helloperil

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. 
 
 

Application season is always stressful and I encourage you all to stay as healthy as you possibly can especially during these uncertain times.

Regarding OSU and other schools:  It is vitally important for schools to present data in a way that is much more representative of the job market rather than intending to misleading. Clumping a large amount of data together by including times when the job market was relatively healthy and not healthy is misleading. Ranking itself does not determine placement which is what makes fit even more important. However, I do think that certain programs do a much fairer job of accurately representing data even if it isn't always 100 percent up to date. I think the way they choose to represent data is also a representation of the experiences people might have at that institution. I'd also like to caution against small numbers  (A program accepting a cohort of 5 students and placing 3 of them per year is much different than a program accepting a cohort of 20 students and placing 3; certain universities might also pay to keep their students in non-tenure track jobs which is something else that should be considered) but rather encourage you to figure out what percentage of students get placed and what steps the university is taking to ensure future job success.
I'd like to highlight a few schools below that I think are doing wonderful things within their English department:
Emory's PHD placement data is clean and allows you to see where students got placed during which year. The graduation date is unknown because placements don't indicate that but it goes further than most universities do in providing that data. Emory recently increased their stipends but the cost of living in Atlanta is pricey. It's hard to ignore their recent placements at Oxford University Press, Pepperdine University, University of Buffalo, Macalaster College, Thomas Jefferson College, Skidmore College, and Union College. : http://english.emory.edu/home/graduate/job-placement.html WashU's PHD placement follows a similar pattern but provides names and graduation years to better provide insight into their track record. Recent placements include University of Washington,  Southern Methodist University, Northwestern University, Tennessee, College of William and Mary, and Columbia University. They increase their stipends yearly to keep up with living inflation. (https://english.wustl.edu/phd-careers) UMD acknowledges placements for both their PHD and MA students. MA placements at specific schools is rarely done so it's a nice change to see. https://english.umd.edu/academic-programs/graduate/graduate-job-placements Rice University has data available if you scroll all the way down. HRC is the Humanities Research Center at Rice University. PWC s the Program in Writing and Communication. 2019 seems to have been a rough year for Rice but I really admire their transparency in listing all placements. Rice University also increases their stipends yearly to keep up with living inflation https://english.rice.edu/job-placement Northwestern University also has very clean data: https://english.northwestern.edu/graduate/phd-program/placement-record.html As does Michigan!: https://lsa.umich.edu/english/graduate/prospective-students/placement.html

 

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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 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 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...