lyonessrampant

Take a list of questions with you. There was a great thread on this back when I applied, and I took this and asked them of the DGS when meeting with her, grad students I met there, and some here with people at the schools I was considering. Depending on where you go, you'll probably be put in contact with a current grad student. These people are great resources, and most will answer your questions directly about both strengths and weaknesses of programs. I just looked to see if I still had this list in an old folder, and here it is. -PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK -Where do most people do their writing and reading? -What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office? -LIBRARY -What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed? -What are the library hours? -Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research? -Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research? -FACULTY -Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon? -Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work? -Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests? -Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well? -FUNDING -Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t? -How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships? -How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably? -Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding? -If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.) -Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips? -How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?) -COHORT -Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive? -Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey? -How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class? -Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially? -Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned? -Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice? -What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time? -I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program? -JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION -What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track? -What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed? -How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks? -Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves? -If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?) -How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications? -SUMMER WORK -What is encouraged/required? -If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer? -Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money? -Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t? -LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT -What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding? -What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it? -Given my research interests, what languages should I study? -When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.) -LOCATION REQUIREMENTS -How long are students required to be in residence? -How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?) -How is funding affected if you don’t stay? -Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program? -TEACHING -What sort of training is provided? -What types of courses do people teach? -Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp? -How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field? -How many courses do you teach per semester/year? -How many students are in your classes? -How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study? -How do students balance teaching with their own work? -Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes? -How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes? -What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them? -METHODOLOGY -Is a theory course required? -What methodology do most people use? -Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading? -Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken? -Typical graduate class and seminar sizes -What should I do to prepare over the summer? -Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me? -Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program? -Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements? -What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required? -What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating? -What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field? -Ask professors: what have you been working on lately? -Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students? -How long are class meetings? -How often do professors teach graduate courses? -Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)? -Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see? -QUALITY OF LIFE -Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in? -Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment. -What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing? -When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look? -Is it easy to find a summer subletter? -How close to campus can—and should—one live? -What grocery stores are there in town? -How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open? -What do people do to make extra money? -Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)? -Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide? -How far does the stipend go in this location?

If you're admitted to a Ph.D. program, particularly at the schools listed in your signature, you will be funded. MAs may or may not be funded. Based on your list, you'll probably certainly be offered admission to NYU's MA program if not admitted to the Ph.D. and that will likely not be funded. I would strongly advise not to do it based on the cost, the cash cow reputation of that program and U of C's MAPH (which I did do with about a 50% tuition scholarship for disclosure purposes), and the fact that you could do a funded MA elsewhere and get research and teaching experience. The prestige of the MA program doesn't matter as much as whether it was funded. The tippy-top schools, like the ones in your sig, tend to prefer direct admits with an educational pedigree (browse the student pages). As far as scholarships, other than super competitive Rhodes or Marshall scholarships (or similar ones) for the UK, I'm not really familiar with any.

^If you search for old posts by me, you'll see I've done the same thing before. Add stress of being an English Ph.D. student + job market woes + alcohol = angst-ridden Grendel on forums.

I remember from the year I applied that there was a super early UIUC admit. I think they have some sort of fellowship that requires early notification and some action on the part of the admit to further apply for it. I could be misremembering that last part, but I definitely remember that there was a lone (or maybe two?) UIUC early admits and then a whole bunch of them several weeks later.

^Yes, this. I wish I could upvote this more than once.

If I were you, I'd tell her that you know she is really busy and has other obligations and that you are happy to take a course (I'd specify which course or possible courses you are interested in taking) in place of this project. Basically, give her an easy out in a way that lets both of you save face. If she really doesn't want to do the project, then she can say something like "yeah, that course is a good choice for you." If she does actually want to do the project, then she can tell you that. If you really don't want to do the project, which is what it sounds like from your posts, you can just tell her that, but I agree it seems pretty late to back out. I'd try to get her to be the one who decides not to go ahead with the project.

I wouldn't recommend telling a program that your partner is/may be attending before you receive an offer. If you are waitlisted or accepted, you might tell them at that point if your partner will be going to that school so they know you'll almost certainly accept an offer from them. Maybe others will have different ideas, though.

The step-down model is also what I've heard and observed for hiring at my institution. The candidates with on-campus talks come from Ivies or top 20 (roughly by USNWR standards. We have good job placement, but it is definitely not at the R1 flagship level. Instead, TT CC, non-flag ship, small SLAC, and some visiting positions first followed by TT positions are the norm, though it varies by subfield. As to the value of the Ivy, if you get in, the money alone is probably enough to be a deciding factor. Combined with brand recognition and a low to nonexistent teaching burden, an Ivy offer would be pretty compelling. That said, Ivy candidates and large public u products, while competing for many of the same jobs, also end up going toward different kinds of jobs. Small SLACS, TT CCs, non flag-ship campuses in remote areas tend to hire much more from the non-Ivy group to avoid attrition, so it really just depends a lot on the ephemeral constitution of the job market from year to year as far as which group is likely to experience more 'success' in terms of job offers. Of course, an Ivy comes with advantages, but I think the point of this thread is that if you don't get into an Ivy, don't think your academic life is over (no disrespect to people at Ivies, but admissions is quite capricious and I've met people--both profs and grad students--shut out of Ivies producing far, far more cutting edge/interesting work than Ivy products. Of course, there are lots of brilliant Ivy products, too, but the myth of the meritocracy can be pretty alluring to the point of perpetuating abjection and shame among the 'lower' tiers in a way that I personally find distasteful. . . aside done).

Hi! I'm about as far as you can get from an Americanist. I specialize in 15th/16th c. England and Italy, but I do know that a lot of people in English take courses in Am Studies and CSCL (comp lit) and vice versa. We're a huge university and very supportive of interdisciplinary work, so there are also lots of Centers that bring together people from various disciplines. If you come here or are accepted and on the fence, you might look into the Institute for Advanced Study. They often host scholars working on modern American projects (as well as all other sorts of disciplines and time periods). If you do early American, we are particularly strong in South American studies and also have some people (not in English) working on early America and Native American studies.

I didn't put anything about my post-Ph.D. plans. I think the general assumption is academia post-Ph.D. Even though it is important to be aware of the job market statistics and preparing simultaneously for a non-academic job, most adcoms and programs in the humanities don't really want you coming in to a program intending not to do the thing it is most meant to prepare you for. I'm sure your SOP is fine I'd recommend resisting the urge to re-read your application materials right now. There's nothing you can do about it now, and short of a major thing like a page missing, it really is annoying to the program coordinators/secretaries to have to change things in your file and many refuse to update your SOP or WS. If you get news about being accepted to conferences, papers accepted, etc., that's different. You can email and ask a note be added to your file to update your CV, but that isn't replacing something they have because you've found an error. If you re-read now, you're just going to cause yourself more stress and anxiety. (In spite of having this advice myself when applying, I was unable to resist and did, in fact, cause myself more stress. Sigh. Even now with fellowship apps I try not to, but sometimes I give in and it is always worse.)

You can send an email to the department secretary updating them about being accepted to the conference. Just ask to have it added to your file.

The Professor is In says no descriptions (linked earlier in this thread), but people aren't unanimous about it. I personally wouldn't because it makes the CV look too much like a resume, but if you think it is useful or helpful to your application, maybe?

This is a great reference for constructing a CV: http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/01/12/dr-karens-rules-of-the-academic-cv/

While you obviously wouldn't want to write a book review that makes you enemies, perhaps it is a field difference regarding when to do book reviews. It is also a common recommendation in my field to do book reviews as a way of getting into publishing. Many journals have information on their webpages about whom to contact to get on the list of people they ask to do reviews. Especially since you have a specific book you'd like to review, you might email journals in the same area as the book, as you've done, though maybe contact more if you don't hear anything back from the journal you have contacted.

There are quite a few post-bac programs out there. It seems like doing one of those would be the best way to strengthen your record, get experience, and develop the skills needed to do a PT program.

It depends on the program, but it is usually possible to meet these requirements with either undergrad courses if they're not too old or doing a semester-long reading language course. Especially if there isn't a strong reason for your research that you need to know another language fairly well, the language requirements are not too onerous.

Schools that belong to research consortiums with the Newberry, Folger, and Huntington also benefit from research resources (both textual and monetary) that most applicants don't think about. Go to the webpages for those libraries and you can see the lists of schools. I'm a grad conference organizer for Newberry's annual grad student conference, and getting the opportunity to help plan and organize a large conference, preside over sessions, and edit the resulting conference publication is a great experience I wouldn't have gotten to do if my university weren't a part of that consortium. Consortium relationships provide additional funding opportunities to go do research at the libraries as well, so schools that don't appear on the USNWR top 50 list may offer better research opportunities because of their consortium relationship. Here's a link to the Newberry's current members: http://www.newberry.org/center-renaissance-studies-consortium-members

^Oh, advantages of what I assume to be big schools, Ivies, and big/elite SLACs. One of my missions has been to help people like me (first gen college student who went to a tiny (super TINY) slac) who knew nothing (perhaps even less than Jon Snow) figure out this whole system. Do take advantage of all those, and if anyone is willing to post those types of things, that's great help to other, less advantaged folks.

I was in a similar situation except it was Italian for me. I spent 7 weeks in an immersion program in Italy last summer and 6 the summer before supported by a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship. These are funded through the Department of Education and it is likely that your university participates in the program. The downside is that French, Spanish, and German are often not funded because these are commonly taught languages. I had a friend from UWashington who did French, though, so it does vary by university, which is what matters since it is the university program who makes the decision about whom to fund, not the DoE. You might see if there is a FLAS program at your university and ask them if they ever fund Spanish applicants.

I don't have an answer for you, but I went to a Catholic undergrad and all of us, including non-Catholics and atheists, called the priests Father even if they had a Ph.D., but that's a different circumstance. I think you'll probably be fine whatever you use, but I personally would use Professor since it's the title for what he does in the capacity you are interested in.

Definitely not a total freak And my advice for the re-connection comes in part from my own relationship where I just feel like I spend so much time in my own world and my husband in his that it is easy for some sort of a disconnect to slip in. We do occasional trips to this remote cabin up north that we both love. I know that's projection (can you tell I have a strong background in psychoanalytic theory and Freud . .. lol), but getting wrapped up in our work/academic lives transfers to that work and the people in it. Your responses are normal. You're dealing with it. You've got this.

I don't think we're disagreeing that the F is a problem and the OP should try to get that changed if at all possible. Some schools will post their median GPAs and a few their 25% and 75% (so mean + standard deviation) and a 3.3 grad GPA (or thereabouts) is well below what I've seen. Unless the credit load for the F is only 1 credit and the OP has 20 (or more) credits of an A, the overall GPA is less than 3.8, which is itself on the lower end when many people applying from an MA have 3.9-4.0 GPAs. This to say that there are reasons besides the ones you listed, which I agree are valid, to try to get this grade changed. I certainly don't know how all committees make their cuts, but the quantitative as first cut is something that some schools put on their webpages, is something that has been said for specific programs in Chronicle articles, and is also something that comes up on blogs and sites like Semenza's. Are there exceptions, committees that don't work that way, and averages that hide outliers? Sure. But if one must gamble on so much else in this subjective process, gambling on something that is often within a person's control raises the stakes unnecessarily in my opinion. Bottom line, we're not disagreeing overall here. I'm responding only to emphasize that there are many, many reasons why getting this F changed is strongly advisable. If the OP is still in the program (or perhaps even if not. . .no idea but can't hurt to ask) there may be a way to do an extra project to replace the F with even a B-.

Certainly no one can tell OP if she or he is "top 20" or whatever material. What one can do using whatever ranking is collect statistical data on admitted averages on the quantitative elements like GRE and GPA. Having done this somewhat obsessively before I applied several years ago, those averages say that an F, which for 18 credits with the F counting as 3 credits and the other 15 at A resulting in a 3.3 GPA [using a quick online GPA calculator], is a bar on the quantitative aspect, which is often used as the first way of wading through a pile of applications.

Definitely try to get that changed to something, anything else. When a B in an MA can be the difference, an F certainly will in some programs. Top 20 programs get applicants with nearly perfect (read strong GRE scores, high GPA for BA or high/near 4.0 MA GPA) and the profiles of many, perhaps even most, students of top 50 programs will be similar as far as stats go. Stellar writing sample, SOP, and LORs can certainly make a difference, but those usually come into play after the initial cuts have been made on stats, so you might not even get past that cut, in which case stellar everything else might not even be considered. Definitely, definitely, definitely do anything to get that F changed to anything else. All that said, it doesn't mean you can't get in anywhere. You've got great advice about how to frame the issue in your SOP, and if you have super high GRE scores and/or subject score, then those might get you through the cut by stats stage.

Back when I applied directly out of undergrad, I was offered admission to Notre Dame's Ph.D. program, which I turned down to do MAPH (many factors involved in that choice). I'm not Catholic, though was applying out of a Catholic-affiliated undergrad, and my SoP if I recall (it was long ago and I've tried to efface that awful SoP from my memory) told a little story about leaving my fundamentalist church to pursue academic interests, so I think it was clear I wasn't Catholic. That said to say it shouldn't matter. I also know several students from ND and have met lots of people affiliated with ND at conferences and most of them were neither Catholic nor even religious. Lots of people who work on religion in the academy are often nonreligious or even atheist, so I wouldn't worry about that. Whether you would like South Bend, IN, well, that's another question! I do think you might be better served to focus on an MA right now and then apply for Ph.D.s later. It will let you develop your interests and decide if you want to go an English, Lit, med studies, or other route, which is important not only for where you apply but also for how those various programs will prepare you for the job market. Since you've got many funded MA programs on your list, those are likely going to have funding as good as or even better than some of the Ph.D. programs you've included (again . . . I only have personal experience with one of them and that was several years ago).