how do you graduate student?

[Anonymous No.7363863]

I'm a graduate student studying early modern English lit at a well-regarded American university. I'm in the dissertation stage. I know many (some? one or two?) of you are considering doing the graduate school thing this application season or in the near future, and I'm really bored and in the mood to tickle my ego, so I thought I'd do us both a favor and answer any questions you might have that reveal no identifying info about me and aren't entirely stupid. Applications process, grad student life, academic questions, etc.

No proof offered of course, but my answers can speak for themselves.

[Anonymous No.7363874]

What are you doing your dissertation on? I'm doing mine on Shelley and the Hellenistic Ideal currently.

[Anonymous No.7363879]

Do you work?

[Anonymous No.7363897]

>>7363874
Fear of Catholicism in English literature mostly during the Stuart era. The idea of the dissimulating Catholic with his loyalty split between pope and king became one of the driving forces of the political imaginary, and the ramifications are clearer in literature than political philosophy.

>>7363879
I teach a composition class as well as doing my own studies.

[Anonymous No.7363904]

1. How many schools did you apply to?

2. How many accepted / rejected / waitlisted you?

3. Who wrote your letters of recommendation? (As in, who were they to you?)

4. Did you turn in a writing sample? What was it?

5. What was your GPA when you finished undergrad?

[Anonymous No.7363913]

What do you plan to do with your graduate degree?

[Anonymous No.7363921]

>>7363904
>schools
14, iirc.

>accepted/rejected/waitlisted
I was accepted at two. U of Chicago does a weird thing where they try to sell you on an overpriced one year MA if you're a marginal candidate, but if you're more borderline they give you half off. I got the half off offer. Everybody else rejected me. Keep in mind that average acceptance rate at most top 20 programs is about 2-4%.

>letters of rec
I had one undergrad professor I was very close to. He wrote one. Two others that I knew less well wrote the others.

>writing sample
I wrote an undergraduate thesis. I carved out the two best parts and made them into one essay with the help of the undergrad mentor. I had 15 and 25 page versions, if I remember correctly. The programs I got into both got the long versions.

>GPA
Ooof. I had a weird situation where many of my classes were not graded. In the half of my classes that were graded, I had something like a 3.4. Not especially good.

[Anonymous No.7363927]

>>7363913
Ideally be a professor. I've got the dissertation blues, though, and have considered jumping ship, possibly to teach high school since I've really enjoyed teaching and the MA I've already earned would give me a leg up in that. The job market is as brutal as it's made out to be, and the closer I get to it the less likely it seems worth it. If I were to teach a 4/4 schedule or worse, I might as well teach high school anyway.

[Anonymous No.7363935]

So you go to u of chicago? Pretty good school to get into for being rejected by 12 others.
What do you plan on doing after grad school?
What was your undergrad school/what was its prestige?
How much free time do you have after planning for your comp class and doing attending to your studies each day?

[Anonymous No.7363942]

>>7363897

How many roundheads can you fit on a pinhead?

is James I's book Basilikon Doron as crazy as I remember it?

[Anonymous No.7363951]

>>7363921
Excuse my ignorance, but do you really think the study of "Fear of Catholicism in English literature mostly during the Stuart era" is something important to research, or better, is something that will be relevant? I feel like 2 or 3 people max would need to know anything about this. Again, sorry if I don't get it, you can bash me.

[Anonymous No.7363954]

>>7363935
No, I don't go to U of Chicago. They gave me a second-rate offer, and two other schools gave me real offers. The school I do go to is similar in prestige, though. The process is a crapshoot and the admissions rates are so low that unless one is both totally hot shit and an underrepresented minority, it's unlikely that one would get offers from more than a couple schools.

>what i'll do after
>>7363927

>undergrad
Middle tier liberal arts college.

>free time
I probably work about six hours a day on average with one day off each week, with some weeks significantly busier when my students have essay deadlines.

[Anonymous No.7363977]

>>7363942
Basilikon Doron can be a bit offbeat, but most of his advice is pretty solid. He's really focused on how the king should work to be respected by his subjects, which is actually a really important subject given how vulnerable kings are to things like being deposed or assassinated. He also argues for much more religious tolerance than most English people wanted at the time. James is endearingly goofy but Basilikon Doron often gets a bad rap, mostly because it's often read in undergraduate surveys next to genuinely brilliant political writers like Hooker or Hobbes. It's shitty and crazy by comparison but not when seen in wider context. His writings on witchcraft are great too.

>>7363951
Thanks for phrasing that so politely! It's the nature of most academic studies that they'll only be relevant for a set of people within an already small discipline. But while it sounds really specific, it pertains to many important discussions about early modern religious cultures (a surprisingly hip field) and political philosophy. A broader way of putting it would be that early modern literature has a lot to say about sovereignty and nationalism, and that it turns out that Catholicism is much more important to understanding the foundations of sovereignty than most scholars have argued. Anti-Catholicism is incredibly widespread in early modern Britain - this isn't just some random avenue, but one of the central building blocks of their political ideology.

[Anonymous No.7364000]

How big a difference in workload and work quality is there between undergrad and grad? That's my biggest worry. I can do stellar work but I work at a snail's pace so the idea of churning out multiple 10 page papers per week (as a full time student) sounds a bit crazy to me. Will I just not sleep for 4-6 six years?

[Anonymous No.7364012]

>>7364000
If you're just a slow writer (like me), it probably won't be a huge deal. It matters when you have seminar papers. At other points in your career you can schedule yourself out of real difficulties. If you're a slow reader, then you'll likely feel overburdened.

[Anonymous No.7364018]

>>7364012
Won't be too bad then I guess. I'm putting the finishing touches on my writing sample and I've been agonizing over it for months now to make it grad school quality. This probably skewed my most recent views of paper writing. I have heard, especially in proseminars, that essays get thrown at you weekly for every class.

Reading won't be an issue since I actually read MORE during the school semesters (why read the assignment right now when I can read something else and read the assignment before class?).

[Anonymous No.7364022]

>>7364018
It varies by institution, but the idea of multiple 10 page papers a week is absurd. My impression is that my university is normal in expecting about 20-30 pages of writing during the semester and 60ish pages of final papers. That's the cumulative page count for all courses, not a page count for each class. Different institutions divide it up differently though. What's your writing sample about?

[Anonymous No.7364036]

>>7364022
My sample is about self-reflexive belief statements/propositional attitude reports; specifically a critical discussion of David Lewis' response to John Perry's work. Typical analytic philosophy paper (exegetical section, criticism section, synthesis section).

If it wasn't obvious, I'm going for philosophy not English.

[Anonymous No.7364043]

>>7364036
Then you'll probably do even less writing because you're not allowed to ramble like we are.

[Anonymous No.7364108]

>>7363921
Thanks for answering all my questions.

I'm looking to apply to some MFA in Creative Writing programs.

Not sure how many I'll be applying to. At least three, but you applying to 10+ makes me think I should cast a wider net.

I'm asking three of my undergrad professors who know I do good work. One journalist, one ethicist, one poet.

For my writing sample, I'm writing a short story that's maybe half done. Planning on about 15 pages. (Some programs have a max sample size of 20 pages.)

I was a huge no-lifer in undergrad (that's not true, mostly) and got a 3.981. Only had one A- during the semester I took all my capstone courses and worked at the university's radio station and newspaper.

[Anonymous No.7364115]

>>7364108
>Not sure how many I'll be applying to. At least three, but you applying to 10+ makes me think I should cast a wider net.
Gonna piggie back off this.

What's a good amount of schools to apply to? More is better obviously, but at ~$50 per application I'd be spending a couple hundred just applying to the 5 or 6 I want to do.

[Anonymous No.7364127]

>>7364108
Good luck. Creative Writing programs are obviously another kettle of fish since they're shorter and more profitable for universities (even if your program is entirely funded). If you can afford to, though, I'd highly recommend applying to every place that you would be excited to go to. Creative Writing programs are also in such high demand that there's a surplus of highly qualified applicants.

I was non-representative in getting in with my GPA. It's sort of irrelevant after you've gotten in, so it's not something that I've discussed with most of my peers, but those I have talked to have all gotten nearly perfect grades. I tend to think that my test scores probably helped overcome the disadvantage my grades put me at.

[Anonymous No.7364136]

>>7364115
I'm the post you're piggybacking on.

I said three, but I wouldn't feel bad at all applying to fifteen or more if I knew it would get me a free ride somewhere.
I took a desk job three months out of undergrad and I need to get out of here.

[Anonymous No.7364147]

>>7364115
It's been a while since I've had this discussion with my peers, but most did about 8-12, as far as I remember. Like I said, most of the top schools have 2-4% acceptance rates. I'm sure that there are always plenty of underqualified applicants, but at that rate just being hot shit is hardly a guarantee that you're going to be accepted anywhere. You increase your odds if you apply to lots of places. This is especially true if you're applying to a program straight out of undergrad. I would say 70% of my fellow students did MAs before coming here, even though they then have to do coursework again and earn a second MA here.

[Anonymous No.7364150]

Any insight into someone who did something unrelated for undergrad, an English minor (4.0 in English classes), and is working in industry for something completely unrelated to English/Lit applying to PhD for English/Comp Lit/etc.? Confident can get a killer GRE if/when it comes to it.

[Anonymous No.7364151]

>>7364136
I've been working since graduating too, I'm just still living with the college mindset of "spend as little as possible". I have a list of about 9 or so (shortened from 35!) that I'm going over with my letter writers this week to get their input about the program-my interests intersection.

>>7364147
Yeah the more the merrier in terms of chances it seems. I guess I can just bite the bullet and hope for a nice funding package at a school I want to attend!

[Anonymous No.7364160]

You'll live in poverty as an adjunct or take a job that has little to nothing to do what you're studying in grad school. Anyone considering graduate work in literature in the US (and Canada and Australia) should know ahead of time that your chances of ever getting a full-time job teaching literature (or creative writing, for that matter) in a university, four-year college, or community college are very, very low. Please do some research ahead of time on the adjunct/contingent faculty life and the poor job prospects in academia before you accept any offer of graduate school. Everyone thinks he will be the one to get a full-time tenure-track job but if they stay in academia, they'll likely be teaching first-year composition and remedial writing at multiple campuses for about $2700-$3200 a class. (Check out The Adjunct Project online for salaries at colleges in your area; some are as low as $1500 a class in rural areas, but even Miami-Dade College and Broward College and Palm Beach State in South Florida, not a cheap place to live, currently pay adjuncts about $1900 for a three-credit cours.

[Anonymous No.7364163]

>>7364150
Well, I actually earned my undergraduate degree in a non-English liberal arts field and only took about four English classes as an undergrad. I had a great writing sample and great GRE scores. So it's something that's possible, but it stacks the deck against you, obviously. If you're really devoted to the idea of getting a PhD in the field, come up with a plan B that involves getting an MA. There are plenty of funded programs out there, but of course it's not anyone's first choice.

[Anonymous No.7364174]

>>7364160
OP here, this is totally reasonable advice. At this point, counterintuitively enough, you're also more employable coming out of a lower-ranked institution. There aren't enough jobs (by a long shot) for students in the best programs, and crappy undergrad schools (rural state schools, community colleges) don't want to hire people that they rightly think will be on the prowl for better jobs.

Being a grad student is not a good financial decision either. I pay no tuition, get free-but-mediocre health insurance, and make about $27k a year for highly skilled labor.

I entered graduate school in my early twenties, so if I do leave I'll still be out well before I'm thirty and I'll have gotten a chance to study something I love and live in a cool area for six or seven years, but I would be super hesitant to enter grad school at 27 or older because the odds that you'll eventually switch careers are quite high.

[Anonymous No.7364185]

>>7364163
Slightly reassuring to hear but at least you were in the liberal arts. I was a finance major working full time in finance...do you think that has any weight, positive or negative?

[Anonymous No.7364204]

>>7364185
Likely negative, though it may attract some curiosity from the people reading the applications. If you want to do something like "finance and literature" that would pique interest, I'm sure, but consider that you'll be competing against a pile of folks with degrees in English. As always - it's such a crapshoot.

[Anonymous No.7364332]

One question people frequently ask is how to study for the English Lit GRE. It is a very difficult test. There's no two ways about it. The good news is that I know plenty of people who scored a little above 600 and made it in, but the bad news is that there's really not a good way to study if you have gaps in multiple periods. It's really a test designed to test your interest in the field as a whole rather than your ability to cram, which I actually think is kind of neat.

Those who haven't looked at it ought to check out the practice book (fat PDF warning): https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/practice_book_lit.pdf

Even if you don't anticipate taking it, you'll probably enjoy/be frustrated by taking it for a spin.

[Anonymous No.7364681]

bump o

[Anonymous No.7364709]

I've just started my BA this semester but I think I want to go to grad school and maybe become a professor eventually.

Not really sure what to do at this stage of the game other than get to know my profs and get good grades.

[Anonymous No.7364907]

>>7364709
OP here. Those are both good things to do. I recommend that you take classes in a variety of time periods as well. There are eight major periodizations: early modern (Renaissance), 18th century, Romanticism, Victorianism, modernism, antebellum American, post Civil War American, and Anglophone postcolonial. Try to cover as many of them as possible so that you gain a wide breadth of knowledge and can learn what fields you most enjoy. It will give you the lay of the land in the discipline in a way that focus on what you currently find most interesting will not.

[Anonymous No.7364921]

>graduate school
>in a humanities discipline

LMAOing at your life

[Anonymous No.7365677]

>>7363863
Is a 168 vebal enough to out weigh a 151 quantitative? I din't study for either sections, so I figure I can bump the math. I intend to go to div. school for a master and then a phd later.

[Anonymous No.7365701]

>>7364907
For the Honours program at my uni I'm required to take at least 1 course each in at least seven different time periods/areas, so I've got that covered by default.

If you're interested the areas of study available are: Renaissance, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century (all of these are British lit), Contemporary and Theoretical Studies, Modernism, American, Canadian, Postcolonial, and Literature by Women

[Anonymous No.7365708]

>>7364907
>>7365701
I forgot to mention that at present I'm most interested in studying Shakespeare, that or literary theory but idk I might find I like something else better over the course of my degree. Probably why I'm required to take such a breadth.

[Anonymous No.7365981]

>>7365677
My impression is that the most graduate schools don't really care much about the GREs. They need ways to quickly eliminate some of the more unrealistic applicants, so if your score is very low that might be a problem. Quantitative should matter at all if you're going to a humanities program unless it's very low. I knew someone who was accepted to a program but didn't meet the minimum quantitative requirement laid out by the university. The department she applied to didn't care at all, and her score was incredibly low (20% percentilish, iirc). That's all to say don't sweat it.

>>7365708
Those breadth requirements are great. The other general advice, I guess, is that you should specialize in a period and not literary theory. Theory is something that everyone has to know about, but it's frankly a bit retro unless you're doing postcolonial or if your theoretical interests are specifically part of a trendy field (new materialisms, affect studies, animal studies, etc.).

[Anonymous No.7366606]

bump to the rescue

[Anonymous No.7366622]

>>7366606
>>>/his/
Take your school questions there, the thread could have slowly died on page 10, but you want your off topic to be deleted huh?

[Anonymous No.7366642]

>>7366622
/his/ is basically fucking pol 2.0 I'm not the OP but I can understand his or her concerns. Sounds like someone pissed in your NEET Cheerios this morning considering grad school is something that can apply to /lit/ as well as a number of other boards and OP could have had a specific reason he came to us as members of family.

[Anonymous No.7366680]

>>7366642
This post is basically on point.

[Anonymous No.7366763]

>>7366642
Saw the thread last night, I didn't say shit because OP wanted genuine help, and it wasn't some subtle b8 thread to start off topic shit, he got his help... then bumped the thread from page 9

>someone pissed in your NEET Cheerios this morning
Lel I wish, I'm no longer NEET, I'm a wage-slave now... sad times.

[Anonymous No.7367600]

>>7366763
More help never hurts anyone. Lit should always keep going especially when there is genuine discussion and progress is being made on issues.

Lol have fun being a wage slave while I sit in academia. The view from this ivory tower is lovely. You did a great job keeping up the grounds though sir.

[Tim No.7367980]

>>7363927
The transition from academia to high school may not be easy. Just because you enjoy the material, doesn't mean thing it is going to be fun.

I'm a high school English teacher and I'm jonesing to get back into academia. Hs is definitely fun, but a lot less English and a lot more management, breaking things down, curriculum design, dealing with admin, etc etc etc

Might work out for you, though. Just don't go into hs English hoping to actually teach English, because it'll be at a relatively rudimentary level

[Anonymous No.7368700]

bump for shits and giggles at this rate m8

[Anonymous No.7369215]

>>7364204
Hey thanks for the response. Just curious if you've ever met anyone with a similar background in PhD level English/Lit? Or is that just not something that really happens from what you've seen? (finance/econ undergrad/work- > humanities)

[Anonymous No.7370649]

>>7369215
No

[Anonymous No.7371548]

OP back again.

>>7367980
Yeah, I know, sort of. Still, I wonder if the drop to teaching high school would be that much worse than ending up teaching at some third rate college. Because I have an MA from a marquee school, I'm decently positioned to get a job teaching at a prep school where the administrative stuff is still likely a disaster but where the actual teaching isn't all that much more rudimentary than undergrad teaching. I have family that teaches high school English and we've had this exact discussion. To some extent I think it's a grass is greener type thing. If I stick it out maybe I can teach undergrads about revenge drama for the rest of my life or maybe I'll get stuck teaching folks who didn't cut it in the college applications process about what the difference between tragedy and comedy are.

>>7369215
I know two professors who did their undergrad in science subjects and then transitioned into English. Your transition is doable, but it's possible that you'd need to earn an MA first if you want to attend a top 15 school. There are many other schools that have a lot to offer in specific subject fields but the pay/job prospects/environment can be quite different.

[Anonymous No.7371672]

>>7369215

econ is a social science retard

[Anonymous No.7371696]

>>7364160
This.

Fuck, I wish I would've done my research BEFORE starting graduate school.

FUCk.

[Anonymous No.7371736]

You've said that the market is brutal for those in your field, but what about the less popular humanities? Ancient Latin, German literature, classics, French lit, etc. Is the market hopeless?

[Anonymous No.7372326]

>>7363863
Shit my negro, I'm applying for early modern English lit at well-regarded American universities right now. Planning on doing my thesis on the shifting cultural poetics of obesity in Elizabethan-Jacobean drama.

[Anonymous No.7372336]

>>7363921
Did you take the subject test in English lit? Score?

[Anonymous No.7372825]

>>7371672
Yes, I just meant people who did undergrad work in fields that aren't English.

>>7371736
Why would less popular humanities departments be any better? The situation for most of those is totally bleak. Low undergraduate enrollment means those departments are on life support in most places, especially Classics. The "good" part is that every school needs one or two professors from each of those subjects to teach basic undergraduate language courses. "But why pay a full professor's salary for somebody to teach French 101? An adjunct could do that," admins everywhere are already saying.

>>7372326
Good luck. Early modern obesity studies is a surprisingly crowded field. Obviously you have to enter in with an idea for a project due to stupid applications requirements, but I've found that my colleagues who are relatively unattached to their ideas do much, much better work than those that clutch the idea they arrived with from their MA program or undergrad.

>>7372336
Yes. It's been a while, but I believe my score was 730. Like I said, my impression is that scores are not weighted very heavily but are used because they take little time, energy, or knowledge to evaluate. I suspect my high score helped me overcome my lower-than-average GPA, but friends that I've talked to about the subject GRE mostly scored lower (though all above 600) and still made it in.

[Anonymous No.7372898]

>>7363897
>composition

Do you have any good resources for learning this on your own? I would like to refresh myself

[Anonymous No.7373169]

>>7372898
Having a live teacher to give you personalized feedback can't be replicated at home. Most writing programs use methods that break down academic writing into its components. Gordon Harvey's "Elements" essay is an influential model. Gerald Graff's book "They Say/I Say" is the best book length guide to academic writing that I've read. Steven Pinker's book "The Sense of Style" has a lot of good advice in it if you can get past the annoying authorial voice. You might also check out Bryan Garner's "Modern American Usage," which is packed with useful advice and is a worthy reference tool.

[Anonymous No.7373742]

>>7363874
Is this a Stoner joke?

[Anonymous No.7373750]

>>7373742
Yes, I'm surprised it took this long