Comparative Literature, 2013

[Marie-Luise]

Ah, I see. I trust I did not come off as too arch in my comment earlier. Not getting accepted to Harvard (a possibility) is definitely no reflection on your merits. For what it's worth, I am (was) an international student as well, in 2005. I've since changed residency status, but when I took the GRE in 2009, it was still as an international student. I don't know where you're from, but I found that the GRE rewards simply playing by the GRE rulebook. You're discouraged from writing in your own voice and it works best if you simply spit out a rather banal essay in the GRE style. You may want to take it again, if you decide to reapply. 

 

As far as publications go, I can't really help you there--I'd suggest speaking to any faculty member you've been in contact with. I'm sure Harvard, like any top department, has international representation in their student body, so it may be worth reaching out to them. 

 

I am German, but doing the PhD in Ireland. I will defo retake the GRE; I guess I didn't play with the book enough and I also ran out of time in a lot of the sections.

I have been in contact with two Comp Lit grads, one in person and one on Academia. And one Faculty member. I'll ask their advice when the time is rife.

 

As for feedback, I will do that in April. What I need to know is if the rejection was based on elements that I have control over (GRE, writing sample, SOP or publications) or elements that I have no (longer) control over (the fact that it's for a second PhD; focus of the dept etc). Because if it is the latter, then it's a waste of my time to reapply.

 

Thanks for the heads-up though.

[getoutofmyhouse]

how's it going, everyone?

[ghijklmn]

From the results board, I see that someone was wait listed at Michigan? Congrats! I still haven't heard anything yet and keep checking my e-mail compulsively... Anyone else not heard back yet?

[jiajia]

I have heard nothing from Michigan

[Hilda]

Can anyone claim the Princeton acceptance? Congratulations! Do you know whether you are likely to accept their offer? Where else did you get into?

[ghijklmn]

I have heard nothing from Michigan

 

And now it's the weekend, dagnabbit!

[Taco Superior]

I am German, but doing the PhD in Ireland. I will defo retake the GRE; I guess I didn't play with the book enough and I also ran out of time in a lot of the sections.

 

I was never great with standardized tests, partly because no one told me how important it is to study systematically for them. The timing element is the hardest part I think. When I would just read through sample questions and answer them at my own pace: no big deal. But turn that clock on, and it's murder.

 

This time around I made myself take timed sample tests every day for the few days leading up to the test so that I would be used to the pace. This made a big difference and I ended up with a perfect score on the verbal, not because of being particularly smart but mostly from preparing well I think.

[heliogabalus]

Marie-Luise, why do you want to get a second PhD? Is your first PhD in something literary? While I'm in no position to know what the admissions committee is thinking, my guess would be that if you're finishing up your PhD, they would be expecting you to be turning your thesis into a publication, getting a university job, and publishing a lot of articles, not going for one more PhD.

[Fishbucket]

I was thinking the same thing. Why would anyone need 2 PhDs?

[Swagato]

^ This is actually something I thought about, but did not comment on earlier. That "two PhDs" may indeed be a cause for concern, especially at places like Harvard where, let's face it, the priority is on producing the next generation of scholars. There would have to be very compelling arguments for the second PhD in order to convince an adcom to take the risk.

[dida]

I also have received no news from Harvard, but actually AM considering it an implicit rejection. I don't particularly feel like emailing the department, although I'd rather have an official rejection now. Apparently there is some sort of budget meeting going on tomorrow regarding funding, but I don't know if the one acceptance on here was notified as the first person or as the last person.

I thought I was a perfect fit topically for my POI and that I had the skills they wanted too.

If I get rejected, I assume is for any combination of the following reasons:

 

1. It's for a second PhD and Harvard doesn't want to do this

 

2. My GRE was too low (69%V/27%Q/4.0W)

 

3. My writing sample was too weak

 

4. This one is tentative: maybe I wasn't explicit enough in my writing sample

 

5. I said I wanted to focus on Med Latin although my training is in Celtic; I have done a number of Latin courses

 

6. I have no publications even though I am at the end of my PhD.

 

That's what I think. I have great language skills and really good letters of rec. So, I don't think they were the reason.

 

And then people kept saying how political these meetings get; that profs will fight other profs to get certain candidates in.

 

I will reapply next year.

 

 

As an international student I found the GRE incredibly hard; we aren't used to this type of standardised testing.

 

As for publications, in the UK/Irish system PhDs work differently and in my programme we weren't particularly encouraged to present/publish until well into the PhD. This is changing now and I wish I had known this earlier. A lot of people start publishing articles once they have finished the thesis. The attitude is pretty much "wait until you have something to say". 

I am not trying to find excuses; I should have known that American universities and especially Harvard don't really care for the differences. They want everyone to conform to their system.

Hi Marie-Luise,

What did you write in your statement of purpose about your interest in pursuing a second PhD? I imagine it would be fairly challenging to make an argument that both demonstrates that you will make a substantial contribution to the field AND somehow manages to explain why, in your first PhD, you didn't accomplish enough to make a postdoctoral fellowship or professorship your obvious next step. If you didn't accomplish enough in your first PhD, then why should Harvard believe that you will in your second? And if you did have impressive accomplishments in your first PhD, then why do you need a second one?

I see your explanation about the UK/Irish system working differently, but to be honest it doesn't come across as a very compelling argument. You write that you were "not particularly encouraged to present/publish until well into the PhD" and you felt you were expected to wait until you had "something to say"... This is understandable, but aren't you now "well into the PhD" and haven't you discovered that you have something to say? I don't think top-tier American universities "just want everyone to conform to their system" -- I think they want to see concrete proof that you've already made a significant contribution to research/academia. And if you DID provide impressive examples of your work in your application, then it's hard to understand why you're essentially starting over instead of moving on up. Maybe it would be easier to make an outstanding impression as a first-time PhD applicant, if the bulk of your application shows that you demonstrate great promise. But if you've spent several years in a PhD program already, and you still only show great promise without any evidence that you went above and beyond what was expected of you, that's a red flag.

Also, there's this explanation on the Harvard GSAS admissions site: "Persons holding a PhD or its equivalent, or who have completed most of the work required to earn the PhD elsewhere, may apply to a PhD program in the Graduate School only if it is an unrelated field of study. In view of the large number of excellent applicants for the limited number of places in the Graduate School, preference for admission and financial aid will be given to those who have not already had an opportunity to receive a doctoral degree here or elsewhere."

So even if you put aside the tricky task of explaining why a second PhD will be useful to you and a good investment for the department, it looks like Harvard takes a firm stance against the second doctoral degree, if only because the university wants to offer their limited spots to applicants who haven't otherwise been able to pursue doctoral degrees. Again, I think one subtext of this argument is that if you've successfully completed a PhD in this field or a closely related field, or if you've come close to earning a PhD but haven't successfully completed it...then why do you need this degree? What will a second PhD give you that a first PhD didn't or that a postdoctoral position wouldn't?

[Marie-Luise]

Marie-Luise, why do you want to get a second PhD? Is your first PhD in something literary? While I'm in no position to know what the admissions committee is thinking, my guess would be that if you're finishing up your PhD, they would be expecting you to be turning your thesis into a publication, getting a university job, and publishing a lot of articles, not going for one more PhD.

 

 

I was thinking the same thing. Why would anyone need 2 PhDs?

 

 

^ This is actually something I thought about, but did not comment on earlier. That "two PhDs" may indeed be a cause for concern, especially at places like Harvard where, let's face it, the priority is on producing the next generation of scholars. There would have to be very compelling arguments for the second PhD in order to convince an adcom to take the risk.

 

 

 

 

Hi Marie-Luise,

What did you write in your statement of purpose about your interest in pursuing a second PhD? I imagine it would be fairly challenging to make an argument that both demonstrates that you will make a substantial contribution to the field AND somehow manages to explain why, in your first PhD, you didn't accomplish enough to make a postdoctoral fellowship or professorship your obvious next step. If you didn't accomplish enough in your first PhD, then why should Harvard believe that you will in your second? And if you did have impressive accomplishments in your first PhD, then why do you need a second one?

I see your explanation about the UK/Irish system working differently, but to be honest it doesn't come across as a very compelling argument. You write that you were "not particularly encouraged to present/publish until well into the PhD" and you felt you were expected to wait until you had "something to say"... This is understandable, but aren't you now "well into the PhD" and haven't you discovered that you have something to say? I don't think top-tier American universities "just want everyone to conform to their system" -- I think they want to see concrete proof that you've already made a significant contribution to research/academia. And if you DID provide impressive examples of your work in your application, then it's hard to understand why you're essentially starting over instead of moving on up. Maybe it would be easier to make an outstanding impression as a first-time PhD applicant, if the bulk of your application shows that you demonstrate great promise. But if you've spent several years in a PhD program already, and you still only show great promise without any evidence that you went above and beyond what was expected of you, that's a red flag.

Also, there's this explanation on the Harvard GSAS admissions site: "Persons holding a PhD or its equivalent, or who have completed most of the work required to earn the PhD elsewhere, may apply to a PhD program in the Graduate School only if it is an unrelated field of study. In view of the large number of excellent applicants for the limited number of places in the Graduate School, preference for admission and financial aid will be given to those who have not already had an opportunity to receive a doctoral degree here or elsewhere."

So even if you put aside the tricky task of explaining why a second PhD will be useful to you and a good investment for the department, it looks like Harvard takes a firm stance against the second doctoral degree, if only because the university wants to offer their limited spots to applicants who haven't otherwise been able to pursue doctoral degrees. Again, I think one subtext of this argument is that if you've successfully completed a PhD in this field or a closely related field, or if you've come close to earning a PhD but haven't successfully completed it...then why do you need this degree? What will a second PhD give you that a first PhD didn't or that a postdoctoral position wouldn't?

 

Thank you for all your responses. This is precisely what I talked to Harvard professors about, who, in fact, didn't see a red flag there at all. It is not a matter of either of these two:

 

a) being not that great and therefore not having publications which is why Harvard would doubt I could do it well with them

 

or 

 

being pretty great and having publications, so Harvard would wonder why they should accept someone who is already well under way.

 

 

This stance is very binary.

I have also read that Harvard prefers accepting people who don't already have PhDs; the GSAS website was my first go-to.

Why do you think I took care to talk to various professors in Comp Lit in the first place? I would never have applied if I hadn't been encouraged by them. My POI further took care of this by talking to the Chair. The Chair emailed me saying he looked forward to my application.

 

But yes, this is a perfectly valid concern and I would indeed have to make a strong point as to why I'd want to pursue a second PhD. Please don't downplay the difference between US and European systems. In Italy for example, this is actually far more common. There is an Italian graduate student here at Notre Dame doing a second PhD. When I was a student in Berlin, one of my profs had two. In Europe, it's considered incredibly ambitious, but by no means negative. I realise that there is a difference in mindset when it comes to the US.

As for my SOP, I made of point of saying that I have studied and researched literatures and approaches which receive very little scholarly attention due to the linguistic difficulty of the languages they are written in and are thus marginalised in Eurocentric Studies. Since I have the linguistic ability I would like to demonstrate the benefit of studying them in a more comparative way and hence make a new and interesting contribution to the field of Comparative Literature. Perhaps this reason was not good enough. I am happy to accept criticism.

 

What do I get from all these reactions? I am not starting over, I am building upon a solid base. What will I do? I will contact the department once matters have quieted down and see if my rejection was due to factors that I have control over or not. If not, I won't bother reapplying. And if the American (or just Harvard for that matter) stance is that you shouldn't have two PhDs because you are in the way of other people even getting just one, then I understand and accept it. It's not the European one.

Until then, I will work on my publications and on finishing PhD number one

[Swagato]

And if the American (or just Harvard for that matter) stance is that you shouldn't have two PhDs because you are in the way of other people even getting just one, then I understand and accept it. It's not the European one.

 

This is not what was implied, nor, to my knowledge is it the case in American academia. What matters is that the applicant for a 2nd PhD have an extremely compelling reason, whereby they can demonstrate how the 2nd PhD will provide additional training for future scholarship that the first PhD does not already provide. International differences are all but irrelevant here--plenty of American PhD students have done their BA/Baccalaureate/MA/equivalent abroad. 

 

Being urged to apply by faculty is no guarantor of success (whether admission or waitlisting). It simply indicates that the faculty member(s) view your profile as nominally worth exploring further. I don't know if they read your writing sample and statement of purpose, or if their comments were based simply off your preliminary meetings. In either case, prior faculty encouragement is not a signifier of much at all.

 

And, really, when it comes to Harvard and similar institutions, I'm of the opinion that "Is this good enough?" is simply the wrong question. 

[Fishbucket]

I'm not sure that you would need to complete an entire second PhD to learn how to do comparative work. The training in comparative literature and national language departments is largely the same, with perhaps more emphasis on theory in comp lit. Most faculty straddle comp lit and language departments. If you want to make new and interesting contributions to the field, you can start doing that right away simply by writing and publishing the work you want to do. If your PhD program has taught you how to conduct literary research, you're already fully equipped to work.

[Marie-Luise]

This is not what was implied, nor, to my knowledge is it the case in American academia. What matters is that the applicant for a 2nd PhD have an extremely compelling reason, whereby they can demonstrate how the 2nd PhD will provide additional training for future scholarship that the first PhD does not already provide. International differences are all but irrelevant here--plenty of American PhD students have done their BA/Baccalaureate/MA/equivalent abroad. 

 

Being urged to apply by faculty is no guarantor of success (whether admission or waitlisting). It simply indicates that the faculty member(s) view your profile as nominally worth exploring further. I don't know if they read your writing sample and statement of purpose, or if their comments were based simply off your preliminary meetings. In either case, prior faculty encouragement is not a signifier of much at all.

 

And, really, when it comes to Harvard and similar institutions, I'm of the opinion that "Is this good enough?" is simply the wrong question. 

 

I never approached professors with the questions "is this good enough". I approached with the question of whether they are generally opposed to the second PhD and they said no. So I applied. I never expected their encouragement to be a guarantor of success either. I am not that naive.

 

I'm not sure that you would need to complete an entire second PhD to learn how to do comparative work. The training in comparative literature and national language departments is largely the same, with perhaps more emphasis on theory in comp lit. Most faculty straddle comp lit and language departments. If you want to make new and interesting contributions to the field, you can start doing that right away simply by writing and publishing the work you want to do. If your PhD program has taught you how to conduct literary research, you're already fully equipped to work.

 

No, I don't need a second PhD do learn how to work comparatively, but I need it for the theory and the approaches of faculty members of the department and outside. As for my compelling reason (at least it is one for me), I wanted to work with one particular professor, who is in Classics actually, but I also wanted to do the programme because it taught theoretical approaches which are difficult to wrap your head around if you come from a background with purely philological training. I also felt that my (comparatively short) PhD programme had not taught me all the tools I needed to be a medieval European literary scholar, which is what I want to be and which said professor can help me with since his own approach is close to what I intend to do. I also want to get a research degree from a more mainstream field ( I am in Celtic now), not only because it is economically more viable, but also because I can contribute both to medieval European literary studies and to my first field like very few can if I do Comp Lit.

So no, I am unfortunate in that my degree spells PhD and not MPhil which is a step down but only a year less than the PhD whereas the discrepancy between the masters and the doctoral level in the States is much greater. So to sum up:

 

1. I want to work with a specific faculty member

2. my first PhD was not a satisfying experience in terms of academic skills due to its short duration and lack of formal coursework/organisation

3. I dont have a masters (this relates to point 2)

4. The programme at Harvard can give me what I need/want + I get to work with the professor

5. I get to employ skills and gain others which a Celtic postdoc would not enable me to do and you can't do a postdoc in another field even if you have the skills; no one would hire me for a Classics postdoc even if I had demonstrated that I had superb Latin skills in editing or whatnot.

6. No one hires you in the US unless you have a PhD from a US university or from Oxford or Cambridge. Let's be honest, exceptions to that rule are very rare. If I want to be on the US market, I need a US PhD. Might as well get one where the programme and the prof are a perfect fit and which has an excellent reputation.

 

Are these reasons compelling enough? Tell me if they are not and I'll stop trying so hard. I don't know how outspoken I can be in an actual personal statement. It would be interesting if you could tell me that.

[Grev]

So to sum up:

 

1. I want to work with a specific faculty member

2. my first PhD was not a satisfying experience in terms of academic skills due to its short duration and lack of formal coursework/organisation

3. I dont have a masters (this relates to point 2)

4. The programme at Harvard can give me what I need/want + I get to work with the professor

5. I get to employ skills and gain others which a Celtic postdoc would not enable me to do and you can't do a postdoc in another field even if you have the skills; no one would hire me for a Classics postdoc even if I had demonstrated that I had superb Latin skills in editing or whatnot.

6. No one hires you in the US unless you have a PhD from a US university or from Oxford or Cambridge. Let's be honest, exceptions to that rule are very rare. If I want to be on the US market, I need a US PhD. Might as well get one where the programme and the prof are a perfect fit and which has an excellent reputation.

 

Hi Marie-Luise,

 

I think you've made a compelling argument for why you would benefit from a second PhD, or at least some serious post-doctoral studies.  When/if you re-apply to programs next year, I would definitely make sure that the points listed above are clear in your Statement of Purpose. 

 

I'll mention that, (and the rest of the forum can peer-review the statement), Comparative Literature in the US is a highly competitive field.  Additionally, in any given year you're not just "competing" against other applicants, but against the department itself being interested in hiring a student with your interests and area of specialization.  As you seem to have a pretty clear idea of what you want to study, that makes things tricky. 

 

I know that you're very interested in working with a particular professor at Harvard, but I'd recommend applying to several US programs in the next cycle if it comes to that.  There's a very good chance you'd be able to collaborate with this professor even if you are not at his school- many programs encourage their students to have someone on their dissertation committee who is not part of the department faculty.

 

And I don't think it is completely unheard of for people to make a shift from one literature to comparative literature in their professional careers provided they have the background for it.  Again, the comp lit docs can confirm or deny that statement

 

In all cases, I do wish you the very best of luck and hope you find a good path to your future goals.

[ghijklmn]

Would someone be willing to claim the other Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) acceptance? It would be great to talk about the program and visiting!

[jiajia]

Any idea about Michigan's radio silence?

[ghijklmn]

Any idea about Michigan's radio silence?

 

No! It's super annoying.

[jiajia]

No! It's super annoying.

Same here!

[ghijklmn]

Same here!

 

Though it looks like you interviewed with them? I didn't, so I imagine it's just a rejection waiting to be sent.

[yellow.wallpaper]

Has CUNY started giving out rejections?

[jiajia]

Though it looks like you interviewed with them? I didn't, so I imagine it's just a rejection waiting to be sent.

Interviews didn't really matter. But just curious as to what they are actually doing with our applications:-(

[ljagavi]

Hi all. I am surprised to discover a place like this on the web. Wish I knew about it before! Anyway, my question will answer some of the inquiries made on previous pages.

 

So far, I have got acceptances from WashU and the University of Western Ontario. I have been informed that I am placed at the top of the waiting list at the University of Michigan. I am awaiting for 6 more answers, and I also got 5 rejections.

 

My dilema is whether I should go to a Canadian or American university. I like the structure of American programs, and US universities seem to be more "prestigious" and rewarding, but at the same time Canada seems to be a more accessible country in terms of getting a permanent residency and "safe" living, which is an option I would like to have at the end of such a time consuming effort that is graduate studies.

 

Do you have any thoughts or advice regarding my situation? What would you do?

 

I wish you all the luck, and please don't lose too much health and energy on fretting over getting admitted or not:)

[anoveldave]

Looks like everyone's either gotten accepted somewhere, or trying to keep it cool while waiting for schools.

 

Does anyone know if Harvard, Michigan, UCLA, or UC Santa Barbara have sent out all their acceptances?