RockDenali

It's a crap shoot when it comes to this stuff. Cruise around the internet and check out some professors' CVs. Outside of the Ivy League, there doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to the importance of BA/MA institutions. But I totally understand your concern. For my BA and MA, I decided to attend highly ranked (top 10) regional universities rather than mid-ranked national universities. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I know I received a more personal education: never once had a class with more than 15 students in it. However, I'm worried that it will hurt my employment options in 4 years when I finish the PhD. I'm hoping to do a concurrent M.A. in a related discipline at my PhD institute . . . So, in answer to your question, it's certainly a legitimate concern, but I think you can rise above your BA (what a terrible way to look at it!) by working your ass off during the PhD. Publish, pursue literacy projects, start a journal, get a grant . . . It seems like that kind of stuff will increase your employment options in a way that a great MA won't.

Harold Bloom kicks ass.

3 of the dumbest things a human being can do: 1) Turn a hard right on the freeway while going 90 mph. 2) Swallow a poison dart frog. 3) Spend money on a humanities PhD. If you're guaranteed funding beyond the first year, then it's worth it. But if the department is being iffy on funding altogether, I'd say roll the dice again next year.

Practical reason: It's guaranteed employment for the next 5 years. Idealistic reason: Expand my mind, valuable research, yada yada yada. It's guaranteed employment for the next 5 years.

Dude, you should have let them down more gently. Say something like, "It's not you, it's me. I'm just not ready for such a big committment at this time in my life." Tell them how beautiful they are and that they're gonna find someone better anyway. "I don't deserve you" is a nice thing to add. Of course, there will still be a lot of tears. This is normal. After a week or so, once they meet some new people, their wound (left by you) will slowly begin to heal. Who knows? In a year, maybe you'll meet them at a bar somewhere, or a coffee shop, and you can sit down, smile, and laugh about the good times you were able to share. The real question is: Are you ready to forgive yourself and move on?

Would you be happy at the CC for the rest of your life? That's really the question you need to ask yourself. If you're PhD will be in rhet/comp, you won't have any trouble finding a TT position at a 4-year school. I don't know of a single program that doesn't have an almost perfect placement rate for their graduates. But then, that's 4 more years of not making a lot of money . . .

This is definitely a good point to consider!

Depends on the program. (Just like a rhetorician to answer, "It depends"!) Personally, I think the best option, if you really want to be trained as a rhetorician or compositionist, is to find a department dedicated solely to that function. There are exceptions, of course: Penn State and Purdue come to mind. But at those programs, the rhetoric emphasis seems nearly to function as its own autonomous entity. But with the programs I researched, contacted, and visited, the ones that most impressed me were the free-standing rhetoric or writing departments. I'm trying to decide between Syracuse and Minnesota; both programs are housed in departments dedicated solely to rhetoric/composition. I did my MA in a traditional English Department which housed literature, TESL, and rhetoric . . . Guess what most of the students were studying and where most of the funding and support went? I'll give you a hint: not rhetoric. At Case Western, only 20% of the students are pursuing the Writing History and Theory emphasis (their version of rhet/comp). I would assume that, in most English departments with a rhet/comp emphasis, the statistic won't change too much. Do you really want to be in that situation? I know I personally would not. Rhetoric and composition is really its own discipline, linked more closely, in my mind, to applied linguistics than literature. At my MA institution, I know I did better work when paired up with TESL folk than with literature folk.

I grew up around here, did my undergrad in Orange County, and have many friends who attend the 5Cs. How could I have forgotten Rhino Records?!?!?! You'll never want for good albums in Claremont if you decide to move here. However, as my fellow southern Californian stated, CGU is not a huge school, and so you'd do well to get as much funding info as possible before you make a decision.

Claremont is awesome. The surrounding Inland Empire is nothing to write home about, but Claremont itself is great. Slow pace compared to NYC, but you're about twenty minutes from downtown L.A. if you REALLLY want to get in some big city time. But Claremont is best for people who enjoy the outdoors. The San Gabriels are right above you; tons of hiking and canyoneering opportunities. Skiing on the other side of the mountains in winter. Joshua Tree to the east. Check out The Press for good local bands and cute waitresses; there's a fun tapas place, but I'm forgetting the name; the Packing House is cool--an old warehouse building turned into spaces for artists and food places. There's a fondue place called the Hip Kitty, which is also a venue for local jazz and funk bands. The Glass House is your nearest (small) concert venue; major bands playing L.A. will often do warm-up gigs there. I've seen The Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, and Weezer there for about $20 each. In other words, Claremont is pretty awesome. It will be a nice change of pace for someone from NYC, but like I said, you're still pretty close to L.A. as the crow flies. I'll be sad to leave So Cal . . .

I won't disagree. My father works at Northrop Grumman, a major defense contractor, and he tells me how atrociously the college-hires sometimes write in their emails and reports. This does, he assures me, make them look bad. However, he also tells me that few of the old guard bother to address the problem anymore. They're too used to it. So, yes, I can see awful writing becoming the norm in fifty or sixty years.

Ha! They'll figure it out soon enough if they want to be managers or run a lab. "mr. smith, I applyed to ur job and was just checking on my resume, do you have it or should i re-send? thx."

Well, I oversimplified what rhet/comp is about . . . I was reiterating what the business folk find us useful for (for what the business folk find us useful?). But then, it would be nice if fewer (not less) students used comma splices . . . .

Abandon the lit ship, lyoness Come join us in rhet/comp. Some capital is still valued; someone has to teach the workers how to write and communicate in today's complex workplace . . .

I think it would be an awesome idea for you to email and report back your findings to the rest of us

Great point. In the past, I think the doctors, engineers, and captains of industry truly VALUED that cultural capital. It's not coinicidence that the humanities flourished in America because of names like Vanderbilt and Carnegie . . . Today, however, doctors, engineers, busines and industry leaders don't really value that capital. At best, they are indifferent to it. Once their support goes, the humanities go. Our capital is no longer valued by them.

I'd be careful to go down that road. How many Ohioans have read Dickinson? I think it's better to argue that "research papers lost in drawers" benefit those who worked on them and those would care to read the research. They serve no "public good" because the public, by and large, does not care about research--scientific, humanistic, or otherwise.

Lyoness, I've noticed the same asinine things on the result board. PhD - partial funding. Things like that. But make no mistake, it's not just the humanities who get hammered for "useless" projects. Whenever Fox News does their monthly round-up of "government waste," they usually highlight some poor grad student's or professor's research, which is often in the sciences, especially biology. $200,000 TAX PAYER DOLLARS SPENT ON STUDYING LAB RATS' RESISTANCE TO JELLY BEAN OIL. MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TAX-PAYER FUNDED GRANTS USED TO STUDY HOW MONKEYS REACT TO MIRRORS. Anything that doesn't have an immediate, practical, industrial use is going to be likewise rididuled and in danger of losing funding in the coming years. Luckily, we in the humanities, unlike the 'practical' folks in all the sciences, have never argued that we provide knowledge with an industrial application. I think Stanley Fish has done a public good arguing his case for the humanities, saying that they provide no practical good whatsoever but are their own good. I think (hope) this will allow them to stay funded while many biology, physics, and psychology programs contract into insignificance. This is one of the reasons I went into rhet/comp. Hard to see a Fox News headline reading, GRAD STUDENT GIVEN 16K A YEAR TO TEACH COLLEGE WRITING AND STUDY HOW ESL STUDENTS FUNCTION BEST IN AN ENGLISH CLASSROOM. But we shall see, eh? Anyway, this is why I applied to private schools!

DAMN IT, OP, I WANT TO KNOW HOW IT ENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What an interesting divide between how the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities students seem to be handling this situation . . . I would echo the earlier advice about giving the department the same courtesy given you . . . If they called, call; if they emailed, email; if they form-lettered, form letter. And as someone else said, you never know when you will run across (and need) people in the unchosen department . . .

I hope that's the case. I don't see how literature professors could have much insight on who would make a solid rhet/comp student, and that goes the other way round, too. But I highly, highly, HIGHLY doubt that most of those 500 applications were for rhet/comp. Even other top-name programs, from my experience with my admits, don't get near that many. They don't even make it to 80 most of the time. However, I know (well, I was TOLD by a Penn State alum) that Penn State does indeed treat rhetoric as just another subfield, meaning that some years they may let in just one person for the emphasis. Hoping Purdue isn't the same . . . Based on the website, the rhet/comp program seems relatively autonomous. EDIT: Oh, and congrats to those accepted!! It's a shame that Blakesley is no longer there, but it still looks like an awesome program.

Thanks gents. (Gents? I think?). And I definitely understand the paranoia . . .

Who else out there has heard from U of Arizona? I just saw an acceptance in someone's handle . . . Oh, and I just posted an acceptance on the results board: Case Western English (Writing History and Theory).

No giving up. You still have several schools to hear from. You can start sighing at the end of March. Till then, no reason to be sad. Last year, my friend received 8 rejections before he was accepted to King's College London and a UC in the eleventh hour.

You forgot the last part: "Now I know why I never had an interest in literature." I was taking a jab at literary studies in general, but it came across as an attack on an individual, so I deleted it. But everything you quoted there I stand by as an indictment of academic literary studies. It's not bitterness. Neither of my degrees is in literature, and I haven't taken more than four literature classes in my life. I applied to some literature programs out of curiosity: is there a way to bridge the gap between linguistics, rhetoric, and literature? Well, it seems unlikely. I haven't met many literature students who can tell you the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb. So, then again, I suppose I do harbor bitterness toward literature: the School of Resentment, over the past decades, has made a bad name for everyone in the language disciplines. But this is a critique of the field as a whole, not on any particular person in here; again, that's why I deleted my comment. I'm not trying to pick a fight.