Ex Nihil

I too am interested in this.

Hi all, seeking some advice. I am a traditional student coming from a not-so-prestigious undergraduate four-year university--a state school, but not flagship. I applied to graduate schools and was delighted to find I was accepted to a 3-4 programs (one still pending). After carefully examining funding and fit, I've decided the best offer I have is a terminal MA from another state school, this one with a significantly better ranking/reputation than my undergrad and at least one professor well known in the field. The offer is fully funded with a waiver and a stipend. However, it's still nothing near a top-20 school. It does have a decent placement record for its PhDs, though most of those placements are also at equal or lower ranked institutions, and overall if I were to get my PhD there (which I do not plan to) I would at least feel not as secure as I would if I received my PhD at a more prestigious school. My career goal, of course, is to be a tenure-track professor, and I know that with how bad the market is one's chances of doing that depend to a great extent on where one received his/her PhD. So, with that in mind, I find myself with some important questions that I hope can be answered. Please be as brutally honest as possible as nothing less than candid discussion will help me. Does it matter where one receives a bachelors? Does it matter where one receives a terminal MA, especially in regards to applying for PhD programs afterwards or getting a job later on? Also, I am planning a visit next week to the campus. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to ask them, particularly given the information above?

I still haven't heard anything! Ahh!

Sorry greenlee. What a strange time to be getting rejection emails! I've given up trying to understand UT's system.

Hi lyoness. I'm in the same boat as you. This is my guess: on Monday or even Sunday they will finish sending out the rest of the rejections/acceptances waitlists. Since we haven't been contacted yet and others have been accepted I'm assuming that we are at least not among the tip-top best applicants. We might be on the list for a personalized rejection email, we might be on the fringe of acceptance and they are waiting for some reason (maybe funding info or last weekend decisions), or we might be waitlisters. Beyond that there's no real way to know except waiting till Monday.

Gentlemen, we have survived another day.

Oh man >_< I hope this isn't rejection day. All of the sudden I don't want to check my email...

Oh man...I applied to the rhet/comp PhD program. Do you think it's bad news that my inbox is empty?

Anyone have any idea? I'm wondering whether I should continue my routine of checking email 1000 times a day this weekend.

If you have your MA and are going PhD or are just applying for PhD straight from undergrad then it's probably much more advantageous to have a sample in the rhet/comp field, like over a classical text or Augustine or a modern theorist. If you are shooting for an MA (which is quite common actually considering a large chunk of grad programs don't allow PhD apps without MA's) then you can get away with a well written paper over something outside the field. Since you've had a classical rhetoric class that's probably a great place to start.