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Fit! (the artist formally known as "There's Got to be...")


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So I got extremely lucky this year. Of the 12 schools I applied to, I had two absolute favorites. One rejected me at 8:00 one morning, the other accepted me at 11:39 that same morning. But that's not why I got lucky -- finding that second school at all is where my luck comes in. I didn't even know they had a PhD program; a friend of mine mentioned it to me one afternoon last winter/spring and I decided to check it out (needless to say, they weren't even on my radar during my first go-round with applications two years ago). And BANG, suddenly I'm faced with a program where there's a ton of classes not only in my field, but dealing with my particular critical interests (memory, aesthetics, postmodern theory, art versus fact, etc), a program that's almost identical to the program I imagined as perfect in my head (lots of input from PhDs as to field exams, tailorable language requirements, the chance to design your own seminars to teach as experience, etc), professors who emulate the kind of intellectual I want to be, etc etc etc. And I didn't even know this program existed until about a year ago. What really got me was when I spoke to the DGS when he called to let me know that I was accepted, he was excited to have me in the program because I was such a good fit. I was stunned.

So here's my thought: as I've been on this board, I've noticed that we all seem to apply to the same 20-25 schools with little deviation. But there's no way all of us have the same 20-25 sets of interests, needs, desires, etc etc. I found my school on a fluke, but there's got to be a better way. Prospective students must have some way of finding the programs that fit (or come close to fitting) their interests, intellectual and personal needs, campus feel, etc. We've all been hearing so much about the elusive "fit" being a key factor in the decision process, so there must be a way we can better hone in on this "fit" and be better informed applicants.

I've been giving this a lot of thought because I want other people to enjoy the kind of satisfaction I've been lucky enough to experience this year. This board is overpopulated with bright minds and people who are actually enrolled in more than just those 20-25 departments: is there a way to gather and share our collective knowledge so prospectives can learn more about what schools seem to "fit" them and make better and more informed decisions about applying?

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Rin,

that's so awesome about BC. I discovered how awesome their program was by chatting with someone on this board who was going to BC in the MA program. Before that, it was not on my radar either.

Strangely, my interests are different than yours, but probably only in the way I label them. I like narrative theory, rhetoric, and American Lit from 19-20th century, especially immigre narratives (creation of identity, national identy of former and new homeland, memory). Memory or as you call it art vs. truth are our only overlaps, even though we don't quite describe it the same way, but everything is so inter-related, anyway.

Labelling is one of the things that really confounds the process, I think. That and the fact that most students go into the degree with an interest in one or two things, but still keeping an open mind anyway.

I will say, I like WUSTL's approach. I love that they put practically a "mission statement" on their web site, broken down by century, they pretty clearly articulate the type of questions they ask about each period, noting the following for 20th Century and Later American Literature: "The 20th Century has been called ‘the American Century’ and the faculty in the field variously address the rhetoric and substance of this claim. We have particular interests in modern and contemporary literature within an international and global frame; in peacetime and at war; in the emergence of forms of experimental writing that even as they cross boundaries possess special affinities with evolving characterizations of ‘Americanness.’ Nor are we content to let phrasing such as ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ pass unchallenged. The complex interactions of modernism and modernity stand at the core of the field. When does modernism start? When does it stop? Is it one thing or many? (Among the varieties of modernism we study: American modernists abroad in London and Paris, cinematic modernism, theatrical modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, Afro-Modernism, queer modernism, Jamesian modernism.) Ethnicity, gender, sexuality, race don’t just enter into the picture—they define and redefine it. How adequate is the language of postmodernism to characterize the fiction, poetry and nonfiction prose of the past thirty, forty, fifty years? Politics, science, society, our relations to the natural world and to built environments, to our selves, our bodies, those of others—these all enter into the department’s vigorous investigation of the past century and of the present."  

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rinneron

you should start a "guide to graduate fit"--okay, bad title, sue me!--or at least, someone should start a guide that answers the kind of elegant, necessary questions that you pose in your post. it could even be online, but comprised of info on all the depts, plus first-person, experiential evidence about each one, what they offer, who's teaching/leaving, how--at the end of the day--the applicant might "fit." I know all this is so capricious and random in many ways, but a guide like this would at least go a little ways toward making some applicants better informed and more comfortable in the app process...

just my thought...

to yellow: i did my undergrad at wustl; the english dept is incredible...

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It sounds like what you want is a wiki - reasonably easy to set up, but you get all the downsides of user-generated content (as we see daily on the results page). It's a pretty great idea, though, if someone can devote the time to set-up and monitoring.

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Quote
to yellow: i did my undergrad at wustl; the english dept is incredible...

GG,

I figured. Too bad no one from WUSTL is calling me.

Quote
It sounds like what you want is a wiki - reasonably easy to set up, but you get all the downsides of user-generated content (as we see daily on the results page). It's a pretty great idea, though, if someone can devote the time to set-up and monitoring.

Hmmm. I wonder if the gradcafe would consider a wiki type page called "fit." Or merely something not much more than a permanent tab under the literature subheading so the entry wouldn't get lost in the conversation.

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I think that's a really great idea. If would be really useful because people familar with programs could write about their experiences, profs, impression of the departments, etc. I know that I'm really baffled right now by the fact that I'm apparantly not fitting. . . not sure why not, and I'd love to hear from people in Ph.D. programs at lots of schools about what they think. I'm sure that other disciplines would benefit from this too. Maybe gradcafe would add FIT to the board index and then we could all start threads about different schools and disciplines. I feel like there is only so much you can learn about a program for its website, and I know I simply can't afford to visit all the schools I plan on applying to next year. Should we contact one of the site moderators (is that what the baristas are?) and suggest this? Anyone know how to do that?

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An existing resource that I've found helpful is "ratemyprofessor.com."

Even though these are usually reviews by undergrads of varying seriousness/interest in the field, they are usually weirdly consistent in describing the profs personality. When I look at a schools web site and find 4-5 professors who's area of interest is shared, then I read some of their work, I still can't tell how it would be to communicate with them on a daily/weekly basis for 7 years. If the undergrads like them, that's definitely a plus. If they mostly don't like them because they're "tough" or "don't make any sense" as long as a few voices chime in that they're brilliant but misunderstood, I'm ok with it. If everyone says they go off subject, keep talking about sex no matter what (I've found that for a certain prof at a Boston area school LOL), I think, meh, maybe I'll be writing my thesis on my own with this prof.

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Definite agreement on that front. When I began searching for programs over the summer, I really had NO idea what to expect or to look for. The possibilities are endless, and I ended up doing what I'm sure many do--looked at rankings and began researching those that are ranked highly. I don't feel I'm so specialized as to be severely limited, but how am I to know what programs will fit me on a variety of levels--a strong focus in my interest field, professors that have worked on the things I want to research, professors that could work with *me*, courses that even out with those same focuses (I found many schools that had the kind of faculty I'd like, but these profs weren't teaching on their interests, which could say a lot of different things about the general structure of the system)...? I know the programs I applied to appear to be a good fit for me, and I should presumably be a good fit for them, but I'm not seeing the results now, and so I wonder-where did I go wrong? Specifically with Chapel Hill (with a flat-out rejection) that came as a real shocker, because even if they weren't my top choice/dream school (for un-academic reasons; I remain otherwise impressed), they probably offered the most 'perfect' fit among all the programs I researched. So I wonder what didn't mesh up, and how can I negotiate that problem if I end up reapplying next year.

Again, as people continue to note, this is a crapshoot. And no one seems to be able to explain why--but I think there are astute questions posed here as to why we can't figure these sorts of things out, and what solutions might be offered.

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I agree completely (notice a trend?). This is my second round of applications, and while I am (thank God) into two programs that I think both offer wonderful fits for me, I did not even apply to those schools last time, because I hadn't figured out that they were good fits. This year I looked at all the programs I could reasonably look at, looked up their faculty in my discipline, read at least one article by each one...and still didn't predict my fit very well (although I lucked out in the end, I would not have picked the schools I am into as my best fits). I wish we could have a wiki-style encyclopedia of grad schools, with perhaps each entry broken down by field (i.e. an entry on School X with short descriptions of the general departmental attitude towards study in postmodernism, modernism, early modern, Victorian, etc etc etc). Would probably take up far too much bandwidth, of course...

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Awesome. I'm glad so many people seem on board with this idea; I think we can at least begin the steps to brainstorming and figuring out the steps to integrating some kind of "wiki" page onto the board (who came up with that idea -- unspeakable, right? fantastic, I love it). Does anyone know any of the moderators here, or how to get their attention? HEY MODERATORS! WE HAVE AN IDEA!!!!

I think Yellow's point about labeling being something that makes things more confusing is well taken; what other ways can we organize this "wiki." Obviously, there's by school, but I don't know how much that would help the process. I think everything can be filed under school, but we need to be able to tag things with labels (ha, labels, can't seem to escape) to somewhat organize them. Maybe types/tiers of labels? For instance, first tier would be by school; second tier would be by historical period; third tier by topic/focus (discourse, historiography, aesthetics); fourth tier by critical/theoretical strengths (structuralism, post-colonialism, marxism). I know to some extent this requires some reductive logic ("well, you can't really say this school has just a strong structuralist focus, it really is just an intersection of blah blah blah"), but as long as schools can have multiple labels I think we can protect against "labeling" a school one thing or another. Basically, it would enable someone to browse all the schools that have a strong faculty in, say, post-colonial theory, and cross search with schools that also have an aesthetic focus.

As I'm writing this, I realize it would take a lot of time and work to put together, but nothing worth doing was ever easy. :) And this'll make us all pull out our Norton's and figure out what the hell to call what we're talking about anyway.

And of course, more important than the labels, would be the "user description" (or what have you) of the schools: people who go there talking about what that school "feels" like (ah, feel and fit, ever important and ever elusive). We'd need some people to oversee/edit the labeling and descriptions, to make sure everything stays neutral or what have you (excuse me, it's ten pm, I'm prepped to have an exterminator come Thursday -- ew... -- and my vocabulary has gone out the window), and make sure that no one "user" is writing a million words on a school.

So, anyone with any web know how/connections to the higher aboves have an idea of what we should do to proceed? I think this would be a really good use for this board, and while it strikes a particular intellectual moral chord with me ("You can't label what I'm doing! It's too... interesting?"), I'm willing to put aside the "ethical concerns of academia" in the interest of getting more info about grad programs to more people. :)

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I also agree. I just discovered the perfect MA program for me today. The only problem is that I already have an MA. I just stumbled on this program today - I never would have discovered them when I was applying because they're not ranked. However, they have a excellent faculty in my area of interest, great additional resources, and an excellent record of placing students in good PhD programs.

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Rin,

Maybe simply a forum called "fit" and then each thread could be an area of interest. So if say, you were interested in "memory and perception" but you didn't know any more clearly what you wanted to study, you could start a thread on it, and people could chime in and suggest 1. periods or authors you could focus on (say Enlightenment/Diderot or Post Collonial/Nabokov) But then all sorts of arguments would break out about whether Nabokov is structuralist or post-structuralist or post-collonial or what.

Once that fight dies down, current students could sing the praises of their favorite professor...except once grad students start working on their thesis, they don't tend to surf the forum very much :(

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I understand everyone's enthusiasm for the wiki idea, but have to say that two things raised my eyebrows. I am glad that BC is a perfect fit, but there are probably 100 people just on this forum who could say the say thing and BC only let's in a couple of applicants every year.

The main thing is, putting up a wiki describing departments' strengths seems a bit odd. I don't know about other people, but when I did my research for schools, I went through every school's faculty page and looked over the faculty related to my field. I looked over their published works; have they published in the last 5 years? Do I like their style? etc... I compiled a 30 page document that listed job placement statistics, faculty interests, funding notes, etc...

Out of the 13 schools (well, 12, because I screwed up the date for one) I applied to, I could say that I would be a perfect fit at 4. There were smart people in my field (20th C. Lit and narratology) who I liked a lot. Then I applied to schools that would be great to be at, though they may not match me perfectly. And I applied to schools that I was hoping would be easier to get into (though, I've learned my lessons about safeties).

I agree that there seems to be a complete lack of imagination at times, with people applying to the same schools and throwing out cliches like aim for the stars when talking about applying to Yale. But I think the idea that there is one perfect love and that once you find it, you're sure to get in... boy I wish that were true, but I'm afraid the schools may not see me in the same light.

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Books,

You're totally right, the "strongest" schools, those 20-30 that everyone seems interested in have the best JOB placement once you're done. It's not about prestige or some perception that you learn more, but the professional preparation aspect of these schools that gets them on those top 50 lists and gets them flooded with apps.

But I do like Rin's suggestion for the lesser known schools. There are some gems out there, particularly in the MA programs. These programs don't show up in the job placement numbers as often as the PhD programs, because people usually complete more schooling before taking a crack at the job market.

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I think that this is a really great idea! I agree with the previous poster that you have to think about faculty fit as well as schools, but at the same time, I do believe that individual schools, campuses, etc. have "feels," cultures, or preferred scholarly approaches. God help you, for instance, if you apply to Harvard without knowing that it's largely New Historicist. It seems that when I speak to senior people in the field, they're able to articulate the cultures of the schools and programs, but I've never found a resource that describes them clearly. So this could be it!

One quick note on organization: although it's not at all ideal, I think that we should organize the resource by school name/program name. I agree that this method has problems and that it lacks some of the advantages of the other way, but I think it's somewhat more practicable for the following reasons:

a) If we try to organize it by topic/research focus, the whole page will likely splinter or metastasize. In my field, for instance, we might have one person posting on "medieval women mystics" and another person posting on "early women's preaching," whereas really all of those topics are so related that they could most usefully be grouped (they are not the same topic, but they overlap enormously). In other words, it would be almost impossible, I think, to develop a rational method of topical organization that everybody could agree on. We would have schism after schism after schism (sorry, another religion reference :) ).

B) There are literally thousands and thousands of possible "areas of interest." Trying to organize the page by areas of interest would result in a huge number of pages that would be difficult to browse through. However, the number of programs out there is somewhat smaller (still huge, but more finite), so it might provide a more successful grouping strategy.

c) Most of us browse this site obsessively anyway. :) Once the info is there, people will link to other program pages, etc., and the site will end up being usefully cross-referenced by topic over time (in a de facto way, not in a formal way), or so I expect.

I hope this happens; I think it will be seriously awesome if it does.

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Loft,

a more general description of each schools dominant approach would be an awesome resource to have. Tufts, for example, is heavily influenced by Gender theory. True, many faculty profiles include gender theory or queer theory, but I didn't realize how dominant the approach was until AFTER I applied, and that is not really my main area of interest, though I wouldn't necessarily avoid it, (and that's why I went ahead and applied, thinking there would be room for other approaches too). A current grad student there informed me this is not the case.

Also, I did not know that Harvard was primarily new historicism.

I think this thread is better than a wiki page.

Rin, can you change the initial thread title so the word "fit" is in there and it comes up on searches better?

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Yay! I'm so glad this page is starting to answer it's own question. Although, as Books pointed out, the most important thing is researching the school directly, I think something like this is a great way to get started. It's impossible (and incredibly daunting) to research every school under the sun, especially when you haven't heard of many of them, just to find the ones outside the most well known programs that are strong in your area. And of course we can include info about faculty as well -- anything that can help prospective appliers!

Yellow, I'd love to change the title of this to "Fit" -- how do I do that? I'm an idiot when it comes to that sort of thing... :oops:

And my two cents on a program: WashU has greats strengths in 19th/20th/21st century, women/gender studies, and African-American Literature. For those interested in Spenser, they also have Joe Loewenstein who is said to be serving on the editorial board of Spenser Studies. What you may not know? There's been a lot of moving towards encouraging more interdisciplinary strengths with roots in English.  They have classes funded by the Mellon Foundation, offer summer fellowships which students design and build humanity projects, and you could obtain a dual PHD degree in English and Comparative Literature.

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Yellow, I'd love to change the title of this to "Fit" -- how do I do that?

On the initial post, there is a "button" called Edit. It should bring up your original post and allow you to make changes.

The post-colonial people do mainly India-England relations

I've seen Irish Lit referred to as "post-colonial" as well.

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The one grad program of which I have recent and direct experience is Harvard's, because I've been cross-registering for their English seminars and bumming around for the last two years. (FYI, I was rejected for the Ph.D., so don't accuse me of name-dropping! :) ) I have entirely positive things to say about the faculty: I probably would have stayed if I could in spite of my better judgment re: fit. Cautions:

*The bureaucracy of the university is a nightmare: I finally resigned myself to treating my registration paperwork, etc., as an extra seminar/course, creating a pocket for it in my accordion file and assigning approximately the same amount of time per week to bureaucratic snafus that I did to my less demanding classes. (My situation was particularly complex, but still: watch out.)

*Context is in; situating literature with respect to large bodies of fact (whether autobiographical, historical, or cultural) is in. Conversely, at least in some subfields, it would be hard to put together a dissertation committee of people who cared a lot about purely theoretical work. In this respect maybe it's the opposite of Tufts.

*Yes, there is a generals exam, and yes, you will be held responsible for something approximating the entire canon, and yes, at least as of now, to the best of my knowledge, everybody in every subfield is responsible for the same very large list of works. If you are not committed to the literary tradition in an essentially broad or integral sense, you may find the process especially onerous.

Hidden positives:

*In addition to its other obvious strengths, it's a wonderful, wonderful place to be if you love poetry of any era. What's more, the city of Cambridge is a great place for poets and poetry.

*The canon thing...the program is constructed in such a way that you really will be acquainted with the tradition of English literature in the fullest possible sense by the time you leave.

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The one grad program of which I have recent and direct experience is Harvard's, because I've been cross-registering for their English seminars and bumming around for the last two years. (FYI, I was rejected for the Ph.D., so don't accuse me of name-dropping! :) ) I have entirely positive things to say about the faculty: I probably would have stayed if I could in spite of my better judgment re: fit. Cautions:

*The bureaucracy of the university is a nightmare: I finally resigned myself to treating my registration paperwork, etc., as an extra seminar/course, creating a pocket for it in my accordion file and assigning approximately the same amount of time per week to bureaucratic snafus that I did to my less demanding classes. (My situation was particularly complex, but still: watch out.)

*Context is in; situating literature with respect to large bodies of fact (whether autobiographical, historical, or cultural) is in. Conversely, at least in some subfields, it would be hard to put together a dissertation committee of people who cared a lot about purely theoretical work. In this respect maybe it's the opposite of Tufts.

*Yes, there is a generals exam, and yes, you will be held responsible for something approximating the entire canon, and yes, at least as of now, to the best of my knowledge, everybody in every subfield is responsible for the same very large list of works. If you are not committed to the literary tradition in an essentially broad or integral sense, you may find the process especially onerous.

Hidden positives:

*In addition to its other obvious strengths, it's a wonderful, wonderful place to be if you love poetry of any era. What's more, the city of Cambridge is a great place for poets and poetry.

*The canon thing...the program is constructed in such a way that you really will be acquainted with the tradition of English literature in the fullest possible sense by the time you leave.

I would agree with most of this (I went there undergrad, but have been double-rejected for the Ph.D., so who knows if what I think about the department is right, but here goes anyway). The university is VERY bureaucratic for cross-registration, but much less so for internal registration (a single bubbled-in form usually does the trick). Still, if something DOES go wrong, it can take a long time to fix (it took an entire extra semester for the university to realize I had in fact passed my classes at my study abroad institution and I was in fact going to graduate). Context IS huge, poetry IS a major strength, and breadth IS emphasized. And they can be very blunt about it when they think you don't have enough breadth in the general - one person I know was asked, point blank "well, is there anything you think you could say about any poem?" when she, a modernist, had trouble with a question about sixteenth-century sonnets. But because of that, you do end up with grad students who know a lot more about the broad sweep of literature than you do in some other places.

Also, it can take a long time to graduate. I don't think my two freshman-year TFs, who were both G4 then, have graduated yet, and I'm a year out of college (and they aren't the only ones in their cohort still around). They might have gotten out last year, but that would be 8 years.

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Rinneron,

Nice job on the name change!

And yeah, NYU does have a strong Irish group -- thanks for pointing that out Yellow, I forgot to mention it.

Boston College seems to have quite a good Irish Lit department too. I suppose that is because both NYU and BC are near an "Irish Riviera" i.e., Rockaway Beach in Queens NY and Boston's South Shore. :)

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Maybe I can cue into my Irish ancestry while I'm up there!

NYU does have some Enlightenment and 18th century people, but the classes offered and available profs in that area are severely lacking. I have a friend in the MA program whose focus is 18th century/Enlightenment/Romanticism, and she's been disappointed with the options available to her. They're a little heavier on the Romanticism side of things, but for some reason even those professors seem absent from the community. It could be that, since being an MA at NYU can be a very fragmentary and disheartening experience, she just doesn't have the same access to the people working in that area that the PhDs have, but she's excited to leave for elsewhere for her PhD in order to be somewhere that more strongly supports her interests.

That being said, applying there as an 18th century person may help your application, since the last few years have seen a surge of Early Modern/Medieval/Renaissance acceptances! I think the cohort last year had 4 or 5 in that area of 11 total acceptances, and the year before was comparable.

Let me ask around a bit more about the 18th century thing and post again about it if I discover anything new; I think putting out feelers should give me a more complete idea of how we stand with that area.

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Thanks, rinneron!

I find what you say to be very surprising because the Enlightenment/18th cen people that are at NYU are some of the really big names in the field, from what I know. That being said, I was a little disappointed by their course offerings when I last checked (only one -- maybe two courses in my field, and the rest are in fields totally irrelevant to my research). And the school where I'm most likely to attend this year is actually in the consortium, so that's a bit of a consolation. Looking forward to updates from you :)

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