id quid

An 84 is a very respectable score. If you are intending to apply for Harvard, they may care -- but even they go to pains to comment that it's only one part of your application. I second Datatape's recommendation wholeheartedly.

It's worth noting that some schools have different versions of these scales. Most of the schools should be able to tell you directly if you ask, though many will direct you to a credentialing service. Colloquially speaking, my professors told me that a "first" for Oxford is really a 3.8. UBC's English department has said an A- is a 3.5 (whereas in the US it's usually 3.7+) or an 80%.

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As self-defeating and self-perpetuating as this rankings cycle is, it's worth noting that young faculty at many schools will have the same names over and over again. From my field, the graduates within the past 10 year teaching at schools from University of Tennessee to Stanford: Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Toronto, Cornell, WashU, Brown, Michigan, Columbia, UCLA, Berkeley, Cambridge, Oxford... Schools outside that list: Colorado ('72) I do not think a sense of "rankings" is going to help anyone here, but it's worth considering your goals when you make your decisions. This is true for every single job and skill: take a look at what the people who are where you want to be did to get there. Things change, of course, and they change more when you do what you can to change them. Ignoring "rankings" because they're "subjective" is no more helpful than considering them the gospel truth and having a cut-off at an arbitrary point on an ordinal scale.

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Thank you for pointing me that way, but I can't do an MA/PhD on my record. It's strictly MA for this round of apps. I thought I'd point out that one of my professors also recommended the route you suggest -- that is, to go to an MA/PhD school I might have a good chance of getting into (she recommended OSU or UC Davis, I believe) and leave with the Master's. Viable strategy, apparently, and worth considering for someone else who has the option!

Funding is a really tricky issue, because there's really no reason for many US programs -- where the emphasis is more on BA to MA/PhD instead of other countries' BA to MA to PhD -- to host a funded Master's program. So far, in programs that seem to have the support, I've found University of Illinois - Urbana-Champagne, University of Connecticut, and University of Tennessee-Knoxville. More broadly, the other programs recommended to me included University of Chicago's MAPH (!), UVA, and University of Toronto. Toronto was already on my list, and everyone agrees it'll be a huge boost to a medievalist's application to go there. That said? NONE of those programs offer funding, not really. MAPH sometimes waives 50-100% of tuition, but Chicago is a pricey city with a COL around $21k. Taking into account the time of program, the total cost for MAPH's 1 year is over $70k (!!), UVA's 2 years is $96k (!!!), and Toronto's 2 years is also about $70k. Compare that against, say, a gross overestimate of the cost to attend Oxford for 1 year ($50k) or York ($40k). I'm having a hard time seeing why it makes "more sense" to do Chicago or UVA than Oxford or York. I do definitely see why Tennessee and even Connecticut are a good bet, no question there.

On a related note, my professor told me that the individuals I work with/learn from/who write recommendation letters for the next step are far more important than the name on the degree. I'll note this is a specific caveat for English and Medieval Studies, where a Medieval Studies degree with substantial literature work will be considered equivalent to, or in some cases superior to, a standard English degree. It was a big anxiety of mine, since I am very interested in Medieval Studies, and I would value the extra training in specific areas like paleography or codicology, but I didn't want to "dilute" my chances at an English PhD. On the contrary, it provides me precisely the deep training required to successfully call myself a "medievalist," and also gives me a little more flexibility when joining a PhD program to use that time to broaden my interests and study so as to make myself a more versatile candidate for jobs.

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Bumping this so people (like me!) who are looking for MA programs know where to start.

Thanks! Someone else had mentioned non-Toronto Canadian schools to me as well, so I'll definitely take a look. I've seen the funded MA's thread. I'll take a look at it again. Probably, I'll painstakingly go through it and see if I can make a case for any of them. The biggest challenge for me with this restriction is to make sure I find a school that will actually support and improve upon my application. That means I need to be very conscious of the faculty and program support for Medieval (and, particularly, Anglo-Saxon and Romano-British). The additional training in languages and the interdisciplinary aspects is what makes Toronto so strong, and so desireable. OF COURSE it would be the one program that carries no funding with it. id est quid est!

Thought I'd give y'all an update on my meetings: Both professors agree a Master's degree is my best next step. I need to distance myself from my mixed transcript, my transfer, my few years away from school. hey also agree that a British degree is almost definitely not worth it, and in their experience no student comes out of it without significant debt which follows them into their PhD programs (if they're even so lucky as to continue into one). I'm a little frustrated with the answer to get a Master's degree coupled with the missive to "avoid debt." The number of Master's programs which give me a leg up on my chances to get into, say, Yale or Berkeley or Notre Dame, is limited, and the number of those which are funded is even more limited. A sampling of the schools one professor recommended I add to my list: University of Chicago's MAPH, UVA's MA, Carnegie Mellon's MA,, UToronto's MMS. Now, go ahead and guess how many of those are funded. Once you've got that, check the cost of tuition + living expenses for them. Then compare that to the British degrees. What's the difference? :|

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The professor asking for my list is an Anglo-Saxonist, so I definitely plan on speaking with her about her recommendations. I hear you about the cost to attend, but it isn't a factor for the MA, particularly the 1-year programs. It is a factor for PhD, of course. I mostly figure if I'm going to pay for my MA, I may as well do so and live in a place where I'll have easier access to the folks I cite in my papers and/or the libraries at which my documents reside. I know of WMU, but I did not know they had funding for Master's. My one big concern there is similar to the one I do have about the international schools; namely, does it make sense to get a Medieval Studies degree when my ultimate goal is an English PhD? My undergraduate major was English Literature, but I wonder about the effect an interdisciplinary studies degree will have on my PhD applications. (I am probably worrying about nothing much here, as I'm sure it happens all the time. Can't stop anxiety!) I also didn't know Stanford had medieval English. Their faculty looked kind of spare, and wasn't among those I used for my work so far, but maybe I'll look a little deeper. As far as PhD applications go... perhaps you're right. Mostly, those 5 schools are the ones I'd absolutely attend if offered admissions, no questions asked, and ones I'm willing to fight for. My GPA is middling to okay (once a transcript issue gets sorted out, I think it's a 3.6 at best, major and total), and I don't yet have my GRE scores (study testing at ~75-85 percentiles). I also have the many schools (5), and only 2.5 years at my degree-granting institution, and it basically just stamps a really big UNKNOWN over how I will fare against committees that have to look over all this stuff. Basically: thank you all for your thoughts. I will be talking to my recommendation letter writers in the next week or two, and I will ask their advice as well.

Yeah, I'm aware. This is where the part where the well-paid field I'm in, and have been for the past four years, comes in handy. Also, too, UConn seems to be the only school in the US that funds its Master's students and has enough faculty and support for my field. Toronto is a wonderful program focusing on the medieval portions of my degree. I haven't seen any other programs in the States or Canada that really fulfill the medieval requirement and offer any better financial solutions than a UK program. Even when they cost money, those British programs come in under some of the US Master's! And then they have the benefit, of course, of more primary sources and locations for the very things I'm studying, plus the faculty.

That's how I generated my list in the first place, so I definitely agree with you. I suppose since I'm going to go into this meeting, I can mention that I'd love her input on my tentative list and see what she recommends. This whole process makes crazy people out of all of us, I think. So much close reading means every insignificant piece takes on monstrous importance when we're analyzing, in fine detail, our applications to programs with murky requests.

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The time has come to meet with my potential recommendation letter writers, and they are naturally interested in the schools at which I am intending to submit an application. My signature has the schools I've flirted with, but I'm at a bit of a conundrum. I am betting than an MA is a good next step for me. I know I want to pursue a PhD, but an MA would allow me to distance myself a little from my questionable and jumpy undergraduate history and really dive into research. I want to submit PhD applications to the five I have listed currently -- Yale, UC Berkeley, Notre Dame, UT-Austin, and UCLA -- but I am struggling a little with the list of MA programs. I also am not sure I want to apply to 11 schools. The Master's programs run the gamut, too, from Medieval multi-disciplinary taught degrees to English literature research degrees with a focus on medieval or earlier literature. How on earth do I decide? There's the argument for future employability, where an English degree with a specialization is likely to make me more flexible in the market. There's the argument for close study, as the medieval degrees account for codicology and paleography in a way a standard English degree does not. There's the part where I don't want to focus in so closely on my field of specialty -- especially since it's more Anglo-Saxon than true medieval -- and would want the flexibility to study a wider period and subject. Then there's the question of how much all of this truly matters for a Master's degree, since my ultimate goal is indeed to pursue a doctorate. Any help?! For reference, here's an idea of the schools and degree programs I've been looking at in the Master's level: University of Oxford: M.St. English Language and Literature (650 –1550) [1 year] or M.Phil in English Studies (Medieval Period) [2 years] (nb, I'm heavily leaning toward the latter) University of Toronto: M.A. in Medieval Studies [1 year] University of Connecticut: M.A. English [2 years] University of Edinburgh: MSc in Medieval Literatures and Cultures [1 year] or MSc Medieval Literature in Scotland and England [1 year; 2 if by research] University of York: MA, Medieval Literatures [1 year] University of Leeds: MA, Medieval Studies [1 year] or MA English Literature [1 year] University of Cambridge: MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic [1 year] or M.Phil. in Medieval and Renaissance Literature [1 year]

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I've been choosy on that, definitely. I happen to live close to Stanford, and I love Stanford, but I can't apply there because what little medieval faculty they have is late medieval and completely out of the realm of my specialties, which trend toward Anglo-Saxon/post-Conquest philology and paleography. On the other hand, my alma mater has a fantastic faculty for my specialty, which is a little sad since it is my alma mater and there are arguments about whether diversity in academic training is important enough to avoid staying at the same school even if the faculty is the best. I've been following the route of checking the sources from my thesis and following the faculty back to their schools to give me a sense of where to start. It, unsurprisingly, leads me to the same few places. Even if the wider understanding of medieval doesn't make room for deeper specialty, departments have identifiable trends. Hallelujah for small mercies! Now to find the magical department that not only has my specialty, but has support for the other topics in English and non-English fields where I have an interest but not a strong academic purpose!

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Most of the schools I've seen mention it at all say they do not count bibliography/works cited against the limit.