Which MA program?

[meowmeow]

All,

After a lot of thought, I have narrowed my choices down to just two MA programs. My goal is to go on to a top Ph.D. program

School A: Public, offers MA and PhD, ranked in the 75-100 range on US News, offered me a top first year fellowship + TA stipend (total funding is almost double the funding of School B!), work load is co-teaching 1 Comp class/semester in first year and teaching my choice of 2:1 or 1:2 load of Comp in second year, health insurance is subsidized and will cost about $600 a year, classes are exclusively grad seminars, no thesis option, liked the students, has one very respected and well-known faculty member related to my secondary interests who met with me and emailed me several times about the program, liked the seminar I visited, DGS arranged a great visit for me so that I could meet a lot of people, could be happy here

School B: Private, MA only (no grad ranking), offered TA position with stipend under 10K (Writing Center only, so no Comp), work load is about 12 hours a week, mix of grad seminars, requires MA thesis or an alternative, LOVED the students, liked the faculty, liked the seminar I visited, could be very happy here

School B reminded me a lot of my undergrad campus in terms of the students, the discussions in the class I visited, the beautiful campus, etc. I wanted to say yes on the spot. However, I am several years older than someone right out of undergrad and I am very concerned with finances (especially since I have existing student loans). My spouse will be looking for a job wherever we go, so the security of School A seems like it would be the best because I know we could afford to live until my spouse finds some kind of employment. I have no idea how we would survive at School B without loans. A trusted professor who is familiar with both schools also recommends School B due to the outstanding professors.

Is there a clear winner from an objective point of view?

[bluellie]

I'll tell you what has been repeated here time and time again: follow the money. The reason? Less crippling debt to worry about. Teaching experience, rather than tutoring experience. Furthermore, from what I understand, your MA is more about what you produce rather than the name on your diploma. Unless you see yourself miserable at school A, I'd go for it. It's so, so difficult to find good funding for MA programs (I've been striking out a lot these days...despite a whole bunch of admits).

Ultimately you have to do what's best for you, and, unfortunately, finances do play a part. Can you imagine having to worry about making ends meets while trying to write term papers/study for comps?

Good luck.

[waldorf1975]

Take the money and run with School A! What School B offers isn't terrible, especially since so many schools don't offer squat, but the fact that you already have student loans makes the call easy. Piling on loans is extremely dangerous when you're entering a profession that comes with no guarantees.

The fact that a faculty member is e-mailing you is crucial. The key to doing well in a program is to have a good advisor. Your trusted professor is right.

[strokeofmidnight]

Does school B happen to be Villanova? If so, I'd go with school B. (for the record, I once "followed the money" and was utterly miserable at the program that I choose because of it. I think it's a fine calibration between going to the place that can help you produce your best work, and making that decision financially feasible). While many students from less prestigious (but funded) MA programs have indeed done *very* well with PhD applications, there results are generally not consistent. Villanova (in my recollection) has a very strong PhD placement record. You might actually want to inquire directly into this. While I do think that choosing a funded MA is generally wiser than, say, paying tuition for an MA from an Ivy, you're really looking at two funded options--even if the funding levels are different.

A few things to consider:

1. My experience with top PhD programs (over three years, I've applied to something like 20 out of the top 25, and were accepted into most of them at one point or another) is that they care FAR more about your research/scholarship then they do about teaching experience. The comp teaching (versus tutoring) can be icing on the cake for some schools, but I don't think it will influence the ad-comms significantly either way.

2. A 2:1 load is a quite a lot. I'm reading (grading only, no discussions or teaching) for one class and it sucks out huge chunks of my time. While I'm still able to focus on my work, I've had to cut down on my class load significantly to compensate. And this is a 25% load...so it's more like a 0.5 load per semester. Personally speaking, I wouldn't be able to focus on my work if I'm teaching more than 1 class (generally considered a 50% load).

3. My experience at places with a terminal MA in addition to the PhD program is that the PhD students will get the lion's share of attention. This isn't necessarily a huge problem, if you tend to work well with a hands-off adviser, but it's something to keep in mind while making decisions.

4. Outside of the one professor, which school is a bit fit for your interests? (along the same lines, how committed are you to your interests?). Considering that you have some funding from both schools, I'd go with the program that will let you produce better work, particularly if it also has a better track record with placement. If I were in your shoes, I'd go with program B--but I may have a different set of priority. I'd be willing to take on some loans (say, 5-10K) in order to attend a program that is a better fit for me.

Brief note: I was heavily courted by a program two years ago, and ended up going to it...in part, assuming that since they apparently wanted me so badly (potential advisers calling, top fellowship) I would have little trouble getting attention/advising when I needed it. I was totally wrong. I'll share you the details, but it suffices to say that my thesis adviser (who did most of the courting when I was an applicant) never read a single draft of my thesis...and i sent him over a dozen drafts, over the course of 4 months. Other professors who had called me weekly never bothered to hand back seminar papers, or provide feedback. I don't know how typical my situation is, but the level of attention during recruitment doesn't necessarily reflect what you'd receive as a student. Some schools are notorious for recruiting very well (Rutgers, Michigan), but while they are indeed strong programs, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll receive less attention at a program that doesn't have an insitutional history of puttin' on the ritz in March and April.

[lifealive]

If you're really concerned about money (and if school B is indeed Villanova, putting it smack dab in the suburbs of Philadelphia), then I would recommend School A. I mean, you have a fellowship, which is awesome and a real credit to you.

However, if you seriously LOVED School B, then go there.

I would cautiously agree with strokeofmidnight here. I usually tell people to follow the money no matter what. But an MA program at a top-25 undergrad school that will presumably give you a lot of individual attention and a little funding may be better than an onerous teaching load at a program 75+. It's all about which program will push you the most and train you the best, and unfortunately that is just impossible to know at this point. It's a tough decision, but I don't think there's any real wrong choice here.

Personally, I would go with Program A, but I've always been weird about debt and money. For the record, I attended a well-funded but 75+ ranked school for my MA and managed to swing into a much-better-but-still-not-top school for my PhD. I felt that the preparation my low-ranked MA was adequate but not outstanding, though I have no point of comparison. I received merely token assistance on my statement of purpose and writing sample; as far as applications went, I was on my own. (This may support what strokeofmidnight is saying--professors at these split MA/PhD programs are busy helping PhD students write their dissertations and job application letters--they are not invested in seeing an MA student flee their program for Yale).

And that brings to my final note of caution: I always got the sense that the professors at my MA really wanted us to stick around to attend the PhD program there. I felt that they did not want us to "trade up"--because that, of course, would be to imply that our program was something to "trade up" from. They wanted us to stay for the PhD program. I'm not sure if this influenced how they advised us, or how they wrote our LoRs, but I constantly wondered. Ugh.

[rising_star]

I'm not in lit and have never taught comp but, I have to say that I'm surprised to hear people label a 1:2 or 2:1 teaching load as onerous. If you're teaching the same thing twice, then it's only one course prep. Sure, it's grading 50 papers or whatever at a time but, anyone that's a TA has that. In my program, this is the workload for one course as a TA: attend 2 lectures a week given by the lead prof, teach 4 discussion sections per week, grade weekly discussion section homework, grade weekly quizzes, grade exams (3 per semester, plus a final), grade 2 essays (first one is 4-5 pages, second is 7-8 pages). Number of students per TA? 90-100. So, I'm not really sure that having a 2:1 load is any more than that, especially since it'll only require the same number of hours in the classroom as I already spend.

But, more importantly, the decision you really need to make is about whether or not you want to write a master's thesis and how it will look to PhD programs if you don't.

[Historiogaffe]

With these decisions, there really isn't an objective point of view, per se – as these replies are evidencing. So, if you'd like my subjective two cents, I would go for Option B.

As strokeofmidnight mentioned, it's still funded – do you think the grands you'd be adding onto your debt would be manageable? The "follow the money" advice is good, but these are both offering you money, and I tend to take that advice as "don't drop yourself into unmanageable, decades-to-pay-off debt" – not as a code for, "whichever school offers you more money will clearly be a better fit and experience for you." Definitely consider the money, but consider it along with everything else. Campus environment? Profs? Students? Placements? You could even consider something like placement as a more long-term financial consideration.

Plus, American universities seem to go gaga for teaching experience.

[meowmeow]

First of all, a huge thank you to each of you for your responses. You all made the point that there are good, albeit different, arguments for each school. I just needed to figure out which considerations were most important to me.

Last Friday, I was almost positive I was going to go with School A. I was ready to send the DGS an email to accept, but I thought I should go ahead and decline School B (not Villanova, but it also has good placement rates) first. Close the door permanently and all of that. But I couldn't send that email.

On 4/11/2010 at 2:28 PM, speakwrite_ said:

The "follow the money" advice is good, but these are both offering you money, and I tend to take that advice as "don't drop yourself into unmanageable, decades-to-pay-off debt" – not as a code for, "whichever school offers you more money will clearly be a better fit and experience for you."

On 4/8/2010 at 2:43 PM, strokeofmidnight said:

4. Outside of the one professor, which school is a bit fit for your interests? (along the same lines, how committed are you to your interests?).

These comments were especially helpful in reminding myself to stop thinking of this as a strictly financial decision, which is pretty much what I had reduced it down to ... I'd be very grateful for the financial support at School A, but I am far more excited about the courses and program at School B and I think I will ultimately do better work there.

Once again, thank you.

(I am so excited!)

[strokeofmidnight]

On 4/13/2010 at 9:47 PM, meowmeow said:

First of all, a huge thank you to each of you for your responses. You all made the point that there are good, albeit different, arguments for each school. I just needed to figure out which considerations were most important to me.

Last Friday, I was almost positive I was going to go with School A. I was ready to send the DGS an email to accept, but I thought I should go ahead and decline School B (not Villanova, but it also has good placement rates) first. Close the door permanently and all of that. But I couldn't send that email.

These comments were especially helpful in reminding myself to stop thinking of this as a strictly financial decision, which is pretty much what I had reduced it down to ... I'd be very grateful for the financial support at School A, but I am far more excited about the courses and program at School B and I think I will ultimately do better work there.

Once again, thank you.

(I am so excited!)

Congrats on making a decision! I suspect that you would have done well at either programs--but it must feel wonderful to settle into a choice. Excited is definitely the right way to begin a program