Applying For Admission To Ma And Phd Programs
The most important advice anyone can give you is to follow the directions carefully whenever you are completing an application for a graduate degree program. Although we will discuss general features common to many applications, be sure you understand exactly what materials you are asked to submit to the schools to which you are applying and by what deadlines.
Deadlines, Timing and Takinga Year Off
About Admissions Personnel
The departmental administrator in charge of graduate study is usually a faculty member whose title is Director of Graduate Studies (DGS). The DGS and a departmental secretary or administrator are usually in charge of receiving admissions applications and answering questions about the program. They are the people to whom you should direct questions about admissions procedures or the program.
An application for an MA or PhD program is typically reviewed by faculty members in the department or program, not by a separate admissions office. Faculty members, not university administrators, almost always make decisions about whether to accept or reject graduate applicants. Therefore, your application will probably be read by full-time faculty members who are actively involved in the department’s graduate curriculum. A particular admissions committee cannot include specialists in every field, of course, although members of an admissions committee may consult other faculty members about applications. In making plans about your application and in writing it, keep in mind this audience of faculty members who may or may not know your precise areas of interest well.
Some departments set formal guidelines for admission or are bound by guidelines set by a university: for example, the department or university may be unwilling to consider applicants whose GRE scores fall below a certain cut-off score. Some departments officially or unofficially observe other admission guidelines, such as a reluctance to admit their own department’s majors into its graduate programs.
Nevertheless, it is quite common for faculty members serving on admission committees to have great discretion in assessing applications. Some faculty members rely heavily on grades and scores; others weight writing samples and personal statements over other materials; still others privilege applications whose recommendations were written by well-known scholars. Most members of admissions committees try to take all the elements of an application into account to some extent. Therefore, it is a good idea to consider in advance how the parts of your application (or at least the parts you control) may be read when someone views them as components of a single file. You may want to build in some redundancy across your application so that important achievements or goals can’t be missed or so that the depth of your learning and commitment in a given area is consistently reinforced. Conversely, you may wish to set up some division of labor, choosing recommenders who can speak to different strengths you have or saying less in your personal statement about interests that are vividly indicated by your writing sample.
Bear in mind that the rotating composition of admissions committees may mean that an application turned down by department X in one year might be accepted by the same department X in another year. As these factors suggest, it is hard to predict with certainty whether a given student’s application to a particular program will be successful. However, check with faculty members who know your work and your goals to get advice about how to make your applications as effective as possible. The application materials required by individual MA and PhD programs vary, so be sure to determine exactly what each application requires. The remainder of this section will discuss some common features of applications for graduate study in literature.
Deadlines, Timing, and Taking a Year Off
At present, most graduate programs in literature request or require that applications be submitted in the late autumn or the winter. Many schools have deadlines in early December. However, since individual schools may set different deadlines and since deadlines for each admissions season may change, it is important to investigate the application deadlines for departments to which you might apply as early as possible. Remember also to allow time for writing and polishing your application, and give your faculty recommenders plenty of time to write their recommendations. You need to start preparing your application well in advance of the deadline.
Regardless of the school’s deadline, however, you may be considering whether to apply in your senior year or to apply a year or more later. This decision is likely to be very personal, although you may be able to get good advice from faculty members who know you well. Be assured that neither course of action is likely to be disapproved by the graduate programs to which you apply. Many students apply to graduate school as seniors; many students spend time working, paying off loans, traveling, reading and thinking, or taking another kind of break from school. If you decide not to apply directly from your undergraduate institution, however, be sure to keep work from your courses and stay in touch with faculty members who could write recommendations for you (or ask them to write recommendations—or drafts of recommendations—before you leave).
If you decide not to try to enter graduate school immediately after you finish your BA, keep in mind that you can continue your preparation for graduate school. You may be fortunate enough to find work that involves reading or teaching. Whether or not your employment directly prepares you for graduate school, you may be able to audit courses, attend conferences, and (especially) keep reading, thinking, writing, and talking about your interests. You might decide to read in areas of English studies that you do not know well, or you might decide to undertake more intensive reading and study in areas of particular interest. Remember that graduate school requires a great deal of self-motivation: any practice in self-directed study you get in the years between finishing your BA and starting a graduate program is bound to be helpful.
Standardized Tests
Most M. A. and PhD programs in the U. S. require applicants to take the Graduate Records Examinations, known informally as “the GREs.” The GREs are a standardized test (plural because of its component parts) administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in many test centers throughout the United States and Canada as well as internationally. The GRE General Test is a standardized test consisting of 3 sections: Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, and Analytic Writing. Students release GRE scores to institutions where they are applying by notifying ETS, and ETS sends the GRE scores to the institutions desired.
Some graduate programs (but not all) also require students to take the GRE Subject Area test “Literature in English.” Information about the General and Subject Area tests and procedures for registering to take the tests is available at Educational Testing Service website.
There are many important features of the GRE General Test and the “Literature in English” test—such as the fees, the reporting system, opportunities for canceling test scores or retaking tests or test sections—that you should be sure you understand before you take these tests. GRE tests are administered only on certain dates in particular locations, so you will need to schedule your test well in advance of your application deadlines.
Check if the programs to which you are applying identify minimum, average, or desirable GRE scores for applicants. Remember that it may be possible to retake all or part of a test if you believe you can improve your score. It may be possible to average a low score from one sitting of an exam with a higher one even if it is not possible to replace a low score. Check the ETS guidelines.
The ETS website also offers sample tests and practice booklets for the General and Subject Area tests. Many students have found that the summaries of literary history available in major literary anthologies (various Norton and Heath anthologies, for example) are instructive to review before taking the “Literature in English” subject test.
International students applying to graduate programs in the United States may also be asked to submit scores from the Test Of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the Test of Spoken English (TSE), or the International English Language Testing Service (IELTS). The TOEFL and ETS tests are also administered by ETS, and information can be found at the ETS website. Information about the IELTS is available at their website.
Transcripts and Grade Point Averages (GPAs)
Most graduate programs will request an official transcript from the school that granted (or will soon grant) your undergraduate degree and from any other schools you have attended. Official transcripts are available from the Registrar’s office (in G-3 Thackeray, for Pitt). Currently, there are no fees for Pitt’s transcript service unless you need the Registrar to send the transcript by overnight delivery.
Consult the application guidelines about whether you should send a transcript after your next semester’s grades have been submitted or whether you should send a transcript earlier and report subsequent grades when they have been assigned.
Most applications instruct applicants to submit transcripts from all colleges and universities attended (or attended for a minimum period, such as a year), even if an applicant’s earlier coursework did not contribute to the undergraduate degree earned. Remember that you may comment in your personal statement on features of your application that may benefit from explanation. If you had poor grades early in your college career but have an excellent subsequent track record, you might wish to explain what happened. If your overall GPA has been brought down by a particular course or area of coursework that deserves special explanation, you might wish to comment. Don’t use up too much of your personal statement discussing your GPA, but be aware that you (or your recommenders) could comment on special features of your academic records or history.
Statement Of Purpose
Perhaps the most important component of a graduate application is the Statement of Purpose, known also by other names such as Autobiographical Statement or Personal Statement. The length of the statement varies: some schools require a statement of 300-500 words; others set a maximum of 1 or 2 pages. Check carefully not only for the target length of the statement but also for the guidelines or general description of the statement in a school’s application materials.
In writing your Personal Statement, count on working through multiple drafts and getting advice. Start drafting your statement early to allow time for this process. It is common for applicants to ask faculty members they know—especially ones who are likely to write letters of recommendation for them—to review one or more drafts of a Statement of Purpose and to offer advice, although not all faculty members will have time for this review (or will have time at exactly the moment you need advice—another reason to start early). There are numerous guides online and in print about the personal statement, although there are a dizzying number of schools of thought about what makes a personal statement good. We offer only a few suggestions:
The Statement Of Purpose Should Be Distinctive.
Give readers a sense of yourself as a particular applicant: your interests, your areas of expertise, your ways of thinking. Write honestly (but not casually) to convey who you are and what you hope to study: you probably would not like to be in a program that would not admit you on the basis of your real strengths and interests. However, bear in mind that your application needs to offer an admissions committee some way to differentiate it from other applications. Loving literature is not in itself a reason to pursue a graduate degree, nor is it a claim that will make your application memorable. Be as precise as you can about the purposes that take you to graduate school.
The Statement Of Purpose Should Have Scope.
It is common in a Statement of Purpose for applicants to outline interests in one or more areas of literary study, defined historically, conceptually, or in some other way Naming one or more areas of interest allows applicants to write in more specific and vivid ways about their interests. It also allows them to show what they already understand about the kinds of questions and interests that graduate students pursue. Your specific interests need not take the form of historical literary fields, however. You may also designate certain problems that you would like to investigate, delineating the kinds of texts and questions that interest you. Although your application needs to be specific, graduate programs usually prefer applicants who are open to learning more about how to frame and develop their interests. It may not be a good idea to announce a fixed dissertation topic to which you are already utterly committed.
Be advised that the interests you name in your application will not be enforced once you are in a graduate program. If you sincerely think you are interested in early American literature when you are admitted to a program, but if you find yourself later feeling more interested in contemporary composition studies, no one will make you stick with eighteenth-century U.S. literature.
The Statement Of Purpose Should Demonstrate That You Are Familiar With The Department Or Program To Which You Are Applying
and that you know why it would be a good place to do your work. However, avoid identifying particular faculty members with whom you would like to study. Particular faculty members may leave: the members of the admissions committee may already know, when they’re reading about your powerful desire to work with Professor X, that Professor X won’t be in the department next year. Moreover, you might find yourself in an awkward position if Professor X turns out in person to be someone you can’t imagine asking to supervise your work, even though Professor X (having served on the admissions committee) knows that you came to the department expressly to work with her.
The Statement Of Purpose Should Be Your Best Effort.
Proofread your statement carefully. An admissions committee may overlook your errors, but no admissions committee will be happy to find them.
The Statement Of Purpose Can Supplement Other Materials.
As mentioned above, it is possible to use your Statement of Purpose to address anomalies or special circumstances that affect your application. Poor grades in your freshman year, a family emergency that took you out of college for a semester, or any other factors that would help an admissions committee to make sense of your application without involving them unnecessarily in your personal life can be addressed in the Statement of Purpose. Ask faculty members reading your statement to check whether you have managed to integrate these factors appropriately.
Writing Sample
Most graduate programs will require you to submit a sample of your academic writing. Check the specific requirements of the program to discover the length of sample that is desired. Many programs require samples of 10, 15, or 20 pages.
A writing sample is usually a very good critical essay that was written for a course and subsequently revised. Be sure to read the application instructions carefully to see whether there are any additional criteria for the essay. One reason why junior seminars at Pitt require students to write a long critical essay involving independent research is so that English Literature majors have at least one substantial essay that could serve as a writing sample. Proofread the essay you choose and correct any errors you missed when you submitted it for the course. You may also revise it on the advice of the course instructor or another good reader. Instead of submitting one longer essay, you may submit a couple of shorter essays so long as they do not exceed the page requirement. However, avoid sending multiple short essays because admissions committees will want to be sure you can sustain a substantial argument.
If you are working on an extended piece of writing, such as an honors thesis, you may send a section of it as your writing sample. You may wish to frame the excerpt for this audience so that it will read easily apart from its original context. For example, you could preface an excerpt from an internal chapter of a senior thesis or a long research paper with a discussion of the work as a whole or the argument up to that point, setting off the prefatory remarks in brackets [] or by some other typographical signal. Here’s an example:
[This writing sample is the final section of a three-part essay about the reception of slave narratives in the 19th-century U. S. The first section discussed the features of slave narratives that have been emphasized by recent critics who study African-American literary traditions; the second section discussed some reviews and discussions of slave narratives that appeared in American newspapers and magazines before the Civil War. In the third section, included here as a sample of my writing, I return to three of the best-known slave narratives to consider some important differences between the nineteenth-century responses and those of critics in the last three decades.] It is important that the sample you send be an impressive specimen of your writing and thinking, carefully proofread. If your best paper is also a paper clearly connected to your area(s) of strongest interest, it would make an excellent sample. However, the most impressive sample of your writing might be about a very different area of study: it might even be in a different discipline. If you are not sure how to select a writing sample, consult faculty members whose judgment you trust. Be sure to submit a sample demonstrating some of the talents and interests that have led you to pursue graduate study in literature rather than another field. However, you may decide to submit a writing sample in one area of study but to announce and explain in your Statement of Purpose your interest in a very different field.
Letters Of Recommendation
Most MA and PhD programs require you to submit three letters of recommendation as part of your application. Usually, these recommendations are written by faculty members who have supervised your work in a course or a special project and who work in English studies. These instructors are likely to be the best-equipped to address your academic abilities, achievements, and motivations.
The program to which you are applying will provide recommendation forms for faculty members. Usually, these forms may be downloaded from the application website. It is also increasingly common for programs to allow faculty members to submit recommendations electronically. Check on the options provided by the programs to which you are applying as well as the preferences of your faculty recommenders.
A faculty recommendation form will include a section that you must fill out. Part of that section will require you to register whether you do or do not waive your right to see the recommendation. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (also known as the Buckley Amendment) gives students the right to inspect any of their student records. Accordingly, any recommendation submitted as part of your application will be available for your inspection unless you waive that right.
Most applicants waive their right to inspect recommendations. The main argument in favor of waiving recommendations is that admissions committees might fear otherwise that faculty members’ recommendations do not honestly represent any concerns or drawbacks about the applicant in question. Because waiving one’s right to see recommendations is such a common practice, you may wish to talk to your recommenders about this issue if you would rather not sign the waiver.
Even beyond this legal consideration, however, it is a good idea to talk carefully with prospective faculty members about whether they could write a good recommendation for you and about the configuration of recommenders that might be most effective. Asking faculty members directly whether they could write an enthusiastic recommendation for you may be wise. Faculty members are usually willing to write a recommendation, but it may be difficult for a faculty member to convey reservations that might affect the recommendation unless students open the topic. However, a careful and thorough recommendation will have to be candid. Applicants always have strengths and weaknesses, and even an admiring recommender will provide a balanced account.
It is most important to get recommendations from faculty members you trust who know your work well and can make persuasive, thoughtful assessments of your achievements and potential. However, there are other factors you may wish to consider as well. It may be relevant to consider whether your recommenders have been active scholars whose work might be known and admired by academics at other institutions, for example, and to consider whether your recommenders are currently active in graduate teaching and advising. Consider also the configuration of your recommenders. If one of your recommenders is very junior recommender or is not active as a graduate teacher, perhaps you could look for other recommenders who are more senior and who are active in graduate teaching. It is often an advantage to have a recommendation from one or two faculty members directly connected with the field you hope to pursue, but if that is not possible, faculty in other fields who have a high opinion of your writing and thinking can still do an excellent job of representing you. It can be a good idea to ask faculty members for recommendations when you have just taken their class, so that their impression of you is vivid. In the case of a visiting faculty member or an instructor likely to leave the institution (such as a graduate Teaching Fellow), this practice may be especially wise: it can be hard to track down an instructor who has left your university. However, most faculty members are willing to write recommendations much later, especially if you can refresh their memory by stopping by to visit or contacting them by phone or email.
Try to make the process of writing recommendations as clear and convenient as possible for faculty members, especially if you are asking for a number of different recommendations. Prepare a comprehensive recommendations packet for each faculty recommender. Provide your recommenders with a list or spreadsheet specifying the programs to which you are applying, the format of the recommendation (online or paper), and the deadlines by which recommendations must be mailed, received, or uploaded. Provide addressed envelopes, and stamp the envelopes if the recommendations are to be sent directly to the program. Send faculty members polite email reminders shortly before recommendations are due. Be sure to give your recommenders as much information as possible that will help them to write full and informative letters. Lending your recommenders samples of work completed for their courses—especially the copies on which they wrote comments—will allow them to be precise in describing your accomplishments and your intellectual style. Some recommenders like to quote from student writing or quote from their own earlier comments in letters of recommendation. Sharing your draft of a Statement of Purpose with a recommender not only can be a means to get feedback about the statement: it also allows the recommender to be sure that her or his representation of you doesn’t clash with your self-representation. The faculty members who are likely to become your recommenders are good sources of advice about the graduate programs for which you might like to apply, and conversations with them might help you—and them—write more vividly about your suitability for particular programs. Many recommendation forms also ask recommenders to characterize applicants broadly, assessing applicants’ motivation, their creativity, their potential as teachers, and a number of other characteristics that may not surface directly in academic work. Most recommenders will refrain from commenting on categories they do not feel qualified to address, but you might also be able to give your recommenders a sense of some of your experiences and commitments so that they can address these broader issues.
Thanks to computers, it is relatively easy for faculty members to create multiple versions of a recommendation (if you are applying to very different graduate programs, for example, or if you are applying to graduate school and law school at the same time). It is also relatively easy for faculty members to update an application. If your first round of applications to graduate school does not succeed and you try again, be sure to ask faculty members to change the date on their recommendation as well as to add any new information that might be relevant.
Fees and Expenses
Applying to graduate school is expensive. Taking the GREs costs money ($130 in the U.S. as of 2007); there can be costs associated with ordering or mailing transcripts (though not at Pitt); and each graduate program to which you apply will charge an application fee (typically ranging from $25 to more than $100). When you begin to be serious about applying to graduate school, keep track of these fees and budget for them. Remember also that you will probably need to pay for any visits you make to graduate programs, although some programs can pay for your travel expenses and put you up in the home of someone in the program.
Visiting Graduate Programs
If you possibly can, visit a graduate program before you accept its offer of admission or to visit programs between which you are choosing. You may learn things while visiting that will affect your decision. Even if you are accepted by only one program, try to visit it: if the place doesn’t seem right, you can turn down the offer and make another round of applications next year. Some programs may be able to offset your travel expenses or to put you up at the home of a faculty member or a graduate student, but others may not. You can get information about whether the program can defray your travel costs from a graduate program administrator.
Be sure to notify the graduate administrator(s) in the department about your visit. Check in advance about whether you can visit one or more graduate courses, meet with faculty in the program, and meet with current graduate students. Have questions ready to ask graduate students and faculty about the program: about faculty in areas of interest, the range of courses that is available, the quality of life for graduate students (including how graduate students get by financially and the safety of the campus area), and the number of students the program places each year in academic positions.
If you absolutely cannot visit a program before accepting an offer of admission, try to get some of this information by phone or email. You may ask the DGS to put you in phone or email contact with faculty members and current graduate students, and you may also get in touch with faculty members on the basis of contact information posted on the web.
Outside Resources
There are many resources that describe application processes and offer more information and advice about the components of an application for graduate study.
The Education USA website offers a list of books that offer general information about graduate study as well as comparative accounts of universities and departments.
The Modern Language Association (MLA) is the professional association for academics working in modern languages and literatures, including English. Its website offers a number of resources for people contemplating graduate study in literature, including the document MLA “Advice to Graduate Students: From Application to Career.”
The Carnegie Foundation has long been involved in studies of graduate and professional education, including the current Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID) study. The Foundation’s website offers a number of resources for people interested in understanding graduate education and learning more about specific degree programs.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has sponsored many studies about higher education in the U. S., including graduate education. Its members have also formulated a number of influential statements outlining the nature of tenure and academic freedom and other important guidelines that affect higher education. Its website offers many resources.