[Bread Loaf School of English]

intextrovert and greekdaph, thank you for the great responses.. I appreciate it.. very helpful

Agreed with everything intextrovert said, especially the paragraph quoted below. I spent the 3 years between undergrad and grad school as a high school English teacher and spent one of my summers at the Vermont campus of the Bread Loaf School of English, so what I'm saying here comes from my perspective as both a teacher and, currently, a student in a full-time PhD program.

Bread Loaf is really, really wonderful: the setting is stunning, the food is amazing, and the people--the faculty, staff, and fellow students--are so friendly and so smart. I had a really fabulous time, and I learned a great deal. The faculty is very talented, made up of teachers who love teaching for its own sake, who enjoy the setting, and who have a chance to get out of the bureaucracies and departmental politics of their individual schools and hang out with colleagues they respect. They seem really relaxed and happy to be there, though of course they work hard and are very available to their students. Most students there are, indeed, English teachers (most, but not all, at the high school level), and few of them intend to go into PhD programs.

As for how classes compare to grad seminars: given the constraints of the six-week timeframe for reading and writing, Bread Loaf is mostly a close-reading program. The library is small and well-stocked with relevant materials for individual classes, there's access to all sorts of online databases, and you can request books from the Middlebury library, but there isn't the time to write research papers that draw on a wide array of secondary sources. Most classes focus on primary texts; some engage with criticism, but few engage with theory. Given that so many Bread Loaf students are teachers, courses are sometimes organized as a supplement to high school curriculums--for instance, Shakespeare and the American canon are popular--and often take up pedagogical questions (how have you taught this? how would you teach this?) as part of their discussions. The level of discussion is often very high--the students are smart and motivated, and the faculty are real experts in their fields, people who teach at highly regarded programs and publish widely (it's not an easy job to get as a prof). But, those discussions don't always revolve around current debates in the field, nor is your written work expected to participate in the kind of scholarly conversation that takes place in journals and monographs. It's not a competitive environment, and Bread Loaf classes feel, often refreshingly, different from grad seminars--discussions are driven by student interests, texts are privileged over theory, etc. I loved that about the program, but though my time there sharpened my skills, it didn't always prepare me for the kind of work I'm now expected to do.

In short, then, Bread Loaf is wonderful in every way, but it may not be quite what you're looking for. As other posters, including intextrovert, have mentioned, most PhD programs really don't care where your MA comes from--or even if you have one at all. They want you to have a good SOP and a great writing sample, and good recommendations can help draw attention to your strengths. So, if you're using Bread Loaf as a way to get a leg up on PhD admissions, you'd have to be a little strategic about it. For instance, you could ask your professors to help you design a final paper that could be a good writing sample (most courses require 1 or 2 10-page papers, or 1 long paper and one short paper; you could ask to write one longer paper). And/or you could take classes with a professor who comes from a program you're interested in attending or is a well-respected scholar in your field. For me, my Bread Loaf summer was the most useful in convincing me that I wanted to go back to school--I left hungry for a full-time program and feeling like those six weeks had gone by too quickly. I also took a class in my field and used the papers I wrote there as my writing sample--it was great to produce something that felt stronger than my undergraduate work and to do so with feedback and guidance and deadlines. In other words, then, I think--as tends to be the case with all MA programs--that the work you do there would ultimately be far more important in admissions than the pedigree of your degree.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and feel free to PM me.

[Bread Loaf School of English]

Bread Loaf is a summer MA, designed specifically for high school teachers. In education circles, it's a VERY highly regarded program. I'm not sure how PhD adcomms would view an MA from Bread Loaf.

Thanks. Any idea as to whether or not that high regard is justified? Is the program really all that selective or rigorous?

Hopefully, someone else will be able to resolve the issue of PhD admissions.

[Bread Loaf School of English]

I'm also wondering the same thing about University of Vermont and schools that are good for undergraduate but are unranked because they only have an MA program.

I can tell you based on personal anecdotes from students there that Wake Forest's competitive undergrad doesn't seem to boast a competitive or prestigious MA to match. I hope this is not the case with Bread Loaf.

I generally get the sense that competitive students go straight into PhD programs, picking up the MA along the way. Those enrolled in pure MA programs are there for a reason: either they could net get accepted into or were not ambitious enough for a PhD program. Is there an truth to this opinion I've formed?

Is this true for Bread Loaf? Does anyone have admissions statistics or acceptance rates?

[Bread Loaf School of English]

I've been accepted to the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury.

Can anyone tell me if this is a reputable program? I know Middlebury is great for undergrad, but how prestigious is the MA? How will ivy league and other top PhD programs view it?

How competitive are admissions at Bread Loaf? (I am hoping to be in class with other competitive applicants.)

Thanks.

[Bread Loaf]

Anyone else apply to Bread Loaf?

I'm getting anxious to hear back.

Any response yet?