The "fit" question

[thepriorwalter]

As Katla has brought up research of current grad students, did anyone else make an effort to seriously check that out for schools of interest? I don't know how reliable those pages are (or how updated they are), but part of my own process for figuring out the fit did definitely involve seeing if any current graduate students had similar interests to me. In some situations, I was actually really surprised at the number of people studying in a particular area in comparison to the stated faculty interests on department websites (so obviously I agree with everyone saying to look elsewhere for current research  ). 

 

Edited to add: Feel free to say this isn't a good way to go about determining fit, I'm genuinely interested in how much others might have taken this into account (if at all!). Also, I've already applied so I can't really take anything back at this point  . 

 

I took this into account in a really serious way. Most of my work is on YA lit, and there just aren't that many programs who have dedicated faculty working in children's/YA lit, let alone more than one person. The way I looked at it:

 

(1) I set about finding programs that had professors who worked in children's lit and, for the most part, applied to those schools if the program was one I was interested in (for example, Illinois State got crossed off because it seems to have much more of a teaching focus than a research focus, despite having a number of wonderful and famous children's lit scholars, and that's not something I'm interested in). 

 

(2) To round out my list, I tried to find programs where I was interested in the scholarship professors were working on, despite not working in children's lit. So, for example, since I do a lot of work with gender and sexuality and queer theory, looking for professors whose work in these areas as a critical lens interested me. This produced a pretty huge list of schools but gave me a good place to start narrowing. 

 

(3) At every school I produced in point 2, I tried to look for graduate students working in children's lit. Even if there wasn't dedicated faculty, having a graduate student working in YA told me that the professors there were willing to support scholarship dedicated to that area. It cut quite a few schools off the list but made me feel better about the "fit" of where I was applying.

 

I did other things to narrow the list after that (mostly looking at funding and placement relative to my current program), but that's at least how I considered the fit question. 

Edited January 29, 2015 by thepriorwalter

[Katla]

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I barely looked at the question of "fit" at ALL when applying to my schools. Instead, I asked my favorite professor for her recommendations - I figured that whatever she held in high esteem would be beneficial to me. Of course, if I stay at my alma mater I'll be working directly under her, so I know the fit HERE would be amazing. But otherwise I just put together the best application I could, and figured the schools would either want me or they wouldn't.

 

It's not embarrassing at all, but a really useful way to go about it, especially if you feel comfortable/get along well with your professor and know that they know what you want to do

 

 

My personal opinion - and this is not to undermine the hard work you've all put into this aspect of applications, clearly it's working for y'all - is that "fit" is difficult to determine from far away; it's an ephemeral concoction of personalities, location, luck, and skill, and all of that is hard to assess in advance of experiencing the university and department first-hand. So I figure, if I get in anywhere, I'll just go visit!

 

Definitely! I think the thing to bear in mind is that even what we consider 'fit' probably varies a lot from applicant to applicant -and potentially the importance of it also varies a lot. Like for me, interested in Lat Am and South Asia, it would not make sense to go to a place that did would not be open to studying two geographically separate regions nor would it make sense to go somewhere where they don't have any kind of faculty in any of these regions. I hadn't considered how big an issue this could be, especially the former, prior to my Masters but while doing that I felt that while I was attending a simply stellar uni with great faculty and resources I wasn't able to really deal with the research questions which interested me, or at least they were considered inferior by my university. I still loved my experience of studying there but it did flag a few points that were important for me to thrive academically.

[kurayamino]

That's an interesting point. One of my mentor / advisor / LOR-writer profs advised against Johns Hopkins for that reason. Rather, she didn't advise against it, per se, but when I mentioned it as a possibility, she blurted out, "Oh, but that program is so small!" then backreeled a little bit. It was amusing, but her point -- inadvertent as it may have been -- was well taken.

 

Of course I still wish I had applied to more programs -- Johns Hopkins included -- but I'm not sure it would have been worthwhile either way.

 

Hahah, I had the same thing said to me about Johns Hopkins and Brown.

[allplaideverything]

I was composing my list based almost entirely on perceived fit and geography. So I looked at course offerings, recent dissertations, faculty areas of specialization, designated emphases or tracks, etc. If the word "queer" didn't appear in any of these listings, I dropped a school immediately. If a school separated queer & sexuality studies from gender studies & feminism, I took it as a good sign. I looked for lots of queers, any mention of transgender studies, radical politics, Marxism, critical race theory, etc. My interests and approach are heavily "leftist," and I know I wouldn't be happy in a program that wasn't set up for that--nor would a program uncomfortable with radicalism be happy with me (or offer me admission). I guess it's certainly possible that there are Marxists and queer theorists who I wouldn't be compatible with as thinkers/scholars/people, but I didn't dig much deeper than "are there queers and radicals here?" for fit.

 

One of my schools has already contacted me, and said they're excited about my application and how my interests fit with the program's strengths. (They wanted a second writing sample to help with final admissions decisions.) And what's interesting is that, while they're a radical- and queer- heavy program, they don't really have a single 19th Century Americanist, which is my proposed period--so sometimes, I guess, methodology can suffice for other discrepancies in fit?

 

But yes, as others have said, no way to know for sure. Fingers crossed for us all!

[allplaideverything]

The only one I'm a bit skeptical about is Washington State in the Tri Cities area. Looking back on the school's website, I'm puzzled how that program made the cut.

 

Lol, I feel the same way about U of Oregon on my list. I feel like I crossed it off my list 3 different times and it just kept popping back up.

[sillyrabbit]

Thanks for all your responses, all! Very informative...if even as just food for thought after applications have been submitted.

Edited February 1, 2015 by sillyrabbit