GoodGuy

I too got this email, last year, after getting rejected from a PhD program at NYU. I thought it was funny. And a little rude. Was very happy to send back an email letting them know the PhD programs I HAD gotten into, and thanking them kindly. From all I've heard? Don't do it.

Imagine! Falling asleep in class! The pity! The shame! Shame on him! Like none of us have EVER fallen asleep or drifted off in a boring-ass lecture. But of course not! We're REAL PhD students who'd NEVER do anything like that. Yeah, right. lol. Only difference is, unlike Franco, we didnt have a pack of photogs lingering around to snap a pic of it. I do think it's funny that Franco's just doing his thing, and probably not thinking a whit about any of us naysayers out here. Good luck to the man.

Hi bespeckled, Congrats on admittance and the fellowship! Another Am Studies person here...I'm not exactly sure of the answer to your question, but something did occur to me as I read your post: perhaps Am Studies at your school, even if it's housed under the English department, is considered a social science? I don't get how or why that would be, but it was just a thought. I remember when I was visiting schools last year, one of the African American Studies programs I looked at was considered a social science, whereas at EVERY other school I'd looked at or researched, AfAm was part of the humanities. So, just a thought...or, maybe the "s" in the "MS" was just a typo? Here's one piece of advice I'd give you in the meantime, a lesson I learned: NO question is too ignorant when it comes to this grad school stuff...Believe me, that's why the DGS is there, to answer all and any questions incoming students might have. Good luck with everything! GG

Last yer most of us found out by post. I think one person got a phone call because her address was confusing or something...I got my acceptance letter on a Saturday. But I lived in New England at the time so I was very close to Mass already. It's a great program, different in many ways than other Am Stud programs. I'm really loving it here...Good luck to you guys! GG

So Brown has finally decided to launch their PhD program in Africana Studies? That's great to hear. Did my undergrad there. Who did you speak to? Would love to find out more! Thanks for the news... I remember these days last year...I got into Berkeley around this time last year, and rejected from Northwestern a coupla weeks later! Good luck to everyone!

Sorry folks. That article is bull. The inability to talk to someone who isn't of your class or educational background has nothing to do with where you went to school. It has to do with where you were raised and who raised you. Pure and simple. You don't "learn" how to be a snob in the Ivy League (or whatever public or private equivalent you might attend). The writer of the article just needs someone to blame for his own shortcomings. And people who agree with him who haven't gone Ivy just don't know because, well, they haven't gone Ivy. And using Gore and Kerry as examples to bolster his point is just lazy. I did my undergrad at an Ivy and now I'm doing my grad work at an Ivy. But it was my parents, regular middle-class people who worked everyday and believed that goodness to others is a virtue--not my professors or deans or fellow students in college--who taught me how to interact with the world around me. But the ability to interact with people, to hold conversations and see other points of view? That was learned at home. Where, frankly, it should be. Sure there WERE social and cultural things I learned at my undergrad Ivy that I can clearly see as marked as "different" or "special" in some people's eyes. But I don't have to let those systems define who I am. And there were things I saw there that bothered me at times. But I don't have to be pissed off at them when there are FAR more important things in the world to be pissed off about. But I will say this: I've seen some selfish, mean, nasty, dumb, egotistical assholes come out of schools far off the Ivy path. What excuse do we give them?

Hey rainy_day As I was looking around at schools last year, there were a few "rock stars" with whom I wanted to work at four of the six schools I applied to. There were also some assistant and associate profs who aren't "stars"; some were up-and-comers, some were just interesting-sounding. I wrote short, direct emails to all of them, letting them know a little about me and my research interests, how I thought my interests might dovetail with theirs, and asking whether they were looking to work with new graduate students. All the "rock stars" got back to me; it was a few of the "lesser knowns" who often didn't get back to me! One of the "rock stars" liked the sound of my potential project enough to offer some advice about ways to actually streamline one of my ideas. That said, I got into three of the six programs I applied to. The one I chose to go to houses a couple of the "rock stars" who got back to my original emails. It's also the school where I mentioned in my SoP that one of the "rock stars" had offered me advice about my potential research, and that that sort of professorial outreach hadn't happened at any other school I'd applied to. So...I'm definitely of the opinion that a nicely-worded, polite email correspondence can be a good thing--not saying that it takes the place of great recs, and a solid SoP and writing sample. But I don't think expressing interest in potentially working with someone can be a bad thing at all--"rock star" or no! Good luck on your apps!

Does anyone know anything about the area in Cambridge around the Peabody Terrace high-rises near the river? I'm gonna be living around there and wanted to get a sense of grocery stores etc. Anything anyone can offer would be great! Thanks! GG

@thepoorstockinger: Elliot Gorn's a great guy; I did undergrad work with him and he was one of my closest advisors, partly because he DID do some scholarly work around sports and masculinity and popular culture. I'd highly recommend working with him in Brown's Am Civ or History departments. He's a very knowledgeable and an easy-going professor who demands good work. I know he's working with a student now who's doing some work around steroid use and male body image. also to you and @geigwm6, there's a guy at Purdue named Robert Lamb who, I believe, does work with some graduate history students on projects related to sports. There's also Michael Ralph in NYU's American Studies program (Cultural Thought, they might call it now?) who does some interesting work around sports, race, masculinity and history... Just some names that I came across in my own investigation about sports history. Glad to see there are others interested in similar fields.

>>>As for American Studies degrees, be careful. Race and gender studies markets are flooded with scholars, and the R1s just keep cranking out these degrees, in order to fill grad courses and exploit cheap teaching labor. (Although I have no idea what you want to study, at my institution AS is code for "colored folk" or "womenfolk," so I feel this piece of advice may indeed be helpful.)<<<< Uh, Minnesotan, what is your institution where this "code" applies??? Just curious...Because in all the research I did before applying to (and getting into) several Am Studies programs I didn't find this to be completely true...thanks!

After deciding NOT to take an intense Spanish course to prepare for ONE of the two languages I need to have for my degree, I figured I'd chill, leisurely read some books and articles by profs I'll be working with, and just ready myself for the work that'll be coming my way. Then I found out that the prof of a pro-seminar I'm taking in the fall has sent out a syllabus and assignment for the first day--a paper, a bibliography, and an oral presentation. So much for leisure. Yet in an odd way, I'm excited. After spending the last year teaching college students, I'm very ready to be a student again!

Just curious: what sorta advice would you impart or expect to be imparted? As someone about to start a PhD in American Studies, I'm wondering what the discourse is around this choice. Thanks!

Pickle-Geuse: Figure out WHY Hopkins, NYU, et al (and wherever you seek to apply) is the right place for you, as opposed to the top, hot places to be for a PhD. They might not all be right for you for the same reasons, but you should know that going INTO the application process. I had pretty decent success this past app season, I think, because I did a ton of research about who was at which universities, what I (potentially) wanted to study with them, and why I would be the best possible person chosen to do so based on my interests and theirs. I crafted applications--my SOP, my writing samples, who I got LORs from--in that direction for every school. It's a lot of work but, I think, worth it in the long run. It's still a big crapshoot--especially these days--but still worth it. That said, people also say that one should apply widely. I'm not SUCH big a fan of that (though I get it) as I think it's better to apply where you will probably want to go and where you think you are, absolutely, the best fit. Applying widely might insure that you have a ratio's better chance of getting in somewhere, but applying smartly will make you concentrate on the presentation you make to whichever unis you choose. So my advice is this: forget about you GPA; ya can't change that now (unless, I guess, you take a coupla extra classes over the summer or somewhere else, THEN apply)...Concentrate on what you can manipulate to your advantage: how you do on the GREs, your writing sample(s), your SOP, your letters of rec. Good luck to you!

I guess I can offer a little something, outofredink--I just went through the process you're about to start. Harvard was my first choice mostly because of faculty, the people there who I thought I'd fit with, and also the ones who got back to me when I contacted them and seemed excited or interested in the possibility of my being a student of theirs. They have a great bunch of historians who also do lit, a close relationship to the African American Studies program (which was very important for me as part of my research is based on some comparative race analysis), and even though there seems to be a bit of freedom, the program seems adamant that students get a good discipline training under their belts. It would be easier for me to speak about the other schools more if I had a better sense of the kinds of things you wanna study and the sorta approach you wanna take with them, but that said, I have a soft spot for Brown as that is where I did my undergrad, and I think I got a very sound and solid training in Am Civ from a bunch of very committed, wonderful and diverse group of profs. Brown is also VERY cross-disciplinary, so I was able to use classes from a plethora of departments to set up my concentration, which I think also happens for the grad students. FInancially I don't think you can go wrong with one of the Ivies; they tend to fund their students very well and competitively. I'm not sure about the other programs you're thinking of as I only applied to Am Studies and African American Studies depts. Yes, I do hate that question! :roll: Only slightly kidding, but that's cause looking back I think the process is overwhelmingly random and yet oddly specific to the individual at the same time, if that makes any sense. I got rejected from places I was SURE I'd get into and yet got into all the programs I sorta thought of (and many people think of) as "reaches", for one reason or another. It is ultimately very hard to tell where you will land once the lottery wheel of grad apps stops but I think there ARE things one can do to TRY to ensure that you have as good a chance as anyone getting into a good program that is also right for you. And I think that starts with the writing sample and SOP. GREs and GPA are important, from what I hear, to weed out some candidates from an overwhelming number of apps that have to be plowed through to get to that desired number of 10 or 7 or 5 (and from what I hear, more and more people are applying these days for smaller cohort numbers!) But you have to figure that MOST people applying to the sorta programs you're applying to probably have good-to-great-to-stellar scores and grades, right? So there has to be another way to impress the admissions committees. And that's in your writing sample and SOP. A lot of students can manage great undergrad grades and study their asses off to learn how to take a standardized test, but not EVERYONE can craft a sterling letter that pinpoints their aims and desires as scholars, who they are as people, and how the two things make them the perfect fit for any particular program. Your SOP should, at the end of the day, tell a story. Not an epic narrative of your life from infanthood up to your graduation day, but instead a short, precise, readable, engaging group of paragraphs that let the committee know who you are, what you (probably) want to study, and how you (probably) want to study it. Methodology and theory are less important than a very clear perspective of your own ambitions. More important than the methods and theory is, I think, which professors at the program are best for your to align your approach. With which professors--based on their experience, research, methodology, could you see working closely? The committee is looking for the best students, yes, but really they're looking for the best students who will add to their dept and who will have someone with whom to work. If you're the person looking to study religious undertones in the work of John Updike, great! If the 20th century people in the dept already have a ton of students split between them, not so great. But if you have an unusual spin on that study project and one of those 20th century people is cool with taking on another student, great! If one of the 20th cent people is going on sabbatical for the next year to write a new book, maybe NOT so great. But you see what I mean? It can be random, yet specific to how you FIT with the program, based on that SOP and the writing sample that shows that no matter what you decide to study, you already have the sophistication and bearing to research and get it down on paper in an elegant and sustained way. See above. Yes, there are a bunch of 4.0ers trying to do just that. Some of them will succeed, many of them will not. Some of them can write circles around you. Some of them are the most pedestrian thinkers you'll ever meet. I would suggest getting your letters MAINLY from the people who know you and your work the very best that anyone does. Of course it helps if at least one of those people is a NAME the committee immediately recognizes. But you want your LORs to glow up at the readers, to emanate all the great essence that is you, NOT make you seem like just another good student who knelt at the feet of greatness for a lecture because said greatness was available that semester. Your numbers as stated above sound more than fine. And your extras sound good as well. The LOR writer who called you "brilliant"--can she get the paper from you and elucidate for the committee exactly what was brilliant about it? Or if you're brilliant as well? The other recommenders sound good because they know YOU, and what you offer as a person as well as a scholar. That will be important to committees too, from what I hear. These people are trying to put together a team of students who they think will succeed in the hotpot of grad study. They want to know what you want to study, but I like said up top somewhere, they're also interested in who you are. Much of this is just my opinion, and I'm sure there are other people on the board who probably offer better or deeper analysis than me. I'm still a newbie in many ways. But you sound like you're on the right track. Good luck with everything and let me know if you have other questions! GG

ProjectPhD You sound a bit like I felt when I was considering grad schools last year. I knew that I wanted to continue the path I'd begun in undergrad, which was an investigation into the intersections of masculinity and race in identity formation, with an emphasis on the social and cultural histories created by pop culture/literature usages. I also knew that I wanted to get a good grounding in history without matriculating in a history department for my PhD. As for the "differences" between them all? You'll get many different definitions, I think, but I'd say this: In English, you will probably get a pretty well-rounded training in lit theory and criticism spanning many eras and styles of literature before you set to choosing your own specific sub-field that will become your specialty. In American Studies, there will probably be a more interdisciplinary approach to the broad spectrum of American history and culture which will be less rigidly disciplinary than a traditional History dept, and which might incorporate aspects of Cultural Studies, which, in my opinion, tends to be more theoretically based study of "culture" and all the notions of ideology that informs it, looking at it from various vantage points of class, race, gender etc... Some schools, I've found, incorporate elements of all of the above in any specific rubric you're thinking of. In other words, I know a woman who is doing her English PhD with a serious Cultural Studies approach, yet wanted to get her degree in English, so she didn't apply to Cult Studies programs, only to schools that would allow her to use her sort of methodology to the study of literature. NYU's American Studies, I think, operates more and more as a Center for Social and Cultural Thought. USC's program is actually called American Studies and Ethnicity. Bowling Green and Minnesota's Am Studies depts are real pop culture powerhouse. I was an Am Studies major in college, and I looked around at almost ALL of the Am Studies/Am Civ/Am Culture(s) programs around the nation. Some I found were more cross-disciplinary than others; some emphasized social/culture theory more than others; some I found operated as more Ethnic Studies programs, in my opinion. What I did was narrow down my list to the programs that would allow me the interdisciplinary approach that I LOVE about American Studies, but also provide me with solid training in a discipline like English or History. Which I think I'll get at the program I chose to attend. My program is made up of profs from different depts around the university, which emphasizes the cross-disciplinary study I needed, and a bunch of them are history-based which made it even more a good fit for me. At the end of the day, I think it IS about fit and the profs you'll be working with. Look at the faculty in all the depts you're thinking of applying. Who's doing work that seems aligned with yours? (Not necessarily note-for-note, but close enough to seem like a good fit for your research.) Who's publishing books or articles that you like or want to read or have found useful in your work up to now? Something else I did was get in contact with those professors who seemed like people with whom I might want to work closely. There are similarities between the programs you're looking at--English, American Studies, Cultural Studies--but getting in touch with profs (many of whom might move between the very disciplines you're investigating) MIGHT give you more insight into where you might see yourself as a grad student. Don't know if I answered your question, but I hope some of this helps! Good Luck!