English Ed. Applicant -- Question?

[AsKingfishersCatchFire.]

Hi all,

 

I am graduating soon with a B.A. in English Ed. for one major and History/Social Studies Ed. for the other major. I am planning on applying to an English PhD program. My question is whether having an English Ed. degree over a pure English major would hurt or limit my chances for getting accepted to programs? Would schools look negatively on this fact even though I would have the roughly the same amount of literature courses and credits? Any information on this would be great! Thanks..

 

 

[toasterazzi]

I don't have any statistics or anything, but I know most of the programs I've looked at just want applicants to have a certain amount of English classes/experience, which I imagine most English Ed. degrees would have. I'm in an MA program right now, and I'll be applying to PhD programs in the fall. I got my BA in English Ed., worked for a year in tech support, taught middle school for a year, and then landed in grad school last fall. My program didn't have any problem with my degree being in English Ed. instead of straight English, but I'm also not in a super high ranked program, so I don't know if that makes a big difference.

[AsKingfishersCatchFire.]

oh cool, thanks that is actually really helpful, what program are you in?

[toasterazzi]

Indiana State. Not well known at all, but there's a lot of great profs here and the Master's is paid for if you get the assistantship/scholarship (which I did). In a lot of ways, having an education background has actually been very useful for me because I have far more practical teaching experience than most of my cohort and it was easier for me to transition into teaching two classes and having to grade all the papers and whatnot than it was for a lot of other people in my group.