Hello everybody! I’m an undergraduate senior in the early stages of trying to figure out where I might want to go for grad school. One of the issues that I am coming up against is that I am not sure where to apply as well as how many applications to make overall. I’m also not sure of what quality of school I have a chance of getting in to. I’m currently an English / Comparative Literature double major at Rutgers (NB) and I would be looking to get into a graduate English program. Ideally I would like to stay at Rutgers (the program is good), but I have been informed that they very rarely take their own undergrads into their graduate programs. That being said, I don’t want to apply for a school that has too much of a weaker ranking than Rutgers because that would almost feel like a step down for me. Unfortunately, most of the schools that have equal or superior ratings to Rutgers in my range of area are top schools like NYU, Columbia, and U Penn. Obviously those schools are very competitive. I’ll lay down a few of my pertinent stats and additional questions:
- GPA: 3.62 overall, 4.0 within major. My first two semesters at Rutgers were very bad because I dealt with a lot of bullying in my dorm and sort of became a hermit and never went to classes. Every semester after that time period I have gotten a 4.0. Do people who look at transcripts take patterns like that into account at all? Is that the sort of thing I should maybe briefly gloss in the personal statement? Also, if I graduated from a community college in addition to a four year university do I need to include that on grad school apps? If so, does that hurt my chances?
- GRE's: I still have to take them, but I did well on my SATs as well as the PRAXIS test. I generally scored in the top 90th percentile or above for English/writing and around the 80th percentile for math. I know the GREs are harder, and the math section worries me especially. What is -generally- considered a respectable score for the GRE's?
- Letters: I should be able to get very good letters of recommendation from the professors who advised me while I wrote my honors thesis.
- I doubt extracurricular stuff counts for much, but I am an officer in both the National English Honors Society as well as an Academic Honors frat.
I’d love some opinions if anyone has the time! I can also provide more information if necessary.
Well, there are sort of two tacks to take on this, and it all hinges on how badly you want that PhD in English literature.
There’s one camp (the camp I’m in) that would agree with you and say it maybe doesn’t make sense to apply for schools that are lower-ranked, especially in the humanities. If your goal is a tenure-track academic position in literature, those jobs tend to go to students who went to high-ranking PhD programs. So some students might reason that if they can’t at least have a decent shot at a good TT job with their PhD, they would rather NOT get the PhD and go do something else.
There’s another camp that would say that the PhD is worth it regardless of where you go and that you should apply broadly if you really want to get into a PhD program at all. They’re right in the sense that if you want to get into a PhD program the best strategy (especially if you are borderline) is to apply to a range of programs.
Really, it’s up to you and what you want to do and your career goals. However, I will say that it’ll be a bit hard not to apply below Rutgers since it’s a top 15 program in English literature.
Here’s the deal: Your GPA won’t keep you out. If your GRE scores are similar to your SAT scores, they won’t keep you out either. But admissions to graduate programs is about so much more than that, so it’s impossible at this point to determine whether or not you’d be competitive for top programs. That depends a lot on your scholarly interests, your writing sample, your language facility (usually these places like to see reading knowledge in one language and maybe having started on another), and evidence of early scholarship (I’m not quite sure what that looks like in the humanities. In the social sciences, usually it’s having worked with a professor on some research, presented a few posters, maybe even collaborated on a publication).
The most competitive students at top PhD programs will have excellent GPAs and test scores AND will have those other things.
- Yes, patterns are taken into account. There is some leniency for the first semester or two, it's a tough transition and not really expected to be perfect. As long as you show an upward trend from that point, you're totally fine. You're GPA shouldn't hurt you. Don't bother writing about it in your personal statement. It's really not a bad GPA or unusal situation, writing about it will just make it seem like a bigger issue than it really is. Also generally speaking you must submit all transcripts from all institutions attended.
2.Take a practice test under realistic conditions to get a sort of idea. GRE scores being good/bad is more related to the percentiles rather than the score itself, you can find these tables online. It also depends a lot on your field, many programs show previous years averages to give you a rough idea.
As for applications, I concur that the sensible thing to do is apply to a range of schools. Reach, match, and safety, just like undergrad. Give yourself options.