Fall 2014 applicants??

[Datatape]

I think availability depends largely on the testing center. One testing center where I used to live was in a smaller town and had maybe 50 chairs (and remember all subject exams test together, so there will be chemistry, biology, math, etc in there as well, so it filled up quick). The room in my last city, where I took the lit subject test, had more than 300 seats in the large lecture hall and it was maybe half full.  

 

However, you might want to consider your timetable. Unlike the general exam, the subject test is paper-based, so you don't get your results immediately like you do on the computerized test. The results take at least six weeks, and they do not come early. Ever. So if you're applying to schools with Dec. 1 or even Dec. 15 deadlines, you'll want to take the test in September if you can. It eliminates concern about schools getting your scores on time. If you take the test on Oct. 19, your scores will not get to Dec. 1 schools on time, that's for sure. Dec. 15 would be shaky as well. 

 

 

This is true, but if you have schools that have an early deadline and you're concerned about your subject scores arriving on time, drop the DGS a line and ask if that's a problem.  I had to take the later test last year and emailed three schools; one told me very politely to pound sand, but the other two were both very encouraging and told me that it would be no problem if my scores arrived after the deadline, since it had more to do with the deadline for the graduate school than the English Department.

[jazzyd]

I think availability depends largely on the testing center. One testing center where I used to live was in a smaller town and had maybe 50 chairs (and remember all subject exams test together, so there will be chemistry, biology, math, etc in there as well, so it filled up quick). The room in my last city, where I took the lit subject test, had more than 300 seats in the large lecture hall and it was maybe half full.  

 

However, you might want to consider your timetable. Unlike the general exam, the subject test is paper-based, so you don't get your results immediately like you do on the computerized test. The results take at least six weeks, and they do not come early. Ever. So if you're applying to schools with Dec. 1 or even Dec. 15 deadlines, you'll want to take the test in September if you can. It eliminates concern about schools getting your scores on time. If you take the test on Oct. 19, your scores will not get to Dec. 1 schools on time, that's for sure. Dec. 15 would be shaky as well. 

 

Something surely worth considering, but if it's a money issue that can't be helped, contacting the DGS would be a good idea. Because really, I doubt the committee is looking at these applications before January. These deadlines all pretty much hover around finals and other end of semester deadlines, so faculty members have quite a lot on their plate already.

[plznE3]

Uh oh. I already registered for October 19th. Most of my deadlines are on Dec 15th, one is on Dec 5th. Datatape, is this the date for which you registered when your scores didn't arrive on time? I'll email the DGS but uuurrrggghhhh.

[id quid]

I apologize if this has already been covered in the thread -- you guys have been busy -- but I was wondering if there are any other medievalists in the house?

There always seem to be a few. I've been around for previous cycles, but due to some transcript issues I'm STILL trying to sort out I've been lax in completing any applications. I've already put the money down on the GRE and GRE for Literature, so this year is going to be the one where I finally get my applications out there.

 

I admit to being a little afraid of giving up a life with a decent living (I work in Marketing in Silicon Valley!) for a pauper's life as a graduate student. But after four years of the strange inanity that pervades the working world, I'm more than ready to return to academia -- and stay there.

[Swagato]

This idea of graduate life = poverty is really pernicious and has got to go. Obviously, nobody's going to give you $50,000/year. But stipends range from $20,000 to $28,000/year in my fields and there are a plethora of opportunities for additional income. I really don't think that's a condemnation to living like a pauper.

[Katia_chan]

I apologize if this has already been covered in the thread -- you guys have been busy -- but I was wondering if there are any other medievalists in the house?

There always seem to be a few. I've been around for previous cycles, but due to some transcript issues I'm STILL trying to sort out I've been lax in completing any applications. I've already put the money down on the GRE and GRE for Literature, so this year is going to be the one where I finally get my applications out there.

 

I admit to being a little afraid of giving up a life with a decent living (I work in Marketing in Silicon Valley!) for a pauper's life as a graduate student. But after four years of the strange inanity that pervades the working world, I'm more than ready to return to academia -- and stay there.

 

*raises fist* medievalist representing.  Specialty?

 

And if it's really what you want to do, the pay cut won't matter.  And above-poster is right--it'll definitely be a cut, but you won't quite be living in a cardboard box or anything.  You'll be just fine--and if school is tempting you out of that comfortable pay bracket, then it's probably a good sign that you really want to be there.

[wreckofthehope]

This idea of graduate life = poverty is really pernicious and has got to go. Obviously, nobody's going to give you $50,000/year. But stipends range from $20,000 to $28,000/year in my fields and there are a plethora of opportunities for additional income. I really don't think that's a condemnation to living like a pauper.

 

Those are really not representative numbers for the humanities as a whole, I know of plenty of schools that offer $14,000 p/y stipends(at least they did a couple of years ago and I can't imagine them going up by almost 50% in two years)...obviously, they're mostly in areas with a lower cost of living, but $14,000 is not a lot of money, wherever you are. My stipend is just below your stated range, and I'm in one of the most expensive US cities to live in....were I not in a serious relationship, it would be a bit of a struggle - certainly finding housing that I could afford would be a lot harder and I'd almost certainly have to share an apartment with three or so others.

 

Getting an additional job helps, obviously, but there are barriers to this, for example: if your stipend depends on you teaching one or more classes  a semester, or you're an international student (who can only work 20hrs a week - and your required teaching for the stipend counts towards those 20hours per week). 

Edited August 27, 2013 by wreckofthehope

[toasterazzi]

Those are really not representative numbers for the humanities as a whole, I know of plenty of schools that offer $14,000 p/y stipends(at least they did a couple of years ago and I can't imagine them going up by almost 50% in two years)...obviously, they're mostly in areas with a lower cost of living, but $14,000 is not a lot of money, wherever you are. My stipend is just below your stated range, and I'm in one of the most expensive US cities to live in....were I not in a serious relationship, it would be a bit of a struggle - certainly finding housing that I could afford would be a lot harder and I'd almost certainly have to share an apartment with three or so others.

 

Getting an additional job helps, obviously, but there are barriers to this, for example: if your stipend depends on you teaching one or more classes  a semester, or you're an international student (who can only work 20hrs a week - and your required teaching for the stipend counts towards those 20hours per week). 

 

I agree with this. My MA English program nets me about $8000 a year, and many of the PhD programs I've looked offer stipends around the $12-15,000 range, which definitely can be difficult to live on, especially in a bigger city. 

Edited August 27, 2013 by escapingindiana

[ProfLorax]

If only there was a way to see recent funding offers to PhD applicants...

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al9pLrYezRcSdGdUTk0zWk5QVUJFSGxVZ2FJQ1QwWFE#gid=0

 

TA-DA!

[jazzyd]

This idea of graduate life = poverty is really pernicious and has got to go. Obviously, nobody's going to give you $50,000/year. But stipends range from $20,000 to $28,000/year in my fields and there are a plethora of opportunities for additional income. I really don't think that's a condemnation to living like a pauper.

 

True, but for some people comparatively it might be. [smart] people adjust their standards of living to the means they can afford and going from an established salary to a graduate stipend would take quite a bit of adjustment. 

 

Coming out of undergrad, my stipend feels like lottery money! But if I were established in my career making over triple that... ehh, probably not so much. 

 

edit: ^that's a great link proflorax! thanks to you or whomever put it together. now I can be quite nosy . an important thing to keep in mind though would be the comparative costs of living for each location. like some of the NYC schools have the highest packages but they actually look a bit skimpy to me taking into account the outrageous cost of living there...

Edited August 27, 2013 by jazzy dubois

[Swagato]

Okay, so.

 

1. I pulled numbers from the database. The following conditions were used: no summer funding was included; if stipends varied over the course (eg., 1st year $X, 2nd-5th year $Y) then the average was taken; all numbers were rounded off to the lowest whole number. No MA programs were counted. It's crude and we can probably fine-tune it, but it's unnecessary (IMO). The average for that spreadsheet comes to $18,751.69. This includes a wide range of programs, from the ones at so-called Flyover State to HYPS-tier institutions.

 

2. Most of the leading programs tend to offer good funding. And, I do apologise if this sounds rough, but (IMO) it is self-evident that we should not pursue graduate studies if we do not make it to a leading program. By leading program I don't mean just the big-name ones, but rather the ones that best fit you and are worth going to. At least, we should not pursue it with any other intent than that of a passion project.

 

3. But, as jazzy notes, even high funding doesn't offset high living costs. Given my experience in Chicago, I think Northwestern's funding package is actually surprisingly generous compared to, say, Berkeley's or even Yale's, simply because of the cost of living in those two places. So yes, there'll be adjustments. But my main grouse was that we should stop perpetuating the popular myth of graduate student penury. We aren't in this for riches, but neither are we living on scraps. I guess it just gets tiring, after a point, reading the nth throwaway claim about graduate student disenfranchisement and debasement. We're really not that poorly off, considering everything we get to do. 

[id quid]

*raises fist* medievalist representing.  Specialty?

 

Middle and Old English philology, magic, mysticism, intertextuality, historical milieu (1000-1400), manuscripts and paleography, Chaucer, Early Modern poetry -- but mainly philology and intertextuality.

 

--

 

I didn't mean to start a "thing" over the payments! I know people can make it work, and it's not quite living in a cardboard box money. But I do currently make over 3x that amount; live in an area with high salaries and, consequently, a very high cost of living; and have friends who are in science and computer science, which means even the grad students pull more than the average humanities grad student. It's all about context!

[Katia_chan]

That there is an awesome list of specialties--you've got a lot of really fascinating topics going on.  I mostly work with manuscript studies and codicology, Celtic (mostly Welsh) identity through folklore, and the effects of pseudo histories (Monmouth etc) on "national" identity and perception.

 

And you're very much right--the money is all about context.  Graduate funding sounds like a fortune to me, but I also make less per year teaching than any institution would ever think of paying a student.  But coming from your perspective of a grown-up job with a grown-up paycheck, it will certainly be an adjustment.  Is there anything you could do part-time through your job to help offset some of the transition?

 

(and you didn't "start a thing." "Things" just start, and get debated, then fade away. You're fine. ).

[id quid]

I'm super excited about the things I work on (well, let's be honest: worked on), and I really can't wait to get back into it. Truly, I'm just fascinated with "all things medieval," and it wasn't until my senior year that I really trended toward Anglo-Saxon and moved away from post-Conquest historiography and Arthuriana. Codicology is another of my loves, but it has that first love shine that has started to wear thin. Philology is my one true love, and looking back it's only too obvious. Funny how we come around to these things! (Which is not to say that I don't feel absolute reverence when in the presence of manuscripts and old books. My favorite memory from a summer at Stanford was donning the requisite white cotton gloves and handling a beautifully illuminated, 15th-century book of hours.)

 

I am positive I can do part-time work, though it likely won't be through my current company. In the short four years since I left school, I've picked up some very valuable marketing skills that are in high demand. I'm more wary about trying to balance school and work because I have an all-or-nothing habit that works well when I can focus on one thing, but falls apart if I try to do well in two. We'll see. To paraphrase the idiom, necessity is the mother of creative solutions!

[aGiRlCalLeDApPlE]

Hi, I have a question about my list of school: Is it wiser to apply to a few places that really really fit and that I think I have a good chance of getting in at lease one of them, OR; I should add some schools to my list that don't fit at all, which I think is useless since I'll end up being rejected?? Does this make sense to anyone? I can only find 4-5 schools that I really like and I hate the idea that I might regret not having applied to a few more 

[jazzyd]

Hi, I have a question about my list of school: Is it wiser to apply to a few places that really really fit and that I think I have a good chance of getting in at lease one of them, OR; I should add some schools to my list that don't fit at all, which I think is useless since I'll end up being rejected?? Does this make sense to anyone? I can only find 4-5 schools that I really like and I hate the idea that I might regret not having applied to a few more 

 

If you can afford it, I would apply to more. 

[dazedandbemused]

Hi, I have a question about my list of school: Is it wiser to apply to a few places that really really fit and that I think I have a good chance of getting in at lease one of them, OR; I should add some schools to my list that don't fit at all, which I think is useless since I'll end up being rejected?? Does this make sense to anyone? I can only find 4-5 schools that I really like and I hate the idea that I might regret not having applied to a few more 

 

In my experience, you're more likely to regret that you spent money on schools that obviously weren't going to accept you. I've known people who applied to 6 or 7 schools and were accepted to 3 or 4 of them because they were extremely focused on proper fit. I applied to 12 schools last year, but I don't think more than five of them were a good fit for me and UT was, without a doubt, the best. YMMV.

[BunnyWantsaPhD]

Hi, I have a question about my list of school: Is it wiser to apply to a few places that really really fit and that I think I have a good chance of getting in at lease one of them, OR; I should add some schools to my list that don't fit at all, which I think is useless since I'll end up being rejected?? Does this make sense to anyone? I can only find 4-5 schools that I really like and I hate the idea that I might regret not having applied to a few more 

 

If you have absolutely no fit with a school then it is a waste of money and time. 

 

Personally, I'm having hard time getting my list under 10 schools (I really only want to apply to 10-12 maximum and I'm at 16 right now). There's  3 schools on my list that I absolutely want to go to and think have a perfect fit. The rest are all about equal to me--they all have at least 2 profs I could work with and have other interesting factors as well. So, at this point I'm really struggling with which ones to knock off the list. I'm thinking of just going by location and ranking, but I fear that I'll cross one off and that's where I could have gone : (

Edited August 27, 2013 by BunnyWantsaPhD

[aGiRlCalLeDApPlE]

Thank y'all for the advice. And BunnyWantsaPhD, don't worry. Once you decided not to apply to a certain school, be sure that it's not meant for you to be there. I'm sure you'll be able to decide which schools to remove from your list. Sometimes you just have to follow your heart

[aGiRlCalLeDApPlE]

Questions questions... I might have to take the paper-based GRE because the testing center is really close to where I live. Has anyone tried it? Do schools accept both versions of the test, paper and computer? Any advice will be appreciated

[omensetter]

Questions questions... I might have to take the paper-based GRE because the testing center is really close to where I live. Has anyone tried it? Do schools accept both versions of the test, paper and computer? Any advice will be appreciated

 

I took the paper-based test, as it's the only version offered in my city (I'm also international). Schools certainly accept it; I'm looking at my score report right now and there's nothing on it that even indicates which type of test I took. There's a few differences in timing between the PBT and CBT (as I remember, you get a bit longer for each section on the PBT, but you also have more questions to answer so it probably evens out with the CBT) - there's lots of information about this on the GRE website, in the official guide, and in the booklet they send you when you register.

 

When practicing, I actually found I did better on the PBTs than the CBTs, maybe because I'm used to having a paper exam booklet to be able to flip through. One thing to consider though, is that on the PBT you'll be writing your AW essays by hand, but as long as you're a pretty fast and decent handwriter, and don't rely heaps on being able to go back and edit your work, you'll be fine. Overall, I really wouldn't worry about which test you're taking, especially if you don't have a a lot of choice in the matter.

[Datatape]

Uh oh. I already registered for October 19th. Most of my deadlines are on Dec 15th, one is on Dec 5th. Datatape, is this the date for which you registered when your scores didn't arrive on time? I'll email the DGS but uuurrrggghhhh.

 

I took the test in November last year and the deadline for the school that told me "don't bother" was December 1.  The two schools with December 15 deadlines were much more accommodating.

[champagne]

I'm not usually one to yell and vent into the vast maelstrom that is the interwebs, however y'all are a supportive group of web-based personae. Here goes:

 

I've been having lots of second thoughts about applying for graduate school. I originally thought that it might be because I've enjoyed my job so much the first year through, and I found myself thinking that I could do it maybe for the rest of my life if not for the near future. I had a great year, and the work I do is incredibly rewarding. It's a tremendous buzz, and apparently I'm really good at it. I had discussions with my co-workers, and they were very supportive of it. I then had a long, frank discussion with one of my favorite professors. He brought up the point that I might possibly be scared of the inevitable rejection that comes with applying to graduate school in the humanities. I looked inside myself and found this to be a huge part of it. I didn't get rejected from any undergraduate schools I applied to, I had a prodigious and successful undergraduate career (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, all that jazz...), I've never been turned down in a job interview, and I've found tremendous success in my first year as a professional. There is none of this in applying to literature graduate programs: Let's demystify a little bit of the process. You will be rejected. With that said, I'm feeling more confused than ever, and I definitely don't want to wait another year to apply. I feel like not applying is letting my 45-year-old self down. Literature and writing and research and teaching is such a part of who I am, but all that I've heard from advisers is the "If you can do absolutely anything else, do it" mantra. Now I have something else I can do, but I don't know if it's something that will sustain me the way I know graduate school would.

 

TL;DR: I'm more confused than ever, and I haven't even started applying.

 

What say you, GradCafe?

[ComeBackZinc]

All I can say is this: essentially every indicator of your future practical good says not to get your PhD in the humanities, in English specifically, and in lit specifically. The practical case against applying to these PhD programs is enormous, even without knowing the specifics of your situation. I know you've heard that before, and I know it's tiring to hear it over and over again. But it's true. And the reality is, as much as this message board is for those who believe themselves to be the exception to the rule, we can't all possibly be the exception to the rule. 

 

I made the choice that I made, of course, so you can feel free to read hypocrisy or whatever into this message. But if you are having doubts now, don't go. Because the real problem wouldn't be getting rejected from grad programs. The real problem comes if you graduate from a PhD program and don't get the kind of job you want. Which, we should be clear, is by far the most likely outcome.

[Swagato]

^ What they said. Bear also in mind the difficulty faced by job-hunters even from 'elite' programs known for very good post-PhD placement. And IMO age definitely plays a role, debates over that issue notwithstanding. A tenure offer is a major, major investment and involves deliberations that go way beyond just matters of scholarship. And if you're not seeking tenure, then there are legions of under-employed, younger, PhDs breathlessly waiting to snap up an offer. 

 

You seem like you've established yourself fairly well in life. There are many ways to remain involved with research and publication (as an independent scholar, say, or more professionally by working at university or academic presses). Is it really worth the big gamble, involving so many unknowable, random factors?