Hi, thanks for reading!
I am a soon-to-be senior in college who has known for a long time that I want to study literature and writing at a high level. Now that I’m about to actually go through the grad school admissions process, though, I’d love some insight as to how that works.
I attend a very prestigious but also very small— and so may not have name recognition in every grad admissions dept— school for undergrad. I am an English major, French minor. My GPA is 3.3, which feels low to me but I’m not sure what it looks like in context against other people’s. I do show very strong upward progression in my grades, going from C’s and B’s my first year to straight A’s for my most recent few semesters. I anticipate and plan to strive for continued good grades next year. One thing that does worry me is that I got a C+ in a course corresponding directly to my interests sophomore year. I did not do as well as I had hoped and truly did not connect with that professor. I do have numerous other professors in the English Department who I am close with and who have already offered to write me good recommendations. Still, will that one grade give admissions pause?
I am taking the GRE in a few weeks and have been prepping weekly for it. It seems that I will do well, though probably not perfectly. Should I take GRE subject tests?
My extracurriculars are strong and include leadership roles as well as teaching experience. I have not done “research”, but have published in anthologies and won prestigious awards for my writing.
I guess I’m just concerned because I don’t know much about the grad school admissions process. What else should I be doing? How like or unlike is this to undergraduate admissions?
Grad school is not like undergrad.
First things first, you need to know what you want to study. This is how you figure out what programs/schools you apply to.
Talk to your professors about your interest in grad school. They’ve been through it and as professors they will know which programs are good for which specialties, and may be able to gauge which programs you would be likely to get in to. They probably can give you a lot of advice on how to prepare your application as well. And you need to talk to them anyway for recommendation letters.
Once you’ve figured out the programs you’re applying for, then you can worry about the GRE. Not all programs require GREs these days since GRE scores correlate very poorly with PhD completion. Not all programs require subject GREs. And in your case for a literature/English program the only one you might need to take is the Literature in English one. That being said, you should figure things out soon. Applications for grad school are generally due in early winter (Dec/Jan), and the subject GREs are only held 3 times a year or less, depending on where you live.
“very prestigious”
They will know your college.
Your own professors are the people who are best able to advise you about your options. They know where students with interests and records similar to yours have been admitted in recent years, and they will be able to help you tap into appropriate professional (theirs) and alumni (yours) networks for more advice and assistance with the process.
“very prestigious but also very small”
Many small schools, such as LACs in the US, prepare students very well for graduate school. You will be surprised how much graduate school admissions know about small schools. I would not worry about this part at all.
I don’t see any discussion in your post about finances. For an English literature major, you should be trying to minimize debt as much as you can.
The vast majority of PhD programs in English literature will require at least the General GRE. Only take the subject test if one or more programs you want to apply to require it.
A 3.3 is lowish. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, if you have an otherwise outstanding application and if your lower grades were mostly outside your major. It’s going to be low compared to the average admissible PhD applicant in English. Upward progression is good, though.
The C+ might give some programs pause, but it will be taken into context of your entire transcript. I failed a class in social psychology and I eventually got a PhD in social psychology, so it’s still possible 
Your extracurriculars don’t really matter for PhD admissions. The sole “EC” that they’d care about would be research experience in English literature - whatever methods are most applicable to the research area you want to cover in graduate school. Publishing in anthologies is good, but it depends on what you want to get a PhD in. An English literature PhD isn’t a creative writing degree, so they’re going to prefer publications that analyze literature in the scholarly method of the field.
Most literature PhD programs also require a writing sample, which is generally somewhere between 20-40 pages long (it ranges) and is some piece of research you’ve conducted. You should take a paper from a class that you’ve already written - and gotten an A on - and rework that into a good writing sample, in close collaboration with a mentoring professor. If you don’t have an appropriate paper, that’s what you should begin working on over the summer.
The French minor is good, since that can be one of your reading languages for admission.