I’m a first year student on a full scholarship to a Top 50 school and I just hate law school. I should not have blindly matriculated just because I did well on the LSAT. My grades are in the gutter and I’m indifferent to it all.
I’d like to pursue an MA in English and teach English in HS. I had a 3.03 GPA at a Top 20 undergrad with mostly B’s in my major (English) and one C+ and I don’t have any superb research experience or invaluable life experiences that would impress.
What range of schools should I be aiming for? I only want to apply to two or three. I live in Manhattan and would like to teach in NYC, so an area school would be fine if I’m competitive. I’m taking the GRE soon.
Depending on your state’s regulations, you might not (read, for nearly all states: will not) be able to teach high school English with a MA—you’ll need a teaching certification, too (or instead).
Ah right. Well I forgot to mention that I also want to leave open the possibility of teaching community college courses too, which would require an MA, so I think it’d be a useful degree.
Ah! In that case, yes, a MA would totally do it, though you would be in competition with PhDs—the job market for academic jobs in English is brutal.
I’d look very, very carefully at how much you’re likely to make if you take that approach. Adjunct instructors in English in many communities end up making little enough to qualify for food stamps, even working full-time at it.
I would think that financially, you’d be better off as a high school teacher. They still also have decent pensions. Rather than applying for a master’s in English, you should probably look at getting one in education. Plenty of good choices for that in NYC, like Columbia and hunter, I think.
Also, while in grad school, for extra cash to support yourself, consider teaching/tutoring standardized tests like the SAT and LSAT. It appears that you did well enough on those tests to gain admission to a top 20 school and merit at a law school. NYC standardized test tutors make good bank. At the same time, you’ll be burnishing your resume with teaching experience.
Since you want to teach in high schools, look for a one year MAT program that guarantees to meet the initial NYS licensing requirements. Once you are working, you can work toward a second MA in English Lit or Composition or the like that will make it easier for you to teach at the community college level or in adult ed. You are going to have to keep taking classes in order to keep and upgrade your teaching certificate, so it may as well add up to something like a second MA that will be useful for you in the job market.
Prep/Private/Independent Schools do not require state certification for teachers. Such schools also prefer one’s grad degree to be in their subject rather than “education.” I know 2 JDs who are now teaching HS English in Prep Schools and are very happy with their decision. So that may be a way to go, and the MA in English would not be a bad route. Positions require teaching experience, though. If your grad school uses students (including MA) to teach comp classes, that could take care of teaching experience. Best wishes.
So you probably won’t be able to teach community college with an MA. It’s not that the degree is not sufficient; it’s just that the academic market for English is so rough right now that even getting jobs in community college is rough with an MA in English. There are PhDs in English that are losing out on those jobs, especially in New York.
You’ll need an M.Ed or an MAT to teach in NYC public schools.
However, I do agree with @snarlatron that getting an MA in English will prepare you for teaching at private/independent schools - which actually might feel a lot like teaching freshman/sophomore level classes at a middling university.
How important is the GRE going to be for me? Like I said, I think my English major GPA is somewhere in the 3.1 range. I just took the Kaplan diagnostic test for the GRE and scored a 144 Quantitative (18th percentile) and 160 Verbal (84th percentile). Do I need to knock this out of the park or can other parts of my application still get me into a top English program in spite of my GPA and law school failure?
If you have a low GPA and a lowish GRE score (verbal) that might together make it more difficult to get into top MA programs. A 3.03 cumulative and 3.1 major are pretty close the bare minimum for most MA programs in English. 84th percentile verbal is good but not fantastic. The GRE may be more important for you precisely because your GPA is lower - you want the entire rest of your package to be as outstanding as possible. If I were you, and I thought I could raise my score by retaking the GRE, I’d retake it. (If you don’t feel confident in your ability to significantly raise your score, though, then don’t.)
The 144 Q and 160 V were diagnostic scores. I haven’t taken the GRE yet and don’t plan to until the fall. I bought the Kaplan book to bolster my quantitative score and verbal, I’m not too worried about, I think I can get a high 160 score on it.
Will my bad law school grades matter? Are they even considered in the admissions process or not really?