ComeBackZinc

Oh, they're known for their digital work, no question. I just think it's relevant that their dissertations tend to cluster very heavily in one particular area, which I note without making any kind of value judgment about one area or another.

My thoughts as well. As more posts go up and people come on the board to corroborate, you can feel more and more confident that the results board is telling the truth.

Yeah, I mean I would just say generally that anyone should take the results board with a grain of salt even under the best conditions, and that you just have to wait for good or bad news to come officially from the departments, although I certainly understand the desire to not have to wait.

That link to the list of dissertations at MSU is super helpful for people thinking about the program. One thing that jumps out right away from that list is the dominance of minority rhetorics/cultural studies/critical pedagogy dissertations. Definitely shows Malea Powell's influence in the department. Here's the list for UIllinois: http://www.cws.illinois.edu/graduate/dissertations/

Yeah, there are several students in their 40s in my program and nobody notices or cares.

Professors do go off script sometimes and call particular applicants early. I mean, if you're a bigwig with tenure and you want to call or email a student or two early, who's going to kick up a fuss about it? Although I do in general advise skepticism about the results board. Anybody can post anything at any time.

You'll be fine! Endure!

You will endure and thrive!

Yeah I am in the same boat-- in addition to my quality of life being much higher as a grad student, as sad as it is, I'm actually financially better off now than I was before.

I know that this has happened in the past, successfully, but of course it's in the tiny minority of cases. Many state schools, for what it's worth, have a particular funding package that is set far above the heads of the actual departments and thus can't be negotiated with. But yes, I know that some students have accomplished such a negotiation. Go with care, no matter what you do. I personally have subsisted on my stipend and some money from editing, publishing, and odd academic summer jobs, without taking on loan aid. Because I have a very bad back, and the health insurance here is great, it's actually a clear net financial win for me. I do want to say that you're perfectly right to think in these terms about grad school, and far too many people don't do that. At the same time, almost anything else you choose to do will be a better financial investment of your time and energy. Just food for thought.

One thing I like about the study I posted is that it lays out the situation in political science in terms that speak to what both sides are saying here. "The top 11 institutions were collectively responsible for the doctoral education of about half of those in tenured or tenure-track positions at the 116 universities." I can't say that English has those exact numbers or anything close to it. But you see the broader point: you can choose to look at it as "11 programs get half the jobs." Or you can look at it as "half the jobs don't go to the most prestigious programs." Both are correct, and if you really truly believe you can be among that portion that doesn't come from the top programs, go for it. But go for it knowing that your odds would be much better if you were in one of those 11.

Hey, exponentialdecay. I am not aware of any serious studies that specifically address the issue of the academic job market in English. As you're aware, absent a particular sample size and σ, there's not much use in worrying about the alpha; however, given a reasonable n, my intuition is that there would almost certainly be a significant difference between the hiring rates of the schools in the top 5 and schools in the top 50. That certainly depends a great deal on the particular programs and specialties, however, and of course it's just informed speculation at this point. For a little context, here's a report about such a study in political science. The results are both to be expected and depressing. As for your first paragraph, in my experience, people are using the word "rankings" as a rough approximation for the socially-constructed perception of program exclusivity/prestige. So there's a lot of wiggle here, along a couple of axes. And yet I'm still confident saying that graduates from Berkeley, Harvard, Brown, or Ann Arbor will have a much easier time getting a job than a graduate from Middle American State, even while I fully acknowledge that people from the former schools go jobless all the time and that exceptional candidates from the latter can and do get TT jobs.

I am happy I got my MA first because I was a dummy dumbhead before I went through my MA program and afterwards I was slightly less dumb.

One of our potential students brought her boyfriend around with her last recruitment season. Nobody seemed to think it was a problem or anything.

There's definite post-decision blahs, too, which I've written about before. Even when you're sure that you've made the perfect choice for you, you get this come down feeling after all the manic work and panic of the actually application process. Plus, once you know where you're going, your future is decided, and even the perfect someplace can't compare to the possibility of anyplace.

You know, Strong Flat White, the fact that you may know all of this stuff doesn't mean that everyone knows all this stuff. Look: there are dozens and dozens of essays and blog posts out there from people who feel betrayed by the academy because they feel that they were never adequately warned about the status of the job market. Dozens. And they're incredibly angry and full of deep hurt. So I try to point this stuff out here, where people are still making decisions about their future, because I think it may help them avoid similar pain. I'm sorry if that's repetitious to you, but given all of the people writing these types of pieces, it clearly needs to be heard from some people. And no amount of throwing around Foucault is going to change the on-the-ground reality of the academic job market. If you find these posts so objectionable, just ignore them.

We had a job candidate come today, and as is tradition, she had an informal lunch with the grad students so that she could get a breather from all the evaluation. So she went all around the room and asked for what we're interested in and studying. The diversity expressed in that room is why I'm so glad to be a part of the field.

It's okay! It probably feels 1000x worse than it is right now.

Again, I don't think that anyone claims that people from outside of the top-tier programs never get jobs. Nor do I think anyone is saying that you should only consider top 20 programs. And yes, there are many individual professors from outside of the top programs who have gotten jobs. None of that changes the reality that all else being equal and in general, people from the most prestigious programs have the best job prospects and enjoy a significant advantage on the academic job market.

Everybody should go ahead and click "report" on this thread.

I guess I should have said "Big Toe's picture grosses me out."

I agree with that. What I don't understand is who is disputing that. People like me say, "on balance, yes, the prestige of your undergraduate institution seems to matter a lot, but of course there are people who can and do excel coming from programs that are not considered prestigious." People then respond, "well here's an example of the latter category." But no one is saying that it's impossible. We're trying to assess broad trends. Like I said above: I highly recommend that people go to the faculty pages of a bunch of programs and check out the schools where current profs got their BAs and MAs and PhDs, and try to think about what this says about the overall landscape. The reality with a crowd-sourced advice forum like this is that most of what you're going to hear ends up getting bent towards what people want to hear. It's just human nature. The problem is that you end up with these endless number of threads where someone says, "My GPA isn't that great, will that sink me?" And everyone emphasizes the exceptions instead of the general rule. "My cousin got into Berkeley with a 2.75 GPA!" Which may very well be true! But then by the end of the thread people are essentially arguing that undergrad GPA doesn't matter, when it matters a hell of a lot. Same thing here: what ends up winning the day is almost always what people want to hear.

Well BigToe, clearly, sucks. However: I strongly encourage everyone who posts here to go to a dozen or so websites of schools and programs you admire, and find the page where the faculty are listed. Take an honest accounting of what you find there. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself when evaluating what you see. Then take that for whatever you think it's worth.

Here are the undergraduate institutions of the current faculty members at Yale English, with a few left out that I couldn't find. I'm not nominating Yale as the best program or anything of the sort. I'm just picking it as an inarguably elite program and using it as just a little food for thought. Yale Cornell Washington University in St. Louis Harvard Columbia Yale Mount Holyoke NYU UC-Berkeley NYU UW-Madison Yale Yale Johns Hopkins Princeton Columbia Villanova Dartmouth Yale Queen's University Belfast Dartmouth Williams College Wheaton College Oxford University of London Yale Oxford Michigan - Ann Arbor Allegheny College Hamilton College Yale UC-Berkeley Trinity University of Alberta St. John Fisher College University of Alabama Swarthmore Do I take this as particularly compelling evidence? No, I don't. I'm just offering it as one example. And like I said, there's exceptions peppered in there. But almost without exception, these people went on to big-name PhD programs. Sure, people climb the ladder, it happens all the time. But to suggest that the prestige of your undergraduate institution doesn't matter, or doesn't matter a lot, is trafficking in a pleasant fantasy. I'm just think that people should be upfront about the competitive landscape. I'm not trying to discourage anyone. Now if you're not moved by this, that's fine. But I think you should go through the faculty web pages of some universities you admire or respect, from different "tiers" of prestige, and see if Yale is an exception or more like the rule.

Oh, for sure. There's no guarantees, obviously. My point would just be this: oftentimes, people come to this board and say "my apps have X problem, can this problem be overcome." And most of the time, unless you're talking a truly atrocious GPA or a history of academic dishonesty, the answer is yes, any particular thing can be overcome. What I would hasten to add to those conversations, though, is that there are many applicants who don't have any areas of obvious weakness-- they have the GPA and the GREs and a good SOP and a good writing sample. Much of the time, adcomms at top programs are choosing among a ton of very qualified applicants. In those situations, having a big name diploma to catch the eye of just one member who will advocate for an app can help. Again, not saying this to discourage anyone. I'm just saying that it's a factor.