runonsentence

Not sure how helpful this is, but an old thread from last winter/spring lists programs rhet/comp applicants on the board had on their lists, and lists their research interests. You could maybe see how their programs look to you:

I started the certificate in the first year of my MA, also thinking it could strengthen my applications. I'm still not sure how much it helped, but it doesn't hurt to try it out. You could always start the certificate and then not completely finish it, if you decide your time would be better spent elsewhere. (I didn't end up finishing it before the end of my MA, for instance.) I talked up my participation as evidence that I am really serious about my pedagogy and want to have cross-disciplinary discussions about it as well. Some of the opportunities have been more useful than others. For instance, if yours is the same as ours, the job search seminar gets rave reviews and the mentoring opportunity is great. It's also been nice to network outside my department (both with students and our CET&L). The teaching effectiveness seminar I took (not sure, again, if this is universal to PFF??), on the other hand, was only marginally helpful. While it was nice to take a second look at my teaching philosophy statement before PhD apps and get some other perspectives and talk more about course design (something we didn't really cover in teaching practicum in my department), I quickly realized that I wasn't the ideal audience for the class, having taught 3 quarters of comp with full instruction responsibility, received both theoretical and practical pedagogy courses in my department, and knowing that I wanted to teach in my future career. Most of the others in the room had never taught a course, or only had grading duties, and half the room was sort of there to figure out whether they wanted to teach at all (or go into industry). Techniques like backwards design and scaffolding (which I'd thought intuitive, since comp instructors are already forced to think in an outcomes-based way) were either a revelation to or resisted by much of the class, at first. I'm not sure whether my experience is typical of what you can expect at your own university, and I'm not even sure I'd dissuade you from doing it anyway. But I thought I'd let you know that my experience has been a bit uneven, and that if your program has good teaching support for GTAs already, there's a good chance you're going to get the same (or better) teaching-training within your program.

Oh, another idea I forgot: listservs! Professional listservs are great for getting a feel for your field. And then you can have celebrities emailing you all day. Celebrities.

I like newsm's idea of using Twitter. I've also stumbled across influential blogs in my field, which is a good way to get a sense of conversations in a more informal setting (and also, similar to review articles, as filtered someone else knowledgeable in the field who can synthesize studies/theories/findings within a broader conversation). My university has a bit of money available to grads for attending conferences ($100/year). If you have something similar or hear of any conferences very close by that would be affordable to attend, that's another great way to get a feel for what's happening. In all honesty, this really does get a lot easier, even after just the first year. The first conference I went to (3 months into grad school), I probably understood about 1/4 of what was being said, haha. Things are much improved now, after having finished my master's. Once you start getting a feel for your field and build a framework, you better understand how new things fit into the broader picture.

If you're awarded a TAship as an international applicant, I don't think responsibilities will differ from those of the native-English TAs. (At least, I've never heard of such a thing at my own university.) If they think you're qualified enough to be a TA, then I'm sure they'll award you the same job they're giving to any other student. The previous poster is right in saying that TA duties vary. In my discipline (and English as a whole), for instance, most TAs teach their own sections with full instruction responsibility. In other disciplines, TAs more often serve as graders for a large section, or run break-out sessions or lab groups. And in addition to varying by discipline, duties vary by school, as well. You'll have to look into the TA duties offered at the programs you're applying to (usually this can be found on the program website in the "funding" section).

They know that it doesn't matter (i.e., that it mostly measures your ability to write a five-paragraph essay with certain kinds of sentence structures and word variety), but they usually have target scores for it, just like the rest of the GRE. But really, they'll have actual writing from you in front of them.

I think you're overthinking it. I've had my teaching sections switched around two or three times now because someone else had a conflict, left the program, etc., and apart from a good-natured grumble ("Darn, I have to teach at 8am again!") I've never gotten myself tied in a knot over it. A quick thank you would be fine if it made you feel better, I think ("Hey, I know that the chair asked you to switch teaching assignments because I had a conflict...I'm sorry that happened, I'm sure it was a pain for you"). But it's not like you're getting your TA section switched on a whim: it's really not your fault that you were scheduled at the same time as a required course. I'm sure your classmate understands this.

I'd say to retake if you think you can definitely score better (perhaps you didn't take practice exams, didn't study enough, or didn't target your study to testing strategies). But if you're fairly satisfied with your scores, my personal opinion is that your time would be better spent on more important components of your application like the SoP. However, that said: you say that you actually won't have time to retake the exam if you don't do well? Why do you ask?

I've never heard of something like this (it'd certainly be helpful if it did exist). The best places to find this information are (1)the program's website (try to find a page about admissions requirements), (2) the university's admissions pages (as some universities have cutoffs that the graduate programs must adhere to), and (3) the graduate secretary. A quick email to the secretary will probably yield this information; but you should make an effort to find it yourself on their website first.

Sorry, I read your post quickly--I see why you were nervous about your undergrad GPA. Still, it's not dismal, and your adcom will likely weigh your MA work much more heavily (because it actually speaks to your capacity to do graduate-level work).

You should still at least try applying to reach schools; you never know. I didn't make the GRE cutoff for either school that offered me a competitive acceptance package. Yes. By "fit" I mean that your SoP and writing sample show that you are pursuing the kind of research that your prospective program is capable of supporting. (That means that maybe you have overlapping research interests with faculty there, or that you work with a similar methodology, etc. etc.) There's no one answer to what fit is, but your SoP should show that you are aware of the academic culture of the program you are applying to and its research; your writing sample would, ideally, demonstrate the kind of research you'll be doing as a student at their program, which (again) should fit in with the kind of work they can support. You might find this thread more helpful than my rambling:

It's not lame to value your relationship. You'll meet all kinds of people in academia: all of us are willing to take on different levels and kinds of sacrifices in our personal lives, when it comes to our careers. Part of what made my decision when I was deciding between two competing PhD acceptances last spring was my relationship. In the end, because there really was no bad decision between the two programs, I chose the one in the same city as my partner (who can't leave, as he's in the middle of a dual degree program) because I knew it would make me unhappy to leave him. And I knew that, for me, it wasn't worth sacrificing my happiness to move 7.5 hours north. Sometime soon—perhaps after you're settled in your new city—I recommend sitting down and being honest with yourself about the kinds of sacrifices you're prepared to make in the future for your career. Knowing what you're willing to endure for your degree/career, and what you're not willing to give up, will make any future decisions a bit easier, I think.

Some people in my field go on the job market ABD. I think the key to actually finishing a dissertation in a reasonable amount of time after taking on a job is to have a very clear, tangible set of goals left for writing (not, "I need to figure this problem out," but rather, "I just have to finish this clearly outlined chapter"). Some advisors, for instance, won't write LoRs for ABD candidates seeking jobs unless the students are on a clear trajectory and the advisor thinks they have an identifiable and achievable amount of work left in the dissertation. Which brings me to my second piece of advice: have you talked to your advisor about the idea? You'll need the support of your advisor to get letters and the like (though perhaps this isn't as true if it's more of a part-time gig, like adjuncting).

I don't think you should avoid saying anything about not drinking—stepping around it would probably make it more awkward. A simple, confident, "I don't drink, but I'd love to hang out with all of you at happy hour" would never come off as strange.

What are your research interests? How do they fit in with the schools you've identified? Your GREs and GPAs (while solid) are likely the least important parts of your packet. Your "fit" with the departments you've identified will be one of the major contributing factors for getting in, apart from your SoP, LoRs and writing sample.

I'm not quite sure what the question is/means. Can you clarify what you're asking for, here? (Or, maybe my answer to your second question will cover it?) As to your second question (whether or not to rely on educational experiences in your SoP), I'd say that you should do your best to make the SoP a "forward-looking" document. While your background will come into play in explaining how you came to your research interests, your interests and goals themselves are the focal point of this document. (Note that the first sentence of the prompt says that this document is about your goals.) The personal statement, by contrast, is where you get to spend more time discussing your background and how it led to you wanting to pursue graduate school. This is where you'll want to put most of the information about your school background. So for instance, in your SoP, you might say something like, "My interest in X, which was developed through A and B courses, was honed even more in a research opportunity with Dr. Smith. I want to continue exploring this issue and get a MPP/MPH because it will be of great use to me in a career as a medical policy person because.... I am interested in exploring [more about research interests here] at Z university, because the faculty at your program are committed to the same kind of work." Here I've noted where my research interests came from, but I've focused more on the goals themselves.

My usual advice is to always solicit letters from those who know you best. That said, I hesitate to tell you to solicit more than 1 recommendation from someone who can't speak to your scholarship/research. As to what an adcom looks for in a LoR: they want a picture of you as a candidate, and they want opinions on how well suited you are for graduate-level work (coming from someone else who knows what it takes to succeed as a graduate student). They want to know what kind of potential you have for doing scholarly work in their program.

I'm happy to share my SoP and writing sample via PM. Though I'm not sure if it will be helpful since I was finishing my MA when I wrote them and I'm in a different subfield. But let me know if you'd like to see them.

I was somewhat similar in high school and part of undergrad: I had made a decision not to drink, and I wasn't really around those who did. I eventually found it less uncomfortable/nerve-wracking to be around those who drank once I stopped working it up in my head—I found that isolating myself from people who drank all that time meant that I had blown the idea of seeing someone drunk far out of proportion in my head—and once I stopped making moral judgements on those around me who were drinking. (I'm not saying that you are necessarily blowing it out of proportion in your head or passing moral judgements on those who drink, but if you are, I found it helpful to work past these things.) At any rate, I am now a drinker but have friends who don't drink for various reasons: some for religious reasons, some to meet short-term health goals, some because they're broke. I still manage to socialize with them in other ways (one is a fellow burger aficionado). But while I consider myself someone who's perfectly capable of having a good time without a beer in hand, I do have to admit that I don't get to see them as often because they're not always there when we do group nights out at the bar to blow off some mid-term stress.

sollee's absolutely right. (The history of trying to standardize spelling in the language is particularly humorous, to me.) I don't want to derail the thread for those who are actually seeking help with the GRE, so I'll keep this response brief. My point is that characterizing the words you choose to use as "legitimate" and the ways that others speak as not "correct"—or calling their words those "which simply don't have reasons to be used"—is at best insensitive to others and, at worst, oppressive. The difference between our viewpoints is that I see a dictionary as descriptive and you see it as prescriptive. A dictionary isn't indicative of how some social, cultural or economic groups speak (and how they have learned the language). As much as I might think the OED rocks as a work of research, not everyone in the country is aware of its existence, let alone consults it OR considers it as representative of their own way of speaking. The OED does make efforts to track and record "non-standard" uses (like your example of "fixin'"), but how could it keep up with every use? Do a Google search of funnest. Below the hits for Q&A sites asking if it's okay to use, you'll see people using it in accordance with the hypothetical I outlined in my last post. Whether any of us like it or not, the word is in use.

There's really no one answer here: it all depends on what kind of experience you've amassed, what you're looking to highlight in your background, and what you're aiming to do. (For instance, my "teaching experience" section comes before my publications because I have more of the former and because it was important for me to demonstrate teaching experience to win my assistantship. Someone in the lab sciences would probably do the opposite.) The best thing to do is look at several samples of others in your field (those at the same stage of their careers would be best). That said, most grad applicants would probably include some of the following sections, as applicable to their experience: education, teaching experience, research experience, publications, presentations, honors/awards, coursework (depending on whether or not your past degree speaks to your preparation), service.

I mean this in the kindest way possible, so don't think I'm ragging on you: but I'd check this kind of attitude before entering graduate school, partly because your posts, I have to agree, are reading in a rather elitist way. And particularly because I know you want to go into English, and I think you might find that in many circles (perhaps not in the most conservative ones), you're going to find a rejection of prescriptive grammar. The NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) released a position statement on students' right to their own languages back in the 70s: http://www.ncte.org/...CC/NewSRTOL.pdf I'm going to take this opportunity to jump onto a critical soapbox: Languages are picked up through osmosis by those around us, and speakers from differing social, economic, and cultural groups in the U.S. all tend to learn different ways of speaking. The problem with the idea of a hegemonic "standard" American English is that (a) it doesn't exist and ( it marginalizes other vernaculars and dialects (a particularly robust example being Black English; see also Smitherin's Talkin and Testifyin). These "other" vernaculars and dialects are usually those of periphery groups, and they're usually only seen as wrong because they don't conform to the myth of the One, True Grammar. Think of it this way: if you heard everyone around you using "funnest" in conversation all your life (I know I hear plenty of people use it), you'd come to see it as an accepted part of speech. Further, say those around you understand what you mean when you use it, and you intuit a set of "rules" for using it (it denotes something is "the most fun"): you even realize that there are occasions when you can use it (chatting with friends) and occasions when it seems to be looked down upon (writing a paper). Why is this more "wrong" than operating within the rules of "correct" grammar? Deployed within the correct kinds of rhetorical situations, it isn't wrong at all. Just different.

Ah. A PhD would be a different beast altogether, because the committee will be looking for a stronger focus. There are PhD programs out there that are interdisciplinary friendly (e.g., check out U of Milwaukee-Wisconsin), but my guess is that you'll still need to articulate a primary research interest in one field. For instance, I have colleagues who are creative writers but are doing one of their exam areas in rhet comp. There might be some interdisciplinary people out there who can direct you better than I can, but I think that what you need to do is decide what kind of work you want to do: literary analysis and theory that is influenced by rhetoric, or rhetorical work with a side interest in literature. That will determine what kinds of departments and programs you look into.

Most schools prefer that your recommenders send them in directly. In the rare case I mailed in the letters myself in packet with the rest of my materials, I did so because I was expressly asked to by the program. If you DO mail them in yourself along with your other materials, ensure that your writers have signed the envelope along the seal. The very best thing to do is to have professors upload their LoR online, along with your application proper. (I'm assuming you'll mostly be submitting electronic apps because very, very few schools these days ask for, let alone accept, paper applications.) Some online systems allow you to invite your writers to upload their letter whenever you'd like, once you've started the application; others don't notify your writers that they can upload their letter until after you've finished the entire application and submitted it, along with the fee.