skybythelight Posted March 21, 2014 Author Posted March 21, 2014 Can I get in on this talk too? I'm looking for any insight I can get on the atmosphere of the department! Of course! I'll copy and paste my response to apixelrevolt in a PM to you as well.
StardewDropIn Posted March 25, 2014 Posted March 25, 2014 I was accepted yesterday for the masters! No funding for first year But first acceptance, so that's exciting! skybythelight, can you PM me with that info too? Thanks for all your help! I must say that the placement at UW scares me a bit. The only info I can find is on the recent PhDs page, and it doesn't seem like all the grads got job offers. The ones that did seem to be going to rather random and not at all prestigious schools. Is the placement really not good at UW or am I just not well informed?
StardewDropIn Posted March 25, 2014 Posted March 25, 2014 Another question: do Masters students get a primary advisor right away? Someone we meet with who helps guide our studies, etc? Would I be assigned to a prof, or choose an advisor after arriving?
shortstack51 Posted March 25, 2014 Posted March 25, 2014 (edited) I was accepted yesterday for the masters! No funding for first year But first acceptance, so that's exciting! skybythelight, can you PM me with that info too? Thanks for all your help! I must say that the placement at UW scares me a bit. The only info I can find is on the recent PhDs page, and it doesn't seem like all the grads got job offers. The ones that did seem to be going to rather random and not at all prestigious schools. Is the placement really not good at UW or am I just not well informed? It really depends on what you mean by "good" placement. In my opinion, "good" placement is just a high percentage of graduate students placed into any full time positions after getting their PhD, regardless of location. If you start talking about what percentage of that percentage go to "prestigious" universities, you're going to be even more disappointed than you were previously by the generally dismal job market. I've said it before, but you really can't be picky with where you want to get a job once you get your PhD, especially immediately after. UW is a top 30 school, so it has some prestige (there's a professor at a top 25 who got his PhD at UW about 15 years ago), but perhaps not enough to place a lot of its candidates into other prestigious universities. I assume that the most "prestigious" universities are hiring out of ivies--my MA program was a midlevel school and nearly all of the professors had their degrees from ivies/tops (Yale, Princeton, Brown...). I'm not sure what UW's overall placement rate is, but it's also good to remember that even prestige doesn't always equal placement. Placement has a lot to do with what the school does for its students as they enter the job market. This is all to say--rather than judging UW's placement simply from what they've listed, it might be best to instead look at what UW says about placement and what UW does to place its graduating students (and, as you have, ask someone at UW what placement looks like). And to also not have too inflated of an idea of what good placement looks like. If UW doesn't have that info listed, their placement not be the best (schools will usually brag a bit if they have good placement), but that doesn't mean they have bad placement, either. Edited March 25, 2014 by shortstack51 Ozymandias Melancholia 1
StardewDropIn Posted March 25, 2014 Posted March 25, 2014 It really depends on what you mean by "good" placement. In my opinion, "good" placement is just a high percentage of graduate students placed into any full time positions after getting their PhD, regardless of location. If you start talking about what percentage of that percentage go to "prestigious" universities, you're going to be even more disappointed than you were previously by the generally dismal job market. I've said it before, but you really can't be picky with where you want to get a job once you get your PhD, especially immediately after. UW is a top 30 school, so it has some prestige (there's a professor at a top 25 who got his PhD at UW about 15 years ago), but perhaps not enough to place a lot of its candidates into other prestigious universities. I assume that the most "prestigious" universities are hiring out of ivies--my MA program was a midlevel school and nearly all of the professors had their degrees from ivies/tops (Yale, Princeton, Brown...). I'm not sure what UW's overall placement rate is, but it's also good to remember that even prestige doesn't always equal placement. Placement has a lot to do with what the school does for its students as they enter the job market. This is all to say--rather than judging UW's placement simply from what they've listed, it might be best to instead look at what UW says about placement and what UW does to place its graduating students (and, as you have, ask someone at UW what placement looks like). And to also not have too inflated of an idea of what good placement looks like. If UW doesn't have that info listed, their placement not be the best (schools will usually brag a bit if they have good placement), but that doesn't mean they have bad placement, either. Thanks for the reminders-- I do know how hard the job market is, and that only adds to my fears. It was just extra worrying to look at the list of grads at UW from the last 10 or so years and see a small scattering of schools I've never even heard of before. Yay academic job market...
skybythelight Posted March 25, 2014 Author Posted March 25, 2014 Another question: do Masters students get a primary advisor right away? Someone we meet with who helps guide our studies, etc? Would I be assigned to a prof, or choose an advisor after arriving? The DGS assigns you to a prof for your first year based on the conversation he'll have with you about your interests, and after that you can choose to stay on with that person or ask another professor with whom you think you'd like to work.
StardewDropIn Posted March 26, 2014 Posted March 26, 2014 The DGS assigns you to a prof for your first year based on the conversation he'll have with you about your interests, and after that you can choose to stay on with that person or ask another professor with whom you think you'd like to work. Great, thanks!
skybythelight Posted March 26, 2014 Author Posted March 26, 2014 Great, thanks! No prob! I will fwd you those PMs sometime in the next few days--I didn't mean to ignore that request, I'm just on a mini-spring break vacay at the moment.
apixelrevolt Posted April 2, 2014 Posted April 2, 2014 anybody have any idea how many acceptances/funding offers UW gave out this year? all I know is that it was "competitive" and that they weren't able to make as many offers as past years. anyway, just wondering if anybody has heard any statistics.
BookReaderPerson Posted April 2, 2014 Posted April 2, 2014 anybody have any idea how many acceptances/funding offers UW gave out this year? all I know is that it was "competitive" and that they weren't able to make as many offers as past years. anyway, just wondering if anybody has heard any statistics. I was wondering the same thing. Also, apixelrevolt--I saw your reply to my post in the turned down offers thread. Sent you a PM.
Fiz Posted April 4, 2014 Posted April 4, 2014 I still have yet to hear anything from this school. Like what the hell gives. It's April 4th.
skybythelight Posted April 5, 2014 Author Posted April 5, 2014 I still have yet to hear anything from this school. Like what the hell gives. It's April 4th. Have you contacted the department?
aes Posted April 5, 2014 Posted April 5, 2014 Hi everyone! After lurking on this forum as a guest in the months following the application send-off, I finally created an account so that I could participate in this thread! I received an offer of admission yesterday (unfunded first year) after checking my status page and, following the advice of others, emailed Jennifer and Kathy for more information. Wow--it seems like an incredibly caring department! skybythelight, if you had a spare moment to send me the same information requested by others earlier in the thread, I would love to hear more information about the atmosphere of the department. Thank you for sharing your experiences with all of us!
il0vewriting Posted April 5, 2014 Posted April 5, 2014 hi everyone! ditto the above post. i'd be very interested in learning more about the culture of the UW English dept as well. skybythelight, could you please PM me your earlier response to others as well? thank you so much!
shortstack51 Posted April 5, 2014 Posted April 5, 2014 I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but I was informed reliably that the culture among students can be very competitive due to people competing for funding from year to year. Something to think about, anyway
il0vewriting Posted April 5, 2014 Posted April 5, 2014 shortstack, for both MA and PhD students? either way, i can only imagine how stressful that must be to attend for more than one year unfunded.
shortstack51 Posted April 8, 2014 Posted April 8, 2014 As far as I understand, the MA and PhD students both depending on funding competition. I was informed that the competition can become deliberately malicious
collikl Posted April 9, 2014 Posted April 9, 2014 As I know people on this thread are nervously awaiting news, I thought I'd share that I turned down my funded PhD offer at UW today. Best of luck to all-- it seems like a great program!
apixelrevolt Posted April 9, 2014 Posted April 9, 2014 As I know people on this thread are nervously awaiting news, I thought I'd share that I turned down my funded PhD offer at UW today. Best of luck to all-- it seems like a great program! Oooo! Thanks for the update collikl! Now, of course, I will anxiously await correspondence from UW (as if I wasn't already). Did you end up accepting elsewhere?
il0vewriting Posted April 9, 2014 Posted April 9, 2014 (edited) Oooo! Thanks for the update collikl! Now, of course, I will anxiously await correspondence from UW (as if I wasn't already). Did you end up accepting elsewhere? ditto this! Edited April 9, 2014 by il0vewriting
il0vewriting Posted April 9, 2014 Posted April 9, 2014 (edited) thank you for letting us know, collikl! if you don't mind me asking, were you a literature or language & rhet applicant? Edited April 9, 2014 by il0vewriting
skybythelight Posted May 11, 2014 Author Posted May 11, 2014 Hi everyone, and sorry for being MIA. School's been hectic and I haven't been on here in over a month. If any of you have accepted your offers at UW and would like to talk more about some of these questions, please feel free to PM me! Also, re: the funding competition. Yes, it is competitive. Yes, it is distracting and discouraging and frustrating and stressful. The main issue is that until last year, this was never an issue. It was more or less true until last year that if you did not receive funding for your first year, you would for your second and beyond. That is no longer the case due to budget cuts/TA raises/etc. So not only is this frustrating and upsetting for those of us who accepted our unfunded offers under the assumption that we would be funded beginning in September, but it's just as frustrating for the department staff because this is pretty much out of their hands and something they haven't had to deal with in the past. So overall, yes: it's a sucky situation.
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