greekdaph

I submitted a resume instead of a CV last year, for the same reasons you did, and did well in admissions. I don't think it matters at all which one you submit.

I applied to more schools (15!) than I had room to list on most applications, so I listed schools that were peer schools with the schools I was applying to, schools that, from what I knew, offered comparable funding packages, had comparable placement records, and were similar fits for my interests. I also tried to list schools that were--again, from what I could tell, which, as we all know about this process, wasn't much--equally or more competitive than the school I was applying to. Hinesaj is totally right that the same information from you could be used by programs for two very different ends; my thought was that I wanted to show each school that I was applying to schools in its range, and to err on the side of showing that I was a confident candidate who was aiming for the top programs in my field. (Though that could backfire, of course, as schools want to admit candidate who they think will seriously consider their offers.) I saw an Econ student talking about this topic once, in another form, who was convinced that his/her partner didn't get into some schools because the other schools he or she listed on the application had very different methodologies and atmospheres. This isn't as much of a danger in English, but if you're applying to a school known for being, say, a collaborative, nurturing environment where a lot of people historicize their work, it's probably best not to list the school known for being hardcore competitive and only into high theory. I don't think these lists of schools ultimately matter much at all, but they're a place on your application to show that you have a strong enough sense of the discipline to know which programs have relative strengths in which areas.

I know what you mean, Jenny, about being obsessed with rankings even while doubting their validity. In my mind, though, rankings matter less as objective calculations of a program's strength (obviously, they're extremely flawed) than as engines that can drive the number of applications a school receives. While we all know that fit is the most important criteria of all when deciding which schools to apply to, who hasn't thrown in an application to a few very highly-ranked programs just to see what happens? As a result, then, programs that are highly-ranked get more applications and, thus, can choose their students from a more competitive pool of applicants, perpetuating, at least to some degree, their high standing. As for the NRC rankings: keep in mind that faculty turnover is such that by the time this round of NRC rankings even gets released (which I imagine will be soonish), they'll be outdated. Also, the economic situation is rapidly reshaping the graduate landscape, and while the rankings, both because of when they were calculated and because of the methodology they use, won't fully reflect that, it's very important to look at what kinds of support programs provide for their graduate students. Plenty of students choose against a more highly-ranked program (I'm one of them!) because that program doesn't have the right atmosphere for them or can't provide a good funding and teaching structure. (Berkeley is a classic example here, in that they don't fund all of their graduate students, or fund them all equally, and people turn them down for precisely that reason.) Mondo, it certainly is worth applying to programs below 40 or 50 because those rankings aren't the best indicator of a program's placement record. It's impossible to know what the job landscape will look like in 6-7 years anyway, but take a look at placement records, keeping in mind that the schools who have the best track records are also the ones most likely to publicize them (and don't be afraid to e-mail programs for this information!). Ask, too, how programs help their students find academic jobs. Also, look not just at placement more generally but at how students in your particular area of interest get placed. There's two ways to approach this latter inquiry: some programs operate more by the it-takes-a-village model and have similar placement across fields, while at others, your fortunes are tied more to the professor who chairs your dissertation; you'll want to see, then, how students of the professors you're most likely to work with do on the job market. What this all boils down to, ultimately, is two things; 1. I'd argue that the most important criteria for choosing programs is the answer to this question: Where are you most likely to do your best work? While your school's reputation may help ensure that your job application gets read, your work must, ultimately, speak for itself. Yes, it's often the case that the "top" programs have the best resources to guide your work, but that's not always true. 2. Rankings are far too general to cover the specific needs of any applicant. Ultimately, then, what matters most is FIT. A school that's ranked lower than 50 may still have faculty that will be really, really important to the kind of work you want to do, and that consideration should, in my mind, trump that school's standing on inherently dubious ranked lists.

One important point about attrition, which is something I hadn't thought about until I heard a DGS talk about it, is that there are (at least) two kinds of attrition: "good attrition" and "bad attrition." Some students leave PhD programs with a free Master's in tow because they decide that graduate study isn't for them, because their family circumstances change, or because of all kinds of other reasons. That makes it into the statistics, but it isn't necessarily a problem and, most often, has more to do with personal circumstances than institutional ones. What's a problem is people who stay ABD for their entire lives--people who get far into the program but, for whatever reason, don't finish and don't even plan to finish. In thinking about the latter category, what you want to look for and ask about is: what structural mechanisms are in place to help students make steady progress towards their degrees? Funding is important, obviously, but there are other kinds of support, too: does a program have structures in place to motivate you to write? Does a program give you fellowship semesters or years--that is, time off from teaching--so that you can focus on your writing? Does a program give you funding to travel to archives and present your work at conferences? The economy affects this, too, and not necessarily in a bad way, as some departments notorious for letting students stick around forever are now cracking down a bit. When you visit programs, ask them what support they give to dissertating students. The more support, the less attrition. As for programs that have a more nurturing academic environment, look, in general, for programs that: 1. Have non-competitive funding (that is, they make a commitment to fund all of their incoming graduate students and give them the same or very similar funding packages). Money can be a source of tension, as it's tough to make a living as a grad student. Also, unequal funding offers can create hierarchies and cause insecurity. 2. Assume that the students they accept for the MA/PhD will be there for the duration of the program. Some programs don't automatically admit students for both the MA and PhD, which can cause all kinds of tension when some get the opportunity to stay and others are forced to go through the horrendous application process again. Some programs treat oral exams (or written exams; whatever, more generally, is the transition between coursework and candidacy) as qualifying exams, and may use them to weed people out, whereas at other programs it's extremely rare for someone to fail these exams. In general, it's that case that everyone at a program wants to see you succeed--they win and you win when you do well. But some students are more territorial, and some institutional structures facilitate competition rather than cooperation. As far as specific program that have more nurturing environments, check out UNC-Chapel Hill, Rutgers, University of Michigan, and Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) (there are many more, too). Bear in mind that some programs have a more professor-centric model, where your experience--and, sometimes, your chances at finding a good job afterwards--are more closely linked to your advisor (e.g., "Professor Awesome's students always do really well on the market!"), whereas other programs operate more on the it takes a village to raise a graduate student model (e.g., "Students from Awesome School always do really well on the market!"). It's hard to know up front which program is which, and hard to know up front which programs are more inclusive than others (often, it depends on how well individual cohorts get along, and often it can vary from year to year), but questions like that can be resolved much more easily on a campus visit where you get to meet other prospective students and where your gut feeling kicks in.

I applied last year and, at least for schools with December deadlines, submitted most of my online applications a day or two before the deadline and overnighted many of my paper materials so they'd arrive on the day of the deadline. And it didn't seem to matter in admissions. Not that I'd advocate that approach, as it added considerable amounts of both expense and stress, but as long as your materials are in by the deadline, it doesn't matter how early they're in. As far as I can tell, most programs don't begin reviewing applications until after winter break, anyway. Get your materials in as early as you can, but don't drive yourself crazy getting them in way before the deadline. Note that this applies to recommendation letters, too; I was, for instance, admitted to a program to which one of my recommenders submitted a letter a full month after the deadline. People seem especially willing to cut their colleagues some slack in this area.

I submitted two papers to most schools for my applications during the last round and was very happy with how I did in admissions. Each paper was about 10-12 pages long, and though they focused on different texts--one on poetry and non-fiction, the other on a novel--they were both in the same field, and both in the field I wanted to go into (not that that's the only way to approach a two-sample application; that's just what I did, and so it's what the experience I articulate here is premised upon). I wrote a paragraph in italics at the top of the writing sample that explained how each essay explores a facet of my interest in topic X, provided a sentence-long abstract of each paper, and glossed the differences in their subject matters and methodological approaches. My worry with submitting two samples was that I wasn't showing that I could undertake a larger project. So to compensate for that, I made sure I articulated a larger project in my SOP. I began my SOP by talking about my senior thesis (which was not the source of my samples), then I talked about how I wanted to expand those ideas to encompass a wider range of texts, then I talked a little bit about what doing so would look like (here's where the writing sample comes in: the sample expanded upon clauses in those sentences), then I talked about the implications of the larger project, about what big questions I hoped it would think about. The larger project is, of course, mythical, but I think it's useful, either in your writing sample or your SOP or--ideally--both, to show how you can think in a bigger way than most undergrad courses ask you to. When visiting programs and talking to the few people who brought up my writing sample, the range in the two pieces helped: though most of the time, the paper they directly referred to was the first (and more successful) one, professors would sometimes bring up the author I focused on in my second paper and say, "Oh, you should talk to my colleague, [awesome person]; he's also interested in [topic of second paper]." I also heard a couple profs (though not anyone who was on an admissions committee) speculate that the shorter length of the sample must have been appreciated; both papers combined were about 23 pages, but someone could get a pretty good idea of what I'm all about just by reading one paper. In the end, I was really glad that I used my best, most recent work rather than applying with a longer sample I felt less confident in.

Since you're already registered for the November test, maybe the compromise here is to take it without doing any additional prep? The questions they ask are so random that maybe your unluckiness yesterday will be balanced out by better luck next time? I'm not just speaking in terms of karma here--some tests skew more heavily towards certain topics. My sense is that the subject test score won't keep you out of programs. Sometimes, high test scores can compensate for lower GPAs, but overall, test scores matter far less than the other areas of your application, all of which you're more confident about. And within that subset of test scores, general GRE scores are almost always more important than subject test scores because some schools use the general test as a an "objective" criterion for distributing university fellowships across different disciplines.

Just a caveat re: your statement about "top 5 programs that can claim to be strong at everything." Of course they claim it, at least publicly, but something that I didn't realize last year when I made my list and that became clear when I wrote my fit paragraphs and even clearer when I visited schools is this (whew, long clause--sorry!): a program's good reputation or high US News rank doesn't mean that it's strong in every field. I assumed that each of the Ivies, for instance, would have a lot of faculty in my not-obscure area of interest, but that turned out not to be the case. The suggestions others have given about scouring faculty bios and looking at course guides are things you should do for every school before you pony up that application fee. A couple more thoughts: -Look at the list of recent dissertations and, even better, see if you can find out who was on the committee of a person whose dissertation is in your field (if that information's not on the website, see where the person is teaching now and if his/her CV is online). -Check job postings (some schools have them on their website, and there's a MLA-related hiring wiki out there somewhere) to see if schools are hiring in your field (these are also a great clue to what a department's gaps are, and/or where it's looking to grow.) -Keep in mind that some schools may be trying to grow their program in your field. For example, I was admitted to a program that didn't really seem like a good fit for me but that was trying to recruit students and faculty in my area of interest. So while fit is of the utmost importance, sometimes fit moves in mysterious ways. If a school doesn't look like a fit on the surface but is a dream school for you, or if it's in an area you'd love to live in, etc., you might want to do a bit of further digging before taking it off the list.

Melusine, I had to google how to do "long subtraction" (i.e., the carrying numbers and crossing them out), and after a few weeks of studying and practicing, I managed to get a math score even higher than my okay verbal score. So don't despair! A little math practice can go a long way. All in all, I would agree with those who say that you shouldn't spend much time working about your math score. English departments won't look at it--they care only about your verbal and, in most cases, your lit GRE. BUT, anecdotally, the administrative structure of a graduate program can affect whether your composite GRE score comes into play. At some schools--often, the larger, more bureaucratic public universities--departments have control over admissions while graduate schools have a lot of say on funding; there are some university fellowships that use objective criteria, like GPA and composite GREs, to compare students in different disciplines and to determine who gets more generous funding packages. Bottom line, then: the math GRE is by far the least important thing to worry about in admissions, but if your writing sample and SOP and other test scores are in good shape, and your workload in your classes is under control, doing some math drills could help you later on.

I agree that using Professor as a title seems plenty respectful. For what it's worth, at the University of Michigan, where I did my undergrad, no one referred to professors as "Dr." either. That UVa term, at least, seems to have corollaries elsewhere. (As for some of the other ones, though, you're on your own!

Check out Phillip Gura at UNC-Chapel Hill (there's a student there working on religion and early American lit, and I think Gura is his committee head; also, UNC has huge committees, so there are at least 5 people there who would be conversant in your field). Also check out Rutgers, and Michael Warner at Yale. Delaware is strong in early American, too, I think?

Though it's impossible to know what goes on during those adcomm deliberations, I don't know that language proficiency is used as a cut-off the way that, say, a GRE score might be. My only language experience upon applying to programs was being a heritage speaker (and weak reader) of a language that's unrelated to my research interests. (I also had two semesters of college coursework in that language.) My experience was that schools that were interested in me--even schools that have demanding language requirements--ignored my weakness in languages. In conversations with DGSs, the assumption was that if I could get into their program, I could also pick up the language skills I needed during my time in grad school (little did they know how weak I am in languages--the requirement seems more daunting to me than they might imagine). And some schools are more lenient about the language requirement in practice than they are in theory--when I expressed concerns about the requirement at a couple schools, the DGSs and current students were reassuring and offered advice about how to make it more manageable. A couple more thoughts: -How seriously programs look at your language proficiency depends on your research interests. Language proficiency is very important for Medievalists, for instance, and programs pay attention to it. My area of interest is 19th century American, so while language proficiency is a bonus, it's not as necessary for my work. That, I think, is why schools were forgiving in my case. -The top programs are intimidating to apply to==and yes, when there are 700 applications, even the tiniest weakness can sink your app. But if Columbia is a great fit for you in every aspect other than the language requirement, apply anyway! Fit is really important here--my sense is that schools that give your application a thorough read won't turn you down on a technicality if they like everything else about how you present yourself.

To add to excellent questions and comments people have brought up here, another question you might want to consider is: does everyone in the cohort receive the same funding package? I found this question important because I wanted to be part of a collegial cohort where people felt that they were on equal footing with each other. Keep in mind, too, though that some departments--even some departments who award the same basic funding package to everyone, and even some departments whose funding package isn't very strong--might have discretionary funds available to candidates they really want to recruit. For instance, after the prospectives' weekend--and after a few candidates had declined their offers--at the program that had initially given me the weakest financial offer, I was offered a funding package that was stronger than almost any other program's. The DGS sensed that funding was one of my concerns and was able to respond to that concern with a stronger package. In short, then, you as an individual can receive a lot of funding even at schools that don't have money to fund candidates at a high level across the board. As far as individual schools: -Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) has a great funding package in a place with a low cost of living. -Also, NYU has improved their funding package in recent years. The cost of living in the city is, of course, astronomical, but their funding doesn't stand out to me as particularly poor. -The University of MIchigan offers detailed information on their funding: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/grad/f ... t/lang.asp -Check out Rutgers--they have a Mellon grant specifically for improving graduate student stipends, and their package is right up there with some of the Ivies. (Not sure how long that grant lasts, though!) And I'm sorry that I'm too lazy to search for the link at the moment, but the Chronicle has some comparative data on grad student stipends available for free on their website. As for the concern about These Economic Times, each program seems to handle this a little differently from the others, but it seems to me that the trend, at least last year, was to maintain funding even if it meant admitting a smaller cohort. (Another side effect was waitlisting more people--programs were wary of getting too high a yield.) The program I eventually chose explained to me that they put the money that's earmarked for you aside once you accept their offer. I'm not sure whether works that way at every program (I hope it does!), but I was comforted to know that the funding package they promised me wouldn't change even if the university struggled. Thinking about the broader financial picture is good, too: what cutbacks are universities making, and what do they show about their priorities? For instance, one school I visited was cutting an undergrad writing requirement because they couldn't staff it, and hearing that made me worry about TAships. And think about hiring freezes--if schools have them and your prospective advisor leaves the program, will there be enough other people in the department for you to work with?

Agreed that the subject test is like Jeopardy, not only for the dorky trivia factor but also because both are based on asking you general questions about very specific topics. For instance, the subject test will ask you about many obscure texts and authors, but it'll ask you the most obvious fact about them--they're looking for broad familiarity rather than nuance, so, for instance, they won't ask you to distinguish between a line of T.S. Eliot and a line of Pound but they'll want you to know that they're both high Modernists. As for the practice tests, I found the ones written by ETS (including the one that's in the Princeton Review book, which is actually an old ETS test) to be VERY helpful. Especially if you don't have a ton of time to study (you're starting now, so you do, but I gave myself only a few weeks for subject-test preparation), looking over old tests is, in my mind, the most important thing you can do. Here's why: a) These tests give you a feel for the format you'll face on test day. It's really hard to write subject test questions, so ETS only has a limited pool of questions available. They tend to repeat questions--unbelievably, a friend of mine took a real test two years ago that was identical to one of the practice tests she had taken (a hard-to-find practice test, not, obviously, the one that ETS sends you for free). That scenario, of course, is extremely rare; more likely, you might see one or two questions you've seen before. And even more likely than that, ETS tends to reuse passages even if they ask different questions--for instance, one of the the sets of quotations-from-books answer choices on my test was identical to one of the sets from a question in the Princeton Review book, even though the actual question prompt was different. In sum: there's less variation between different editions of the test than you might expect, so the practice tests are useful not only for practice but, with a little luck, as more-accurate-than-you-might-expect predictors of what you'll see on test day. Do a google search for old practice tests, and a couple will pop up that you can download as .pdfs. Good luck!

That's awesome news! Congrats!!!!

Most independent schools don't require their teachers to have any formal coursework or training in education (or even, sometimes, any teaching experience). What they look for instead is subject-area expertise. So teaching at an independent school could be a really good option for you. For more information, check out the National Association of Independent Schools at www.nais.org. They have a search feature that can help you locate schools in your area. Also, there are several placement firms (Carney Sandoe is the most well-known and, therefore, often the most effective) that are free for teachers; the NAIS has a list here: http://www.nais.org/career/placementCompanies.cfm I've been teaching at independent high schools for 3 years and have had a fantastic experience. If you want more information or have any questions, feel free to PM me.

I agree that GRE prep classes are money drains and that the material you learn in those classes isn't really different from what you can find in the books put out by the same companies. BUT--I coughed up the money and am glad I did because the class gave me the structure and discipline to study for the test, structure that I couldn't have provided for myself. My situation is different than yours, as I'm a few years out of school and was juggling work and grad school applications. Since I wasn't in student mode, the time-management skills needed to study independently for an obnoxious standardized test eluded me. For me, then, the question was whether it was worth the money to have the accountability--and, yes, the opportunity to ask questions and get access to a bunch of prep material--the class provided. I decided that it was and feel good about that decision. Since you're still on a college campus, you might want to a) ask if there are any GRE prep courses you can take through your school (I know some colleges are starting to offer their own one-credit courses that compete wtih the test prep companies), and see if you can get together a study group. Good luck!

Sent you a private message just now. I've had problems in the past with people not getting PMs I've sent here (maybe I'm doing it wrong?), so if you don't receive it soon, let me know... And good luck with your decision!

Did anyone here attend the University of Michigan's visiting weekend? And, if so, would you be willing to share notes and thoughts? I visited a few weeks ago, but I'd love to hear your impressions and to hear how the department and the students presented themselves. Feel free to PM me or to comment here. Thanks so much!

Is the program that's pressuring you to accept part of the Council of Graduate Schools agreement that holds schools to the April 15th deadline? Check here: http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/CGS ... ch2009.pdf If so, then you can accept the offer that's pressuring you and withdraw your acceptance by 4/15 if you need to. Granted, it's best to avoid accepting and then declining an offer if you can at all avoid doing so, but if the school is giving you no choice, then you shouldn't feel too bad about doing this.

Orin, I got the e-mail from UChicago just yesterday, about 10 days after I received the packet in the mail. From this, I'd guess that your e-mail is on its way....

Yale is another program that doesn't seem too keen on taking people with MAs. On the other hand, though, NYU seems to take many MAs (though not necessarily people from their own MA program, who are treated the same as external candidates when applying for the PhD).

I know that "just be yourself" is rather empty advice--easier said than done, and what does it even mean, anyway?--but I think it' the best advice out there. Other thoughts: -Be prepared to chat not just about your scholarly interests or your the program but about typical small-talk subjects: where you're from, what you do for a living, where you've traveled, etc. And be prepared for faculty to talk about these things, too. -If alcohol is offered, don't drink too much. :-) -If you have any special dietary needs, you may feel more at ease if you let people know ahead of time. I'm a vegetarian 99% of the time, and I sometimes worry about being in a position where I'd feel awkward declining meat even if I don't want to eat it. Usually, this works itself out, but if it's something you're nervous about, be proactive. -Remember that conversation sometimes interferes with eating. Sometimes, especially if you're a slow eater like me, you'll find that you've been to busy talking and listening to actually finish your food. So don't expect to be full at the end of the meal, and don't arrive so ravenously hungry that you can't enjoy the conversation because you're stuffing your face. Though I know you're nervous, this could be very fun, too! And a great way to see if you get along well with people whom you may be working with in the future.

HI Goose, I don't know anything about your field specifically, though it sounds fascinating! But, a question and a couple thoughts: -Have you visited any of these programs? A visit could help settle many of your questions almost instantly. I've done one visit so far and I found that my more concrete/rational questions vanished once I had a feel for the place--i.e., either I will love a place so much that I will find some way, somehow to be able to afford it, or I will dislike a place enough that no programmatic advantages would make me choose it. -English grad studies seems to be a very small world, and given the specificity of your field, that world will be even smaller. Though professors obviously have to put themselves, their families, and their own students first, my sense--and I hope I'm right!--is that people will be helpful to you even if you don't choose to enroll at the schools where they teach. You'll run into these people at conferences, for instance, and so if there's one or two scholars you get along with well at a program you generally don't prefer, you may well still have a chance to correspond with them. Also, programs and professors will totally understand if you decide to go elsewhere; they won't hold it against you. -The school I just visited was one that was growing their program in my field: it had some great people, but was overall weaker in my area than in others. Faculty and grad students tried to sell me on the program by telling me that I'd get to be part of the excitement of creating a culture--that I'd get in on the ground floor. Ultimately, though, I think I'm going to turn down that offer. As exciting as that shaping can be, and as wonderful as it can be to have students and faculty working together in that way, I am wary for two reasons: 1) What if the new culture doesn't stick? Institutions can be somewhat immune to progressive thought, or at least somewhat slow to arrive at it; and 2) I have a sense that I'm going to be busy enough in grad school without the additional opportunity/burden of trying to show others the validity of my area of study. Good luck to you! Let us know how it turns out!

Lyoness, how recently have your recommenders gone through grad school themselves? Admissions keep getting more and more competitive (and that's not to even mention the current economy). I'm sure your professors aren't trying to pull the wool over your eyes; maybe they're just not cognizant of just how brutal the process really is these days? I've had professors tell me that they don't think they would have gotten into the institutions where they did their grad work if they were applying nowadays. And/or maybe your recommenders are just confident in your work--a confidence that you shouldn't lose no matter how difficult of a season it has been.