If you believe you would like to pursue graduate study, count on spending a good deal of effort identifying the programs to which you will apply. The good (and bad) news is that there are many resources you might consult, all of which you will have to weigh and consider. You may wish to pursue one level of investigation in determining where you wish to apply, then explore further any programs to which you are admitted. If you possibly can, visit any program before you accept its offer of admission so that you can sit in on graduate courses and talk to graduate students informally about the program.
Especially if you are considering a PhD program, think nationally. Many institutions prefer not to accept their own undergraduates into their graduate programs (although there are exceptions). Therefore, the institution where you have received a BA may not encourage your application to a graduate program, not because there is anything undesirable about you as an applicant, but because the intellectual health and national reputation of the graduate program depend on its bringing in students from other institutions. Also, it can be very hard to get into a graduate program, especially a graduate program that offers funding and is highly ranked. Therefore, it is usually wise to apply to a number of programs (including some that seem more modest in admissions criteria than others) and to be willing to move for a good program.
Begin your search by talking with faculty members who are familiar with you as a student. Faculty members can help you translate your interests into possible programs of study. They may have ideas about what kinds of program would best foster you as a graduate student, and will almost certainly have specific knowledge about particular programs that will help you narrow down your possibilities. Indeed, different faculty members are likely to have different opinions about these matters and to have different bodies of knowledge. Try to get more than one faculty member’s point-of-view.
Evaluating Graduate Degree Programs
There are several factors to keep in mind as you begin your investigation of graduate degree programs, although only you can decide the relative weight you give to each factor. These factors include (in no special order):
- The program’s capacity to value and foster work you would like to undertake. The likelihood that you can do the work you would like to do in a graduate program may be affected by:
The set of faculty members in a given program who offer courses and could serve as advisors in areas that interest you; and
The intellectual culture of a department: its faculty members’ and graduate students’ range of interests; its tendencies toward sponsoring more traditional or more innovative forms of scholarship; its intellectual liveliness (marked perhaps by the availability of public lectures and symposia, reading groups, in-house forums for discussions about scholarship and teaching, and other opportunities for intellectual exchange outside of courses); and its tendency to invite interdisciplinary work or not.
- The reputation and ranking of the department offering the degree. The department’s stature may be closely related to the stature of the institution in which it is housed, but particular departments may also be markedly more or less distinguished than the rest of the institution. An English Department’s rank in comparison with other English Departments may be a useful indicator about the quality of instruction in a department, the reputation of its faculty as a whole, and the impression its degrees will create on prospective employers or admissions committees.
The program’s degree requirements. Investigate the relationship between the program’s degree requirements and the work you hope to do.
The program’s admission criteria. Published admission criteria or anything you can learn about the past admission record of a program will help you make an educated—but still speculative—guess about whether you are likely to be admitted.
The program’s placement record for recent graduate students. Investigate how many recent graduates the program—especially in the case of PhD programs—has placed in academic positions (and in what kind of academic positions).
Funding. Programs vary widely in the levels and kinds of financial support they offer.
The location of the graduate program. Remember that you will be probably live near your graduate institution for all or most of the time it takes you to earn a degree. The school’s location will affect your cost-of-living, the kinds of supplemental work available to you, and your quality of life. Consider whether it is important to you to live in (say) a fast-paced city or a friendly town when you are envisioning your time in graduate school.
Information about some of these factors is easy to locate using print or web resources. Other factors may be complex to assess, requiring a visit or direct contact with current program faculty and graduate students in addition to the Director of Graduate Studies.
Deciding which programs to investigate is a significant task. In addition to drawing on advice from faculty members and other word-of-mouth sources, you may consult comparative rankings of graduate programs to get ideas about programs you might wish to explore more carefully. However, bear in mind, when you consider these rankings, that empirical measures of program strength (based on assigning numbers) are controversial and may not capture the possibilities or limitations a program may pose for a particular student with particular interests. The National Research Council (NRC) ranks graduate programs, as does the magazine U. S. News and World Report (in a special annual issue as well as in an online edition for sale). An accessible and free resource is the website www.phds.org. (There does not appear to be a similar site focused on MA programs, but what you can learn about a department’s PhD program is likely to affect its MA program as well.) This website uses NRC rankings and evaluation criteria to allow users to search for customized program recommendations. You may set up searches that reflect your own sense of the relative importance of a variety of criteria such as faculty reputation, size of program, funding provided to students, and the representation of women and minority students and faculty in the program. It is a good idea to use the search engine several times, weighting search criteria differently each time, in order to get a sense of the range of programs that might suit you.
There are also a number of published guides to graduate programs that you can consult in a library or purchase. Be sure to check how recent your guide is, though, since departments and their rankings are constantly changing.
The best source of basic information about a particular graduate program is its official published information: its website and its published brochures and catalogs. (You may email, phone, or mail a request for published materials, although most graduate programs post everything on a website that is available in print.) Pay attention not only to the information provided but also to the ways in which each program represents itself. Looking at multiple websites or brochures for graduate degree programs will help you learn to read them for differences in emphasis that might give you clues about the intellectual and collegial life of departments and degree programs. You may also ask questions of the program’s Director of Graduate Studies or graduate administrator by email or phone.
In reading a degree program’s informational materials, check for the following information:
- Specific information about the program’s application for graduate admission and its expectations for backgrounds and qualifications of its applicants. Some programs offer information about minimum or average GRE scores for applicants, for example, or about kinds of coursework they expect applicants to have completed.
- Requirements of degree programs and the relationship between MA and PhD (and MFA, if that seems relevant) programs in the department.
Faculty areas of work and interest. If you believe you are interested in (say) British Romanticism, see how many faculty members in a department you are considering appear to work in that area. See if their profiles offer indications about whether their scholarship and course offerings seem significant and compelling to you. You may also look up publications by particular faculty members in PittCat or the MLA International Bibliography. The ways in which faculty members identify their areas of interest may offer insights into the range of critical and historical approaches the department offers. Notice also which faculty members in a program are active in graduate teaching and advising: in some departments, only some of the faculty work with graduate students.
Lists of graduate courses regularly or recently offered. Course offerings (and their instructors) will give you more insights into the kinds of work the department supports and the faculty members who are active in graduate instruction.
A Graduate Student Handbook (under this name or some variation). Many graduate program websites make available handbooks intended for the use of their current students. These handbooks outline all the steps and requirements of particular degree programs, list required core courses, and describe the kind of work that is expected for exams, theses, and dissertations in the program. Because handbooks are usually designed for graduate students already in the program, handbooks may give you more informal and candid information than program materials aimed at applicants. (See Pitt’s Graduate Student Handbook as an example.)
Areas of specialization or secondary concentration (departmental or interdisciplinary) that are promoted in program materials.
Information about graduate placement. How many students with graduate degrees have been placed in academic positions? How many each year, in recent memory? In what kinds of jobs? Placement information is unlikely to be published officially, but you can ask graduate administrators about it.
Throughout your search, be in touch with faculty members you know who can help advise you about this process and provide contexts or questions for the things you learn in print or web materials. Also, be aware that you can contact administrators at particular programs with specific questions, either when you make decisions about where to apply or after you are admitted. You may also ask to be put in touch with faculty members or graduate students in the program.