CUNY or Re-apply?

[Fishbucket]

That is the hypothetical question. Better to get a PhD at CUNY or reapply and aim higher?

[asleepawake]

That depends a million or so factors, but I think CUNY looks like a fantastic program. You cannot beat the location, and if you're funded well enough, I can't imagine turning that down for the unknown experience of applying again.

Edited March 2, 2013 by asleepawake

[bfat]

Uh...higher than what? CUNY is a top 20...

[TripWillis]

Reapply and "aim higher." 

[ComeBackZinc]

Lit job market being what it is, you can always say "try for a better program," but it's really hard to find better programs than CUNY, and plenty of people from the no-bullshit top-5 end up jobless anyway. Waiting a year for an uncertain crack at schools that may or may not have a better hiring record does not seem like a rational decision to me. Declining to go into a PhD at all, particularly in the humanities and particularly in English (regardless of program)? That makes a lot of sense to me. Declining in order to get back on the wheel, when you have a CUNY acceptance? Much less so.

[yellow.wallpaper]

When I was interviewed, the professor told me that CUNY prepares you to actually have a job when you graduate. So...I would definitely think about it

[mostlytoasty]

What is it that (hypothetically) discourages you from attending CUNY? If by "higher" you mean a program with a better fit, I would maybe consider reapplying. Are you considering reapplying because CUNY was perhaps the only school you applied to and you think you could have cast your net wider? Do you feel like you could reapply knowing that there's no guarantee of success next season? 

 

I agree with what's been said: CUNY has a great program with a lot of unique resources and opportunities. Having been accepted must mean the admissions committee saw your potential to do very well with what their program has to offer. If by "aiming higher" you mean some measure of prestige, going to a school ranked slightly higher than CUNY is not going to make or break you. Like others have said, it's a reputable program already—and really, it's what you're putting into your education and training that's going to set you apart.

 

Personally, my experience with CUNY faculty and students has been incredibly positive, and I attended a conference there last spring that was very inspiring for my work. That said, I did end up declining their offer of acceptance this season. My reasons were more personal and had to do with fit and location. But if CUNY was my only acceptance, would I have accepted? Absolutely.

[Deadinthewater]

I suggest you reapply and aim lower.

[Lycidas]

On the surface of things, it definitely sounds like going to CUNY is the better choice. It's a really good program, as most everyone in thread has noted. But (and I say this with no knowledge of your personal situation, so of course take it with a giant grain of salt) are you possibly posing the question to yourself because you have doubts about your fit at CUNY? CUNY is a great program, but if you don't think you could fit there very well, then reapplying would not be a terrible decision. But if you do think it's a good fit for you, then I think it'd be rash to pass it up. I'd be pretty pumped to have a P.hD from CUNY myself

[NowMoreSerious]

It doesn't get much better than CUNY really, provided you feel you are a good fit. If it's because you had your heart set on an Ivy, I'd ask yourself why. I know everybody says job placement but I've heard that some of these "elite" schools have an overall reputation that outruns their actual job placement/preparation.

[downtherabbithole]

If it's not right for you, I would be perfectly happy to take your CUNY acceptance!

[bluecheese]

If CUNY is a good fit you should totally go. It's a great program. 

[cordis]

English or comp lit???

[TripWillis]

In all seriousness, I'll just echo everyone else's sentiments. CUNY is about as competitive a program as you'll find. They have tremendous resources across departments, a consortium with area schools, and it's in New York. The support package is also very good. If it's a good fit for you, you should go. If not, then you might consider reapplying. If you're concerned about prestige, I wouldn't be.

[cicada123]

CUNY-- no matter how good an applicant you are for a Ph.D. program, this process certainly has a degree of arbitrariness. And while I didn't apply to CUNY, I have researched it because I thought about applying. It has a great reputation, and while its funding/teaching requirements aren't as ideal as they are for some other programs, you should be really proud of that acceptance and go for it. 

[TripWillis]

and while its funding/teaching requirements aren't as ideal as they are for some other programs

This is actually no longer true. Funding teaching at CUNY has changed and is now better than most programs, save maybe the Ivys, Rutgers, and a few others.

[ZacharyBinks]

I say re-apply, but that's only because I'm on the CUNY wait list

[Fishbucket]

Well this makes me feel better. Thanks everyone

[ComeBackZinc]

I mean, look: some significant majority of the people who post here will graduate from their programs fully intending to get a TT job somewhere and not get one. That's just the weight of the numbers. I could certainly be among them. If you're in doubt, don't go. Brilliant, committed, worthwhile English PhDs graduate year after year after year and meet with no success. If you're really concerned, the question is not "should I reapply," the question is "should I go at all?" The numbers are unambiguous: far more people will graduate than will ever get decent jobs. And assuming you are the exception is not productive.

 

I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm just saying that anything less than full commitment should default to not going, as even those with full commitment will often end up on the outside looking in.

[Fishbucket]

The question isn't whether or not to get a PhD, it's just a matter of what school to go to.

[Mercyhurst2010]

Lit job market being what it is, you can always say "try for a better program," but it's really hard to find better programs than CUNY, and plenty of people from the no-bullshit top-5 end up jobless anyway. Waiting a year for an uncertain crack at schools that may or may not have a better hiring record does not seem like a rational decision to me. Declining to go into a PhD at all, particularly in the humanities and particularly in English (regardless of program)? That makes a lot of sense to me. Declining in order to get back on the wheel, when you have a CUNY acceptance? Much less so.

 

Keep in mind also that the job market is a total crap-shoot, and while an "elite" program may give you an outside chance of being hired by an elite university when you're on the job market (a chance those of us outside the top-20 likely will never have), the 4-year liberal arts colleges and state universities (where most of the jobs are) often tend to see job candidates from top-5 / top-10 schools as riskier to hire. This, at least, was the experience of a few of my PhD student colleagues who went on the job market while I was in my MA program. No joke, there have been a couple years where, by the "percentages," Case Western (which is unlikely to break "top 50" in the admittedly arbitrary ranking system) did a better job of placing graduates in tenure track work than many schools in the Ivy League. Granted, the Yale grads getting jobs were getting them at places like Hopkins while the Case grads were getting jobs in low-enrollment colleges in rural southern towns, but if the goal is primarily to get a job, you're honestly better off looking at the amount of support the individual department provides for the job hunt, regardless of its rank, and ignoring the fanciness of the letter-head on which you'll be sending your application materials.

 

Just my two cents, anyway. There are lots of so-called "2nd tier" graduate programs where every graduate in the past 4-5 years who conducted a national job search is working as a full time lecturer or better, just as there are lots of elite top 10 schools with half a dozen recent grads trying to scrape something together on the adjunct mill. Everything you do in this profession is a risk, and it is impossible to make your position more secure by climbing the ladder of university prestige. With all that being said, if I had an offer from CUNY and nothing holding me back from attending, the only reason I would turn it down would be another offer from a program with a better fit in this application cycle.

[planesandtrains]

pretty sure this thread was just created to start shit. don't take the "bait" people! I have a feeling that fishbucket's alter-ego shares initials with mr. lawrence, if you get me...

[Don'tHate's Ghost]

pretty sure this thread was just created to start shit. don't take the "bait" people! I have a feeling that fishbucket's alter-ego shares initials with mr. lawrence, if you get me...

 

Don'tHate, could this be true? 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyL8sKJJUHU

[wreckofthehope]

CUNY is an amazing school, that said - the couple of things that would worry me, if it were my only option, are its graduation rate and length of time to degree (certainly not its position in a relatively arbitrary ranking system)...I have no idea what the numbers are, but I get the sense that CUNY has quite a large intake and that there is quite a lot of attrition; on top of that (and probably related to it) it seems to have a pretty long time to degree. I'd want to look into what the actual numbers are and whether or not it's good attrition, if there are positive reasons for the time to degree etc. My sense of this might be wrong, in which case - there's pretty much no down side to CUNY, but those are things to think about before accepting. 

[Fishbucket]

I think the data for CUNY may not be particularly representative of a new student's experience anymore, because as Trip Willis says they recently completely changed their funding packages in order to graduate more students faster. So a lot of the reasons for attrition may have been fixed.