ghostmango

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