<p>I'm a college junior planning on going to grad school, but I really have no idea how to go about beginning to research schools. I'm an English major and would like to find a program in either English Lit or Journalism/Mass Communications. I'm mainly thinking Midwest, but am open to other parts of the country as well. I'm not looking to go to a "top 10" school, but obviously I want a decent program.<br>
Any ideas on how to begin a search?
Thanks!</p>
<p>Look at the people who publish papers that you like and see which schools they are professors at. Or you could just go to the departmental pages of random universities you think you're interested in and look around. Obviously rankings are nonsense, but, if you need a place to start, it's not a bad idea to look at the rankings from, say, 20-50 and browse those schools' English department pages and read about their programs.</p>
<p>It's really best to decide what you want to study first, and then try to find a university within the geographical region that suits your interests. The best professors in the field I'm interested in are scattered all over the U.S., so I would have left out two or three really important choice had I stuck to my geographical preferences! </p>
<p>There is a website that allows you to rank the importance of several aspects of graduate programs, like the importance of student to faculty ratio, numbers of awards the professors receive, and other (more important) factors. Then it offers you a list of the best matches for your program. I found this a pretty good place to start when I hadn't yet picked out a specific interest. This is for Spanish and Portuguese but you can change it to reflect English:</p>