Hi all,
So, I’m hoping to apply to English MA and/or PhD programs this upcoming cycle and I’ve got a bit of a weird situation. This means that I’m not confident of my prospects either way and I have no idea which sorts of schools I should even be applying to. I was hoping y’all could help me out and figure out just what the hell to do in applying for graduate school.
My undergrad experience was extremely rocky. I spent over half of it pursuing a fruitless double major in both math and English that ended up giving me a disproportionate amount of stress and sunk my GPA a ton. I ended up with a cumulative GPA of 2.87, which, since COVID-19 has forced our entire spring trimester into a pass/fail grading system, isn’t going to change no matter how well I’ve done this term. My major change doesn’t explain my entire GPA situation, since there was one term where I took only English classes and still did kind of average. Yet, since winter 2019 – that is, in the past five terms – I haven’t got any lower than a B+ in any English course – and that B+ was from a creative writing class. Everything else has been an A- or higher, including all advanced-level courses. During one particularly bad term last year, where I had a pretty severe bout of depression and as such received Ds (or lower) in three other classes, I still came out with an A- in a 400-level English class. Furthermore, despite my low cumulative GPA, my major GPA is 3.41, and my senior year cGPA is 3.58 – a far cry from the 2.87 from all four years, and one which surely would have been higher had I not been forced off campus and into online classes. My poor GPA, then, clearly isn’t an indication of inability to do the work. Far from it: in fact, I know I have the ability to excel in English. My senior year grades prove it.
Right now, I’m thinking that my main prospects are to either A) take non-degree-seeking classes in order to boost my cGPA above the 3.0 mark or apply to MA programs in order to have a better shot at PhD applications next go-around. Problem is, the former would take quite a long time, and the latter has limited options due to the former. Plenty of MA programs have GPA limits, and I have no idea where to start looking for universities that would accept a student with my GPA. I don’t want to be stuck taking more undergrad classes at my local state university in a non-degree trajectory that has no definitive end. I’m just confused as to what to do. I don’t want to be held back by who I was in my underclass years, but it feels like every minimum GPA is saying that that’s going to be the case. Anyone have advice for my situation?