Department of Romance Languages
Hispanic Graduate Program Workshop
HOW TO FIND A SUITABLE PH.D. PROGRAM AND GET ACCEPTED?
Drs. Adriano Duque, Silvia Nagy-Zekmi
Monday October 1, 2012 at 2:00 pm, SAC 303
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COLLEGIALITY AND PROFESSIONALISM
It starts in grad. school (now). What does it mean?
- Getting to know your professors
- Working with your peers
- Classroom evaluations
- Online presence:
- the problems of Facebook- Rate my professors, etc.
- Other professional sites: http://academia.edu; http://www.linkedin.com/
CHOOSING A UNIVERSITY
List of Ph.D. programs: http://graduate-school.phds.org/find/programs/spanish
1. Know your interests!
MA programs cover all aspects of the study, but PhD is a specialized form of study. This about
what your future specialty will be.
Factors to take in consideration:
- Your natural inclination (interest)
- What you want to work on most of your carrier
- Market trends
- Additional skills (knowledge of another language, for ex. Arabic for Medieval, Dutch for Caribbean, etc)
- Check the MLA job list for trends in the market: http://www.adfl.org/jil/index.htm (user: 2797, pw: VU’s zip code)
2. Ivy league
- Don't think that the Ivys are necessarily better than other universities. Usually, they are not (in our field). If you have a good cv, have publications, well-articulated interests, you will be able to get a job more easily than with a Harvard PhD alone.
- Be choosey and aim high! Do not decide that a prestigious program may not want you.
- Apply for the best but have a few back-up programs in the mix. Do not waste a year.
- It depends on YOU how much you learn. The university is less important than you might think, it is the type of profs. you work with and your own commitment and dedication that will define your experience.
- Be flexible: Research PhD programs in other countries (U.K., Australia, has very good PhD programs in Cultural Studies and Latin American lit, for ex. They offer support (unlike most institutions in Latin America.)
- Check how many courses are required for the PhD. Some universities will require that you practically redo your MA. It is ok if you want to do this, but you should know before you start.
3. What to look for in a website?
- Program description (both the content and the structure of the program – how many courses, etc.)
- Graduate course offerings (if they have very traditional course offering, i.e. 18th century this, 19th century that) it is probable that the program is antiquated, very traditional and will not prepare you well for the future demands of the market.
- Faculty (areas, cv, publications – who will work with you? Are there any interesting people?)
- Type of faculty (new hires? Or ‘tenured in’?)
- If available, check grad. student info., you may even contact them and ask them questions.
4. Place
- You’ll be living in that city/town for a few years. Choose it carefully.
- Smaller towns will require you to have a car, they offer less cultural opportunities
- If you can, before accepting the offer (if any), VISIT the place and the Department, talk to the profs. (or at least to the graduate director, make an appointment before you go).
5. Funding
- When you are accepted to more than one place, compare the support they offer (TA, tuition waver, other opportunities, Summer stipend, research funds, etc)
- As you shop for a PhD program, they also shop for the best students.
HOW TO PREPARE AN APPLICATION
Credentials
- Interfolio http://www.interfolio.com/ you can keep your documents on their site and also the confidential letters (you cannot access the latter so they will remain confidential. Letters of recommendation that are not confidential have a lesser value. This site may be more valuable to you when you are looking for a job, not necessarily for the PhD application.
CV
- Backward chronology, not narrative
- Be informative (include a very short description of special projects, awards, etc.)
- http://jobsearch.about.com/od/cvsamples/a/blsamplecv.htm
Statement of interest
- Should be succinct and well structured. Do not repeat information. Think about what to include. A little bit about the past (most of the info. is already in your cv) write about your experience in teaching, how you feel about teaching, do you do extracurricular stuff this might get you a TAship). Your future plans and expectations. Why you chose that particular school (do not write generalities ‘a great school’, etc)
- Stand out! Add anything that you think will make you memorable, particularly appealing and stand out in a crowd of applicants.
Writing sample
- Normally, it is a paper you wrote for a course, but if you have a published piece, you could consider sending that. If you have a better unpublished paper, send the best quality. This is what will tell the committee how well you write, what is your intellectual potential. Shine!
- Revise the paper, rework it and don’t just pull it out form your archives. Have someone check it, read it, critique it.
- Do not exceed 20 pages!
Letters of recommendation
- Very important who writes it! Do not just ask anybody.
- The scholarly reputation of the person, how well s/he knows the system
- How well your recommender knows you (s/he may be famous, but if s/he has not much to say about you, the letter will be ineffective)
- His/her writing skills in English
- Do you think this person will be willing to write a thorough, long letter? Has s/he been supportive over the years?
- Have letters from your MA institution and maybe from elsewhere
- Be aware of the difference in “rec. letter culture” in the U.S. and other countries.
WEBSITES YOU SHOULD KNOW
American Comparative Literature Association http://www.acla.org/
Association for Cultural Studies http://cultstud.org/index.php?s=resources
Association of Departments of Foreign Languages http://www.adfl.org/
Center for Digital Humanities http://cdh.sc.edu/
Center for Global Nonkilling http://www.nonkilling.org/
Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/
Humanities and Social Sciences Online http://www.h-net.org/
Instituto Cervantes http://www.cervantes.es/default.htm
Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana www.pitt.edu/~hispan/iili/
Latin American Studies Association http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/
Letras Femeninas http://www.public.asu.edu/~sev1987/Letrasfem/index.html
Mediterranean Studies Organization https://www.mediterraneanstudies.org/
Modern Language Association: www.mla.org
National Hispanic Institute http://www.nhi-net.org/Pages/index.aspx
The Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5
World Cat http://www.worldcat.org/
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