ComeBackZinc

Ahhhh, Shoot. Sorry.

Congrats!

Indeed, there are exceptions. Many. It's just important to point out that they are exceptions.

Yeah I guess I should clarify what I mean: typically an MA is about two years and PhD coursework is also about two years. If you go in with just a BA, you'd be talking about four years of classes. If you get your MA first, you'd obviously knock off those two years. So you'll get that advantage. What isn't typically the case, from my understanding, is that you can use your MA coursework to substantially replace the PhD coursework-- you might get some requirements and some credits out of the way, and reduce your coursework by a semester or even a full year, but you shouldn't expect two years of MA coursework to replace two years of PhD coursework. Although now I'm getting even myself confused. And, as with all things, it varies a lot, I'm sure.

Yeah speaking personally I benefited not just from having the knowledge and skills I learned in my MA program, but from knowing much more about the culture of my field and what it meant to be a professional student.

Very rarely. You'll almost always have to complete the typical 2-3 years of coursework and departmental requirements at the PhD level even if you have substantially similar classes at the MA level. If you're getting your PhD at the same program as your MA, you'll typically be able to use courses you took at the MA level to fulfill requirements and secondary areas, but not to satisfy the necessary overall credit load.

Grades and classes aren't a sexy part of this process, and there's obviously tons of people with perfect or close-to-perfect grades who are applying to school. And as usual in this process, there are people that get into great programs without stellar grades. But really, grades are the foundation that allow you to wow them with your letters, your SOP, and your writing sample. They indicate to adcomms that you have the ability to produce high-quality work in a post-secondary setting, and that you're dedicated enough to survive the long haul.

Grades and the classes you got them in, for sure. Not a sexy part of the application process and not something people like to talk about, but a huge part of a good application.

I would second you on that sense. I know for a fact that a bunch of DGSs monitor this site.

There's just so much variability. It just depends on so many different things.

Since fit is always discussed most often when people talk about SOPs and writing samples, I figured I'd copy and paste this from an email received by another poster by the DGS: I think this is a useful way to think about fit-- it's not a static quality. It can evolve from year to year based on the internal movements of faculty within a department, and is dependent on the particular advising load for particular faculty members. As usual, the process serves the needs of the departments first. Just food for thought. (And more reason that you shouldn't beat yourself up about any given rejection-- there's just so much you can't control.)

And I think proflorax's advice is especially important because being an academic means going through rejection again and again and again, even if you have a stellar career-- that's just the nature of academic publishing and peer review. So you've got to develop that thick skin as soon as you can, and then you can get busy with building your career. It's a healthy part of the life, but that doesn't mean it comes easy. (Well, it doesn't for me anyway.)

Yeah, I would definitely encourage you to search around for salary data from public schools as well, which should give you a good idea of where people are starting at different schools. As you suspect, there's tons of variability. At the kind of open enrollment and lesser name public teaching universities that are the source of most comp hires, the range for a first year TT prof seems to be in the $45k-$50k range. Bumps are usually tied to years of service and tenure promotion, and are often set by the department or settled by negotiations between the administration and the faculty union if there is one.

If you're interested in submitting a poster to Cs next year, I highly recommend you also consider applying to the Research Network Forum. Fantastic way to interact with other r/c people, get some feedback on your project, and get a CV line. http://researchnetworkforum.org/

Not at all!

I'm glad that Professor Schneider gave you that information. It's almost worth posting elsewhere-- it demonstrates more of what people are talking about when they talk about fit and departmental need. It also goes to show how much chance there really is in this process; there are so many things that are out of your control. So I'm not sure if I'm the best person to assess such things, driftlake, but I'll try. Part of the reason that we have less of a specific character is that we're the oldest PhD program in rhet/comp (depending, a bit-- Carnegie Mellon could also make that claim) and one of the largest. A lot of programs focus in more specific areas because they have a smaller faculty and smaller number of grad students, so they try to define their areas more narrowly. That isn't better or worse; it's just different. That said, I'm surprised that you don't think we have a strong digital focus-- Pat Sullivan came initially from computer science, Sam Blackmon does a lot of games and interface research and minority rhetorics, Nate Johnson does informatics and databases. But yeah-- we have a broad set of interests so people look at many different things. Rick Johnson-Sheehan does both classical rhetoric and science communication, Michael Salvo does digital rhet and professional/technical writing, Pat does feminism, the modern period, and research methodology, Jenny Bay does a lot of theory and feminism, Thomas Rickert is a big theory and philosophy guy, etc. We do graduate a ton of WPAs who go on to work in that capacity; it's something of our bread and butter. Sadly, Linda Bergmann passed away this winter, but we're conducting a hire right now to fill her position in the Writing Lab, OWL, and in WPA theory. Many of our graduates go into technical communication and business writing. Actually, empirical might be traditionally an area we haven't done quite as much with, but that's changed a lot, and with Pat having written Opening Spaces, we have a good background there. I'm in quantitative research and computerized textual processing myself, which is rare both here and in the field generally. As far as the Midwest phenomenon goes, I think that is more of a rhet/comp phenomenon than a Purdue specific thing. This is slowly changing, but the field is still dominantly found in the Midwest, with some exceptions. Part of the reason that we're focused more in the Midwest is because we put a lot of people in separate rhet/comp programs. At many schools, people are joining English departments to be the sole compositionist in the department. Finally, recognize that while there are lots of jobs in the East because of the huge number of colleges in the east, in terms of percentages, there's still far fewer rhet/comp jobs per college in the Northeast than there are in the Midwest. Many of the colleges back east are private schools with much more traditional, literature-focused English departments, and by and large they don't hire compositionists. Hope this makes sense.

Sam is a close friend of mine. She's a great mentor and one of the friendliest professors I've ever worked with. She's actually teaching Games and Rhetoric right now. Don't worry-- she'll definitely teach more such classes. Plus there's always events, such as Extra Life, a gaming marathon we do each year to raise money for a children's hospital. As for the OWL-- we are holding a search for advanced associate or full now. We'll likely know candidates in the next several months. Obviously, we were sadly unable to do the usual hiring process to replace Linda. We expect it will be a very competitive hire.

So I'm not sure about this but our courses are going to be added to the online system on March 17th, so maybe then?

In case anyone is interested, I have copy and pasted the Fall 2014 English graduate classes below, with the exception of the teaching practicums, which I have removed. These were just released internally today. If you need anything decoded please let me know. 2/24/2014 ENGLISH DEPARTMENT-- GRADUATE COURSES -- FALL 2014 50600-001-68603 Intro English & General Linguistics TR 04:30 PM-05:45 PM V Raskin 51000-001-67789 Hist Of Engl Language TR 10:30 AM-11:45 AM MK Niepokuj 51100-001-67790 Semantics T 06:30 PM-09:20 PM F Raskin 51200-001-38339 English Syntax Syntacic Theory RB Wilber 51300-001-65335 English Phonology TR 09:00 AM-10:15 AM 51500-001-54571 Adv Professional Writing TR 01:30 PM-02:45 PM MJ Salvo 51600-001-19709 Engl Second Language:Theory Foundations MWF 10:30 AM-11:20 AM 53100-001-68452 Rise Of The Novel W 06:30 PM-09:20 PM M Powell 54400-001-68450 Milton MWF 12:30 PM-01:20 PM AA Duran 55300-001-68454 Colonial & Early American Lit T 04:30 PM-07:20 PM CJ Lukasik 56000-001-68424 Modern American Poetry MWF 10:30 AM-11:20 AM DC Morris 56500-001-61331 Sociolinguistics TTH 10:30 AM-11:45 AM BA Brown 58000-001-68462 Theories Modernism & Postmodernism MWF 02:30 PM-03:20 PM A Plotnitsky 58600-001-61561 Theory Of Film W 03:30 PM-05:20 PM L Duerfahrd 58600-LA1-61562 Theory Of Film M 06:30 PM-09:20 PM L Duerfahrd 58900-001-19717 Directed Writing Arrange Hours 59000-001-19723 Directed Reading Arrange Hours 59100-001-46326 Introduction to Composition Theory TR 12:00 PM-01:15 PM S Blackmon 59600-003-52497 Inquiry In Second Language Studies M 06:30 PM-09:20 PM DS Atkinson 59600-006-68227 Rhetoric, Technology, & Game History T 04:30 PM-07:20 PM NR Johnson 59600-007-68463 Ecocriticism T 04:30 PM-07:20 PM RP Marzec 59900-001-68602 Academic Language And Content Online Arrange Hours P Morita-Mullaney 60600-001-19749 Sem In Poetry Writing W 11:30 AM-02:20 PM DS Platt 60900-001-19751 Sem In Fiction Writing M 11:30 AM-02:20 PM 61300-001-68464 Middle English Language M 04:30 PM-07:20 PM RA Malo 61500-001-67791 A Reading Of Beowulf MWF 10:30 AM-11:20 AM SF Hughes 61900-001-67801 Qualitative Research W 06:30 PM-09:20 PM AS Atkinson 62400-001-52237 Composition Studies: Rhetoric of the Modern Period F 11:30 AM-02:20 PM PA Sullivan 62700-002-67802 Experimental Syntax MWF 01:30 PM-02:20 PM EJ Francis 62900-002-67785 Pedagogy & World Englishes TR 03:00 PM-04:15 PM MS Berns 62900-003-67805 Classroom Assessment MWF 01:30 PM-02:20 PM AJ Ginther 62900-004-67806 Digital Tech In The Classroom MWF 02:30 PM-03:20 PM 64200-001-68448 Shakespeare & The Queen's Men TR 12:00 PM-01:15 PM PW White 64700-001-68466 Seminar in the Romantic Movement M 04:30 PM-07:20 PM DF Felluga 65700-001-68467 Transatlantic Children's Lit R 04:30 PM-07:20 PM DA Pacheco 67300-001-68468 Cultural Studies in South & SouthEast Asia W 04:30 PM-07:20 PM A Sagar 67800-002-68470 New Crisis Of Black Intellect TR 03:00 PM-04:15 PM JR Saunders 68000-004-67809 Gender Rhetoric & Body M 11:30 AM-02:20 PM JL Bay 68000-005-67812 Medical & Environmental Wrting TR 10:30 AM-11:45 AM RD Johnson-Sheehan 68000-006-67813 Professional Writing Theory W 11:30 AM-02:20 PM PA Sullivan 68100-001-66722 Hutton Lecture Series in Rhetoric & Composition R 03:00 PM-05:50 PM S Blackmon 69000-001-64979 Second Language Internship/ESL Arrange Hours 69600-007-68102 Reading The Midwest R 04:30 PM-07:20 PM CP Knoeller 69600-008-68893 The Bakhtin Seminar W 04:30 PM-07:20 PM H Mancing 69800-001- Rsrch MA/MFA Thesis Arrange Hours 69900-001- Research PhD Thesis Arrange Hours

In seven or eight months, you'll be at a program you love, and it will all be worth it.

No, that makes perfect sense-- giving yourself more of a buffer/wiggle room.

I'm curious-- why would you submit your apps earlier?

The Yale 10,000 number must be for the entire university-- in 2011, they had 383 applicants. http://www.yale.edu/graduateschool/academics/profiles/englishlanguagelit.pdf

ps we have had lovely visits with potential grads at Cs who ended up deciding to go elsewhere, so no pressure.

Looking forward to it! I can introduce you around. Plus if you want to meet anybody from the larger network-- Kathleen Yancey, Paul Matsuda, David Blakeslee, Shirley Rose, etc etc-- let me know.