ComeBackZinc

I'm sorry, thestage, Swagato, but tone, idiom, and ethos matter. As I said earlier in this thread, much of what the OP says isn't obviously wrong but is obviously right. It's true: students sometimes don't respect faculty. It's true: students sometimes don't get along with their peers. If anyone expects that to not be the case, don't go to grad school. But when you start a troll thread, by acting like you're interested in giving genuine information, and then use it to grind an ax against individual people, by name, while you yourself remain anonymous-- that's disqualifying of being taken seriously. Could these allegations be true? Sure, although some of them are so idiosyncratic and vague that I don't really consider them complaints at all. As for the more serious allegations... how seriously am I intended to take anonymous complaints on the Internet? If the OP had written this post in a way that indicated a degree of professionalism and a desire to genuinely engage with particular problems in her or his program, I would listen, but not trust. When s/he works overtime to slander people without evidence, I neither listen nor trust. Every program, always, has a few students who believe themselves to be misunderstood geniuses. Every once in awhile, they're right. But most of them time, they aren't.

Not to open a can of worms, but I don't think that any rankings accurately reflect those factors. At all. If you're just using "ranking" as a placeholder for all of those things, than yeah, those are important. But I would probably just discuss them directly rather than through reference to rankings.

I'm curious, Two Espressos-- if they offered you an admission, would you definitely turn it down? I'm so out of touch with the lit world.

... you seriously asked people why they liked you? Wasn't that awkward?

Maybe a more productive question: what do you think ranking signals about your scholarship and your career? What motivates your interest in these rankings?

I'm still amused that this person was apparently unaware that, when you're in a graduate program, you don't always get along with all of your peers or all of your professors. Who knew!

I just want to say that, as far as languages slowing you down in a PhD program, I know that feel.

Perceptions of a program's prestige certainly matter on the job market, but the perceptions that matter will be those of hiring committees, which will certainly be far more nuanced and informed than any rankings. And English profs are exactly the kind of people to resist the rankings of an organization like US News and World Report. However, it's also true that many, many professors are not at all up-to-date about perceived prestige of other programs, or even who is still on which faculty. I guarantee that the people reading this board are more informed about such things than many sitting faculty. And perversely, given the realities of seniority, it's often the people who are most out of touch who have the most pull on search committees. So take this Yale discussion. while people are making compelling points about their relative prestige, the Ivy name does matter. It just does. I don't think it should, but it does. That's less likely to be true of English faculty than of the world writ large. In the greater world, saying you've got a Yale (or Harvard or whatever) PhD just holds more sway with the average person than a school that we might all consider better. And while I don't doubt that sitting profs in departments have a better handle on things than Joe Schmoe, it's naive to think that academics are immune to Ivy envy or getting starry eyed about the prestige of those schools. Which, I think, is reflected in the fact that a lot of people who are in programs they perceive to be better than a Harvard or a Yale would have thought very hard about going to one of those schools if they got in. People turn down Yale admits. They don't do so lightly. Does any of that make sense? No. But then, neither do any of these external rankings of prestige. Like I told you guys: you're getting trolled.

Peter Elbow definitely strikes me as the kind of guy who would stick close to home as emeritus and stay involved in the program.

Y'all are being trolled by US News.

whoops I totally didn't mean to -1 your comment, Stately. Still getting used to this touchscreen laptop....

Yeah, I chose some inexpensive but personally-tailored gifts for my recommenders. It was actually fun to choose for them.

I don't think that there is any right or wrong to what you're asking here; I think a lot of it has to do with your personal relationships with them. For me, personally, I wanted to give them all the details. I felt I owed it to them. That was true when, many moons ago, I applied to a dozen schools and was rejected by all of them. I didn't have a clue what I was doing back then. I told my three recommenders. It was one of the hardest things to do. But I felt I owed it to them. Anyway: you've got good news! That's all they'll care about. Also, it sounds like you're already well on your way to forgetting that your acceptance came after being on the waitlist. Good. Because nobody will care. It's just so irrelevant. Your peers and the faculty will meet you and evaluate you on your merits. They'll chat with you about your interests, see how you conduct yourself in a seminar, observe your teaching, read your writing.... If anybody even knows you were on the waitlist at first, they won't remember a month into your program. You've got nothing to feel awkward about.

I know that at some schools, they have a waitlist that they never announce; they just wait until they have people turn down offers to extend more. I think the theory is that it will help avoid making people who get in off the waitlist feel stigmatized. I personally wasn't waitlisted, but I did hear quite late in the day. And while I can't speak for any other programs, at both my MA department and my PhD program, nobody knew or cared in the slightest who got in off a waitlist or in what order or whatever. It's just totally irrelevant. You meet the actual people and that sort of thinking just seems pointless.

Perhaps this is indicative of a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, but frankly I'm amazed that any public university departments can offer travel funds. I wouldn't assume the worst based on a lack of travel funds, which are always a luxury (I'm sorry to say). What is the specific language of your funding offer? Mine specifically guaranteed five years of funding. Does it say you have to reapply every year or something similar?

Email, though, don't call.

Could you perhaps provide the prompt so that we can have a bit more to go on? I've put together a fellowship application in the past. Most of my efforts were directed towards the particular orientation of the fellowship. More info would be helpful.

I don't necessarily disagree with what Phil Sparrow said. But I want to stress that "good enough" or "excellent" shouldn't suggest that there is a continuum of quality to excellence. There isn't! What is an excellent paper for one reader in one department in one context will be a merely adequate writing sample in a different context. I totally agree that fit is a really important criterion. But when people discuss fit, they tend to write about it as if it is a property that can be accurately assessed from outside of the whims of a particular situation at a particular time. I don't think that's true. I think that you can do your level best to make your applications fit particular departments. But I don't think that you can ever make your application fit. Nor can you know how closely you match what they are looking for when you're engaged in the process. And that's the most essential thing to say in this whole process: you are not in control of your own success. You can do a lot of things to help yourself; you can be more strategic or less; you can maximize or minimize your chances within a particular situation. But you don't control whether or not you get in. You just don't. And part of the problem with a board like this is that people who have gotten into competitive programs are both those who will be taken most seriously, having already "won," and those who have the most incentive to act as if entry into these programs is a straightforward assessment of your value as a student-- and that "value" is even a meaningful concept in this context. The truth is, much or most of this process will always be unknowable to applicants, and success will always be (to one degree or another) out of their hands. That's not comforting, but it's true.

I think a fair number of people leave town for the summer and take jobs wherever they happen to live. Some people are able to find miscellaneous funding on campus; with a campus this size, there's always jobs to be done. That's more during the semester, but some in the summer as well. (There was a GA available, cataloging and archiving Neil Armstrong's papers... I was tempted.) I think the reading tutoring I talked about is through the Institute of Reading Development. The biggest thing with housing, to my mind, is being able to take a little time and find just what you want. There are some real gems, but you have to sort through a lot of worse places to find them. With 40,000 students and a generally itinerant population, there's lots of incentive for landlords to buy old properties and rent them out without really keeping them up. However, there's also a lot of cool old buildings with a lot of character that you can rent out for cheap. Generally speaking, grad students tend to live over the bridge in Lafayette, undergrads in West Lafayette right near campus. There are exceptions, of course, and I'm not really sure about other departments, but that's how it generally goes. There are two major roadways between the cities, and a lovely pedestrian bridge between them, so it's easy to get between the two towns. People mostly want to avoid living too close to campus if only because it's so undergrad-y; Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night are what you'd expect from all of the undergrad houseshares and the insane number of fraternities. Same thing with the bars: Lafayette's bars are more grownup, West Lafayette's tend toward the undergrad meatmarket type. That's not to say that I'd never live in West Lafayette. There are some great ethnic restaurants and access that close to campus is obviously a plus. One thing you'll find about Lafayette: neighborhoods are very inconsistent. You'll be in a part of town that seems really junky and not the type of place you might want to live, and then you'll go another block and it'll be lovely. You really have to explore and get a sense of what's out there. For context, my own apartment (which I love) is a huge two bedroom, the top floor of a big house, which has a dishwasher, on-floor washer and dryer, a porch, backyard, and off-street parking, two blocks from downtown Lafayette and 30 minutes walk to campus. I pay $750 a month. It's important to say, though, that a lot of people consider Lafayette a drag. It's definitely in the minus column. I do think that some people don't have the context to know what a really small town is like, and it could be a lot worse. I like the bars and restaurants, and there's the farmers market, an independent bookstore, some galleries and shops, and a seemingly unsustainable number of yoga studios. But it's quiet, and small, and you won't meet a lot of people out and about. I've said this before on this board, but I have definitely found Lafayette to be a bigger problem since I became single. Indianapolis is an hour away and Chicago two, and I know some people who head out of town every other weekend or so. I find Lafayette totally doable, but many people report it as a constant frustration. I have actually been living car-free since October. The bus system is very serviceable, particularly for Purdue students, as the school heavily subsidizes the system and uses it as our campus transportation system. (Which is a necessity; if I walked from my office to the tennis courts, it would easily take me over an hour.) It's a bit of a pain to get to the supermarket, and you can expect buses to run 5-10 minutes late, but for a town of this size, it's an impressive system. On your visit, I would take care to check out both West Lafayette and Lafayette in general. Also, try to get a sense of how much you like the campus. I will say: the campus has its own charms, and it's grown on me. But it will never be mistaken for beautiful. If you go to visit that den of sin and avarice, Indiana University's campus in Bloomington, you'll see a gorgeous campus. Purdue's is... functional. The campus mirrors Purdue as a whole: it's a huge, efficient, somewhat impersonal machine for research and education. The departments are modular and distinct, without a lot of crossover for grad students or faculty. Just about everything is brick. The size and monotony can feel alienating. Some of the buildings, such as the student union, are lovely, but almost nowhere is cozy. Make sure you check out the library, which is one of my biggest complaints. Not in terms of resources; the library resources, as with the school's resources in general, are incredible. But they're done the way Purdue does everything: separated and efficient. I think we now have 14 libraries, down from a one-time high of (I think) 24. Each is devoted to separate specialties, with engineering of course having the most. They work fine. But they aren't the kind of places you want to find a cozy corner in and curl up, and there's no major library hub on campus. It can be a bit of a drag. That said... I absolutely love it here. Love it. I have found the faculty and staff to be incredibly engaged and approachable, from the grad director to the professors in my own department to the director of the writing lab to the administrative assistants in the office. The range of classes available, for someone of my interests, is incredible. We have a bunch of great resources like an indigenous and endangered languages lab, a second language acquisition lab, access to Purdue's incredible technological resources, lots of cool events.... I saw the Joffrey Ballet perform the Rite of Spring on campus a couple weekends ago, and if you're into college sports, the Big 10 is pretty crazy (even though our teams aren't good). Moreover, I just find it inspiring to be around so much research and crazy stuff going on. There's a functioning nuclear reactor in the basement of the Electrical Engineering building; awhile back, I was sitting in the union reading to see some undergrads drive a solar car around the corner. Academic stuff, college stuff, I love it. Definitely ask about the numbers when you're here-- ask about job placement rate, time to graduate, percentage of people who complete prelims who end up finishing their dissertation, etc. Chat with TCS people, who will know a lot more than I do about what that program is really like. And more than anything, try to get a sense of the culture and whether you feel like you'd fit in. Oh, and don't walk under the bell tower.

Hi ArcticKind, let's see! I have several close friends in both literature and TCS. While people are aware of the divisions between programs, I think you'll find that, all in all, people get along quite well. (People from just about every program are currently represented in Echo Base, a houseshare that a bunch of people got together for.) TCS students seem to enjoy it, although I haven't taken any of those classes. That's probably the program with the most hybridity, so you'll have plenty of opportunity to try different things out. Many rhet/comp students take TCS courses, and several of our faculty members such as Thomas Rickert and Samantha Blackmon regularly teach classes in those subjects. It's not unusual for TCS people to take a rhet/comp secondary. All PhD students at Purdue are eligible for 5 years of funding, as I understand it. Some small number get fellowships for the first two years. I have taught ENGL 106, Introductory Composition at Purdue, for my first two years here, and I've quite enjoyed it. Here, freshman composition is a 4 credit class, so if you can teach a 1/1 load. However, after your first year, you will have the opportunity to apply for different positions if you'd like. Some options include 108, which is a service learning class which involves working with a community partner; 106i, which is a special section of freshman comp especially for non-native speakers of English (a necessity at a school with 9,000 international students); business writing; technical and professional writing; or working in our renowned writing lab. There are many other options as well. I'll personally be working for Purdue's Oral English Proficiency Program in the fall. Understand, however, that most of these are quarter time, so you'll have to double up to get your usual funding. I personally have found it doable to live on $13k in Lafayette, if you're frugal. If you feel like you really need more money, there are a few options. One thing you can do is teach a learning community, special sections that involve out-of-class social events and working with teachers of different classes. It's not a lot more money, but you do get an additional stipend. Also, after your first year, you can sometimes earn three quarters time, for example by tutoring for the writing lab and teaching a 106, which many people find quite doable. You will also receive a small bump in pay in your second and third years. Don't get me wrong: it's humanities grad school, and it's tough. (Particularly galling since the engineering students can make in the $30k range or higher.) But it's doable, in part because rent is so cheap out here. The summers are definitely one of the major downsides; there just isn't a lot of summer funding available. The summer teaching jobs are quite competitive. Some people have had luck teaching at Ivy Tech, the local community college. There is talk of starting a summer Intensive English Program, which would provide more opportunities for summer work, but right now, that's one of the definite downsides. There have also been several people who have gotten work through a summer reading tutoring program that operates out of Indianapolis. Hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions.

Oh, hey, listen: I would never say you can't get in without those connections, and I would never say that a lack of connections can't be overcome. I know for a fact that that isn't true. I'm saying that it matters some of the time, and that because of the small numbers we're talking about here, small differences have major impacts. I have read on this board, all the time, "It's all about fit." No, it isn't. Fit is exceptionally important. But to say that it is all fit is neither true nor productive. There's a weird sense in which people want to have it both ways on this board: they want to talk about the process as simultaneously difficult to understand and alchemical and mysterious, and simultaneously deny all the many ways in which success is out of the hands of the candidates. My natural disposition is to be supportive, positive, and encouraging. But my discretion tells me that pessimism can be more valuable. To take the opinions on this board at face value, everyone will get into every school, everyone will get a job, everything will turn out great for everybody.... That's not realistic, and it's kind of cruel, in the long run. I want to be kind and supportive, but I also know that positivity can be distorting. I just hope that everyone runs everything read here through a filter of necessary, defensive realism. That's all.

I don't disagree with anything that's been said here. I will note that the notion that connections aren't important will always be voiced more strongly here than the alternative, because it's what people want to hear. There is not a single competitive human process where connections don't matter at all. And, again: we're talking about cohorts, perhaps, of 6 or 7 people. If one or two of them take advantage of even subtle networking, that has a big impact on the composition of the cohort and the chances of those trying to get in. It's not corruption, and it's not an explicit quid pro quo. Nobody says, "this student is garbage, but let him into the program because you owe me." What people do say, all the time, is "I know this student is brilliant and hardworking and you two will work really well together." That matters. It just does. I know it's uncomfortable to think about, but it does. You can only control the things you can control. But I hear on this board so often that your undergrad institution doesn't matter and that your recommenders don't matter. And that's just not true. It just isn't. That's my spiel.

I just want to point out again: if the intention is to get into a PhD program and to eventually get a tenure track job, understand that a significant majority of the people who attempt that fail. The job market is that bad. Obviously, I'm taking this bet myself, and obviously, I could be one of the people who fails. But if you end up taking $50,000 in loans over two-three years in an MA, which is wholly possible, and you go out onto a job market that is as bad as the English job market is... you're taking a huge risk. I don't mean to dwell on this. But it's important to note: the bias here is always going to be towards encouragement and support. That's a good thing! But the message not to go into debt, because of the certainty that many people who post here will end up on the outside looking in, has to be voiced, strongly.

Both.