Georgetown English MA Program

Graduate School
1

<p>Hey everyone!</p>

<p>Georgetown is my absolute dream school, but I didn't dare apply straight out of high school because I highly doubt that I would have been accepted. I have always planned on going to GT for grad school unless something else comes along. I am currently a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin and I am wondering what I should do to further my chances at getting accepted into Georgetown in the future. My GPA is currently 3.77 and I am positive that it will stay in the A range. My extracurriculars include crew, theatre, and tutoring underclassmen.
What steps should I take in the future to prepare myself more? </p>

<p>Thank you,
Bird</p>

2

<p>Why do you want to go to Georgetown?</p>

<p>I think it’s fairly normal for people to dream about a specific university in high school. But graduate school is very, very different. First of all, one attends grad school for a specific purpose - one gets an MBA if one wants to go into leadership in business, or an MFA in dance because one wants to teach dance at the college level, or an MA in political science because one wants to do poli sci research at a think tank. One does not, however, attend graduate school “just because.”</p>

<p>If you are currently a sophomore - a junior in fall 2014, I presume - then have you decided on a career course? Why do you want an MA in English? It’s honestly not a very practical career choice; the one use I can think of it is if you plan to get a PhD in English. It’s not that you can’t go into other fields with an MA in English - technical writing, journalism, editing, teaching English - but it’s not a professional degree that’s really designed for that kind of career field.</p>

<p>Assuming that you feel you need an MA in English for your career, though, the next issue is that you can’t think about graduate school the same way you think about undergrad. In undergrad, a “dream school” is based upon a lot of intangibles - location, the student body, activities, architecture, whatever. The non-academics are almost as important as the academics.</p>

<p>Graduate school is more akin to work. What was a great place for you in undergrad may not be the best place for you in grad school. Like let’s say that you wanted to do work on Asian American literature; there’s only one professor at Georgetown that does that, which means that there can’t be a lot of seminars on Asian American lit there. Or let’s say that you were interested in Jewish American literature; there’s no one there who does that. (I will admit, though, that Georgetown does have a lot of strengths in a lot of areas. It was difficult to think one that they didn’t have anyone in!)</p>

<hr>

<p>But, let’s put that aside and assume that you’ve determined that 1) an MA in English is the right career move for you post-college and 2) Georgetown has what you need.</p>

<p>Application requirements are here: <a href=“http://english.georgetown.edu/graduate-program/prospective-students/applying/”>http://english.georgetown.edu/graduate-program/prospective-students/applying/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>So here’s what you can do:</p>

<p>-Get high GRE scores. Aim for the 90th percentile or higher in the verbal and, I would say, 60th percentile or higher in the math.</p>

<p>-Think about your scholarly interests early, and identify an area of interest. Think about this seriously over the next year, and in the summer after your junior year, start drafting a 2-3 page academic statement of purpose “addressing in detail your intellectual interests, proposed topic(s) of graduate study, and rationale for your suitability for specific funding package(s) if applicable.”</p>

<p>-You will need to submit an 8-10 page paper of your strongest undergraduate critical/analytical writing on a topic relevant to the MA in English. Usually (for undergrads) that paper comes out of something that you write in your junior year - so as you begin to take classes next year, write your seminar papers with an eye towards using one of them as your writing sample. Ideally, it would be in your research topic or related to it (like if you are interested in studying African American literature, ideally you’d want to use a paper from a class on African American literature. A paper from a class on modern American lit could also be good, but a paper from a class on medieval European literature wouldn’t be ideal). Whichever one you choose to be your potential writing sample, make sure that you begin work on it early and get a lot of feedback from your professor - you may even want to let them know that you plan to use the paper as a writing sample.</p>

<p>-Think with an eye towards recommenders. Good recommenders are often people you took junior year courses with - upper-level seminars, but you’ve finished the course and got a grade, so they can comment on your work. Visit office hours and have conversations with faculty members. If you are struggling in a class, definitely discuss with a professor in case they need to comment on it in a letter.</p>

3

<p>Even though it says that the literature GRE (or LGRE for short) is not required by Georgetown, it is often recommended to take it for a MA… however, the LGRE is very different from, say, the verbal section of the general GRE. ETS claims that the scores can range from 200-990; yet, with 230 questions to be answered in 170 minutes, the LGRE becomes a test of speed (and even I felt that the PGRE was a test of speed, despite it having a meager 100 questions and my own 910 in it) with the result that the best actual LGRE score reported is a 760.</p>

<p>That said, aim for 600+ (perhaps even 650+) on the LGRE if you elect to take it.</p>