I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but that goal is, in this day and age, practically unobtainable, unless you want to join the growing army of underpaid contingent labor, with almost zero job security. The majority of people who have done their PhDs or MAs in English for the purpose of teaching English at the college level are working as adjuncts for a paycheck of about $20,000-$25,000 a year, while paying back student loans.
As for the ones who actually get tenure-track jobs - most are teaching for about $45,000-$60,000 a year (after spending 12 years as poverty-stricken graduate students), and are not teaching in one of the “top-200” colleges and universities out there, but in one of the 2,000 lower ranked or unranked four year colleges and universities, or in one of the 800 or so two year community or junior colleges. There is a very good chance that your college will be shut down or have positions cancelled because of dropping enrollment and loss of government funding and/or because of a disappearing endowment.
You will most likely not be teaching the kids you know from Honors English or AP English Lit, but the kids who took the regular track classes or lower. You will likely be teaching kids who find high school level English challenging, and be teaching English at that level. You will be dealing with administrators who are more interested in enrollment numbers than in maintaining any educational standards. You will likely be teaching 4 or 5 classes a semester, and possibly a summer course as well, which includes prepping the class, and grading assays and assignments, office hours, committee meeting, student advising, and administrative duties (unlike high schools, most colleges departments no longer have secretarial staff).
On top of that full time job, you may have a dean or provost who decides that faculty also need to engage in research, and you will be expected to produce research articles and/or a book.
Simply put - despite the fact that populist politicians and articles written by people who have no idea what they are talking about claim that there are plentiful cushy jobs teaching in college, this is absolutely not true, even in the most limited sense.
Read the archives of the Forums of the Chronicles of Higher Education about the travails of academic job searching for people with PhDs in English, and the experience of those who are actually working in the field, first hand.
The best advice that I can give you is Just Don’t Do It.
If you, after learning about this, still want to go for an academic career, a couple of important pieces of advice:
A. Despite what is generally believed, academia IS prestige-ridden, and Humanities are the worst of all. So, to be considered for a real faculty position in English at most colleges which will pay a living wage, you will need to get your PhD in a university which is considered to be a top-25 graduate program in English. Ivies will almost ONLY hire faculty who did their PhDs in an Ivy, or a foreign equivalent (like Oxbridge).
Prestige is not the the same as the rankings from non-professional media, though, for humanities, there is a large overlap. To figure out which are the “best”, one should look at the undergraduate schools of PhD students at top graduate programs, and at the undergraduates schools and the PhD programs of faculty at different universities.
B. To be accepted to one of these programs, the best route is an undergraduate degree in a top-25 research university or a top 30 LAC. In fact, well regarded Liberal Arts Colleges are probably the best place to do your BA, if your ultimate goal is a humanities PhD.
C. Be skeptical of advice from people who have never been academics. Unless a person has done a PhD and has been on the academic job market, they have little understanding of how academia works.
D. Be skeptical of advice from people who have not been on the academic job market in the past 30 years. The academic job market has changed drastically in the past 30 years.
@northwesty A PhD program in English is NOT Law School, and the fact that Harvard Law accepts kids with undergraduate degrees from all sorts of places tells you nothing about the acceptance practices of PhD programs at Harvard. To begin with, Law students pay their own way. Not only do PhD students NOT pay tuition, they also get stipends or paid jobs. So Harvard will be a bit more selective in choosing students which cost them over $50,000 a year than they will be for students who are paying $50,000 a year. Also, faculty personally choose one or two graduate students a year at most, and a faculty member with an Ivy-league BA and and Ivy League PhD is not likely to choose a graduate student from Northwest Missouri State over one from Williams or Princeton. I will not bore everybody in a further three page explanation about the differences between a professional degree and a PhD.
@bud123 To teach English at college level, does not require an education degree but a PhD in English. There are some exceptions, such as teaching creative writing with an MFA, or many adjuncts who have MAs in English. However, an education degree is for teaching at the K-12 level, not college level.
PS. There are a wide array of careers available for people with English degrees, or even an English PhDs, aside from teaching English at college, so doing an English PhD is not a guarantee of a miserable existence even for those who do not get top-paying faculty positions.
PPS. Vanderbilt is a good place for an undergraduate if one’s ultimate goal is an English PhD.