ComeBackZinc

goddammit I gave another inadvertent downvote. sorry.

I would say that they know what they are doing, but face resource and time constraints that make their choices necessarily subject to some fickleness. I always think of the Harvard undergraduate admissions chief who admitted that 90% of Harvard's applicants are perfectly capable of excelling at Harvard. From the adcomm's perspective, there's little to fear because genuinely unqualified applicants can be eliminated easily and early, and there are many perfectly qualified applicants trying to get the same spots. For the applicants, it's a little less comforting.

One of the things I like a lot about that book is that it is resolutely anti-romanticism in academia, which I've found to be a real problem for a lot of people; they romanticize the university system so they have a hard time dealing with the inevitable disappointments. But I don't intend to post this in a purely or deeply pessimistic sense. In large part, I think the takeaway is first to forgive yourself if you don't get into that one program, because there is just such variability in readers on adcomms. Relatedly, cast your nets wide both in the sense of applying to a good number of schools (the author of the book advocates 10 as a sensible number) but also emotionally. Don't get overly attached to one department! Also, I agree with this person in the sense that the system has a lot of randomness and arbitrariness in it, but still tends to produce fairly just results in aggregate. I think an individual rejection or acceptance can be a genuine crapshoot, but that if you apply to a decent number of schools, you should hope to find that your luck breaks out even. I also think that you can trust that several acceptances from good programs are an indication that you have what adcomms want. (Not necessarily the same thing as an "objective" notion of academic value!) On the downside, I think if you strike out at many departments over a few separate application seasons, it's likely that you do not have an academic resume that projects the kind of things adcomms are looking for in the field right now. It's natural for all of us to have a somewhat self-defensive attitude towards our own success or failure in this process. If you got into your top programs, you want to believe that the system is fair. If you didn't, you want to believe that the system is flawed. The reality is probably in the middle. More than anything, I hope people try to maximize their chances for success, but also that they don't get bound up in thinking that any particular acceptance or rejection is somehow indicative of their value as people or as intellects. Sorry to speechify.

I'm starting my third year in a couple weeks-- and, eep, taking my prelim exams starting in about 14 hours! (ApplyingToGrad is making a nice distraction at the moment.) And I love it here. There are of course drawbacks and problems, which I'm happy to talk about, but I really can't tell you how satisfied I've been in my time here. Feel free to private message me with any questions.

I thought you guys would be interested in this passage from Getting What You Came For, which is an older (mid-90s) book about going to grad school. It's from a member of the graduate admissions committee in the English department at Stanford University talking about the process they go through. Because of its age, I wouldn't advise you to see it was necessarily what Stanford does now, but as a general description of how adcomms work it fits what I've heard from lots of profs. Just some food for thought.

The conversation about contacting POIs is consistently the most controversial one around here and at the Livejournal Applying To Grad community. I don't think anybody can resolve it to your satisfaction, other than to say that some people contact POIs and find it immensely helpful and some people don't contact POIs and get into the best programs. Since you're nervous about the actual content of the email, maybe someone here could private message you with emails they sent themselves to POIs? Also, Getting What You Came For by Robert Peters discusses the topic at length. For what it's worth, Peters is very pro-POI contact, to the point where he advocates choosing a dissertation advisor before you ever show up on campus.

Yeah. I plan on getting a job. This isn't a degree I'm getting just for fun. But when I read so many people talking about how stupid it is to get a PhD, I really don't think they bother to consider quality of life, or to trust people who say they enjoy this. The last several years have been among the most fulfilled and happy of my life. I cannot tell you how much enjoyment I have in my day-to-day existence. I'm being practical and strategic in my grand plan; because I'm funded, I've been frugal, and I've search for additional money and side jobs, I have no more debt today than when I started the program. But I'm also being a romantic because I'm living a life I love right now. That'll be true even if I don't get a job.

That's an impressive list of programs you're applying to, Chadillac! edit: erm, sorry for going off topic.

I'll be the person to advocate that you simply pick the course that you find most interesting and generative, rather than the one that you think will best position you for the next step. While you want a strong background in your chosen subfield when you apply, you've likely already established that, and the topics of the courses that you take will ultimately be less important for your applications than your grades, your relationships with your professors, and your major application materials. When you reach the PhD level, there will be plenty of time to professionalize and think in strategic terms. Even then, I think it's vital to maintain a sense of academic play, to be willing to pursue interests and ideas that don't have obvious or immediate importance for your professionalization.

Well I just finished my second year and my coursework, although I'll be taking a couple stats classes and some random others in the next year or two. The next step for me is my comprehensive exams, which start on the 30th of this month. In my program, we have a 24 hour test, with 5 questions (each based on one of our core classes) of 1200 words a piece, followed by a 7 day test which is a paper of 18-20 pages on a topic picked from a small list. It's a pretty traditional test. The 24 hour section is the real nail-biter, so as you can imagine I'm really feeling the stress at the moment with daily studying and writing of practice answers. I'll feel much better when I'm through with the test. I really want to try and finish in 4 years. It's doable; there's usually one or two people from each cohort who do. But the faculty is generally discouraging, and I know they have good reasons for that, so I'll probably finish in 5. Perhaps I'll be in absentia, doing research at a city high school somewhere. I guess the biggest impression for me, other than how much I enjoy being a grad student (which isn't to say it's perfect-- it's far, far from perfect), is the pressure to publish. I have to say that my CV is in better shape at this point in my progress than I possibly could have predicted, and yet I still feel pressure every day to respond to CFPs and pitch to journals. I guess that attitude will probably be good for me in the long run, although I wouldn't use the word healthy to describe it!

*bump* Would love to hear how you all are doing after your first year. What's grad school like now that it's, you know, your life?

Incidentally, if I have given anyone any inexplicable downvotes, please blame my clumsiness with a touchscreen. I was just perusing an old thread and handed out like 3 totally undeserved downvotes. (Clumsiness is my curse. You should see me try to take those first few pedals on my bike....)

I often feel bad for saying this, because this tends to be such a supportive community (and that's great). But getting into a really prestigious program really does matter, if you're in lit. When people say that you can't just chase the top departments, I understand what they're saying, and exceptions happen. (Feel free to name some you know of personally, if you'd like.) But the reality is that jobs tend to be staffed by people from the biggest name departments, and I genuinely feel that most people who have a choice between a Berkeley/Harvard/etc and a better fit with less prestige should take the former over the latter. The numbers are what they are. For those of us in rhet/comp, the landscape is different, with better numbers generally and a very different set of schools being the best programs. It's also the case that rhet/comp has (again, with exceptions just like in lit) amounted to a trade between getting TT jobs period and getting the most high-profile, high-prestige jobs. You are much more likely to get a job at State U with a rhet/comp degree than a lit degree, by pure numbers (in terms of # of PhDs issue to # of jobs proportionally), but with a few exceptions such as jobs that pop up at Stanford or Georgetown, you are not going to get a job at Elite English Department X with a rhet/comp degree. I love to teach and would be thrilled to work at a big public research U, personally, which was part of my choice to pursue a doctorate. I guess all I'm saying is that, aside from no duh stuff like "be great" and "get a single-authored, researched paper published in a major journal before you go on the job market," going to the most prestigious program is the best thing you can do to set yourself up to get a TT job rather than to end up adjunting. (In my only partially-informed opinion!)

It's brutal, and it's something all of us in English have to seriously think about, considering that the majority of English PhDs won't be getting tenure track jobs. I know someone who teaches SIX classes a semester in the fall and spring and two in the summer, and still only makes about $38K before taxes. And she's lucky because she gets health insurance from her husband.

Nope. You should go for a Macbook Pro if you want to buy a Mac then. (says an anti-Mac person.)

Big name schools, or big name departments? The former is largely irrelevant to your eventual job search, the latter certainly isn't.

wreckofthehope, do you have any insight in the teaching question? I've heard that it can be hard for graduates of UK universities on the American job market because many don't teach as graduate students. Obviously that would be mitigated somewhat by Oxford's name. Have you ever head anything like that? Does it sound accurate?

I personally would not. High risk, low reward. It's true that it could catch the right adcom and make them smile, but it also could demonstrate a lack of seriousness in a process where weeding out unserious applicants is a big part of the point. I just don't feel the small chance of a positive response is worth the risk of a negative one, you know?

Two egregious typos in my post before. Ugh. THEIR and BEAR in mind.

Boom! A personal example of getting into a great, great PhD program with a masters in ed.

I mean, it's going to depend on the individual department, of course. But it's not unusual for people who have MAs from disciplines outside of English to get into English PhD programs, provided that your MA coursework has classes that make at least some sense for lit, your writing sample shows that you can write about it, and your SOP reflects someone who has the requisite knowledge and applicable interests. As far as certification goes, it really depends a great deal on the particular state. My advice would be to look at the teaching certification and credentials necessary in those three states and see what they're requirements are. As far as I know, there's no programs that you can go to that would result in your having a certification that you could take to any state. That's why ed programs tend to be so locally focused. Some states will let you immediately take the Praxis, I think, while others will require another step to state-specific certification. Bare in mind too that few states require the completion of a masters before you start, but many require that you demonstrate progress in one over time, or that you have one before you are eligible for certain types of promotion, tenure, and pay rates.

It really depends on the state and their particular path to certification, whether they use the Praxis, etc. I know that there are many English departments (such as mine) that offer an English education program that sets you up for certification but are not certification-granting themselves. (Here's the website for Purdue's just to get the flavor of what I'm talking about.) Bear in mind that most states (and maybe all?) allow people with content-area MAs and PhDs to get certified, not just with education degrees, and sometimes these degrees are favored on the job market. Finally, if you were to get an MA in Education with a focus in, say, secondary English, there are many PhD programs that would consider your application. Hope this helps.

I definitely get the urge not to live too close to campus, especially because the immediate area around our campus are indeed very undergrad-y. At the same time, I've found that proximity to campus really is a great boon, all-in-all. That's true both for the obvious reasons and also because I've found that my mental state and feelings of community are intimately tied towards being on campus a lot. The more often I'm on campus doing anything, even if it's something I could be doing at home, the happier I tend to be. Grad school can be lonely and alienating in the best of times. Just something to think about. That said, I'm taking advantage of a particular artificial boundary here. I live in Lafayette, over the bridge from West Lafayette. And for whatever reasons (classism, for one), the undergrads just do not come across the bridge, except maybe to go to one bar. And since I'm still thirty minutes walk from campus over the pedestrian bridge, and ten minutes on the bus, I really do get the best of both worlds. So I'm pretty spoiled. I walk 90% of the time, just because it keeps me active and gives me a period when I can think to myself.

Hey, here's a wild idea: Swagato does Swagato, Aspireperspireinspire does Aspireperspireinspire, everybody's happy. Different adults have different priorities and thank goodness for that. I would never want to do another MA, but I know people who have done it and enjoyed it. Different strokes.

Typically, only as much as is directly relatable to your current research interests. "As an undergraduate I discovered the works of X which interfaces with my interests in Y because...."