<p>I'm currently a sophomore English major at Montclair State University. I've been here since Fall and I hate being away from home. I'm thinking of transferring to Kean University's Ocean County College campus so I can live at home. It would also be much more affordable for my family.
My goal is to get into a Ph.D program in the New Jersey/New York program(hopefully Rutgers). I know that these programs are extremely competitive and I know that Kean has lower rankings. I am an excellent student and last semester I got a 3.9 GPA. If I do well on my GRE, keep my grades up and get involved, will Kean still hurt my chances of getting into a Grad program?</p>
<p>I've also applied to Rutgers, but it's still a little under an hour away from me, so the commute may be a bit much.</p>
<p>What matters for grad school admissions is not where you went but what you did there. If you are an excellent student at Kean and learn to do the kind of scholarship you will need to do to be an English PhD student, you will be fine. You just need to get involved in scholarly activities and find an English professor willing to mentor you at Kean.</p>
<p>Two related things:</p>
<p>1) I hope you know that the job market for humanities PhDs is pretty abysmal right now, and English is one of the worst fields. Of course, who knows what the market will be like 12-15 years from now, which is when you will probably begin teaching. But if you want to be an English professor, jobs are scarce, with hundreds of applicants applying for each position. Even community college positions are difficult to secure.</p>
<p>2) You shouldn’t select your PhD program based upon geography, unless you have some pressing concerns (i.e., taking care of sick or elderly family members nearby). The best program for you may not be in NJ; it may be in Kansas or California or Florida. You have to be willing to branch out and away from home in this field. Not only on the grad school level, but after - at least for their first job, PhD holders who want to be academics have little choice in where they want to live. Or rather, it’s not really like “I want to live in NJ, so I’m going to look for professor jobs there,” but you apply for 100 jobs in a job market cycle and then if you get offered 1, you take it. If you get offered 2 or 3, which is less common, then you choose which one is in the more desirable place. Since jobs are scarce, people who are picky about location are less likely to land a job because they are applying to fewer.</p>