meghan_sparkle

being married to a prince helped

being married to a prince helped

being married to a prince helped

being married to a prince helped

being married to a prince helped

being married to a prince helped

being married to a prince helped

being married to a prince helped

being married to a prince helped

in an ideal world, i would say do the English MA. it's clearly the better fit for you by miles, meaning you'll likely produce better work than the fiction you might under people whose work is very different from your own. you can always reapply to MFAs with an english MA in hand. i think you're right to highlight the relative newness of the program, the difference between faculty's interests and your own, and ranking. teaching opportunities and internship opportunities are great obviously, but by no means are they unique to an MFA program; a lot of MA and PhD programs offer these too, often in abundance.
the only caveat is: funding. i'm guessing the MA is not fully funded. is it partially funded? do you have any support available to you (family/savings), or the ability to apply for external funding or teaching there? if not, my advice changes a bit. imo it is never worth going into debt to get a humanities degree, mostly because 1.) there is (unfortunately) no guaranteed paying career path at the end of either an MFA or a terminal MA (or even a PhD for that matter...)  2.) the better fit might be somewhat squandered if you're struggling to produce your best work while incredibly stressed about money throughout.
if the funding situations are wildly disparate, it would probably be easier/wiser to do the fully funded MFA, playing to your strengths (developing teaching skills, etc) and adapting to the program's weaknesses (fit). there were at least 2 recent MFAs in this year's yale english phd admitted cohort (14 ppl i think?) so it definitely wouldn't hurt you. go where you will produce your best work—and the answer to that question is probably 50/50 fit and funding, it sounds like. sorry for the equivocal answer!

Just wanted to correct one of your claims here -- Brown, Columbia, and Cornell all have MFA programs!
OP, I know people who have done the MFA > PhD route, the MA > MFA > PhD route, as well as the PhD > MFA > PhD route (doing an MFA in the middle of the PhD!), as well as the PhD > MFA route. It really depends on where you and your work are, right now, critically and creatively -- and also, perhaps, taking age into account. I have an MFA and I'm starting a PhD program in the fall, and I'm really glad I did the MFA first. It absolutely strengthened my applicant profile -- I've won a number of creative writing fellowships and prizes, and have a couple of publications in prestigious journals, which I likely wouldn't have had without the MFA. Not so much because the MFA itself made me a better writer, but because it gave me access to the literary world and its opportunities. It also gave me time + funding to mature as a writer. Also, people at the English PhD programs I've been admitted to have been very interested in and impressed by that aspect of my writing life, so I wouldn't discount what you're bringing to the table as a creative writer, or the possible appeal of your degree/background.
I was also very generously funded at my MFA, so your situation, I think, is a bit different. Will you be able to live comfortably on the stipend the MFA program is offering you? One of the absolute best aspects of my MFA was being able to travel and save money, which totally transformed the first part of my twenties. Also, I've seen some MA English programs where a creative thesis is possible -- that might be something to look into! I think the best options here are a) do the well-funded MA, be proactive about seeking out creative writing opportunities, b) take a gap year, reapply to better funded, more established MFA programs.
Congrats on your admittances! You have a wonderful problem on your hands. Getting into fully funded MA and MFA programs is nothing to sneeze at.

WHOA I totally missed the line about twice the funding – sorry OP, I thought the MFA program was fully funded and the other one was less funding!! Resolving not to post replies just before bed anymore.
Totally agree w @Bumblebea — especially the bit  about the degree to which poor faculty fit can be lowkey traumatizing. ("What's the worst that can happen?" is, it turns out, a lot.)
My professors in undergrad but were avid, curious readers of my writing, but the faculty in my 1 year masters, supposedly more prestigious and bigger names, really did not care about my work or writing or advise me at all. The experience of feeling so out of step with them, burnt out by a program I didn't believe in, constantly feeling uninspired or even unwanted—it honestly wiped out my confidence for a good year or so. I didn't ask anyone that taught me on my masters for a recommendation. Hell I didn't even tell my postgraduate dissertation advisor I was applying for PhD programs. 

@merry night wanderer I read your first post as "non-traditional students shouldn't bother with Ivies" and my response was intending to counteract what I thought was a publicly defeatist attitude regarding the fact that non-traditional applicants certainly produce competitive applications and receive great offers too, and should definitely keep applying to institutions where they are underrepresented. Like, FOR SURE. 10/10. But I see now that you were really just trying to address the uncomfortable paradox of participating within a system which has been historically and institutionally discriminatory in a myriad of ways that generally don't work in favor of the "other," and certainly these demons manifest themselves saliently in the admissions process.

I disagree with a lot of this, and not only because this was not the case for me; I was even told by my advisors and letter writers that my non-traditional background (I'm 31, attended 4 schools including 2 community colleges before receiving my BA, and have some 1.3's and 1.7's etc. on my earliest transcript from 2006) would actually make me more appealing as an applicant because my record shows persistence and continual growth. I met with literally all of my English professors for advice on my future applications as early as 3 years before I even applied. I was told by one of my letter writers, however, that I was possibly aiming too high and should apply to more schools outside of the top 10, but I had been researching faculty and current students at certain schools for so long and didn't have time to edit my application choices. Luckily, this cycle worked out very well for me! But I was certainly told by multiple professors/advisors that I would likely get multiple offers because of my non-traditional background, not despite it.
I graduated with English honors and a 3.8 GPA, a research internship w a NYT bestselling author, a double major that included 2 years of Latin, and one creative publication I ended up on a brief in-state book tour for, all while bartending full-time and working late nights...the obstacles my background and transcripts reveal put my accomplishments into perspective, and I certainly don't think that this hurt my application. 

@meghan_sparkle same boat here! I was really looking forward to the Berkeley visit for Comp Lit. But got the email this afternoon that it was cancelled. Two visits in, leaving for a third tomorrow that is still on, and Berkeley was to be the fourth. I was hoping to get more info about the program's affordability of living in the area on the budget... 

If any Harvard admits have any questions, feel free to message me, considering the coronavirus-fueled cancellation of official visit days. 

Hearing rumors that multiple programs I have yet to visit are considering cancelling their visit days (or rather, departments are reckoning with the very real possibility that the university may require them to cancel.)
And... panicking.
EDIT: Wasn't clear but for coronavirus reasons I mean.

Hearing rumors that multiple programs I have yet to visit are considering cancelling their visit days (or rather, departments are reckoning with the very real possibility that the university may require them to cancel.)
And... panicking.
EDIT: Wasn't clear but for coronavirus reasons I mean.

Declined Brown! Hope this helps someone on the waitlist -- and in time to attend visit days too.

I can send you my Brown one if you want! DGS replied thanking me saying it was "very gracious" which was touching bc I found it hard to write too

Honestly? I'd say there aren't even 20 programs you can graduate from to find TT work these days. At the risk of sounding like That Person ... that's how bad the job market is. There is no job market. I'm no longer on the job market, but in my particular field--which was once very robust and considered a "must have" for almost all university English departments--there were a total of seven tenure-track jobs this year. Seven. Back in 2013, there were 35 ... and that  was considered a "bad year" at the time.
My point is that we've basically moved into uncharted territory. None of this is even showing up in the rankings yet because it's such a new reality. And yes, it's new, but it's not turning around. It's the new normal, rapidly becoming just "the normal." 
Since the two programs you're weighing are much better known for their rhet/comp programs than their literature programs, you might want to think about doing something rhet/comp adjacent. Not that you should give up specializing in literature (if that's non-negotiable for you), but maybe look at cultivating a side-specialty in rhet/comp--not to mention helping with the writing center, working with the first-year writing program (they need lit PhD input too), learning how to teach technical or developmental writing. That kind of activity will make you more attractive to the kind of universities that will actually seek to hire a PhD from a less-elite program.
And yes, there are universities that would rather have a Ball State or Miami PhD rather than a Cornell PhD. A community college or large open-admissions regional university is going to value relevant teaching experience and "fit" over pedigree. But even this dynamic is changing in certain places, as schools and departments are taking advantage of the "buyer's market" to burnish their credentials with an Ivy hire. A friend of mine just took a sabbatical from her small public college in North Dakota, and the department hired a one-year VAP from Princeton to take her place. It's wild out there these days.

yayayayaYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYYYYYYYYYY

Declined Brown! Hope this helps someone on the waitlist -- and in time to attend visit days too.

After a ridiculously wonderful visit at Yale, I've decided not to visit Michigan and Cornell and have officially accepted Yale's offer. SUCH PEACE!

If you're referring to job placement, isn't this also the situation at places like Harvard? (A current student and 2 recent grads have told me they haven't placed a student on a TT line in several years.) Not saying there isn't an issue at Columbia but I'm curious about the degree to which that infamous CHE piece resulted in overexposure for them. Obviously placement is declining (steeply) almost everywhere but it seems to me like flatlining placement is a big issue across several Ivies and I'd be really curious to know where it is worse than other places, as it's almost impossible to take faculty or students' word as gospel and statistics on department websites are often incomplete/fudged/misleading...