I would really appreciate advice on some quandaries I'm facing. I got accepted into my backup school for the ENG PhD with funding. I feel grateful for this, extremely grateful, but the reality is that I wish to transfer to another, better program.
I was thinking I should go to this school (the one that's accepted me), stay for a year, and then transfer next Fall (2008). My questions are:
1. Is it unethical to do this? On the flipside: (a) The school that has accepted me has very very few facultypersons in the area that I'm interested in, and I am genuinely terrified of finding courses canceled, no resources, etc. ( The school's ranking is very low, and I was wondering if this will turn out to be career-suicide in the long term.
2. If any of you got accepted in your top-choice schools after a year of waiting, what did you do in the interim (gap) year? Did you take the GRE/Subject GRE again? More importantly, did you get something published, attend conferences/symposia, etc. to build your resume?
3. Finally, I was thinking of writing directly to the faculty persons at the programs that I am interested in. Is this a good idea? Or should I write to the grad directors? I don't know if faculty take kindly to the thought of writing to a total stranger, so I would love to hear if this worked for some of you.
I realize that the answer will be different for every person, but I am trying to find out what went wrong with my application, which I thought (and my advisor thought) was outstanding. Thank you in advance for your support and any advice you have to offer.