UT Austin English 2016

[UTQT]

I’ve also been wondering about transportation to campus. Is it really impossible to get a parking pass? I don’t really care where the parking is on campus. If I have to drive to campus and then take a shuttle from the parking garage, that would still be wonderful! I have been looking at apartments ~20 minutes away. Maybe this is a mistake? I had been looking at the Northwest Hills area. Also, y’all are amazing. Thank you so much!

[CulturalCriminal]

49 minutes ago, UTQT said:

I’ve also been wondering about transportation to campus. Is it really impossible to get a parking pass? I don’t really care where the parking is on campus. If I have to drive to campus and then take a shuttle from the parking garage, that would still be wonderful! I have been looking at apartments ~20 minutes away. Maybe this is a mistake? I had been looking at the Northwest Hills area. Also, y’all are amazing. Thank you so much!

Preface: Not currently at UT, but have friends there.

Even though traffic sucks and parking is a pain, commuting isn’t impossible. I’ve known folks who’ve commuted from Kyle, Pfluegerville, and Cedar Park. Just consider that what you might spend on gas and the overpriced parking pass might be equivalent to (or more than) the difference in rent.

[UTQT]

Also, will my recruitment schedule be available before I arrive? I’d like to prepare for any meetings I might have. This is my first (and hopefully only) recruitment, so I don’t really know what to expect. Do y’all remember what your schedules were like?

[mk-8]

1 hour ago, UTQT said:

Also, will my recruitment schedule be available before I arrive? I’d like to prepare for any meetings I might have. This is my first (and hopefully only) recruitment, so I don’t really know what to expect. Do y’all remember what your schedules were like?

I emailed last week to ask about schedules and was told we’d be getting them by the end of this week. So, hopefully by the end of today or tomorrow!

[UTQT]

17 minutes ago, mk-8 said:

I emailed last week to ask about schedules and was told we’d be getting them by the end of this week. So, hopefully by the end of today or tomorrow!

Thank you! 

[dazedandbemused]

6 hours ago, UTQT said:

I’ve also been wondering about transportation to campus. Is it really impossible to get a parking pass? I don’t really care where the parking is on campus. If I have to drive to campus and then take a shuttle from the parking garage, that would still be wonderful! I have been looking at apartments ~20 minutes away. Maybe this is a mistake? I had been looking at the Northwest Hills area. Also, y’all are amazing. Thank you so much!

It's not impossible to get a pass, but most people in the department don't. That's primarily because the pass isn't a guarantee of parking, it just gives you access to certain kinds of campus parking. I had a friend who bought a pass our first year and ended up never using it because the traffic near campus is so congested that parking fills up quickly. There are a few garages and many people use metered parking in West Campus so if that would work for you, I'd recommend those options before paying for the pass.

Edited February 22, 2018 by dazedandbemused

[UTQT]

20 minutes ago, dazedandbemused said:

It's not impossible to get a pass, but most people in the department don't. That's primarily because the pass isn't a guarantee of parking, it just gives you access to certain kinds of campus parking. I had a friend who bought a pass our first year and ended up never using it because the traffic near campus is so congested that parking fills up quickly. There are a few garages and many people use metered parking in West Campus so if that would work for you, I'd recommend those options before paying for the pass.

This is so helpful! Thank you! 

[dazedandbemused]

10 hours ago, RK092089 said:

@silenus_thescribe @dazedandbemused Sounds like the program is great, but the rent is high. Noted. Do people find lower rents somewhat further away from campus, particularly if they have a car? I'm aware of the UT shuttle and its range, but what about other forms of public transportation? If you live a bit out of the shuttle's range, are you able to get to campus without a car with relative ease? 

Other, random questions: How's the health insurance? It looks pretty good, aside from a not inexpensive deductible. Also, I noticed UT is a campus carry school. How does that play out, if at all, in your experience on campus? 

Also, how are the working conditions for TAs? I've been an adjunct at my MFA school for the past two years, and the work is great but the conditions are awful. We have extremely limited access to printing/copying. The department office and administrators are rude and unhelpful. Over a hundred adjuncts share one, medium-sized office. 

Finally, how do you find the experience of navigating the UT bureaucracy? My MFA is at a large, multi-campus university system, sort of like UT, and the bureaucracy is a nightmare. Our online interface for grades, financial aid, etc., sucks, and, when dealing with actual offices, it is very frustrating to try to do simple things like get a paycheck or make a key.

Great questions, honestly. I didn't think to ask them and am, five years later, super grateful that I chose well on these counts anyway (other than campus carry which I'll get back to).

Health insurance is actually really good. It has reasonable copays and since it's such a big system, is taken pretty much everywhere in TX.

While they do throw you right into TAing, it's very much a supported experience. The department has cubicles in a separate building for you to hold office hours, as well as tiny but workable office cubes that are only shared by two people (I wouldn't recommend trying to work in there at the same time though, lol). You also get access to much larger cubes with windows once you enter candidacy. There's a graduate lounge (which you'll be visiting the first day I believe) that has computers and a copier for teaching materials, as well as a sink area with all you'd need to warm up or store meals you bring from home.

As far as bureaucracy, the grad admin people are excellent. I recommend getting on Patricia and Cassandra's good side! They can help you fix just about any problem. As to the multi-campus system, I haven't found it to make any particular difference in how things are run. In many ways all of the campuses here operate independently, and I also think that UT Austin being the main campus means that what happens here is the rule. Now, there are definitely some things that you'll encounter that will be bureaucratic nightmares, like submitting your MA report or Dissertation to the Main Building. But for the most part, the in-house team makes it super easy. Although you do have to walk to the other side of campus to pick up your keys...but I only had to do that once!

Now to campus carry. It's kind of amusing you should ask now, because yesterday we were actually notified of two instances where people had brought their concealed carry weapons to campus and then left them lying around. Twice. In one day. The English dept is extremely anti-campus carry however, which helps to off-set the existential horror.

[silenus_thescribe]

I echo everything that @dazedandbemused said, and would especially stress not getting a parking pass from the university. They run about ~200 per year, which is pretty high given that you aren't guaranteed parking. Also, traffic is a bloody mess around that area, and I think that + gas makes it not worth it.

To expand on a comment of mine from earlier: While east/west bus service in town is really spotty, if you can land somewhere on the North-South angle of town, you can usually land a bus that will get you to campus, and at no cost to you as a UT student. Even for some of the more southmost/northmost parts of town, you can catch the 801 or 803 rapid shuttle, which will drop you off right on the main drag of campus, and pretty quickly at that. If you want to avoid some of the higher Hyde Park/North Campus rents and are willing to go north (up by 183) or south (down by 290/Southpark Meadows), both the 801 or 803 are an excellent bus option. Personally, my recommendation would be to land a place with reliable bus service and save yourself the trouble of car costs (gas, insurance, repairs, etc). I all things considered am glad I have a car, but I recently had an expensive repair bill that made me wish I only needed to rely on the bus. 

If you know you'll be flying a couple times a year, there's a bus that leaves from campus (the 100) and goes straight to the airport. Like all buses, it's free for UT students.

My first year, I got to campus on the 7 bus, which from my neighborhood at the time (where I rented a place for a cool $500/month, a price that's still kind of available there) took between 35-45 minutes. Not ideal, but with traffic you aren't guaranteed a fast commute a lot of the time, and if you can read on the bus, which I can, it's not wasted time.

[UTQT]

I just received my recruitment schedule! My first two meetings are with faculty that I would absolutely love to work with (so excited/nervous to talk with them!). My third meeting is with a wonderful professor that I don’t know much about— I checked his CV and we don’t really overlap in terms of research. Is it typical to get paired with someone tangential to your field, and are those meetings best used to talk about UT Austin more generally? Of course I’m interested in hearing about his research, so I’ll read up on him and prepare questions.

[silenus_thescribe]

6 hours ago, UTQT said:

I just received my recruitment schedule! My first two meetings are with faculty that I would absolutely love to work with (so excited/nervous to talk with them!). My third meeting is with a wonderful professor that I don’t know much about— I checked his CV and we don’t really overlap in terms of research. Is it typical to get paired with someone tangential to your field, and are those meetings best used to talk about UT Austin more generally? Of course I’m interested in hearing about his research, so I’ll read up on him and prepare questions.

Yes, it sometimes happens that you meet with faculty who aren't necessarily in your field; it all depends on who is in town and is available that weekend. I met with the person who became my advisor (and was my POI on my statement of purpose), and a professor that I have barely seen since that recruitment weekend.