International applicants to US

[Caien]

Hello all, long time lurker first time poster here!

I'm just reaching out to see if there are any other international applicants to US PhD programs here, or current international students already in a US program, who may be able to shed some light on the process of applying from abroad. Having applied last application cycle with exactly zero success (well, one Masters offer that I couldn't afford) to 7 programs, I'm gearing up for this year and trying to put together a new game plan.

Here are some things I suspect let me down this past cycle:

1. Academic CV I know this is not considered the most important part of the application, but I can't help but notice a lot of US applicants have whole piles of awards, prizes, publications etc, even at undergraduate level. I did not win any prizes at undergrad, and it wasn't something that I thought to worry about until I came on to GradCafe! There wasn't really any emphasis on that kind of thing in my department.

2. Letters of recommendation While I'm sure my professors, who were very encouraging and supportive, wrote strong letters for me in the context of our own academic culture, I can't help but wonder if there may be a significant difference in what's expected of the letters in the US. Obviously there's no way to investigate as the letters are anonymous, but for example one professor told me not to send him my applications materials to help him in writing the letter; he wrote it from my 'file' :/

3. SoP Did my best, since I got no offers I'm inclined to think it was terrible. I did get feedback from a number of professors, including two who had graduated from US PhD programs as well as my undergraduate advisor and other professors who knew me fairly well. They all assured me that not only was my SoP quite strong, but that I was quite a strong candidate overall.

Now, of course I know that English PhD admissions are incredibly competitive, but I have to admit it really threw me to get no offers at all after essentially being told to reduce the number of applications I was submitting as I was sure to get a handful of offers. I can't help but wonder could there be a significant deficit in both my own and my professors understanding of what makes a good US application. Basically I'm just reaching out to see if anyone has any wisdom to offer in this regard!

Finally, for context sake, I'm applying from a world top 50 English department in the UK with a very strong reputation, and I was applying to top 50 programs.

Thank you to anybody who has read this far!

[jungThug]

Hey there!! I'm also an international applicant. Currently finishing my MA and preparing for PhD applications. I don't have any definite answers for you, but many universities in the States require 4 years of college before you can get accepted to a PhD . This requirement is often imposed by the university's graduate school and it puts people from Commonwealth unis at a disadvantage because we get our degrees in 3 years. One way that I've seen people overcome this requirement is to get an MA from your home country which puts you above that 4 year threshold. Furthermore, you are more likely to be accepted with an MA because you can get credits for some classes and get rid of 1 years worth of coursework, which puts you in a better position to complete your degree in a timely fashion. 

 

Best of luck for this application season!  I also applied to a bunch of places last year and got roundly rejected from all places. Got a couple consolation MA admits but no money so I couldn't go. 

[ExponentialDecay]

Take any feedback or advice from anyone who is not on an admissions committee with a huge grain of salt, but imho the first 2 are non-issues and the third is a correlant rather than a causative factor. Prizes and publications, unless we're talking Rhodes or a publication in an actual peer-reviewed big-girl journal, are of marginal importance. If your department regularly sends students to US PhDs and if your recommenders studied in the US (though it is better if they are known in US academia), your LORs should be at a good level. Applicants with UK credentials are no rarity. I don't know what a "file" is, but if it contains your work with that professor, then that should be fine. They're writing a letter based on your past performance with them, after all, not on what you want to do in the future. 

I'm sure you are a strong applicants, but lots of strong applicants get dinged every year because there just aren't enough spots in the programs. Your best bet is to be an exceptional applicant, which, who knows what that is, but it's not simply being a good student who got good grades, or to focus heavily on fit with programs that will value some niche competency you have, like a language, or a technical skill e.g. for digital humanities. 

[Caien]

Thanks for the replies guys.

JungTung, my uni is actually a four year degree, but thanks for the thoughts nonetheless. Definitely going to apply to more MAs this time around, including in the UK (The plan was to apply for 4-5 UK Masters last year, but my supervisor told me not to, go figure.)

ExponentialDecay, my concern regarding my academic CV is part of my understanding that there are more qualified applicants than places. In terms of being an 'exceptional candidate', its difficult to see how that can be quantified on a paper application other than having essentially a perfect application. What I'm getting at is, if there are two applicants who meet the most important criteria (excellent WS, SoP, great fit for department etc.), but only one place, then will not the logical step to be take the applicant with the sparkling academic CV over the one with basically nothing? Or in someone else's case, take the applicant with perhaps the high GRE scores? Or better grades? I've made a few attempts to get an award or an undergrad publication in recent months, but as I'm already a year out of uni, the submission eligibility has limited my options.

Your advice regarding niche competency is well taken though. The main reason I want to study in the US is that I feel the open entry format is much better, not having to have your thesis project locked in for a few years. I'm an Irish lit specialist, with a double major in history, but I've been hoping to have 19th Century Irish, British and American as my research area. As such I was sort of resistant to applying to only programs that would be strong in Irish studies, as I didn't want to pigeonhole myself. I've come to realise that applications are basically a matter of getting yourself in the door, and that that there are a lot of universities that would be strong in Irish literature (thereby making it easier for me to argue fit) and have generally strong programs overall, so I can branch out later if I so wish. (Though the fact that still, it seems, Irish literature in academia basically means the modernists is somewhat frustrating!)

[knp]

46 minutes ago, Caien said:

What I'm getting at is, if there are two applicants who meet the most important criteria (excellent WS, SoP, great fit for department etc.), but only one place, then will not the logical step to be take the applicant with the sparkling academic CV over the one with basically nothing?

Hi Caien,

I think you may be underestimating the amount of difference that can be found in writing samples and statements of purposes. "Excellent" is not a binary yes/no category. (Actually, it may be near-binary for CVs—where excellent gives you a tiny bump, but everything in the vast middle between "excellent" and "has a pattern of getting arrested" will have no effect on your application. It is not binary for pieces of writing.)

I've never served on admissions committee, but if I had to guess, at every humanities department, chucking every other piece of information and lining up files in order of how compelling the writing sample is would predict about 75% of admittances. If you chucked letters of recommendation, and especially CVs and grades, and you kept only writing samples and statements of purpose, perhaps you could predict 90%. Of course, that'll never hit 100%: sometimes even a stellar writing sample is accompanied by a weak or untailored statement of purpose, or where an amazing statement of purpose isn't backed up by a demonstration of sufficient research skills, or four excellent Joyce specialists applied and the department only had space for two.

I think the original sense of the strong/weak metaphor for writing might be worth recalling here, for this 'no but it is WS and SoP that are most important, not CV' thing I'm off about. In academia, we often use strong and weak as synonyms for good and bad writing. But statements of purpose aren't an explanatory genre: they're a persuasive one. So no matter how well-written, or "good," a statement of purpose can be "weak" if it doesn't make a forceful case for the worth of your research (and, borrowing the Kelsky paradigm, you as the "hero" who are best equipped to do that research).

Now if I may be entirely blunt, I don't know if it was "good," but it sounds like your statement of purpose was weak. I mean, I'm definitely curious now about what kinds of nineteenth century Irish literature you study, but if your ambivalence about your direction came through, and there was even a hint of a "this project is interesting, I guess" tone to your materials, it may not have been very convincing as an argument. There was an application cycle I sat out, a couple years ago, but where I hadn't quite settled on my project yet: all of my drafted essays sounded like this. They didn't convince me, so I figured they wouldn't convince a committee. I'm not sure, but it sounds like that might have been a factor in what's going on with you.

However, I think that leaves us with a fairly simple way forward. You say you're not committed entirely to Irish literature, but are interested in maybe branching out? Unless regionalism in English is stronger than I expect, I think you can lean into that and show you're committed to the process of research itself. What themes have interested you? If you structured your SoP perhaps more around a theme, and spent most of the "my qualifications" bit on your background with Irish research, I think you have perfect leeway to say, "I've also become interested in extending this project across the Atlantic to examine this theme in James Fenimore Cooper, because of xyz factors that make it interesting for my questions." Don't say that you're interested in "American" literature from the period! But if you can point to some specific works for specific reasons to be interested in both, I think that might be OK. In the versions of my SoP that had a "sources" paragraph—I had some weird interdisciplinary things going on with my applications—half the paragraph was, "I might use these sources, and I would be interested in taking a feminist angle on them! Or I could use this whole other collection of material, which might be interesting because x. Lastly I have considered comparison with some other materials from a region somewhat to the north of mine, which could possibly contribute because y. Anyway I have no idea at this juncture which of those, if any, my dissertation might focus on, but having spent so much of my statement of purpose on the questions I want to answer I figured I should sketch some of the approaches I might take." (Obviously the actual paragraph was not quite so meta as that last sentence, but that's the work that part of my text was doing.)

I definitely want to run this by the English people on this board, because I know that in your field if you did the same thing with period, rather than region, that would be a problem, but I'm not sure about region. I do know that Atlantic/ocean studies are getting increasingly more popular in most of the humanities, as a lens for research, but I don't know if they have penetrated English to the degree that you could rely on it in application materials.

Anyway, this was a rather longer post than I expected, but no matter how many publications you have—I don't have any, and I'm a rising first-year—you will likely be well-served by an extremely polished WS and an SoP that excites your readers to want to see more of your work.

[Caien]

 

Hi Knp, thanks for the response.

On 16/8/2016 at 10:22 PM, knp said:

I mean, I'm definitely curious now about what kinds of nineteenth century Irish literature you study

The Anglo-Irish Gothic novel (Charles Maturin, J Sheridan Le Fanu, Stoker, Wilde amongst others), also the historical novel and 19th century Irish historiography.

On 16/8/2016 at 10:22 PM, knp said:

Now if I may be entirely blunt, I don't know if it was "good," but it sounds like your statement of purpose was weak. I mean, I'm definitely curious now about what kinds of nineteenth century Irish literature you study, but if your ambivalence about your direction came through, and there was even a hint of a "this project is interesting, I guess" tone to your materials, it may not have been very convincing as an argument. There was an application cycle I sat out, a couple years ago, but where I hadn't quite settled on my project yet: all of my drafted essays sounded like this. They didn't convince me, so I figured they wouldn't convince a committee. I'm not sure, but it sounds like that might have been a factor in what's going on with you.

However, I think that leaves us with a fairly simple way forward. You say you're not committed entirely to Irish literature, but are interested in maybe branching out? Unless regionalism in English is stronger than I expect, I think you can lean into that and show you're committed to the process of research itself. What themes have interested you? If you structured your SoP perhaps more around a theme, and spent most of the "my qualifications" bit on your background with Irish research, I think you have perfect leeway to say, "I've also become interested in extending this project across the Atlantic to examine this theme in James Fenimore Cooper, because of xyz factors that make it interesting for my questions." Don't say that you're interested in "American" literature from the period! But if you can point to some specific works for specific reasons to be interested in both, I think that might be OK. In the versions of my SoP that had a "sources" paragraph—I had some weird interdisciplinary things going on with my applications—half the paragraph was, "I might use these sources, and I would be interested in taking a feminist angle on them! Or I could use this whole other collection of material, which might be interesting because x. Lastly I have considered comparison with some other materials from a region somewhat to the north of mine, which could possibly contribute because y. Anyway I have no idea at this juncture which of those, if any, my dissertation might focus on, but having spent so much of my statement of purpose on the questions I want to answer I figured I should sketch some of the approaches I might take." (Obviously the actual paragraph was not quite so meta as that last sentence, but that's the work that part of my text was doing.)

I definitely want to run this by the English people on this board, because I know that in your field if you did the same thing with period, rather than region, that would be a problem, but I'm not sure about region. I do know that Atlantic/ocean studies are getting increasingly more popular in most of the humanities, as a lens for research, but I don't know if they have penetrated English to the degree that you could rely on it in application materials.

Your suggestions for how to approach the SoP was essentially exactly what I did unsuccessfully last year. It was likely not clear, but your remarks on branching out are what I meant when I said I'm a Irish lit specialist who hopes in the future to work on British and American literature of the 19th century as well as Irish. Of course I did not say in the SoP that I am interested in '19th century American literature', I did specify writers/works and how they would relate to my previous work. When I mention my preferred research area as 19th century British, Irish and American, I refer to the fact that on application forms for English PhD programs, they require you to state a very broad geographical/temporal research area, which is used to direct the application to the appropriate member of the admissions committee. Additionally, my SoP was structured around a theme, which was the interrelation between historiography and the novel.

However, its very likely that my SoP didn't sound entirely committed, as on the advice of some of professors, I simply put together a potential thesis project as an example of what I might study in the future, with an awareness of the fact I would not be tied down. It requires a bit of cognitive dissonance, I think, to propose a thesis as if I am 100% committed when a big part of why I am applying to the US is because I don't want to commit to a very specific project at this stage. If that was the case I would likely just do my PhD in the UK. This is clearly something I just have to work through.

Finally, when you mention 'Atlantic/ocean' studies do you mean transatlanticism? Because yes that is becoming popular in English departments.

Having done some serious digging on good SoPs and reading discussions here on Gradcafe, it really does seem like writing the SoP is a simply a learning process. Thanks very much for taking the time to make some suggestions, I will definitely be keeping in mind the emphasis on persuasive rather than explanatory writing.

[knp]

Very cool! I love Gothic fiction. Not so much to read for fun, but I also find it intellectually interesting.

It sounds like you were on the right track, then, and sorry if my speculation was off base. For me, I found that a good rule of thumb was that, if I read the thing out loud, was I sort of excited by the ideas I was reading? If yes, then it was persuasive. If I was like "eh," I had some revision or more brainstorming to do. But I am an excited talker, so that's an easy metric for me. It was also a subtle difference, but I preferred to think about "potential," rather than commitment, for the project I pitched in my SOP. As I am hoping to have a career that requires publication of at least a few articles beyond the dissertation, thinking of potential research projects (not all of which I'll be able to actualize) will hopefully be a skill I end up using. So I was able to reduce the cognitive dissonance by thinking about it on a level of plausibility, or as a kind of brainstorming practice.

In the fields I've dabbled in more seriously, it is just called "Atlantic studies" (with 'Pacific' and 'Indian Ocean' studies as other popular framings, hence 'ocean studies'), but yes! That's the thing. I think there is a line, though, between things that are newly popular as an angle for research, and things that have (newly) entered the foundation of the discipline, such that you can take them for granted. If you wanted to work in something vaguely New Historicist ten years ago, for an example of the latter, you wouldn't have to argue, "New Historicism is a useful angle for my project because it says this and this helps answer my original question in the following way": by 2006, it had entered the discipline long enough ago that you could just assume people knew it was valuable sometimes, and skip from answering whether it could be valuable straight to why. I am unsure whether or not transantlanticism would need that "this is valuable and it is valuable because" kind of justification. (Did I do that chronology right on new historicism? I moved my example back in time in case it is now passé, but I don't know: my English dual-major has gotten rusty.)

Good luck! I think English sounds like a rather harder field to get into graduate school for than I faced, just for the record: in anthropology there is actually a lot more differentiation based on field experience and language/research skills. In English, without those things...yikes! I hope you end up doing very well.