Lit Subject Test ... saying farewell?

[EliotsProtege]

I just registered to retake my GRE's and Subject test yesterday, only to find out today as I registered accounts for the schools I'm applying that almost all of the schools have decided no longer to require it. If Yale and UVA weren't such traditionalists I could breathe easy and not stress about it. Are other fields of study doing the same? Is this a skewed sampled or are other Lit PhD seekers finding the subject test less and less relevant?

[newms]

In my area, Computer Science, I don't know of any school that requires the subject test. Some schools recommend it, but none I know of requires it. In fact I've heard that the very top schools pay no attention to it at all. I think around 2,500 people do the Computer Science test each year (worldwide), so its not particularly popular among the thousands of people that apply to grad school each year in Computer Science.

[Branwen daughter of Llyr]

I'm applying to 10-13 schools this year, and nearly all of them still require the Lit subject test (although I wish they didn't) - only 4 schools listed the test as not required or optional. Unfortunately, all my top choices (except Northwestern) still require the damn thing.

*sigh*.

[rachaelski]

My program, PhD in Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies, does not even require the GRE! However, it is quite fitting we wouldn't, as we look at education through a sociocultural lens. It really wouldn't make sense for a program that focuses so much on individual learning experiences to use standardized testing!

[DrFaustus666]

I have to put in my two cents, and I bet it'll be an unpopular opinion. Maybe I should just shut up and let the world turn as it sees fit.

I am in the middle of an MA program in Germanic Studies, 25 years after finishing my first master's degree, in music (performance). When I signed up for Germanic Studies, I thought I'd be reading everything Goethe and Schiller and Heine and Marx and Freud and Kafka and Günther Grass ever wrote.

It turns out that the only thing really German about the program I'm in is that the classes are all taught in German and the readings are (almost) all in German. But "Germanic Studies" is, at my august institution, really more like Cross-Cultural-Studies/Women'sStudies/QueerStudies/TurksLivingInGermanyStudies/PostColonialism/PostStructuralism/NewHistoricism/PostThisIsmAndPostThatIsm.

When I mentioned this in class once (big mistake!) the professor answered that there was nothing stopping me from reading Schiller and Goethe if I want to, but "Cultural Studies is where it's at" (yes, the professor said those words in English).

So, I'm not sure I'll ever finish this MA program---for various reasons, not just the above reason.

I'm not even sure why I'm writing this ... I certainly don't wish to put extra burdens on anyone else ... but it seems to me if your degree is to read "XXXX in English" there ought to be a certain minimum familiarity with English literature AND coursework ought to focus on English literature. Certainly it's appropriate to study all the trends in literary theory and criticism and relate them back to literature. But to abandon the requirement of some familiarity with literature seems to me to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater (for non-native speakers of English, this colloquial saying means "going waaaaayyyyy too far" with a good thing, until it becomes a bad thing.

OK enough said. I'll probably generate 20 or 30 red marks for this, and thus lose my current "good" reputation on this forum, but it seems to me there ought to be some minimum standard of knowledge in the subject area: not necessarily a GRE Subject Test, mind you ... but the gradual erosion of the various subject tests seems symptomatic of something larger, at least in liberal arts.

My very personal and probably unpopular but honest opinion.

John

[intextrovert]

I'm not even sure why I'm writing this ... I certainly don't wish to put extra burdens on anyone else ... but it seems to me if your degree is to read "XXXX in English" there ought to be a certain minimum familiarity with English literature AND coursework ought to focus on English literature. Certainly it's appropriate to study all the trends in literary theory and criticism and relate them back to literature. But to abandon the requirement of some familiarity with literature seems to me to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater (for non-native speakers of English, this colloquial saying means "going waaaaayyyyy too far" with a good thing, until it becomes a bad thing.

OK enough said. I'll probably generate 20 or 30 red marks for this, and thus lose my current "good" reputation on this forum, but it seems to me there ought to be some minimum standard of knowledge in the subject area: not necessarily a GRE Subject Test, mind you ... but the gradual erosion of the various subject tests seems symptomatic of something larger, at least in liberal arts.

I just think you misunderstand what the Lit GRE is and what's on it. First of all, there's as much theory on the test as primary text, which you seem to think is tangential to an English PhD. It's not. It's central and has always been central - you're always using some sort of theory when you write about literature, so as a serious academic you have to be able to do so self-consciously. Also, even if you have a "minimum familiarity with English literature" and coursework focuses on literature, it doesn't mean you'll do well on the trivia quiz known as the Lit GRE. Especially since the idea of a "canon" becomes almost meaningless in the 20th century or so since it's so vast and cuts across all sorts of national boundaries, and because "non-canonical" stuff becomes more important, if you get something like 70% of the questions on the test right, you'll land safely in the 90-something percentiles. So basically a lot of it is luck, whether the particular passages you get happen to be ones you know.

I mean, I like trivia. I did pretty well on the thing. But it's because I learned a lot of superficial factoids (Tristram Shandy was written in 1760-1770, not 1730-1740!), not because I have a broad/deep knowledge of literature in English. Doesn't really say much about what kind of scholarship you're going to be able to produce.

Edit: I should say, too, that I don't necessarily disagree that there ought to be some standard of knowledge base for people going into PhD programs in literature. But I honestly don't think it's possible to stuff that into a standardized test - that particular knowledge base will be more individual than that, and I think adcoms are capable of applying those sort of customized and nuanced standards to applicants better than ETS.

Edited September 4, 2010 by intextrovert

[Branwen daughter of Llyr]

I just think you misunderstand what the Lit GRE is and what's on it. First of all, there's as much theory on the test as primary text, which you seem to think is tangential to an English PhD. It's not. It's central and has always been central - you're always using some sort of theory when you write about literature, so as a serious academic you have to be able to do so self-consciously. Also, even if you have a "minimum familiarity with English literature" and coursework focuses on literature, it doesn't mean you'll do well on the trivia quiz known as the Lit GRE. Especially since the idea of a "canon" becomes almost meaningless in the 20th century or so since it's so vast and cuts across all sorts of national boundaries, and because "non-canonical" stuff becomes more important, if you get something like 70% of the questions on the test right, you'll land safely in the 90-something percentiles. So basically a lot of it is luck, whether the particular passages you get happen to be ones you know.

I mean, I like trivia. I did pretty well on the thing. But it's because I learned a lot of superficial factoids (Tristram Shandy was written in 1760-1770, not 1730-1740!), not because I have a broad/deep knowledge of literature in English. Doesn't really say much about what kind of scholarship you're going to be able to produce.

Edit: I should say, too, that I don't necessarily disagree that there ought to be some standard of knowledge base for people going into PhD programs in literature. But I honestly don't think it's possible to stuff that into a standardized test - that particular knowledge base will be more individual than that, and I think adcoms are capable of applying those sort of customized and nuanced standards to applicants better than ETS.

Hear Hear!

Isn't the basic knowledge the fact that most PhD applicants to English Lit MUST have at LEAST 30 hours of upper division work in English? (i.e. a Major in their undergrad. or an MA?)

I hated the subject GRE - it was one of the most difficult endeavors I've ever had to go through - since most of the questions were about obscure things I've never seen before, and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much theory (I was a traditionalist in my BA - Medieval & Renaissance all the way, mostly close reading).

At least I managed to scourge up a score just high enough that I don't have to take it again....

[DrFaustus666]

intextrovert wrote:

I just think you misunderstand what the Lit GRE is and what's on it. First of all, there's as much theory on the test as primary text, which you seem to think is tangential to an English PhD. It's not. It's central and has always been central - you're always using some sort of theory when you write about literature, so as a serious academic you have to be able to do so self-consciously.

Branwen wrote:

Isn't the basic knowledge the fact that most PhD applicants to English Lit MUST have at LEAST 30 hours of upper division work in English? (i.e. a Major in their undergrad. or an MA?)

You're both right of course. Intextrovert, "misunderstand" is clearly the right word. Branwen, "at least 30 hours of upper division work" should be a minimum, yes I agree wholeheartedly.

Probably I should have investigated XYZ university's program aims more carefully before deciding to attend that university based on (1) price (in-state tuition); (2) convenient location---10 minutes by auto from my home, where I still have a full-time 40-hour/week day job and my childrens' undergraduate tuition (approx 75,000 US$) to pay)---and (3) the fact that XYZ-U routinely schedules graduate classes in the evenings, in order to allow the teaching assistants to teach lower-level undergraduate classes during daylight hours.

I've been reliably informed that ABC-university (located probably 20 miles/32km from my home, and far more expensive than XYZ university) focuses much more on close reading of traditional German literature at an advanced level.

By the way, I DO see the point of studying all sorts of influences in the rapidly flattening world (as Thomas Friedman so aptly puts it). But something deep inside me still says that Shakespeare is better literature, and more deserving of my close study, than the pop-up adverts on the Internet --- even if those adverts are an expression and reflection of modern culture.

So my dissatisfaction is a combination of ignorance, economics, and some kind of fundamental dislike of globalization--an old man's grumbles.

[augustquail]

I just think you misunderstand what the Lit GRE is and what's on it. First of all, there's as much theory on the test as primary text, which you seem to think is tangential to an English PhD. It's not. It's central and has always been central - you're always using some sort of theory when you write about literature, so as a serious academic you have to be able to do so self-consciously. Also, even if you have a "minimum familiarity with English literature" and coursework focuses on literature, it doesn't mean you'll do well on the trivia quiz known as the Lit GRE. Especially since the idea of a "canon" becomes almost meaningless in the 20th century or so since it's so vast and cuts across all sorts of national boundaries, and because "non-canonical" stuff becomes more important, if you get something like 70% of the questions on the test right, you'll land safely in the 90-something percentiles. So basically a lot of it is luck, whether the particular passages you get happen to be ones you know.

I mean, I like trivia. I did pretty well on the thing. But it's because I learned a lot of superficial factoids (Tristram Shandy was written in 1760-1770, not 1730-1740!), not because I have a broad/deep knowledge of literature in English. Doesn't really say much about what kind of scholarship you're going to be able to produce.

Edit: I should say, too, that I don't necessarily disagree that there ought to be some standard of knowledge base for people going into PhD programs in literature. But I honestly don't think it's possible to stuff that into a standardized test - that particular knowledge base will be more individual than that, and I think adcoms are capable of applying those sort of customized and nuanced standards to applicants better than ETS.

Yes, Intextrovert!

Also- Just to put my stats in: 5 out of the 12 schools I'm applying to require the lit test, and 1 "recommends" it. I think the lit test requirment is fading somewhat, but traditional programs will probably require it forever. When are you guys taking it? (my test date is oct. 9) I haven't studied too much yet since I have to take the general test in five days. What kind of study methods are you using?