A question about top graduate programmes in English

[filouxx]

Hi there,

Just as a preamble, I'm a UK undergraduate studying English at UCL. I'm about to go into my third year and am 90% convinced that I'd like to get a Ph.D and attempt to break into the academic world. As such, I've been looking more and more at more at graduate literature programmes in the US, as they seem to far outstrip their UK alternatives. If I graduate from UCL with a first, as I am very much on track to, I'd ideally pursue a taught masters in the UK (either at Oxford or again at UCL) in order to hone my research interests and eventually make an application to some US departments for a Ph.D.

Now, I fully appreciate that there is no sense in choosing a graduate school based on arbitrary notions of the institution's 'prestige', but several of the English departments at the very top of the US league tables are very attractive to me (and many others, I'm sure!), simply due to their fantastic facilities and brilliant faculties. At this fledgling stage, I'm wavering between interests in both Anglo-Irish modernist poetry and early modern studies, both things that Princeton seems to excel in (the Renaissance drama collections, Paul Muldoon as a writer in residence, etc.). I guess what I need to know is what areas of literature and what critical schools these top departments are mainly focussed upon so that I can gauge which ones will fit my research interests when I do apply in a few years. Can anybody help me? I can infer that Harvard are very much into new historicism and early modern studies (Stephen Greenblatt) and would assume that U. Chicago retains some of its opposition to the New Criticism... but what about places like Princeton, Yale, Columbia and Berkeley? 

In short, if anyone can give me a broad overview of the strengths and characters of the top US English departments, I'd be really grateful!

Thanks a lot!

Edited September 12, 2015 by filouxx

[Ramus]

With respect, I don't think you can classify very many programs as all one thing or all another. Even in broad strokes, it's difficult to label most departments or even individual periods within departments. I could probably say that USC or most of the University of California schools lean toward gender and sexuality stuff, but there are just as many counterexamples that suggest those departments are pro-object-oriented-ontology (can you imagine?) or whatever.

Let me illustrate this using some of the schools you mentioned. You've drawn the conclusion that Harvard's EM folks are probably more new historicist. I can't fault you for thinking that because you see Greenblatt's name, but it's nonetheless a fairly limited picture, even for the early modern crowd. Greenblatt doesn't teach very much, is often giving lectures elsewhere, and doesn't work too closely with graduate students. As a consequence, most of the Renaissance dissertations there are being directed by Gordon Teskey, who is decidedly not a new historicist. Since Teskey is working more closely with students, it might be more accurate to conclude that EM people are probably more Teskeyan (he doesn't really fit into one school very well) than new historicist. But again, that's only a partial answer.

The same is the case with Princeton and their early modern people. Nigel Smith is a hardcore British historicist. Jeff Dolven is into poetics and New Criticism (he probably wouldn't admit this outright), and his work in no way resembles Smith's. Bradin Cormack is somewhere in the middle, having a strong element of historicism combined with a theoretical approach to nationalism and law. 

So this is all to say that generalizations rarely help. Ultimately you need to research every individual within your field for each department to which you're applying, or considering applying.  A pain, to be sure, but it's the only way to get a real sense of who you might be working with. 

Edited September 13, 2015 by Ramus

[filouxx]

With respect, I don't think you can classify very many programs as all one thing or all another. Even in broad strokes, it's difficult to label most departments or even individual periods within departments. I could probably say that USC or most of the University of California schools lean toward gender and sexuality stuff, but there are just as many counterexamples that suggest those departments are pro-object-oriented-ontology (can you imagine?) or whatever.

Let me illustrate this using some of the schools you mentioned. You've drawn the conclusion that Harvard's EM folks are probably more new historicist. I can't fault you for thinking that because you see Greenblatt's name, but it's nonetheless a fairly limited picture, even for the early modern crowd. Greenblatt doesn't teach very much, is often giving lectures elsewhere, and doesn't work too closely with graduate students. As a consequence, most of the Renaissance dissertations there are being directed by Gordon Teskey, who is decidedly not a new historicist. Since Teskey is working more closely with students, it might be more accurate to conclude that EM people are probably more Teskeyan (he doesn't really fit into one school very well) than new historicist. But again, that's only a partial answer.

The same is the case with Princeton and their early modern people. Nigel Smith is a hardcore British historicist. Jeff Dolven is into poetics and New Criticism (he probably wouldn't admit this outright), and his work in no way resembles Smith's. Bradin Cormack is somewhere in the middle, having a strong element of historicism combined with a theoretical approach to nationalism and law. 

So this is all to say that generalizations rarely help. Ultimately you need to research every individual within your field for each department to which you're applying, or considering applying.  A pain, to be sure, but it's the only way to get a real sense of who you might be working with. 

This is all very helpful- I must apologise if my questions are exasperatingly naive. As I say, I'm still very much an undergraduate, aha. I'll be sure to speak to my one-to-one tutor about the process when I get back to UCL.

Do you have any idea about the assessment of applications within the departments themselves? Say, for instance, somebody applies to Princeton with a SoP asserting a desire to research and write about animals in Richard Lovelace. The application then gets passed on to Smith or Dolven. Provided the candidate's grades are excellent and their submitted work is fresh and exciting, how would the faculty go about judging the proposal? Does it simply have to have a certain 'je ne sais quoi' that captures the imagination and the whim of the professors?

 

[Ramus]

Do you have any idea about the assessment of applications within the departments themselves? Say, for instance, somebody applies to Princeton with a SoP asserting a desire to research and write about animals in Richard Lovelace. The application then gets passed on to Smith or Dolven. Provided the candidate's grades are excellent and their submitted work is fresh and exciting, how would the faculty go about judging the proposal? Does it simply have to have a certain 'je ne sais quoi' that captures the imagination and the whim of the professors?

 

The short answer is that it depends on a lot of things, and the process varies department to department. First, it matters how the grad program simply processes applications. Does it have a four or five person admissions committee which decides everything? If that committee turns to other faculty for input, to what extent does that outside feedback matter? Or, as many schools do, do individual periods get more or less final say about who they want? This seems to be pretty common practice when the department is larger, because each period is afforded one new graduate student or so each year.

When it comes to the question of what actually makes departments/faculty want to admit you, nobody really knows the answer. Different qualities matter to different programs. But in general, I think programs are looking for the following: 1) Someone who can construct a convincing argument using evidence appropriate to early graduate work; 2) Someone who can write at least somewhat well. (This is probably not as much of a priority as it should be.); 3) Someone whose work seems innovative in some way; 4) Someone who understands what graduate work is. This final thing may seem silly, but you wouldn't believe how many people want to go to graduate school primarily because they like reading literature. Passion is by no means a bad thing—none of us would consider grad school if we didn't have it—but it's not a sufficient reason to admit you to grad school. A lot of people don't understand that. 

One final thing: American schools aren't necessarily looking for a set-in-stone proposal like UK schools are. Of course you want to show that you have a pretty good idea of what you want to research and write about, but you probably should not  submit a mini-dissertation prospectus for your statement of purpose. That conveys rigidity. Programs want you to be ready, but they also want you to be malleable. 

Edited September 13, 2015 by Ramus

[echo449]

Ramus is very correct to say that sweeping institutional commitments to theory are pretty rare these days. Certainly there are certain hot subjects/ interests that coincide across the department, but that's also true of the discipline as a whole. For example, I was surprised at the sheer amount of Latour/New Materialism that I am engaging this year--but it does make a lot of sense that professors would try and organize seminar topics around the poles that are attracting current research. No one is really "against" New Criticism anymore--for most of the discipline, new crit is more a historical formulation now than a body that needs to be rejected. Chicago has a bunch of famous theorists on faculty, and the two that immediately come to mind are Berlant and Brown, so looking at their work might give you a sense of what kind of theoretical approaches are big there. Though, again, they are not really representative of the department as a whole.

One thing i also want to add: At many places, a creative writer, unless they are someone like Fred Moten (who has a PhD in literary studies and a substantial scholarly career), cannot be part of your committee/ you will be discouraged from working with them if they can be on the committee. As such, and I admittedly don't know anything about Paul Muldoon, I would be wary about choosing a program cuz of the poets that they have hired, though that might make an already interesting place even more enticing. 

[filouxx]

 

When it comes to the question of what actually makes departments/faculty want to admit you, nobody really knows the answer. Different qualities matter to different programs. But in general, I think programs are looking for the following: 1) Someone who can construct a convincing argument using evidence appropriate to early graduate work; 2) Someone who can write at least somewhat well. (This is probably not as much of a priority as it should be.); 3) Someone whose work seems innovative in some way; 4) Someone who understands what graduate work is. This final thing may seem silly, but you wouldn't believe how many people want to go to graduate school primarily because they like reading literature. Passion is by no means a bad thing—none of us would consider grad school if we didn't have it—but it's not a sufficient reason to admit you to grad school. A lot of people don't understand that. 

Thanks for demystifying the process. The fact that you've outlined a few general criteria has made it seem much less daunting- I was worried that the success of somebody's application was purely decided on the whim of the professor reviewing it. Am I correct in thinking that these top departments are looking for candidates whose applications suggest innovative scholarship, very strong intellectual curiosity and cogency of argument rather than applicants who are interested in particular authors that members of the faculty are experts on? For instance, going back to Nigel Smith, whose book on Marvell I am particularly familiar with... would a candidate who was interested in researching the divine field of metaphysical poetry (Herbert and Vaughan, let's say) and whose submitted written work was incredible be treated more favourably by Smith (let's pretend he's the member of the faculty reviewing the applications) than a candidate whose work was less good, but focussed on Marvell? Sorry if this question is a bit nebulous! Also, are you aware of the extent to which these top departments 'curate' the admitted year? As in, would they reject a very strong application from a medievalist if they had already admitted 2/3 medievalists already that cycle?

One thing i also want to add: At many places, a creative writer, unless they are someone like Fred Moten (who has a PhD in literary studies and a substantial scholarly career), cannot be part of your committee/ you will be discouraged from working with them if they can be on the committee. As such, and I admittedly don't know anything about Paul Muldoon, I would be wary about choosing a program cuz of the poets that they have hired, though that might make an already interesting place even more enticing. 

Ah yeah, I figured that the writers in residence wouldn't do too much formal teaching... I just love the idea of going to a university with frickin' Paul Muldoon there!

Edited September 13, 2015 by filouxx

[Ramus]

Am I correct in thinking that these top departments are looking for candidates whose applications suggest innovative scholarship, very strong intellectual curiosity and cogency of argument rather than applicants who are interested in particular authors that members of the faculty are experts on? For instance, going back to Nigel Smith, whose book on Marvell I am particularly familiar with... would a candidate who was interested in researching the divine field of metaphysical poetry (Herbert and Vaughan, let's say) and whose submitted written work was incredible be treated more favourably by Smith (let's pretend he's the member of the faculty reviewing the applications) than a candidate whose work was less good, but focussed on Marvell?

Yes, I think that's correct. However, you don't want your interests to be so far removed from the faculty's that they can't figure out why you'd want to work with them in the first place. If all of the early modern professors focus on Erasmus, More, and Latin philology, they'll be scratching their heads if you say you want to study queer theory and Dryden under them. This is a matter of what's generally referred to around here as 'fit.' You and the faculty don't have to identical interests or methodologies to 'fit,' but you generally want to have (at least) either a shared interest in the same authors or a comparable methodology. 

 In the example you give, Nigel Smith would be probably more interested in the first candidate. Others may disagree, but I think most faculty are more interested in students who can create fresh, interesting work than they are in students who want to be clones. 

[echo449]

I can answer that last question for Ramus (though he may have additional insight): so, yes, a program may turn down a strong medievalist because they had 2 other medievalists, even if, say, the 19th century americanist that got an offer wasn't as good on paper. A large part of this is just that a human being can only supervise so many people at once--this also makes admissions even hazier since restrictions on who can take what and when are not easily available to prospective applicants. Some programs are more formal about this than others.

[Ramus]

I can answer that last question for Ramus (though he may have additional insight): so, yes, a program may turn down a strong medievalist because they had 2 other medievalists, even if, say, the 19th century americanist that got an offer wasn't as good on paper. A large part of this is just that a human being can only supervise so many people at once--this also makes admissions even hazier since restrictions on who can take what and when are not easily available to prospective applicants. Some programs are more formal about this than others.

I'd only go a bit further to say that programs will turn down top candidates because they have a glut of students in that period who are still in coursework (i.e. not getting out of the program anytime soon). It happens all the time. And the thing is that you can't know what programs are seriously considering students for a given historical period in a given year, and they probably wouldn't tell you if you asked (they still want the app $). That's just part of the application crapshoot.

[Dr. Old Bill]

All of the above is true.

I will say, however, that there's always the Unraed / Hreademus example: two undergraduate Medievalists who got accepted to several of the same top programs, and are currently in the same cohort at Berkeley. So if you're an excellent, can't miss candidate, there's always hope regardless of other field / era circumstances.

[Ramus]

All of the above is true.

I will say, however, that there's always the Unraed / Hreademus example: two undergraduate Medievalists who got accepted to several of the same top programs, and are currently in the same cohort at Berkeley. So if you're an excellent, can't miss candidate, there's always hope regardless of other field / era circumstances.

I'd actually thought about that case prior to posting. I'd wager, though, that that has less to do with Unræd and Hreað̠emus being stellar candidates (which, of course, as Berkeley admits, they were) than it does with the gamble the department takes with its offers. Some departments will only extend one PhD offer per period at a time (e.g. UMD), because that allows them the greatest control over their class size. They don't run the risk of inflated cohorts or too many students in any one field. It's a smart way of doing things, I think, but it's not the system many programs use. Most departments extend multiple offers at once, with the expectation that a certain number of the offers will be declined. This method has left some programs in a bind in the last few years, and more are moving away from it (cf. UChicago's turn to a Skype final interview round last year). I might be mistaken, but I believe Cal uses this second system, and thus may have played a part in the case you mention. They may have extended two offers, but may have been expecting only one to be accepted. 

I just think it might be assigning a bit too much agency to applicants to say "if you're an excellent, can't miss candidate, there's always hope." Sometimes things are beyond your control. Sometimes you won't have a snowball's chance in hell, no matter what. 

I will concede, though, that if you're as good as Unræd or Hreað̠emus, you're going to get in somewhere good. It just won't be the department that doesn't have a spot for you or anyone else specializing in your period.

 

Edited September 13, 2015 by Ramus

[unræd]

I just think it might be assigning a bit too much agency to applicants to say "if you're an excellent, can't miss candidate, there's always hope." Sometimes things are beyond your control. Sometimes you won't have a snowball's chance in hell, no matter what. 

I think this paragraph is vital to keep in mind--as well as its corollary, which is that factors other that your sheer quality can help in an application, as well. To be sure, no school's going to admit an unqualified candidate just because of connections, or having gone to an especially fancy undergraduate institution, but I don't think the idea that the application process is well and truly a blind meritocracy is really tenable.

Yeah--it's an interesting question, and given the available evidence of just Hreaðemus's and my case, I could construct plausible arguments for both sides of that debate. Yes, we were both admitted to Berkeley as Old Anglicists (I'm trying to make the term happen), and this year's Cal cohort is strong in medievalists overall (3 were admitted with another 2 on the wait list in admitted group of roughly 20; there are 3 in the final cohort of 13) even though there were two medievalists in last year's even smaller cohort of 12. We were also both admitted to Yale, when there's only one (outgoing) Old English faculty member, and the overall pool of admits was also very small. But then again, both Yale and Berkeley overbook, as it were (and as suggested above), and there were other Ivy League schools to which one of us was admitted and the other wasn't, and vice versa, suggesting that it's not the case that a good person will always get in (which I know is a stronger argument than anyone here was making). Moreover, while Berkeley had admitted plenty of medievalists in the years ahead of us, they hadn't had an Anglo-Saxonist in the cohort for two years prior, so they had lots of spaces to fill. So basically: who knows? As Ramus pointed out, different schools really do process application in sometimes very different ways.

As to what Cal itself is like, and with the disclaimer that I've been in classes for only like two weeks, I can certainly share my impressions of the department, as well as what faculty themselves have said about the department's flavor, which is that it doesn't have one: everyone repeatedly stresses the department's size and catholicity, and that there is no one "right way" of doing English at Berkeley. Again, to use me and H. as examples, she's currently working a project that is all about negative space and which is very Deep Thought-y and Theoretical; I'm looking at dry as dust scribal practice stuff in an OE poetic manuscript. It's certainly borne out in other terms, too: in the past few weeks I've received invitations to a bevy of officialesque working groups on everything from the Frankfurt School to DH to psychoanalysis to translation studies to materiality; Stephen Greenblatt both gave a fancy invited lecture here this week and was beaten up (in absentia) in one of my seminars; and my cohort has an eco-crit person, a person who does new media, a couple of queer theory people (both modernists), etc.

There's a lot of other great advice in this thread I don't need to repeat--the different between UK and US applications in terms of specificity of project and the degree to which you're held to it, the importance of your materials showing that you know what the professional academic study of literature really is/means, etc etc etc. But if you have any other questions about Berkeley specifically that I can speak to, do feel free to ask!

[SoyCoffee]

Ramus,  

You seem to be familiar with Princeton's early modern professors. 

I hope you don't mind me asking, 

What's the word on Bradin Cormack? Is he new there? is he well-known in his field?

I'm thinking about applying to Princeton (working on early modern women-writers and political rhetoric)

and I'm still debating whether to contact Night Smith or Bradin Cormack... Both aren't exactly my field but close enough... 

[Ramus]

Ramus,  

You seem to be familiar with Princeton's early modern professors. 

I hope you don't mind me asking, 

What's the word on Bradin Cormack? Is he new there? is he well-known in his field?

I'm thinking about applying to Princeton (working on early modern women-writers and political rhetoric)

and I'm still debating whether to contact Night Smith or Bradin Cormack... Both aren't exactly my field but close enough... 

Bradin Cormack's been there for only a year or two. Before that, he was at UChicago for about a decade. I don't know how many people in EM studies more broadly know him, but he's pretty well known among those who work on law and literature. His monograph is one of the more widely cited ones in that field from last decade. Recently, he has started to move away from the law stuff and started working on the Renaissance trivium and its relation to ontology (so said his faculty page last year). I haven't seen the fruits of that labor yet, so I think he's still in the early stages of the project.

If memory serves, Nigel has actually published a bit on EM women's writing. You can double check that on the MLA Int'l Bib, but I think that's right. I'd probably get in touch with him instead of Cormack if I were you. 

 

 

 

[SoyCoffee]

Thanks! 

That was very helpful!