helloperil

YMMV but I've found that reaching out to professors whose work aligns with yours isn't super necessary for lit PhD admissions programs - my partner has a PhD in STEM and from what I've seen, it's more common there because you're applying to work with just one prof and their lab. In my program, for example, the admissions committee is made up of like six profs so it's likely the professor you reach out to won't even be reading your app and deciding on admissions. As far as your interests go, I think you do have some fairly defined research interests. It's good that you know what period you want to study and have an angle (new media studies) through which to analyze that period. I recommend reading some recent issues of relevant journals to get a sense of what sort of scholarship is being published right now (Contemporary Literature comes to mind immediately as one you might check out). It's also helpful to carefully pore over the works cited pages of people whose work you admire and find interesting - by doing this, you'll quickly learn who the major scholars are in your areas of interest. Then, you can read their work and begin to get a sense of where your own work and research interests fit into the field. What major questions and concerns are people grappling with? Are there areas that you feel are understudied or intersections of certain fields that you feel would be fruitful? For your statement of purpose, you'll need to be able to articulate 1) that you understand the field you are applying to enter and 2) that you can ask interesting questions about said that could potentially lead to your own project that contributes original knowledge in said field. You certainly don't have to (in fact, I would say the adcoms don't want you to) propose a whole dissertation project but you want to appear informed.

oh and one more thing, once you're in grad school, you'll be told time and time again that if you want an academic job, you should be prepared to move anywhere for it. when i was a naive 22 year old entering my phd program, i thought to myself, oh sure, i'll move anywhere because i love the profession! now, i'm several years older, i have a partner whose field simply doesn't exist in rural alabama, i've spent several years living and working in the Midwest and i've realized "you know, i don't want to just move anywhere for the pursuit of an academic job. actually, i only really want to live near a major metropolitan area, like where i grew up, and where my partner will actually have job opportunities and ideally i'd like to be driving distance from my family." and if you want to be in academia, you can't be choosy like that. so that's something to consider and prepare for because a phd is long and life happens and sure, at the beginning of your phd, you think you'd be happy wherever as long as you can pursue an "academic life" but four years into your phd, you realize "an academic life" isn't such an exalted thing anyway and wow i'd really love to live somewhere with a major airport and varied food offerings. you're all great at writing and have the ability to pivot to jobs like marketing and communications and technical writing which are much more flexible in terms of where jobs are located. i'm not trying to convince folks not to pursue a phd because that's probably not possible, but i really encourage everyone who is entering this year to start building a resume outside of academia from day 1 and go in with the expectation that you will not secure an academic job. i have a peer reviewed publication, great teaching evals, a stellar history of department service, "trendy" research interests, and excellent relationships with my advisors — all told, i've enjoyed my time here and i will go on the job market (in a limited capacity because i'm not willing to move anywhere). but i have zero expectation of securing an academic job. i'll still probably be crushed when i go on the market and get rejected but at least i'll have been preparing for that rejection for six years. that's all you can really do imo: have no expectations.

dissertator here (so i've seen several cohorts come and go) and wanted to add something about alt-ac: your department, wherever you end up, will be very ill-prepared to help you transition to alternative jobs or develop skills outside of traditional academic skills. your advisors are people who never had to think about alt-ac; they've most likely been in academia their whole adult lives so even if they mean well, they can't offer you much in preparing for the tremendous likelihood that you will not receive an academic job and will need to pivot and market yourself in a different way ' so basically, you need to be prepared to do your academic work while also developing skills that will make you more marketable in the "real world." i've been developing communications/marketing skills since my first year here through a campus job, which is nice and hopefully will lead to something that can pay the bills after i graduate (i'm one of the suckers who has bought into the sunk-cost fallacy and decided to just finish the phd since i'm already dissertating) but it's also tiring to be seeking out these professional development opportunities on top of normal academic duties also, i've seen one person in my program get an R1 job the whole time i've been here. the market is bleak bleak bleak. everyone thinks they will be the exception but that's not how exceptions work. if you're going to enter the phd no matter what, i encourage you to start preparing for alternative employment from day 1

For lit studies programs, your proficiency in language is not a factor in applications (an exception might be if you are planning on studying medieval literature but even then, I don't think coming in with no Latin/Old French knowledge is necessarily a dealbreaker). If you are trying to bolster your lit studies applications, your time would be better spent improving your statement of purpose and writing sample. For comp lit, it most definitely is necessary to have proficiency in another language, so it really just depends on what programs you will be applying for. I see you've noted that listening/speaking is where you have difficulty with German/French and again, for lit studies programs, I wouldn't worry about that at all. You won't be evaluated on your speaking skills — most likely to pass a language requirement all you'll need to do is translate a short passage and you'll be allowed a dictionary.

imo it doesn't hurt to try to discuss counter offers and try to get more funding or bonus funding, like a summer of guaranteed funding, extra travel funds, etc. I had a few offers and tried to negotiate for a better offer from the school that I now attend. I was unsuccessful but it didn't create weird vibes between me and the DGS; the DGS is actually even on my committee now so it's all chill. I think they understand you're not making a lot and you want to maximize your funding.

For what it's worth, I also received acceptance letters from my POIs but I didn't contact them before submitting an application; they were simply given my name because their interests aligned with mine and they sent an email and offered to chat on the phone as part of the recruiting part of the admissions cycle. I guess, personally, I wouldn't read too too much into getting acceptance letters from POIs, they're pretty much just given a list of admitted students to reach out to in order to woo them to accept. I want to make clear that I don't think there's any harm in reaching out to POIs but myself and fellow cohort members who have gone through the admissions cycle just don't really see any correlation between reaching out and acceptances/rejections. If you have the time to do it, that's great but if you're pressed for time, I wouldn't worry about it.

No problem! Another thing I remembered — it can be helpful to peruse course descriptions if a program has that info on their website and many do have them available somewhere (here is Indiana's, since I see you applied there). It gives you another sense of the scholarship/research that the department is engaging in. It's also helpful to see /who/ is teaching the courses because professors who aren't around will not be teaching grad seminars and you can see what sorts of classes your POIs are interested in teaching right now. It can also give you a sense of their approaches — are they engaging a lot with more current scholarship in their course descriptions or are they more traditional. You can also cite specific courses you are interested in taking; I remember looking through course descriptions and saying in my SOP that I would love to take insert course here taught by so-and-so professor. It demonstrates that you've researched the program and are excited by their offerings and how they would fit into your proposed project. It might also help your writing sample because you can see who your POIs are in conversation with and who you might need to be reading if you want to demonstrate that you have an understanding of current scholarship in the field and are able to situate your own project in said field.

As someone who's on the other side of the cycle (phd candidate in a lit studies program), I really don't think reaching out to POIs has any bearing on admission. I contacted zero professors in my admissions cycle and was admitted to several PhD programs. I've also had conversations with faculty about the admissions process and they literally have never mentioned a prospective student reaching out to them as a factor in admissions. It really just boils down to the writing sample, LORs, and the SOP. I suppose if a POI could provide feedback on an SOP or writing sample that would be helpful but I doubt most, if any, have the time to do that. Fit, of course, is important to convey in the SOP but honestly you can find out way more about fit from reading a professor's recent work than from a short email exchange (especially when profs are already so overwhelmed with email from current students!). There is sometimes the scenario where a professor you might want to work with is on medical leave or sabbatical or close to retiring and some people encourage reaching out to get more information about those situations. But I also feel that's not necessary because if there is just ONE person you want to work with in a dept, it probably is not a great fit honestly. In hindsight, the programs I was admitted to were ones where there were several faculty whose work aligned with mine. IMO, it's really important to make sure there is more than one faculty whose work aligns with yours; I've seen people who come to work with one star faculty and then find out they're never around or their advising styles don't vibe. Hope this is helpful — please feel free to message if you want to chat more about this or the admissions process! It is a certainly a frustrating and mystifying process but I really do think time is better spent working on admissions documents rather than reaching out to professors.

congrats to the davis admits! i did my undergrad there and have nothing but great things to say about the english department. feel free to PM if you have any questions or want to chat

Perhaps I'm just a jaded PhD candidate but the OSU placement rate doesn't seem that abnormal — I would wager a guess that most similarly ranked literary studies programs are placing people in tenure-track jobs at similar rates. Using misleading placement info on the website is a red flag but I wouldn't say their low placement rates are that surprising. The majority of lit studies graduates will not get a tenure-track job, even ones at tippy-top programs (see what happened at Columbia in 2018-19) There are just not many literary studies jobs at all and covid has wrecked the academic job market even further. editing to add: not posting this to be a bummer or to discourage folks from pursuing a phd; just wanted to contextualize the OSU post on the results page from the perspective of someone who's now seen a decent number of program-mates enter the job market in recent years

This is great information! I also wanted to add the program at UT Austin as one of interest; Alison Kafer (author of Feminist, Queer, Crip) and Julie Minich, who works on disability studies and Chicana/o literature, are both professors in the UT Gender and Women's Studies program and I believe Minich has a joint appointment in English. And in addition to Sami Schalk in UW Madison's gender and women's studies program, Ellen Samuels, who works on disability in American literature, has an appointment in English and gender women's studies as well.

I also want to recommend resisting the urge to contact anyone at this stage. I know the first wave of acceptances is stressful but there is still so much time left in this admissions cycle! When I was applying to programs, my first notification was a rejection from Duke, which absolutely crushed me. I was convinced this one rejection was indication that I'd never get in anywhere. And then literally a week after that, I was accepted to the program that I'm now happily attending. All this to say — you never know what is coming next for you! You are all well-qualified, smart applicants and there's still a lot of time left. Hang in there!!

I'm currently a PhD candidate at a large R1 public university and through conversations I've had with faculty over the years, your GRE score is not weighted very heavily at all for admission. The most important pieces of your app are by far your writing sample, LORs, and statement of purpose. Surprisingly, LORs actually hold a lot of weight — when I was applying, I figured everyone would have good letters and it wouldn't matter so much but they do read them closely. I think they really read those three pieces I mentioned and most of the time decide who they'll admit based off those three parts of the app. YMMV based on each individual program of course, but this is my experience. Sending good vibes to you all — happy to weigh in on any other topics that may be on your mind at this point in the cycle! It's been years since I applied but I still remember the anxiety...