Importance of Publication

[litguy]

Dear literature majors,

what is the importance of academic publication, or conferences for admission to a good Phd in English?

I mean, does it worth to visit some conferences and publish some articles to have a better chance at American universities, does it really impress adcom?

Also, are the book reviews important, too?

[lotf629]

There's discussion of this elsewhere. I think our loose consensus has been that it's not necessary, though under some circumstances it can be a help. Others have pointed out that it's far more important to focus on tailoring your entire applications to your top choice schools, a process that can be quite time consuming if done well, and I agree.

I have come down harder in favor of publishing, or trying to publish, than other people on the forum, though I have been made to see the other side of the issue by other people's posts, and I think that I have overemphasized the importance of a truly preprofessional writing sample. Take back: I don't think that the writing sample needs to be preprofessional. Still, the dead horse I keep beating is that publishing something usually requires you to a) write to a certain standard, take some stock of the state of your field at the present moment, and c) do original research. These are also some of the things that an excellent writing sample should do. So if you are not sure whether your writing sample is "good enough," and you want to make sure that it's as good as it possibly can be, I personally think that a great way to do that is to try to get it ready for a journal. Also, original research is fun, and it's a great way to confirm that you are really excited about working in your field.

Let me also say that when I walked in the door of the reception at the most selective program that accepted me, the DGS walked over to me, greeted me, turned to another faculty member, and said immediately (by way of introduction), "Lotf's writing sample was really excellent. Of all the writing samples I've seen, this one was the one that made me say, 'I really expect to see this in print.'" I was certainly left with the impression that my writing sample was a major factor in my having been accepted to the program in spite of my relatively terrible undergraduate GPA. So maybe we can say that publication is unnecessary especially if all the other parts of your record are in order, but that, if you are trying to do something particularly shiny, working toward a journal article is a far more useful extracurricular than, say, trying to ace the GRE Literature (eughhh).

[jasper.milvain]

I think loft wrote a great reply. I'm one of the people who have come down against early publishing, but the benefits of publishing that loft describes are things we can all agree on:

a) write to a certain standard, take some stock of the state of your field at the present moment, and c) do original research.

You can show these three things in your SoP and writing sample, but I can see how publication would be a good carrot to encourage you to really work at them. In my own application, I used a research proposal that I had developed for a federal grant competition as my SoP. It required me to do a field review, identify a research gap, and gather primary and secondary texts that would be of use. I revised constantly and rigorously. That is to say, the grant application process made me do the three things that loft identifies as the benefit of publishing. I got similar feedback--faculty at a school I applied to said they could see the project "as a book", and adcoms mentioned the strength of my proposal.

Maybe it's more about the benefits of going through a rigorous research and revision process and less about lines on your CV?