1Q84

I wasn't ragging on Berkeley, to be clear. I know that it's the common line nowadays that going to top tier schools in the US doesn't guarantee anything yada yada yada but is my claim that grads from Berkeley tend to land a TT job demonstrably not the case? Not being snarky, sincerely want to know. (I was, of course, making a comparative claim.) Judging from the placement record for the past couple of years, 4-5 TT positions seems pretty decent for the field.

Exactly. I apologize drugazi that you thought I was attacking CGU but I thought the fact that I linked you to the thread-that-shall-not-be-named was sign enough that I was trying to make a wider point about the academic job market. If your statement had been that you wanted to take on $200,000 of debt to attend Berkeley, I'd honestly still say pass. But considering grads from that school tend to land TT jobs pretty easily, let's guesstimate a starting income of $50,000. Even if you paid down the $200,000 very aggressively with that income, (maybe $2000 a month), a federal student loan would still take you 138 months and cost an additional tens of thousands of dollars of interest. Many folks, I'm sure, would still take the Berkeley opportunity with those numbers considering the prestige and job chances. I wouldn't but that's just because I'm extremely debt adverse. Listen, if you have tons of savings or someone funding the last 30% of the cost, then feel free to ignore everything I said. But to take on $200,000 + in loans for a slim chance at a <$50,000 salary (because that's what's common to most grads from schools outside of the "Top 20") is really just foolish. Nothing personal.

And it only took you 46 days to come up with that burn...! But I should add that you don't know anything about my employment history so your assumption that I've never taught before entering my Ph.D. program is off-base. (For future reference, I've adjuncted for a few years so I have a decent sense of the vicissitudes of the academic job market, thanks.)

Anyone who's interested in fully-funded MA programs for international students, check out Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. Scholarships and TAships fully cover tuition. If you'd like anymore information, feel free to PM me!

I'm not teaching at the moment. I'm beginning my Ph.D. program.

I would really love for this to be true, and that they standardize all incoming apps in Comic Sans or (worse yet) Papyrus.

While I agree with your overall statement that being able to identify and articulate one's fit with the department's overall specialties/methodologies is most important, I don't think it would hurt to mention that we folks who are in programs already once suffered in these anxiety-laden, panicky few weeks before Dec 1 and overthought many parts of our apps as well. It's easy to look back in retrospect and say, "Yes, what I did made sense and it worked out for me. See?" But I also think various other SOP formats can and do work, and that includes demonstrating a more thorough-going knowledge of Prof. X's work.

Right, I'm not saying that people must mention professors in their SOP. I'm saying that if they do, it should absolutely be an informed mention rather than an outdated one. (Also, I'm tickled that you and many others keep calling me IQ84... Is that how you all really see me? )

Yep, I'm on the side of those saying to re-take and also echo the 160 minimum. OP, you mentioned in your post that you heard that it could keep you from obtaining funding and I think that's a huge consideration. No one wants to attend a humanities graduate program unfunded.

I don't think that's what I was really getting at, though. I still think it's important to know the research of who you're naming because if you do cite the Milton research from 1980 that Professor X no longer works on, the adcomm will see and, here's the important part, that such a pairing would be to the applicant's detriment because they won't find the resources that they need or want to develop his or her project. It has nothing to do with offending the professor in question. Any sensible adcomm will hesitate on those grounds because they want to best serve any incoming students and ensure a healthy, supported cohort.

I think one good way of avoiding any seeming shallowness in referencing faculty work is being very mindful of citing their most recent work. For example, I spoke to one professor at (unnamed top ranked school) who was very generous in informing me that he no longer works on Milton (the subject with which he made his name) much anymore and has moved into art history. So it would make you look bad if you said in your SOP, "I want to work with Prof. X because of his work from the 80s on Milton!" Being specific enough to pinpoint a professor's most recent and strongest interests as relevant to your own future academic career is enough. No one is really expecting you to have read all of their works in their entirety (though reading some recent article abstracts from them wouldn't hurt).

I struggled with this when I wrote my SOP. The best bit of advice I received to that end was to make good friends with the department's grad secretary. You can pick her or his brain about which profs are on leave, which ones moved departments, or which no longer take students, etc. This will help you to name-drop in a more informed and strategic manner.

Good question! I was kind of an idiot and I wrote my MA SOP to be like a Ph.D. one, which was mostly fine except that I talked about who I would want to "work with," which I guess is fine except for the fact that it didn't totally matter and I didn't really get much of a choice (and people rarely do in English MAs, I find.) It helped to show that I thought about fit, which is super important, but made me look a little uninformed because I was so specific about my "faculty choices." So my advice is to have a good sense of faculty strengths, department focuses, and general vibe so that you can talk about fit but don't talk about "advisors" etc.

I got a mediocre score and didn't address it at all. I don't think the subject test ever really makes a difference, like silenus said, until it's really high or really low (ie. it catches the eye.) Right on. The SOP is such a crucial part of your app and has the most limited word count so unless you have an F on your transcript you need to talk about, always focus on displaying your readiness for and interests in intellectual work. To those wondering about the effect of GRE scores: this question is a perennial one and I firmly believe that there's really no good answer other than "it depends on the school." It also depends on the committee that year and as well as whoever may be chairing it. There's so many moving pieces that it would be foolish to take any one isolated anecdote from TGC and extrapolate it to your own app strategy. If you're really concerned about it, try finding out how the GRE scores are perceived by that school in particular, then if you have a chance to talk to the grad chair and committee chair, see how they feel about them. I was able to do both for the schools I got into and found that scores are not a huge deal to them but that it would put me out of the running for entrance fellowships (which they did for the school I wound up at, and it really blows.) There will be plenty of people who tell you that they got into top 10 schools with subpar GRE scores. There will also be the same number of folks who say that faculty specifically singled out GRE scores as a reason for concern in their unsuccessful application. I think if you take the various opinions about standardized testing from any of the threads on this forum (ranging from raging boycotts to acceptance of a necessary evil) and apply that spectrum to all the adcomms across the country, you'll see how your middling score can be interpreted in any number of ways by any number of people.

To add to what the Prof (always brilliantly) says, this part of your post stuck out to me. I know I would never have made it through my toughest graduate school moments if not for colleagues that I could lean on, whine to, or have full-on outpourings of grief (or, even better, ecstatic joy). I also found the reciprocal moments when I could help them through a "moment" or share in an accomplishment made all the difference in dark times. I know this won't solve your problem now but I would really suggest that you find at least one other person to talk to about the big and small things. Shared suffering does wonders for mental resiliency! Good luck!

Comp/Rhet is not a real field because those boring Aristotleans refuse to wear suede elbow patches like the rest of us real academics.

I really don't want to link you here but I will...

Or, you know, you could go to a fully-funded program with a solid placement record. Just a thought.

Little, if any. I would avoid it like the plague and spend all that freed up time on your other (more important) app materials.

Can confirm: last year I took it October 25 and got the scores back November 23 Oh what a nerve-wracking 29 days that was...

You're throwing away a groundbreaking dissertation here, bhr...

So.... you're just going to ignore my entire post and petulantly post yet another strawman argument? Cool. Thank heavens the mods are sticking up for you and the valuable contributions you're making to this forum.

That article highlights some truly unfortunate thinking going on by some people in power. Enter all that "life of the mind" claptrap. I mean, the next paragraph states that DePauw says that universities should prepare students for non-academic jobs but doesn't state how. I was told one graduate director at my school (in an affiliated program to English) straight up told the incoming cohort at the open house that it's fine if you're not interested in a job in academia but to just let him know so that the program can be best shaped to suit the student's needs. I think that's definitely a step in the right direction. That creates awareness in an incoming cohort that jobs outside of academia for Ph.D. holders even exist. The more and earlier students know about these possibilities, the easier it'll be to create the pressure to either get them into alt-ac jobs or to convince bureaucrats that these alternative foci need to become structurally inherent to doctoral training itself. Well, gee, no one's ever brought up those points before... What exactly is your proposed solution to any of this, other than to petulantly point out mammoth structural problems and hope that your personal outrage convinces management to magically change course? If you don't have a proposed solution, perhaps your energies would be better focused working with fellow academics to come up with one rather than haranguing them to the point of exhaustion.

Congrats on completing it, Waco-Waco! I made sure to drown my sorrows in tacos and horchata shortly after completing the test. Don't know if this is one of your compulsions, but don't obsess over the results (that is until you've estimated when the scores will come out and you're feverishly refreshing the GRE site... not that I'd know what that's all about :)) Any other test takers out there want to share their experiences? It was certainly one of the worst exam scenarios of my entire life so I'm curious to hear how this year went for folks.