair game. I personally quintuple spaced my SOP because I'm that person. Side note: if you select "double" from the line spacing options in Word, the program will format your document to be more than double spaced. If you instead go to Line Spacing Options -> Line Spacing, and set it at "Exactly" "24 pt" (assuming you're using 12 point font), you'll get a true double space, which is when there is a full blank line, equivalent to the full height of a line of text, between rows of words. Word's "double" spacing gives you more than the full height of a line of text between rows of words, and so robs you of a little space. For an SOP this trick won't be helpful (because the difference between Word's "double" and using the "exactly" setting is minimal), but if you're struggling to figure out how to squeeze an extra paragraph into your 20-page WS, changing from Word's preset "double" spacing to "exactly" 24-point spacing might gain you an additional couple lines.

What I'm about to say is speculation; I'm not in grad school, nor am I on an adcomm. Other people can and probably will give better advice. I think it's probably more important to zoom in on one text and go deep into other scholars' readings. I would think that demonstrating the ability to engage with primary and secondary sources would likely be looked on favorably by adcomms. But I'll add two things: (1) a paper's thesis should dictate the depth of its engagement with secondary sources (i.e., a paper centered on close reading will likely not need to engage as deeply with secondary sources); (2) even in 20 pages it's pretty difficult to engage deeply with a large number of secondary sources. If you're concerned that readers will be turned off by less engagement with secondary sources, you could always explain in your introduction that, because of the depth of the close reading you're doing, the paper's scope will be necessarily limited as far as its dialogue with other scholars' works. I think adcomms would be able to read between the lines and recognize that you're saying you can't engage with 900 secondary sources and do the close reading you want to in just 20 pages. I'm sure it'll turn out awesome no matter what you do. Good luck!

Yep, it's awesome. I feel you. Same.

I think I get what you're saying. I have indeed watched friend after brilliant friend struggle to make ends meet after finishing both graduate school and law school. I have also lived on poverty wages. So I guess I would be in the minority in not finding any other answer "shockingly privileged and naive." I'm not trying to start an argument with you. I totally respect you. Even read portions of your blog and think it's awesome. But I do think that people's circumstances vary, and that those circumstances (including, yes, privileges) can and should color their decisions and inform their tolerance for risk. That's all I was trying to point out.

I think you make an interesting point, because my thinking has been somewhat different. When I was finishing up my bachelor's degree in '13-'14, I really wanted to get my PhD. But I also recognized that the market for academic jobs is not great. So I ended up going to Emory University for law school. My reasoning was that, since Emory's placement rate for full-time lawyering jobs is better than pretty much any English PhD program's placement rate for TT positions, law school was a better way to gain a marketable skill and get a job. I'm not saying that you should go to law school. At all. But I do think that applicants should take their other marketable skills into account when applying to English PhD programs. And this is where my personal opinion will depart from yours, although I totally get and respect your rationale for wanting to pursue the PhD no matter where you get accepted. I think that, for those applicants who only really have experience in an academic setting, getting into the best program possible is imperative. Those applicants who have already had another career, or who double majored in electrical engineering or something similarly marketable, can have the "luxury" of taking greater chances at lower-ranked schools. This isn't me saying that I have a wealth of opportunities waiting for me by virtue of my J.D. from a mediocre school. It's just me saying that the marketability of my other degree is something that I take into account in applying to PhD programs. People like to give facile answers such as "DO NOT get a PhD unless you can go to Yale or another top-10 school" or "only get a PhD if you just love to learn so darn much." But the truth is that we all have different levels of risk tolerance, and what seems reasonable to one person will seem unreasonable to another. If you feel like you're willing to accept the risk that a lower-ranked program presents, then I say go for it. I know I'm applying to a few schools outside the top 20.

I agree with vondafkossum; I don't think it's something to worry about. But if you can find someone to write to a better recommendation, then go for it. As to your questions: I'm sure it's entirely possible that two strong letters of recommendation can offset one that is just OK. I also think that one letter that's just OK could harm two great letters. It really depends on the strength of the other two and on the meh-ness of the one you've seen. I think it's likely that almost every applicant's materials feature one letter that's the strongest, one that's in between, and one that's the least enthusiastic. That's not to say that third-place letters are unenthusiastic. It's just pretty unlikely that all letter-writers will voice exactly the same degree of enthusiasm for a given student. And I also think that different letter-writers express themselves differently. One writer might offer qualified or vague praise for even the best students. Another professor might hail a just-decent student as the next Empson. I think that adcomms are aware of the varying styles letter-writers employ, and take that into account when reading LORs. Not that I know for sure; I'm just guessing that's the case. The bottom line is that I don't think you need every letter to absolutely gush over you for your application to be competitive. Also, since you mentioned you're anxious, I'll add that ultimately no applicant has control over the content of LORs. We do have control over our writing samples, SOPs, CVs, etc. I, too, worried about the quality of my LORs until I recognized that my energy would be better-spent tweaking my SOPs (and eliminating the gajillion typos I managed to include in my first few drafts). Just my two cents, sorry if I'm overstepping.

I don't think there really is a "too soon," provided that your letter writers are generally engaged and responsive. My approach: I emailed all my writers on October 1 and gave them a list of schools I'm applying to. I told them I will have submitted every application by November 1. I then listed deadlines for each school. I said, "My goal is to give you the maximum amount of time to write and submit each letter; submitting each application by November 1 will give you at least a month to draft and submit a letter for each school." Seriously, I did want to give them a ton of time both as a courtesy and so that they would have a longer time to think of synonyms for "genius" to use in their letters for me (ha). (I'm personally not interested in submitting letter writer info and then walking away from the application; once I do that I might as well just attach my CV and WS and submit the while thing.) I'm keeping track of the dates on which I enter each letter writer's info. Around November 15, after I've submitted all my applications, I'll send each writer a simple checklist. It'll just contain the name of each school, the date I submitted their name to each school (so they can cross-reference that date with the contents of their email inbox if they missed something), and the deadline for each application. tl;dr: I think you can assuage your concerns by keeping track of the dates on which you enter letter writers' info, then providing a checklist using those dates to your writers near the end of the application period.

Some programs highlight their own strengths. E.g., Rutgers states, "Our department is known for its work in feminist and gender studies, as is Rutgers as a whole, and we have specialists in women’s writing in every historical period. We also offer many courses in drama and performance studies, in digital humanities, and in literary theory. One of our particular strengths is African-American literary studies, in which we have a large group of faculty and students." Another example: UC San Diego offers detailed information about the strengths of its program. Check it out: http://literature.ucsd.edu/grad/phd-admissions/index.html. Other schools don't provide any information about specific programmatic strengths. In those cases, your best bet, I think, is to check out faculty profiles and CVs. Also, bear in mind that a program's representations of its own strengths might not be comprehensive. I've heard elsewhere that Rutgers has a reputation for being strong in Victorian literature, and my own research of faculty profiles has confirmed this. Yet its program overview page says nothing about Victorian literature: https://english.rutgers.edu/academics/graduate-92.html Bottom line: some programs list specific strengths, and those lists might be useful. But don't take a program's recitation of its strengths at face value, because you might learn about other strengths by putting in some in-depth research into faculty profiles. For me, finding out about a program's strengths literally involved opening like 50 tabs at a time on my web browser (one for each faculty member), opening just as many CVs, and looking through publications, classes taught, interests, etc. It was a little tedious (OK, a lot tedious) but ultimately led me to apply to a number of programs I had not previously considered to be contenders.