Rutgers or NYU?

[inkbee1]

Hi, I am 50/50 between Rutgers and NYU for English PhD (concentration: medieval and renaissance lit.) Which program do you think would be better? The funding packages are similar. My main concern is job placement. 

[StamfordCat]

As someone who's NYC adjacent, it's definitely important to look into the cost of living in the city when considering the funding packages. It's unbelievably expensive here.

Congrats on your acceptances!

[inkbee1]

25 minutes ago, StamfordCat said:

As someone who's NYC adjacent, it's definitely important to look into the cost of living in the city when considering the funding packages. It's unbelievably expensive here.

Congrats on your acceptances!

Thank you! I already live in Brooklyn and plan to stay in my current living situation, so it would be about an hour commute to Rutgers or half hour commute to NYU. 

[jusrain]

What is NYU’s placement rate? I know Rutgers is around 87%. 

They’re both great top 20 programs so it comes down to the little things. But don’t forget they’re in a consortium, too! 

[Warelin]

4 hours ago, swarthmawr said:

What is NYU’s placement rate? I know Rutgers is around 87%. 

 They’re both great top 20 programs so it comes down to the little things. But don’t forget they’re in a consortium, too! 

I think it's important to remember that different programs have different ways of showing their placement rates which can make it harder to distinguish between placement rates. Some programs consider any employment as a successful placement; others only consider tt-jobs while others count postdocs or visiting positions as well. It gets trickier at times because there are some universities which hire permanent but not-tenured instructors as well.

From Rutgers:
"Between October 2004 through May 2014, the department conferred 134 Ph.D.s. Of those graduates, 116 (87%) secured college and university teaching jobs in all categories of employment (including tenure-track jobs, lectureships or instructorships [some of which turned into permanent but non-tenured positions], visiting assistant professorships, and post-doctoral fellowships). 91 of those graduates (68% of the total) got tenure-track jobs."

While those numbers are impressive, it also includes numbers prior to 2011. (Prior to 2011, the job market looked differently than it does today. It's missing data from 2014-2019 which would be more representative of their current placement. There's also been a recent shift in a number of highly-regarded institutions to have their students pursue alt-ac jobs. As such, these numbers could be all over the place as it gets harder to determine whether or not a student wanted to obtain a professorship in the first place as some strictly want to focus on being a scholar or a teacher. 

I imagine that both institutions have similiar placements. As @swarthmawr mentioned, they do belong to the same consortium. So, I think the biggest questions I'd ask are: Who do I feel is the best equipped to help me with the work I'm most interested in? If that person doesn't work out, do I feel like there are a number of faculty which could? Do I feel that the culture of the department is right for me?

[inkbee1]

Thanks, yes, @swarthmawr @Warelin you've hit the nails on important points that I'm considering. As someone already living in NYC and familiar with NYU, I think I'm too inside the city to view the programs objectively, so random votes or opinions are very welcome. I'm waitlisted at McGill, so I'm considering it if I ascend to the top of some lucky list somewhere.

[Indecisive Poet]

I did my undergrad at RU – I don't know too much about the graduate program but feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions you think I'd be able to answer about the university, location or department in general! I am no longer anywhere near a medievalist but that was my area of concentration there as an undergrad.

[spectrum-in]

On 3/19/2019 at 7:02 PM, inkbee1 said:

Thanks, yes, @swarthmawr @Warelin you've hit the nails on important points that I'm considering. As someone already living in NYC and familiar with NYU, I think I'm too inside the city to view the programs objectively, so random votes or opinions are very welcome. I'm waitlisted at McGill, so I'm considering it if I ascend to the top of some lucky list somewhere.

For what it's worth, NYU's graduate school is unionized, and I think you're paid for teaching on top of the stipend (rather than having it be a component in the base package.) I'm not exactly sure how this works (heard from a friend). My friend also indicated that if you wanted you could take on more teaching appointments, and I think she made quite a bit of extra $ doing that in semesters that were less busy.

Either way, you've got amazing choices. Good luck!

[ExileFromAFutureTime]

Rutgers is also unionized and they are militant- just authorised a strike vote. Mobbies in the best way.

[jusrain]

On 3/24/2019 at 9:32 AM, ExileFromAFutureTime said:

Rutgers is also unionized and they are militant- just authorised a strike vote. Mobbies in the best way.

Yeah, just want to second this, when I visited they were discussing the upcoming strike and it seems like it’s a really vocal and supportive community— I think all faculty, staff, etc across all of their campuses are included in the union. @inkbee1 any decisions yet? 

[wordstew]

Unfortunately, I'm too late in seeing this thread, and the April 15th decision date has passed. I'm intimately familiar with the Rutgers program, and the 87% placement statistic is a bald-faced lie. It's inexcusable that the program still has this blatant falsehood on their website. it's tantamount to fraud. Go through the recent PhDs conferred by the program and see who does or does not have a job--and what that job might be. You'll quickly find that numerous placements are counted multiple times for the same person. I'd estimate the program's placement is now somewhere around 10% since hardly anybody is getting tenure-track employment. They're placing about one person a year in actual "domestic" tenure-track positions: i.e. not Turkey or elsewhere. They've tried to find contingent positions at Rutgers for recent grads such as teaching postdocs and admin positions, but there's only so much of that to go around, and those aren't permanent employment for the most part. However, we can't totally blame Rutgers since this is now true of virtually all the elite programs. Don't believe me? Go take a look at the academic jobs wiki. The profession has collapsed. For those of you attending Rutgers in the fall, try demanding some accountability from the DGS. It probably won't get you very far, but it will be a fair indication of the obfuscation and spin to come.