2020 Applicants

[Karatani]

On 10/1/2019 at 12:59 PM, Glasperlenspieler said:

I went to a non-flagship public university for my undergrad and it doesn't seem to have negatively affected my experience in grad school.

In terms of your last question, I would encourage you to not get too hung up on thinking about where you can get into. It's good to be realistic about your chances (applying to grad school in literary studies is extremely competitive), but you're unlikely to be very successful in guessing where you have a good or bad chance of getting in. There are plenty of stories on here about people with perfect stats who got shut out, people with sub-par stats who got into top programs, and people who got rejected from low ranked programs only to get accepted at a top-ranked program. Instead, identify the schools that are the best matches for your interests and research. You certainly shouldn't limit yourself to top-ranked programs, but if all the programs that make sense for your research are extremely competitive, so be it. You're unlikely to be doing yourself any favors by applying to programs just because you think you have a good shot of getting in. 

All re-assuring! Fit is definitely my top priority, it seems like few people on here have gotten in somewhere - "top" or otherwise - where profs didn't share interests/enthusiasm.

[DanArndtWrites]

Hi everybody

I'm a current MFA Fiction student in my final year at Wichita State. I'm looking into my PHD right now and hoping to study 20th c. American, with a particular look towards the Midwestern Gothic and an interest in Folklore and Interdisciplinary work. I have no idea if my MFA will help or harm my application 

[merry night wanderer]

@DanArndtWrites I'm in the same boat. Based on the advice I've received, if you did well in the graduate lit classes, it's a great asset - it shows you can do graduate work, but also doesn't put you in the "already has a Master's" admissions category. 

[VincentH]

On 10/2/2019 at 6:21 PM, ArcaMajora said:

The SoP is a barometer of fit just as much as it is the adcom's way to hold a litmus test in how well you can present yourself as a scholar in an academic and professional context and also as a way to see if you can start proposing the kinds of projects that are expected of graduate students to produce. The best way I can phrase it is that you do need to be specific enough in order for a program to identify not just your field, but the methodologies you favor (you like queer theory? are you more into ecocrit? continental philosophy?), the texts that you gravitate toward, etc, but the possibility of change (either the refinement of interests or even an outward expansion) by either faculty discourse, the program's strength, seminar, etc. will definitely need to be there.

Holy cow - this is so thorough, and such great advice! Thank you for this! I've been struggling in particular with my SoP (as I'm sure others have, too) and this really helps us dial in our focus on what's most important. Cheers!

[merry night wanderer]

How does one go about determining a program's strengths? Just by faculty and faculty interest? 

[HenryJams]

18 hours ago, merry night wanderer said:

How does one go about determining a program's strengths? Just by faculty and faculty interest? 

Some programs highlight their own strengths.  

 

E.g., Rutgers states, "Our department is known for its work in feminist and gender studies, as is Rutgers as a whole, and we have specialists in women’s writing in every historical period.  We also offer many courses in drama and performance studies, in digital humanities, and in literary theory.  One of our particular strengths is African-American literary studies, in which we have a large group of faculty and students."  Another example:  UC San Diego offers detailed information about the strengths of its program.  Check it out:  http://literature.ucsd.edu/grad/phd-admissions/index.html.

 

Other schools don't provide any information about specific programmatic strengths.  In those cases, your best bet, I think, is to check out faculty profiles and CVs. 

 

Also, bear in mind that a program's representations of its own strengths might not be comprehensive.  I've heard elsewhere that Rutgers has a reputation for being strong in Victorian literature, and my own research of faculty profiles has confirmed this.  Yet its program overview page says nothing about Victorian literature:  https://english.rutgers.edu/academics/graduate-92.html

 

Bottom line:  some programs list specific strengths, and those lists might be useful.  But don't take a program's recitation of its strengths at face value, because you might learn about other strengths by putting in some in-depth research into faculty profiles.

 

For me, finding out about a program's strengths literally involved opening like 50 tabs at a time on my web browser (one for each faculty member), opening just as many CVs, and looking through publications, classes taught, interests, etc.  It was a little tedious (OK, a lot tedious) but ultimately led me to apply to a number of programs I had not previously considered to be contenders.

[Brown_Bear]

On 10/2/2019 at 6:21 PM, ArcaMajora said:

I've thought over the role of the SoP and here's my thoughts now after having settled into my graduate program and the general expectations for first years at least from what I have seen in Irvine so far.

I want to stress that the statement of purpose is by no means a contract. You are absolutely not beholden to it once you are in the program. I've talked with my advisor about how my fields could well shift in the duration of my fellowship year and that the questions I raised in my SoP would instead be much different ones depending on where my lines of thinking go. That being said, it is productive to be as specific as you feasibly can without appearing like you're completely calcified in your field/period. When I was writing the basis for what became my statement of purpose, I thought of it as a sort of 'prospectus.' I wrote a vision of myself as a scholar at that moment then; and accordingly then had a tentative dissertation topic/larger lines of thinking that could form the seed of the eventual dissertation prospectus or master's thesis if I sustain that project beyond just applying to graduate school. Being specific enough without appearing like you're too set (to the point where you may not benefit from graduate education) is a balancing act. If you are a restoration scholar, then it is very much okay to write yourself as such in your SoP, as that will ensure a higher (but not guaranteed) chance that your SoP will be read by a faculty specialist that is within or adjacent to your time period. If you know what kinds of texts, authors, theorists, etc. you're working on, make that apparent in your SoP.

The flexibility (ie. being molded by the program) comes if you make it clear with confidence that you know your project can benefit from having the influence of discourse with faculty within the program either due to its general strengths or if there's a particular faculty member you're looking to work with. For example, this might mean writing in your statement with strategic moments of 'While so-and-so project represents the current inquiry I have into this specific time period/issue/question, this is by no means a closing off of my wider scholarly interests. Indeed, OMG University's strengths could complement my project by way of so-and-so-and-so and possibly even expand my research into these ways/areas.' It becomes an exercise in showing how you and your project/lines of thinking could be molded by the program that you are applying for, and it's one of the many ways in which you can demonstrate your potential fit to an admissions committee. Thus, don't sacrifice your specificity (the adcom will want to know what you're studying) but make sure to appear as such that your interests can change, expand, and of course be complicated.

The SoP is a barometer of fit just as much as it is the adcom's way to hold a litmus test in how well you can present yourself as a scholar in an academic and professional context and also as a way to see if you can start proposing the kinds of projects that are expected of graduate students to produce. The best way I can phrase it is that you do need to be specific enough in order for a program to identify not just your field, but the methodologies you favor (you like queer theory? are you more into ecocrit? continental philosophy?), the texts that you gravitate toward, etc, but the possibility of change (either the refinement of interests or even an outward expansion) by either faculty discourse, the program's strength, seminar, etc. will definitely need to be there.

Should this include referencing specific faculty by name? If there are faculty whose research is interesting to the applicant? Or is it enough you think to just reference the research being done, without name-dropping?

[Indecisive Poet]

How is everyone handling citations/footnotes for things you're quoting in your SoPs? I want to paraphrase or allude wherever possible, but I think I'll inevitably end up with at least one or two short quoted words/phrases. I'm not sure if footnotes or citations are expected – all of the examples that I've looked at don't include them, but that's not to say they didn't omit their works cited page/footnotes when they sent me their statements.

[ArcaMajora]

On 10/6/2019 at 6:58 AM, Hasspurple said:

Should this include referencing specific faculty by name? If there are faculty whose research is interesting to the applicant? Or is it enough you think to just reference the research being done, without name-dropping?

Admittedly, this is a gray area and I've had conflicting advice from my letter writers in this regard. One saw mentioning the specific names of faculty as being a touch too presumptuous, while another letter writer encouraged me to contact faculty while applying and mention them in my SoP. I did not contact faculty but I did mention faculty by name when I wrote my statement. When I sent these drafts to all my letter writers, I wasn't pinged for mentioning faculty by name (which I did for all applications).

Ultimately, the decision to do this depends on the approach you take for your SoP and how well your rhetoric lines up with either mentioning faculty by name or not. In most SoP's I've seen for PhD programs, I've seen faculty being explicitly named (the Berkeley History PhD example that I modeled my SoP after does so to my knowledge). There are best practices for this, of course. (ie. if you mention faculty by name, try not to over-mention them, and speak about them in a way that allows for their strengths to intersect with your interests while not resorting to appealing to overt flattery). It also largely depends too depending on how many faculty you've found, how you yourself define fit, and how that faculty member can configure in the calculus that defines your fit with the program. For example, for SUNY Buffalo, that was the one case where I did both (mention specific faculty that I was most compatible with but also described their general strength with poetics). I identified at least five or six faculty there I could work due to their poetics program, but for pragmatic purposes I mentioned the two names I felt I was compatible with while remarking on the bigger picture research of the poetics program.

On 10/3/2019 at 3:46 PM, PercivalV said:

Holy cow - this is so thorough, and such great advice! Thank you for this! I've been struggling in particular with my SoP (as I'm sure others have, too) and this really helps us dial in our focus on what's most important. Cheers!

I am really happy that what I wrote helped Good luck with your SoP and the rest of your application materials!

As I've said in the past, I'm always happy to talk via DM to answer any questions anyone has about the process. Graduate school has diminished my spare time recently but I can make time for quiet moments work.

Edited October 7, 2019 by ArcaMajora

[Warelin]

46 minutes ago, ArcaMajora said:

Admittedly, this is a gray area and I've had conflicting advice from my letter writers in this regard. One saw mentioning the specific names of faculty as being a touch too presumptuous, while another letter writer encouraged me to contact faculty while applying and mention them in my SoP. I did not contact faculty but I did mention faculty by name when I wrote my statement. When I sent these drafts to all my letter writers, I wasn't pinged for mentioning faculty by name (which I did for all applications).

I'd like to add on to this. I was accepted at schools where I mentioned certain faculty by name. I was also accepted at schools where I did not mention any faculty by names. In one of the schools I was accepted to, I only mentioned one faculty. They're currently at a different school.

So I don't think there is a correct or wrong way of writing your SOP when it comes to the inclusion or exclusion of names.

[DanArndtWrites]

I've actually gone though my list and only like 3 of my 10 are top 30. Idk if that's good or bad but I don't want to get too far from the midwest so

[karamazov]

Do discursive endnotes count towards page limits? I'm moving some pieces of my 15 page writing sample into the notes, which will shorten the actual paper's length. The paper will overall still be 15 pages long if the endnotes are included, but it will sit at something more like 13 or 14 pages without them. Will this be an issue for schools that want writing samples between 15 and 20 pages? Will the total length of 15 pages including endnotes be okay with adcomms, or do they only include the content of the paper itself in that 15-20 page range? 

[grace2137]

Hey guys - does anyone have advice about CVs/resume for the PhD applications? I'm applying straight from undergrad, so I don't really have significant teaching experience/published articles, etc (though I do have a lot of work experience). I'm trying to figure out how I should tailor my resume from what I have on hand for when I'm applying for jobs... lmk!

[grace2137]

22 hours ago, karamazov said:

Do discursive endnotes count towards page limits? I'm moving some pieces of my 15 page writing sample into the notes, which will shorten the actual paper's length. The paper will overall still be 15 pages long if the endnotes are included, but it will sit at something more like 13 or 14 pages without them. Will this be an issue for schools that want writing samples between 15 and 20 pages? Will the total length of 15 pages including endnotes be okay with adcomms, or do they only include the content of the paper itself in that 15-20 page range? 

pretty sure notes don't count toward the page limit - just judging from the fact that several of the schools I am applying to have specified "not including notes"

[Karatani]

How have people been approaching emailing professors, if at all? I've written to 7 at my top-choice schools and have heard back from six. One of my mentors suggested I try to reach out to someone at every school, while another told me not to waste my time and instead to use any hours I would spend reading their work and stressing over emails to tighten my own materials. How are other people approaching this?

[onerepublic96]

1 hour ago, Plurabelle said:

How have people been approaching emailing professors, if at all? I've written to 7 at my top-choice schools and have heard back from six. One of my mentors suggested I try to reach out to someone at every school, while another told me not to waste my time and instead to use any hours I would spend reading their work and stressing over emails to tighten my own materials. How are other people approaching this?

I'm still agonising over that one myself... If you don't mind my asking, how did you reach out? One concern of mine is that the faculty profiles on a few of my programme websites may be somewhat out of date, and I thought of contacting them to make sure I had the right idea of what they're working on, but I'm stuck as to how to do this without sounding ignorant or making them feel like I'm trying to waste their time. ?‍♀️

[merry night wanderer]

Related, but tangential question: is it okay to email profs to ask for pdfs of their work? I know it tends to be in the science.

[Brown_Bear]

I'm an applicant for this cycle, and I am trying very carefully not to mess up any information on the online applications. It seems quite easy to mistype or say something. Also, I noticed UMass Amherst has a policy to apply for the TAship with an application. Is this normal? Or do other programs, if you are accepted, just give you funding of some kind?

[Indecisive Poet]

16 hours ago, merry night wanderer said:

Related, but tangential question: is it okay to email profs to ask for pdfs of their work? I know it tends to be in the science.

For articles – yes, absolutely. Every academic I've emailed for a copy of an article (that I didn't already have access to through my institution's library) has responded almost immediately with great enthusiasm. For books, I don't think so. They'll likely want you to buy the book instead (despite the fact that prices of academic books are extortionate) and may even find the request insulting.

[Karatani]

@onerepublic96 Part of why I'm starting to email less is because each email takes me so long to research/write! I've been formatting mine as about 3-4 sentences total: 1 introducing myself, 1-2 on something I've read by them, and 1 asking some sort of specific question. My strategy in terms of deciding what to read by them has been to pick something within the last 10 years, and something that relates to my work. I've emailed 6 professors—those who I most want to work with—and I've heard back from 5 and had encouraging interactions and gotten some great information that wasn't on websites. I think instead of worrying a bout knowing they're current research before you email, it would be totally appropriate to use the emails to inquire what that current research is.

[karamazov]

I dual enrolled at a nearby university during my senior year of high school. When I'm reporting the institutions I've attended on my applications, and sending in my transcripts, do I have to include this, or do programs only want to see post-high school university transcripts? 

[onerepublic96]

1 hour ago, karamazov said:

I dual enrolled at a nearby university during my senior year of high school. When I'm reporting the institutions I've attended on my applications, and sending in my transcripts, do I have to include this, or do programs only want to see post-high school university transcripts? 

Most of my applications explicitly state that they want my educational history 'after high school'. But it might be worth it to check with your particular programmes. 

[Bopie5]

7 hours ago, karamazov said:

I dual enrolled at a nearby university during my senior year of high school. When I'm reporting the institutions I've attended on my applications, and sending in my transcripts, do I have to include this, or do programs only want to see post-high school university transcripts? 

If you got undergrad college credit for your high school dual enrollment, it may show up on your college transcripts! At least, that’s how my university handled it. My dual enrollment courses from high school all showed up at the bottom of my official transcript for my undergrad. Might be worth checking or looking in to!

[theatergeek]

Does anyone know if UCSB's Comparative Literature program requires the GRE for basic funding? Their website is more than confusing - to say the least. 

[karamazov]

@onerepublic96 @Bopie5 Thanks for the input! I'm thinking I'll probably ask each program. I can get them the transcript from that school if they really want it, but if they don't, I'd much rather save the money than send it to them unnecessarily.