Bleep_Bloop

https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4255-conflict-in-spanish-and-portuguese-department This gives you an idea, without going into details. There have been years in which they have been unable to recruit a single graduate student. It really isn't much better today, though their enrollment is up. They have not hired any junior faculty to breathe new life into the department. There is not a single assistant professor in the department. The only new addition since the scandal broke (5 years ago!) has been a senior medievalist, which is hardly pushing the department in new directions. It's just very stagnant and intellectually conservative, and that's not even getting into the factions and conflicts.

To state the obvious (someone has to), these are dark, dark days for academia. No one is getting jobs, absolutely no one. The job market has completely collapsed (there are currently 8 listings for Spanish on the MLA jobs board, across all fields in the country). If you want to be a professor, I'm sorry. Don't do a PhD for this reason. If you've lost your job, have nothing better going on, and want five years of funding then by all means do it but for the love of god cultivate a parallel resume and network throughout grad school that will help you find employment in some other profession once you finish.

This isn't my area, so I can't say. The best advice to find a good fit is to browse faculty profiles online and read their research to see if it excites you. Besides some obvious markers like period, region, or genre keep in mind whether you would like to focus more on literature / cultural / visual studies because the field has splintered a great deal in this regard.

This depends entirely on your research interests. For a Latin Americanist, Princeton, Columbia, or Penn. I would say that the exception to this is Yale, which it would be best to avoid regardless of specialization. I won't go into detail, but Google it if you're curious. There have been years in which they haven't been able to recruit a single student.

Not different for professors vs. grad students, just follow their lead. If I'm unsure because I'm the one starting the conversation, I default to Spanish or Portuguese depending on their specialization.

Assuming you have already been accepted at both, the funded PhD. This has little to do with prestige, you're comparing five years of funding to one. Furthermore, in academia, a masters doesn't count for much because it isn't a terminal degree. A Mst from Oxford may help prepare you for a PhD, but if you already have an offer from an ivy then I recommend you take it. An option you might consider is asking the PhD program to defer your acceptance for a year so you can take advantage of the Mst offer. I have seen this done.

I actually commute from Philly to Princeton, so just a little shorter than what you'll be doing. It takes a lot of patience with SEPTA and NJ Transit, they don't coordinate very well and there are a LOT of delays because of track work along the Northeast Corridor. At the fastest it takes me 2 hours one-way, but I always budget 3 just in case. Most days it winds up being 2.5 with delays or missed connections when transferring in Trenton. I'm sorry to say that I really don't think it would be feasible to get from Philly to Rutgers in 1.5 hours via SEPTA/NJT. I still put up with it because I'm much more productive commuting by train than I am by bus or carpool, and I don't have a car. While it definitely takes a lot of time, at least I can get work done on the train. My recommendation is to invest in a good pair of noise-canceling headphones and a good portable battery / power bank. I should say that I wouldn't be able to do this commute more than three days a week, however. Most days I'm in Philly, working out of UPenn. I'm writing up my thesis at the moment, so I don't have to worry about being on campus for coursework or teaching. I typically travel once or twice a week for meetings, talks, lectures, or other departmental stuff. I try to collapse as many of these activities into my commuting days as possible, and my adviser has been really understanding about my schedule. During really packed weeks, or when I need to be on campus two days in a row, I crash on a friend's futon rather than commute back-to-back. I lived near campus for three years, so I was already "integrated" into the department when I began the commute. The only reason I left was because my partner got a job in Philly. It will definitely take more of an effort to have the same type of departmental life because you'll have to plan around trains and be very good managing your time, but there's no reason that you can't integrate to the same degree that you would if you lived nearby.

I want to second both of these points, as they've been true in my experience as well. At every institution I've attended there's been an unofficial rule that the town police would not enter campus unless called for by the campus security. So all drug and alcohol violations went through the university and the students were safe from any legal consequences, except in the most serious cases involving, say, drug dealing. It's pretty typical.

If I were in a one-bedroom, I wouldn't really care who lived in the building so long as it had a reputation for being quiet. I would not share an apartment with an undergrad if I could help it just because our lifestyles would be so different and we would have little in common. Though I would take a university owned and operated apartment with an undergrad over rooming with a rando from craigslist, hands down.

Not sure if you're aware of all the battery problems that iPhone users have been facing, but be forewarned. I just had the battery replaced in my iPhone 6 (it was discounted because a number of users were threatening Apple with a class-action lawsuit). I still love the phone, though, and with the new battery it works (almost) as good as new. But before I got it replaced I couldn't go more than 5-10 minutes on a charge. Maybe I could fire off a couple of texts or e-mails, but it wouldn't hold a charge long enough to order a lyft/uber. I had it plugged into a portable power bank non-stop, and when it was unplugged it was basically unusable. This was after 2 years of normal use. From what I read online this was pretty typical. I'm hoping to squeeze another year out of it with this new battery...fingers crossed. I don't know if these problems are also affecting the SE? But all my friends who have the 6, 6s and 7 have had similar issues. I've also read about battery problems with the iPhone X due to wireless charging. Though I doubt you're interested in the X if you want something small and cheap.

Yes, both grad students and faculty read, write and teach. My point is that the scope and intensity of these activities is so different that to equate them makes little sense. But by introducing this distinction a few posts back, you took this thread off track from graduate student life to faculty life. We don't even know if OP is necessarily pursuing a career as a professor (they ask about alt-ac options in the social sciences, suggesting they very well may not), so this whole debate is pointless and I'll leave it there.

I don't mean to suggest that anyone has to work that much. I can only share my experience and lifestyle. I can work that much and not burn out because I'm really, really into what I do. I have friends in my program who do the 9-5 thing and they're happy too. When I was an applicant reading these boards everyone insisted on limiting "work" to 40 hours a week. I tried that and it didn't work for me. I think prospective grad students should know that there are many types of grad students. I know I don't have to "work" as much as I do, but I really don't mind it. My project is interdisciplinary and so I need to cover bibliographies across fields. I want to take advantage of my time in the program to read as much as I can because I know that I won't have time to do that once I start the TT grind. That's my choice, not a requirement. I don't think anyone here is claiming universal truth. It's good advice generally, but I'm not sure I agree with how it's framed. Obviously, being a professor is more demanding than being a student. But based on my conversations with faculty, I wouldn't consider the transition from PhD student to faculty as a sort of x+y in which you take all your responsibilities as a student and simply add the responsibilities of faculty. They're two different "jobs". It's not about just adding more work, but replacing some things I do now with others that are required of faculty. There are a lot of things you can do as a student that you just won't be able to do as a professor (which is why it's important to do them now). For example, reading as widely as possible (this is field dependent, of course. The bibliography will require much more time in the humanities than in the sciences because these are book and not article fields).

I realize that this might seem excessive depending on personal habits and institutional culture, but I've been doing it for nearly 5 years and don't feel like my life is a hellscape. I have time to work out, cook, spend time with my partner, go out for a walk, and have a beer on a Friday night. A lot of people considering PhD programs ask me about hours worked, and I always feel weird answering, because I don't view (most of) what I'm doing as a job. For example, a lot of my weekend hours are spent reading and writing. I'm in a literature program, so reading theory and literature and jotting down my reflections would count as "work". But I would be doing this on any given weekend regardless, because it's what I enjoy. Whenever I'm reading I'm thinking about how I could teach this material, and start mapping out syllabi. That would also count as "work". Dropping by a conference on campus on a Saturday would also be considered "work". But I go, even if it means adding more to my schedule, because I love the intellectual dialogue. It's fun. So I don't feel burnt out, even though I'm technically "working" 8 hours on a Saturday or a holiday. Of course, there are things that definitely feel like work, such as answering e-mails, grading, organizing conferences, etc. That stuff I try to keep to what would be considered the "work week". I save the more pleasant tasks for the weekend so it doesn't feel like I'm constantly on the grind. When I started my PhD program I went in with the attitude that this was a job, and that I needed to keep track of my hours to prevent burnout. I tried to limit my work to 40 hours a week, as if it were a 9-5. This actually stressed me out more. I wasn't able to do everything in 40 hours, and my institution expects much more than what you can fit in between 9 and 5. When I was tallying up the hours it took me to finish everything, I was discouraged because the "hours worked" mindset led me to think that I was an employee clocking in 60 hours for slightly more than a subsistence stipend as "compensation". Meanwhile, I had friends working much less and making much more, spending their weekends traveling or going out. This was discouraging. After discussions with my adviser and other faculty members I changed my mindset and began to think of academia not as a job but as a lifestyle. At this point it's hard for me to differentiate between work and non-work. When I'm asked about hours worked, I try to put myself back into my original mindset (grad school is a job) so that I can give this person an honest answer. But I just don't care if I "work" that much...I don't need a hobby because reading and writing are my hobbies. And I'm happy with that. I was drawn to the PhD because I wanted to live an intellectual life, and that requires you to be constantly thinking, reading, and writing.

While ageism obviously exists in academia as in any industry, I really don't think it applies in your case. Reverse ageism (being "too young") would not be a factor in denying a PhD application. The opposite is more likely: a department might not accept a PhD applicant because they are too old (say they are worried about their job placement and can't imagine a 50 year old recent PhD landing a tenure-track job). I haven't seen it happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. The age range in my program goes from 23 (straight out of undergrad) to 37 (coming in with two MAs). I think you're confusing age and experience. Someone coming straight out of undergrad is not necessarily young, people graduate at all ages for any number of reasons.. Applying straight out of undergrad might hurt you, but only if you don't have the same grasp on the field and bibliography as someone finishing an MA. Your job in the applications is to prove that you are widely read in literature and theory, intellectually curious, abreast of the current debates, capable of performing archival research if necessary, competent in whatever languages necessary, capable of asking the right questions and designing a thesis quickly, etc. Whether or not you're still in undergrad is irrelevant. If you can prove that, they won't care whether or not you have an MA. You might feel that you're at a disadvantage because you are young, and this is perfectly normal. You might have less experience than other applicants because older students simply have had more time to read and think. Of course, this is assuming that these older students have been spending all that extra time studying. Given that you transferred from STEM to French in your third year as an undergrad, you probably lack this experience. How much literature have you had time to read? How much theory? Criticism? Historiography? You can't expect to take two years of classes in literature at the undergrad level and expect to launch right into your dissertation or teaching. An MA sounds like a logical solution because your profile suggests that you lack coursework in your field. Also, keep in mind that "repeating" coursework later does not mean taking the same classes over again...you're simply taking more coursework. It is not at all a waste of time and will only make you a better scholar because you will be more widely read. Graduate coursework is not the equivalent of undergraduate coursework, so you are not "repeating undergrad all over again". Also, you wouldn't be repeating your undergrad experience because you spent 3/4 of it studying STEM. Finally, 30 is not old for academia at all. In my opinion, ageism starts to be a factor when tenure-track applicants are 45-50+ because hiring committees know that these applicants (regardless of experience) can't have as long of a career in the department as someone coming in at 30-35.

Yes, I distribute that time over weekends and holidays. I will work every day, though the number of hours varies. Less on a Sunday, for example, when I need to run errands.