Choosing program based on overall strength in subject vs. potential advisors

[Grizbert]

I am applying to PhD programs in English Lit, and my interests are medieval / women's studies / Jewish studies / history of the book. I am trying to narrow it down to ten programs to which I will apply.

I already have an MA and a pretty darn specific idea of what I am looking for regarding advising, research, and dissertation topic, involving the above topics. Therefore, I am considering the breadth of advising potential and resources across these areas and giving special considerations to universities with strong Medieval Studies, History of the Book, Women's and Gender Studies, and Jewish Studies programs, along with significant relevant collections (or proximity to them).

Should I be targeting programs with overall strengths across these areas, even if there is no "obvious" or "perfect fit" advisor for my pet topic / specialization intention, or should I focus on programs with tenured faculty doing very similar work (there are a few)? As an example, would it better to go to say, Berkeley (which is consistently well regarded in English, and has a good placement record in medieval and early modern) or somewhere that is less strong overall, such as Texas or Wisconsin, but which has a "perfect fit" potential advisor and decent supplemental programs/resources?

Thoughts?

[BelleOfKilronen]

Hi, Grizbert,

I'd recommend, if given the option, not choosing a school based on a "perfect fit" potential advisor for a few reasons, the biggest one being that, unless you have intimate knowledge of the department's goings-on, you have no way of knowing whether or not this person will be at the institution for the duration of your time there. I have several friends in my program who applied in order to work with a specific faculty member who, in all likelihood, will be leaving at the end of this year for reasons that they were not privy to as applicants. (We also have a fabulous new senior professor who moved here from a great program this summer, and his old institution still has his faculty profile up on their site. Yikes!)

On a more personal level, I ultimately chose the program I did because there isn't anyone here exploring the same questions I am interested in. Instead, there are a lot of really awesome, open-minded faculty members who are interested in my (admittedly inchoate) ideas despite the fact that they don't align neatly with their own. This set-up gives me a bit more room to develop my own ideas without falling into the scholar-worship I might have if I were working closely with someone whose work was directly influential to my way of thinking; at the same time, it means that I have to work a little bit harder to convince my advisors of the validity of my arguments, since, while interested and supportive, they don't necessarily gravitate to the same theoretical frameworks that I do. Though I can only speculate at this stage in the game, I'm anticipating that this sort of "cross-pollination" will make my writing stronger once I start publishing.

[Grizbert]

Thanks, BelleOfKilronen!

From my initial research, based on the "perfect fit potential advisor" approach, I am leaning toward a broader view, and your points make great sense. This also leaves room to apply to some high prestige programs that can offer a broad range of medieval scholars, great collections and other resources, as well as good funding packages. I definitely don't want to apply anywhere with only one tenured professor working in my area, or where the scholar whose work interests me is untenured. And your thoughts on avoiding being a fanboy while formulating your own unqiue approach are also very convincing.

[BelleOfKilronen]

Glad to have helped in some little way, Grizbert--

I found myself facing a very similar conundrum last year during acceptance time. The fact that you're asking these sorts of questions before you apply means to me you're ahead of the game ... or at least doing better than I was at this stage

[Neuronista]

I'd recommend, if given the option, not choosing a school based on a "perfect fit" potential advisor for a few reasons, the biggest one being that, unless you have intimate knowledge of the department's goings-on, you have no way of knowing whether or not this person will be at the institution for the duration of your time there. I have several friends in my program who applied in order to work with a specific faculty member who, in all likelihood, will be leaving at the end of this year for reasons that they were not privy to as applicants. (We also have a fabulous new senior professor who moved here from a great program this summer, and his old institution still has his faculty profile up on their site. Yikes!)

I don't know if this is common in your field, but for us, science applicants, we usually contact professors whose work we find interesting and actually ask them if they will be available the following year and if they are willing to take new graduate students. Couldn't you guys do that too to be on the safe side?

[Grizbert]

Thanks, PhS Pharmacist. I do plan to do that. I am currently contacting grad students, and will start contacting professors in the next couple of weeks. For the most part, this seems to be done in humanities, too.

[Timshel]

I have a few comments.

First, I think it could be good to apply to a mix of schools that are good for your field AND some schools that have specific people working on similar topics.

Also, I know that in the sciences it is common to contact professors and possible people to work with, but is it really that common in English? And if so, what do you actually say? I'm not sure if this is something I should be doing or not.

[Grizbert]

From what I have heard/read, you want to have a decent grasp on that professor's general work and have read and liked their recent publications. Then you just email them cold to ask about any questions you have regarding their research, your interests, and whether you're a good "fit" for the program. Or you might contact the graduate advisor/coordinator first to ask if faculty are open to this type of communication.

[runonsentence]

From what I understand (having a partner in the lab sciences), it's a bit different from the sciences in that faculty use grant money they've earned for the lab to take on new graduate students. Contacting POIs in the sciences is about finding out if they have the money, available projects, space, etc. to take on a new student. Whereas in the humanities, it's not so much "can you take on a grad student" as much as it is seeing if s/he is interested in the work you do (and might one day want to advise you and work with you on your dissertation).

[bdon19]

Also, I know that in the sciences it is common to contact professors and possible people to work with, but is it really that common in English? And if so, what do you actually say? I'm not sure if this is something I should be doing or not.

Yes, this is something I've been wondering, too. I recently e-mailed a student at a school I was interested in, and she proved EXTREMELY helpful. She copied the professor in my area of interest on the e-mail, and, while he hasn't yet responded, I got some invaluable advice from the student, even though the program itself ended up not being a very good fit.

I think, based on the feedback I got from her, I'm going to start off by contacting current students at various programs I'm interested in. It's a little less intimidating than contacting professors directly, and they can really give you a feel for what you're getting into. For instance, I contacted this student because there were only 2 profs in my field at the school. She informed me that, actually, one of them now has taken on a strictly administrative role, and as there are currently 4 students in the field working with only 1 faculty member, they may not even be taking on new students in the area for this year. That saved me $65 right there, and a struggle with trying to tailor my SoP to a specific prof.

I think I'm going to contact as many students as I can for the time being and, as the school year comes a bit closer, maybe try to get over my fears of professors and e-mail them.

...Though I'm not sure how easy that might be. I only just sent an e-mail to a prof. I'm really close to, because the more I like/respect someone the more afraid I am of them. I hesitated for the longest time because I wasn't positive if I was on a first-name basis with her (I was), and her response was basically, "Don't freak out. When you get back on campus I'll buy you a drink, give you the nerdy literary gift I bought you, and then we'll talk grad school." So, maybe my fears are a bit unwarranted.

[runonsentence]

Yes, contacting current students is a must! Speaking as a current student, I know I'm always happy to help guide a prospective student who contacts me. And I'd even go so far as to say, once acceptances start coming out, you shouldn't consider attending a school unless you've had a chance to speak with current grads. Especially ones you contact on your own (not ones asked to contact you and talk up the program)—they can give you the nitty gritty.

[Grizbert]

This is all also true. I am finding current students very helpful, too. Especially regarding programs' theoretical approaches, collegiality, etc.

[Timshel]

I wondered about contacting current students, so I'm glad you mentioned that.

There is one instructor in particular that I am considering contacting because her publications are EXACTLY the type of stuff I am looking to do, so I would love to work with her, but she is one of those professors that is primarily in a different department but also teaches a few classes in the English department, so I want to make sure that she would be able to be on my committee, because if not, I wouldn't want to mention it in the SOP, and I may not even apply there at all, beings she is the biggest selling point of that school.

[Neuronista]

Thanks all for giving the idea of contacting current students! I must consider doing this myself.

But what kind of questions do you ask them? And what kind of info are they allowed to give out?

Personally, I would like to know how good a particular prof. is as an advisor and mentor. For example, someone may be an excellent, highly reputable researcher but is not readily available for his/her students, or perhaps may be ill-tempered (which I cannot stand, personally). Can I ask current students about such issues (of course stated more politely ).

What else can I ask them?

[Phil Sparrow]

Personally, I would like to know how good a particular prof. is as an advisor and mentor. For example, someone may be an excellent, highly reputable researcher but is not readily available for his/her students, or perhaps may be ill-tempered (which I cannot stand, personally). Can I ask current students about such issues (of course stated more politely ).

In all honesty, you probably won't get very frank answers to questions like these until you've already been admitted. Grad students (myself included) often shout from the rooftops about professors we love, but are unwilling to give the real nitty-gritty until more of a connection is made (either personally, if we meet you and like you, or professionally, like when you've been admitted to the program and we want to give you honest counsel about accepting the offer or not).

[Grizbert]

Phil Sparrow, this is definitely the feel I'm getting from my queries so far. 95% of the current students I've approached have been very helpful and delightfully garrulous. I have heard very few remotely negative comments about faculty, but I have gotten several extremely positive, practically giddy responses on certain professors, such as "Professor X is the most collegial, professional, helpful person ever." Which is good to know.

[Neuronista]

I have heard very few remotely negative comments about faculty, but I have gotten several extremely positive, practically giddy responses on certain professors, such as "Professor X is the most collegial, professional, helpful person ever." Which is good to know.

That sounds fair enough! I don't think if a professor wasn't really helpful a student would be happy to talk about him/her in such a manner, and that is good to know. If a professor was not such a great person, the student might only give, as you said, a remotely negative comment or even avoid the question, which I would take as a warning sign.

So, how else can can current students help me?

[i'm getting real excited now. I want to start sending out those e-mails ]

[bdon19]

So, how else can can current students help me?

[i'm getting real excited now. I want to start sending out those e-mails ]

I'm getting very excited, too! Honestly, I think maybe the best way to go is to start out with some more general questions about the program itself and how well it might fit in terms of your interests. Then you can test the waters as far as how responsive the students are, and perhaps go from there with more questions. At least, I think that's what I'm going to do.

Also, does anyone know how we might go about getting names of students to contact when a directory isn't posted directly on the school's web page?

[Grizbert]

Email the graduate coordinator. Take with grain of salt, however: the department is unlikely to give you the names of any students who will be less than positive.

[Timshel]

I'm getting very excited, too! Honestly, I think maybe the best way to go is to start out with some more general questions about the program itself and how well it might fit in terms of your interests. Then you can test the waters as far as how responsive the students are, and perhaps go from there with more questions. At least, I think that's what I'm going to do.

Also, does anyone know how we might go about getting names of students to contact when a directory isn't posted directly on the school's web page?

Most of the schools have a list of the current grad students with their email addresses.