desaparecido

I've never heard this before, and this also hasn't been my experience by any means. I got my MA from a program that also offers a PhD, and the majority of the professors I had were very much involved and interested in working with MA students, particularly those of us who were working on theses and interested in moving onto PhD programs, whether in the same program or not (I can't think of one that wasn't, in fact).

I'm very glad I went to this particular program for my MA, as I think getting to work with the professors I worked with was a valuable experience that really helped me along in many ways. At the same time, I didn't want to stay there for my PhD, and the professors I worked with were totally understanding and were still very much willing to work with me, despite the fact that I wouldn't be around after the second year. While the school I got my MA from isn't a top 20, it is a respected program with some top-notch professors. I got into several of my top-choice PhD programs (many of which are more well thought of than the program I got an MA from), so I think to advise people to avoid getting an MA from a program that offers a PhD is misguided at the very least.

I've never heard this before, and this also hasn't been my experience by any means. I got my MA from a program that also offers a PhD, and the majority of the professors I had were very much involved and interested in working with MA students, particularly those of us who were working on theses and interested in moving onto PhD programs, whether in the same program or not (I can't think of one that wasn't, in fact).

I'm very glad I went to this particular program for my MA, as I think getting to work with the professors I worked with was a valuable experience that really helped me along in many ways. At the same time, I didn't want to stay there for my PhD, and the professors I worked with were totally understanding and were still very much willing to work with me, despite the fact that I wouldn't be around after the second year. While the school I got my MA from isn't a top 20, it is a respected program with some top-notch professors. I got into several of my top-choice PhD programs (many of which are more well thought of than the program I got an MA from), so I think to advise people to avoid getting an MA from a program that offers a PhD is misguided at the very least.

I've never heard this before, and this also hasn't been my experience by any means. I got my MA from a program that also offers a PhD, and the majority of the professors I had were very much involved and interested in working with MA students, particularly those of us who were working on theses and interested in moving onto PhD programs, whether in the same program or not (I can't think of one that wasn't, in fact).

I'm very glad I went to this particular program for my MA, as I think getting to work with the professors I worked with was a valuable experience that really helped me along in many ways. At the same time, I didn't want to stay there for my PhD, and the professors I worked with were totally understanding and were still very much willing to work with me, despite the fact that I wouldn't be around after the second year. While the school I got my MA from isn't a top 20, it is a respected program with some top-notch professors. I got into several of my top-choice PhD programs (many of which are more well thought of than the program I got an MA from), so I think to advise people to avoid getting an MA from a program that offers a PhD is misguided at the very least.

Protocol aside (I think it's clearly do-able to switch your decision, though I'd personally be wary of burning a bridge with a great school like BC), I completely side with your advisor regarding the one-year MA. I'll probably get jumped on for saying this, but paying for your MA really isn't the worst idea in the world. It's only two years, and I think it's the best possible investment you can make in this case. As has been discussed elsewhere on this forum, doing a one-year MA will likely be a two-year commitment anyway, as I can't see you getting really strong letters of recommendation or a much stronger and/or refined writing sample or SOP while trudging through your first 2-3 months of graduate-level coursework (seeing as your applications will likely be done sometime in November, before any seminar papers are done and before your MA professors will be able to effectively evaluate any of your work). And as much as folks say one's interests will shift during the PhD program, I think there's a more drastic shift during the BA-MA years, seeing as your MA thesis will likely be your first real in-depth, expanded writing project (unless your undergrad institution had serious writing requirements, though; I think my UG thesis was ~28 pages vs. my 80-page MA thesis, which had an unimaginably strong impact on my research focus). I mean, the call is ultimately yours, but I think accepting BC's two-year program, even unfunded, is a much better decision, personal investment-wise, than Rochester's one-year program, even if you had both offers at the same time. Good luck!

Protocol aside (I think it's clearly do-able to switch your decision, though I'd personally be wary of burning a bridge with a great school like BC), I completely side with your advisor regarding the one-year MA. I'll probably get jumped on for saying this, but paying for your MA really isn't the worst idea in the world. It's only two years, and I think it's the best possible investment you can make in this case. As has been discussed elsewhere on this forum, doing a one-year MA will likely be a two-year commitment anyway, as I can't see you getting really strong letters of recommendation or a much stronger and/or refined writing sample or SOP while trudging through your first 2-3 months of graduate-level coursework (seeing as your applications will likely be done sometime in November, before any seminar papers are done and before your MA professors will be able to effectively evaluate any of your work). And as much as folks say one's interests will shift during the PhD program, I think there's a more drastic shift during the BA-MA years, seeing as your MA thesis will likely be your first real in-depth, expanded writing project (unless your undergrad institution had serious writing requirements, though; I think my UG thesis was ~28 pages vs. my 80-page MA thesis, which had an unimaginably strong impact on my research focus). I mean, the call is ultimately yours, but I think accepting BC's two-year program, even unfunded, is a much better decision, personal investment-wise, than Rochester's one-year program, even if you had both offers at the same time. Good luck!

Protocol aside (I think it's clearly do-able to switch your decision, though I'd personally be wary of burning a bridge with a great school like BC), I completely side with your advisor regarding the one-year MA. I'll probably get jumped on for saying this, but paying for your MA really isn't the worst idea in the world. It's only two years, and I think it's the best possible investment you can make in this case. As has been discussed elsewhere on this forum, doing a one-year MA will likely be a two-year commitment anyway, as I can't see you getting really strong letters of recommendation or a much stronger and/or refined writing sample or SOP while trudging through your first 2-3 months of graduate-level coursework (seeing as your applications will likely be done sometime in November, before any seminar papers are done and before your MA professors will be able to effectively evaluate any of your work). And as much as folks say one's interests will shift during the PhD program, I think there's a more drastic shift during the BA-MA years, seeing as your MA thesis will likely be your first real in-depth, expanded writing project (unless your undergrad institution had serious writing requirements, though; I think my UG thesis was ~28 pages vs. my 80-page MA thesis, which had an unimaginably strong impact on my research focus). I mean, the call is ultimately yours, but I think accepting BC's two-year program, even unfunded, is a much better decision, personal investment-wise, than Rochester's one-year program, even if you had both offers at the same time. Good luck!

Protocol aside (I think it's clearly do-able to switch your decision, though I'd personally be wary of burning a bridge with a great school like BC), I completely side with your advisor regarding the one-year MA. I'll probably get jumped on for saying this, but paying for your MA really isn't the worst idea in the world. It's only two years, and I think it's the best possible investment you can make in this case. As has been discussed elsewhere on this forum, doing a one-year MA will likely be a two-year commitment anyway, as I can't see you getting really strong letters of recommendation or a much stronger and/or refined writing sample or SOP while trudging through your first 2-3 months of graduate-level coursework (seeing as your applications will likely be done sometime in November, before any seminar papers are done and before your MA professors will be able to effectively evaluate any of your work). And as much as folks say one's interests will shift during the PhD program, I think there's a more drastic shift during the BA-MA years, seeing as your MA thesis will likely be your first real in-depth, expanded writing project (unless your undergrad institution had serious writing requirements, though; I think my UG thesis was ~28 pages vs. my 80-page MA thesis, which had an unimaginably strong impact on my research focus). I mean, the call is ultimately yours, but I think accepting BC's two-year program, even unfunded, is a much better decision, personal investment-wise, than Rochester's one-year program, even if you had both offers at the same time. Good luck!

I've never heard this before, and this also hasn't been my experience by any means. I got my MA from a program that also offers a PhD, and the majority of the professors I had were very much involved and interested in working with MA students, particularly those of us who were working on theses and interested in moving onto PhD programs, whether in the same program or not (I can't think of one that wasn't, in fact).

I'm very glad I went to this particular program for my MA, as I think getting to work with the professors I worked with was a valuable experience that really helped me along in many ways. At the same time, I didn't want to stay there for my PhD, and the professors I worked with were totally understanding and were still very much willing to work with me, despite the fact that I wouldn't be around after the second year. While the school I got my MA from isn't a top 20, it is a respected program with some top-notch professors. I got into several of my top-choice PhD programs (many of which are more well thought of than the program I got an MA from), so I think to advise people to avoid getting an MA from a program that offers a PhD is misguided at the very least.

To paraphrase Eliot, April is the best fucking month ever (at least I think that's how it goes, right?).

The Graduate Center, City University of New York, PhD in English.

Sub-field(s): African-American Literature, Queer Studies, 20th Century, and Literature and the Environment.

<----- Sunglasses to hide joyous tears, crazy excitement, and thrill of finally being finished with this process. See you all on the job search in 5-7 years!

Just accepted an offer from Stony Brook University! *faints* It's over, finally.

I GOT INTO UTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TIL it's hard to sign your (user)name mirror image!

NOT TRIP'S BOAT

I know! Worst part is, the prestigious university she attends rejected me. If only I, y'know, showed up to conferences unprepared to deliver a paper for my own panel, maybe I'd have gotten in.

Sorry, I'm a bit bitter. I'll stop.

My thoughts on your concern regarding the SOP and shifting interests: In my opinion, at least, what the adcom is looking for, even if you decide to change your focus, is someone that can write convincingly for 2-3 pages about a project they're very much interested in, at least at the time. Saying "I'm interested in writing about Little Dorrit and Bentham" is one thing (in the eyes of the adcom), but writing a really interesting 2.5 page proposal of a project that interjects in the current scholarship about LD and can interestingly explain how your project adds to the conversation in the field, and how such-and-such university's faculty and/or resources would benefit your work immensely - that's another thing completely, and I think that's what adcoms look for in terms of "fit."

The ability to write a really strong proposal like that, I think, is perhaps the most important thing in applying to a PhD program, at least in my experience. Strong GRE scores are cool, a good GPA certainly adds to the package, but the numbers mean relatively little if, in 2-3 pages, an applicant can't explain how his/her project benefits or adds to the conversation going on in his/her proposed field of interest. The best way to help with that sort of thing, in my experience, is applying to and attending as many conferences as you can. For those, you're writing a (generally) 250-500 word proposal of a paper - granted, a paper 20x shorter than your dissertation will be, but the exercise is the same. I got shut out last year, and in the year off I applied to and presented at 20something conferences (excessive? maybe. but I genuinely feel it helped me not only become a fairly solid proposal writing [necessary for publication possiblities, grants, etc. once we're in the profession] but also helped both refine and expand my interests), but also made my CV look much nicer than it did (my CV was pretty much empty the first time I applied... no conferences, no publications, nothing outside of the few courses I TA'd while doing my MA), and makes you look like an active member of the academic community (which, I think, counts, at least sometimes).

This, of course, is far from an exact science. I haven't gotten accepted to lots of schools I was hoping to get into, but I also got into a couple of programs I'm really, really excited about. At the time I applied this go-round, I had presented at I think 24 or 25 conferences in the last year (some of them I turned into road trips and hit 3-4 different conferences over the course of two weeks, presenting different papers at each one, which isn't a bad cognitive exercise!) and, at one conference I went to recently, met a third-year PhD student at Duke who was presenting at his very first conference - so apparently he was able to convince Duke that he had a project worth investing $100,000 into without the (what I see as great) benefit of conference presenting/proposal writing experience. That's just what I feel worked for me, and I genuinely don't think I'd have gotten in anywhere this go-round if I hadn't spent the several months prior to applying writing proposals constantly, sending them out, presenting my work (including, at times, my writing sample and things that I spoke about in my SOP, in various incarnations) and getting feedback from others in the field.

So yeah, even if you decide after writing your SOP that you want to shift focuses (as long as there's still someone at the school you're applying to that you can work with in terms of your new interests), I think the adcom is mostly concerned with an applicant's ability to write a strong enough proposal that can clearly articulate what intellectual conversation you're hoping to insert yourself into, and what your proposed project would add to the existing scholarship.

I hope some of that is at least somewhat helpful!

My thoughts on your concern regarding the SOP and shifting interests: In my opinion, at least, what the adcom is looking for, even if you decide to change your focus, is someone that can write convincingly for 2-3 pages about a project they're very much interested in, at least at the time. Saying "I'm interested in writing about Little Dorrit and Bentham" is one thing (in the eyes of the adcom), but writing a really interesting 2.5 page proposal of a project that interjects in the current scholarship about LD and can interestingly explain how your project adds to the conversation in the field, and how such-and-such university's faculty and/or resources would benefit your work immensely - that's another thing completely, and I think that's what adcoms look for in terms of "fit."

The ability to write a really strong proposal like that, I think, is perhaps the most important thing in applying to a PhD program, at least in my experience. Strong GRE scores are cool, a good GPA certainly adds to the package, but the numbers mean relatively little if, in 2-3 pages, an applicant can't explain how his/her project benefits or adds to the conversation going on in his/her proposed field of interest. The best way to help with that sort of thing, in my experience, is applying to and attending as many conferences as you can. For those, you're writing a (generally) 250-500 word proposal of a paper - granted, a paper 20x shorter than your dissertation will be, but the exercise is the same. I got shut out last year, and in the year off I applied to and presented at 20something conferences (excessive? maybe. but I genuinely feel it helped me not only become a fairly solid proposal writing [necessary for publication possiblities, grants, etc. once we're in the profession] but also helped both refine and expand my interests), but also made my CV look much nicer than it did (my CV was pretty much empty the first time I applied... no conferences, no publications, nothing outside of the few courses I TA'd while doing my MA), and makes you look like an active member of the academic community (which, I think, counts, at least sometimes).

This, of course, is far from an exact science. I haven't gotten accepted to lots of schools I was hoping to get into, but I also got into a couple of programs I'm really, really excited about. At the time I applied this go-round, I had presented at I think 24 or 25 conferences in the last year (some of them I turned into road trips and hit 3-4 different conferences over the course of two weeks, presenting different papers at each one, which isn't a bad cognitive exercise!) and, at one conference I went to recently, met a third-year PhD student at Duke who was presenting at his very first conference - so apparently he was able to convince Duke that he had a project worth investing $100,000 into without the (what I see as great) benefit of conference presenting/proposal writing experience. That's just what I feel worked for me, and I genuinely don't think I'd have gotten in anywhere this go-round if I hadn't spent the several months prior to applying writing proposals constantly, sending them out, presenting my work (including, at times, my writing sample and things that I spoke about in my SOP, in various incarnations) and getting feedback from others in the field.

So yeah, even if you decide after writing your SOP that you want to shift focuses (as long as there's still someone at the school you're applying to that you can work with in terms of your new interests), I think the adcom is mostly concerned with an applicant's ability to write a strong enough proposal that can clearly articulate what intellectual conversation you're hoping to insert yourself into, and what your proposed project would add to the existing scholarship.

I hope some of that is at least somewhat helpful!

My thoughts on your concern regarding the SOP and shifting interests: In my opinion, at least, what the adcom is looking for, even if you decide to change your focus, is someone that can write convincingly for 2-3 pages about a project they're very much interested in, at least at the time. Saying "I'm interested in writing about Little Dorrit and Bentham" is one thing (in the eyes of the adcom), but writing a really interesting 2.5 page proposal of a project that interjects in the current scholarship about LD and can interestingly explain how your project adds to the conversation in the field, and how such-and-such university's faculty and/or resources would benefit your work immensely - that's another thing completely, and I think that's what adcoms look for in terms of "fit."

The ability to write a really strong proposal like that, I think, is perhaps the most important thing in applying to a PhD program, at least in my experience. Strong GRE scores are cool, a good GPA certainly adds to the package, but the numbers mean relatively little if, in 2-3 pages, an applicant can't explain how his/her project benefits or adds to the conversation going on in his/her proposed field of interest. The best way to help with that sort of thing, in my experience, is applying to and attending as many conferences as you can. For those, you're writing a (generally) 250-500 word proposal of a paper - granted, a paper 20x shorter than your dissertation will be, but the exercise is the same. I got shut out last year, and in the year off I applied to and presented at 20something conferences (excessive? maybe. but I genuinely feel it helped me not only become a fairly solid proposal writing [necessary for publication possiblities, grants, etc. once we're in the profession] but also helped both refine and expand my interests), but also made my CV look much nicer than it did (my CV was pretty much empty the first time I applied... no conferences, no publications, nothing outside of the few courses I TA'd while doing my MA), and makes you look like an active member of the academic community (which, I think, counts, at least sometimes).

This, of course, is far from an exact science. I haven't gotten accepted to lots of schools I was hoping to get into, but I also got into a couple of programs I'm really, really excited about. At the time I applied this go-round, I had presented at I think 24 or 25 conferences in the last year (some of them I turned into road trips and hit 3-4 different conferences over the course of two weeks, presenting different papers at each one, which isn't a bad cognitive exercise!) and, at one conference I went to recently, met a third-year PhD student at Duke who was presenting at his very first conference - so apparently he was able to convince Duke that he had a project worth investing $100,000 into without the (what I see as great) benefit of conference presenting/proposal writing experience. That's just what I feel worked for me, and I genuinely don't think I'd have gotten in anywhere this go-round if I hadn't spent the several months prior to applying writing proposals constantly, sending them out, presenting my work (including, at times, my writing sample and things that I spoke about in my SOP, in various incarnations) and getting feedback from others in the field.

So yeah, even if you decide after writing your SOP that you want to shift focuses (as long as there's still someone at the school you're applying to that you can work with in terms of your new interests), I think the adcom is mostly concerned with an applicant's ability to write a strong enough proposal that can clearly articulate what intellectual conversation you're hoping to insert yourself into, and what your proposed project would add to the existing scholarship.

I hope some of that is at least somewhat helpful!