Terminal MA Reputations

[callmelilyb]

Hello Everyone,

I would like to hear anything good or bad that people have heard about the terminal MA programs in English at any of the following universities:

Saint Louis University

Northeastern

Brandeis (joint program with WGS)

Purdue

Boston University

Boston College (focus on Irish Lit/Culture)

Any comments are appreciated. Any of these known for being cash-grabs?

As an aside, any programs I haven't listed that you know have a particularly good reputation?

Thanks!

[rainy_day]

I know that BC is funded for a number of applicants! Other than that, I don't have too much info. Someone will chime in shortly to point out that you need to focus on fit vs. ranking, which is true.

[callmelilyb]

I've heard that about BC, too. Also, one of the current students I contacted at Brandeis had a half-tuition scholarship.

I do know that "fit" is important....problem is part of my motivation in doing an MA first is to figure out what that means for me. So for right now "fit" has a lot more to do with academic environment, location, funding, etc. than scholarly interests. Although I am specifically interested in Brandeis for their joint program in Women and Gender Studies because that is one of the directions I am leaning and the Irish Lit. concentration at BC sounds interesting too....completely unrelated I know.

At this point all I can say is that I like realism, gender, Virginia Woolf and poetry......sigh. How do you guys narrow your interests down???

[rainy_day]

Oh, I hear you! I'm also a bit all over the place.

For me, I'm not interested in any one particular time period or author, so that was out. I knew I was into power dynamics, and gender, and post-colonialism, and female authorship/audience, and pop culture, but also literature from various eras...It's hard to write a compelling SoP when you are all over the place. I ended up doing a lot of journaling/brainstorming about what interests me. I started with lists of key terms and authors., and then I thought about my favorite papers. I asked myself *why* they were compelling. For me, it wasn't that I was writing about Coleridge (although I do love him!), so much as the questions I was asking. I looked at the similarities between the questions I kept coming back to across my favorite papers. Finally, one afternoon of journaling, this one sentence that sums it all up just sort of came to me. Now that is the opening line of my SoP. Hope my story helps. I don't think it is the standard path, but it worked for me.

In the other comment I just left you, I posted a link to some funded MA programs.

BC does have Irish Lit and Gender Studies within their dept, fyi. Also, anecdotally, My good friend is at Brandeis right now, doing an MA, and she loves it.

[callmelilyb]

Okay, I like your strategy and I'm going to try my own version of it and see what I come up with. I think taking a theory class would help to apply some vocabulary to my interests.

LOVE Coleridge too....are you into his poetry or criticism? Or both?