Admissions FAQs
1. How important is it for there to be a ‘fit’ between my interests and those of people already working in the department? How can I investigate my ‘fit’ with the department?
The issue of ‘fit’ is crucial in the application process; it is also crucial to your happiness and success in graduate school, so it is worth investigating as fully as you can. That does not mean that anyone expects you to know in advance what historical field(s) or interests you might focus on when you have finished your PhD. But for any department where you might apply, you should be intrigued by some or all of faculty's descriptions of their interests. If you have one or more historical fields of special interest, then you will want there to be faculty in those fields in the department whose research sounds exciting to you, and whose published work you admire. Similarly, if there is a particular kind of interdisciplinary work you want to do, or a special interest you want to pursue, then you'll want to find out whether it is represented within the department, and if possible elsewhere at Duke as well: read faculty and graduate student descriptions of their interests on this website, check out the graduate student Reading Groups, and investigate other options at Duke through other departmental websites as well as the links on Other Resources. The Director of Graduate Studies and Assistant to the DGS are always happy to answer questions on this issue. Many faculty, too, will be happy to answer your questions via email, if you would like to contact them directly -- though do bear in mind that faculty on leave are not always available on email. Most importantly, you will want to craft your Statement of Purpose and choose your Writing Sample so that the good 'fit' between your interests and those in the department and beyond is clearly apparent to the Admissions Committee.
2. What is the difference between the English Department and the
Program in Literature at Duke? Which should I apply to?
Please apply to either English or Literature, not both. In rare cases where we feel that a student has misdirected an application, we will contact the student to suggest transferring the application: the student's permission is required for the transfer. But we cannot always guarantee that there will be time for this, so we recommend that you read their website carefully as well as our own if the brief description below intrigues you, and take a close look at factors such as the 'fit' between faculty's interests and your own (see previous FAQ), the kinds of work required for the PhD in each program, the courses offered, and so on. Bear in mind that either program will allow you to take courses in the other and to appoint faculty in the other to your committee. There is, indeed, some overlap between the programs in that some graduate courses are cross-listed each term and quite a few faculty are cross-appointed. So the fact that you find courses and faculty in each program interesting need not complicate your choice further. As a broad generalization, research in the English Department focuses largely on literature and other media in English (though faculty have comparative and interdisciplinary interests too) and the approaches taken are often cultural and/or historical in focus (though historicism is of course itself a form of theory, and many other theoretical interests are represented within the department). Again to generalize, research in the Program in Literature often has theoretical issues as its primary focus (though all in Literature have a central literary interest); it draws on a variety of national literatures rather than simply literature in English (there is, in general, a strong comparative impulse); and it is less focused on literary works and related media: the work of some scholars draws primarily on other disciplines such as sociology, political science, or book history. Particular strengths of the program are in Marxism, globalization, and Continental philosophy. Although the Program in Literature is unique, it may bear a stronger resemblance to programs at other universities with labels such as Theory, History of Consciousness, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, or Comparative Literature, than to English departments at the same universities. The Director of Graduate Studies and Assistant to the DGS in English will be glad to answer your questions as you make your choice. As will the DGS and DGSA in Literature.
3. What opportunities will I have to engage in interdisciplinary
study?
Such opportunities are ample here: students are encouraged to take courses outside the English department and to appoint faculty members in other disciplines to their dissertation committees. Most faculty in the department have interdisciplinary interests: a series of links to other department and programs in which faculty are cross-appointed appears on our main page. We encourage you to contact individual faculty in our department who might be able to help you pursue a particular interdisciplinary interest, and to investigate courses and faculty in whatever other disciplines you want to pursue as part of your program of study. The Director of Graduate Studies and Assistant to the DGS will be glad to help in your research.
4. How can I find out what my doctoral work in English at Duke
would involve?
The Overview of the Program gives you a quick sketch. for more details, see the Student Handbook.
5. How would I be funded during my study?
Nearly 100% of students in the program receive funding that covers their tuition, fees, and living expenses. Where funding is not provided by Duke, it almost certainly comes from a program outside Duke such as Mellon, Javits, etc. We would now strongly discourage any student from taking on the financial burden of graduate study without adequate funding. See the Overview of the Program under both Fellowships and Funding and Pedagogy for more details. A detailed description of how you would be funded will be provided to you if you are admitted. For full details on how students currently in the program are being funded, see the Student Handbook; note that the stipends and teaching payments are adjusted each term to the cost of living.
6. What sort of teaching work would I be doing in the course of my degree
in return for my funding?
We take pride in educating our students in pedagogy as well as in scholarship, and our students engage in a coherent, progressive pattern of training in teaching. See Pedagogy for a brief description. They do not teach freshman composition courses in each of their years in the program: at Duke, the Writing Program is in any case separate from the English Department. Students funded according to the department's standard funding package typically have their first two fall terms free from teaching responsibilities, and do a teaching apprenticeship in the spring term in each of their first two years. A teaching apprenticeship is a pedagogical training experience involving a lighter workload than a teaching assistantship: students are apprenticed in an undergraduate English course, once to a faculty member in their field, and once to a faculty member in another field of interest to them. In third, fourth, and fifth year, students typically spend one term acting as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate English course, and in the other, follow a progressive sequence of independent teaching assignments. Third years teach a course in the Writing Program or work in the Writing Studio. Fourth years design a course in their own field to be offered in the English department (see the current list of 26S courses for some samples). Fifth years usually teach 90A, Readings in Genre, or 90B, Reading Historically (again, see current examples): in either course they teach alongside faculty members who are offering the same type of course at the same time, but set their own syllabi. In their final year in the program (usually the sixth, but sometimes the fifth), students are free of teaching responsibilities so that they may concentrate on writing their dissertation.
Students with other sources of funding may teach fewer courses (though they would follow a similar sequence of training), and more senior students are in some cases offered the opportunity to teach other courses. Please contact the Director of Graduate Studies if you have specific questions about what might happen in your case. For more detailed information, see the Student Handbook.
7. Does it matter whether I already have an MA? Will I get transfer
credit if I do have one?
You do not need an MA in order to be accepted into the doctoral program in English. Each year's class includes both students accepted straight from their undergraduate degree and students who have subsequently completed an MA. You may want to consider doing an MA before you begin your PhD study for a variety of reasons: If you did your undergraduate degree in a different discipline, then you may need more background in English before you will be ready for graduate study in English (and an MA might give you a chance to find out whether English is really what you want). If you were the star student in an undergraduate institution which does not often send students to top graduate programs, then an MA might improve the quality of your preparation by giving you exposure to a more challenging environment and a greater variety of courses. If you became especially interested in one particular historical field or focus of interest late in your undergraduate career, but haven't had a chance to explore it in depth, then an MA might be the ideal way to do so. If you've been out of school for a number of years, then an MA might help you to launch yourself back into academic life. (Many of these purposes might also be served by taking a few graduate courses on a part-time, non-degree basis with the best scholars you can seek out to study with: the decision which of these routes to follow will probably depend on personal and financial factors.) An MA will never be wasted: up to three courses taken in your MA work may count toward your eleven required courses (though many students take extra courses in any case), and more importantly, you will have a head start on deciding how best to pursue your chosen interests.
8. What if my undergraduate career was unusual in some way (transfers,
study in another country, undergrad degree in field other than English,
etc.)?
Students succeed in many different ways, and we have had practice in
evaluating a variety of different kinds of undergraduate success. We don't
have just one possible model in mind. That said, there are things you
can do to ensure that your application is easier to evaluate, here and
elsewhere. If your undergraduate career involved a lot of transfers, then
including a brief CV which lists the places where you studied will help
your readers keep the transcripts straight. If failures, low grades, or
dropping out were factors at some point, then at your discretion you may
want to include a letter of recommendation from someone who can explain
the circumstances, or make some brief mention of them in your Statement
of Purpose. If you have studied abroad, many institutions will include
with the transcript they send some explanation of the way they evaluate
students and what the US equivalents of your grades would be: you should
ensure that this is done if at all possible (though Duke does supply this
information to its departments, not all institutions may do the same),
and include some explanation of the content of the courses if it differs
greatly from that in a US course of study. If your undergraduate degree
was in a different discipline, then this will certainly not bar you from
consideration provided that you have sufficient background in English
literature to serve as a launching point for a PhD. In this case, make
sure that you foreground your preparation in the field of English (for
example, discuss it in your Statement
of Purpose, include a list of relevant courses, and/or choose recommenders
who can comment on your extensive preparation)
9. Are you looking for one particular kind of person for your program?
Our faculty have diverse interests and backgrounds, and so do our graduate
students. We have students fresh from their undergraduate degrees as well
as students who've spent some time in another career. Students with MAs
and without. International students from a variety of countries as well
as some visiting students and scholars from abroad, and students from
both nearby and far afield within the US. Students who have attended elite
colleges and students who have not. The most important things we look
for in your application are 'fit',
intelligence, originality, and writing ability. The most important places
for you to make these qualities evident are your Statement
of Purpose and Writing Sample
10. Should I apply early to beat the rush?
We do not begin reading applications until after the final deadline has passed, so there is no particular advantage to applying early. It is worth getting started early so that you have time to work on your application, and so that your requests for transcripts and recommendations are handled in good time. If you do end up mailing your materials on the final postmark deadline (December 15), then do ensure that they will really arrive by the final arrival deadline of 14 days later, particularly if you are far away. The Graduate School takes no responsibility for the vagaries of the postal service.
It might be advantageous to consider submitting your application far in advance of the deadline if you plan to be working abroad during the fall term, or otherwise occupied in a way that will make it much more difficult to submit materials in December. In these circumstances, the Assistant to the DGS and Director of Graduate Studies will be glad to answer questions that may emerge for you at this early stage of the process.
11. Should I visit the campus before I apply?
We are always glad to welcome visitors, and coming to see us may help you to decide just how interested you are in the program. However, don't worry if you can't afford to visit. We evaluate each and every application on its own written merits, and those who we've met in person do not have any unfair advantage as a result. If you are accepted into the program, then we will invite you to visit us for our graduate recruitment weekend at our expense. On this visit you'll get a chance to meet the other students who have been accepted as well as current students, and the Assistant to the DGS and Director of Graduate Studies, as well as faculty who share your interests, will be ready to answer your specific questions about the program and your place in it.
12. How important are the GREs in your evaluation of candidates?
The average GRE scores of students entering our program in a recent year were Verbal 668, Quantitative 611, Analytical 728, Writing (new analytical) 5.72. But there is wide variation among the students we accept, and your GRE scores are far from central to our decision process. We do recognize that there are other measures of intelligence, and of the potential for success, than the ability to perform well on standardized tests. Unless your scores are unusually low, there is no need to give them any more thought: concentrate on the Statement of Purpose and Writing Sample. If your scores are unusually low, then you may want to make some brief reference to the reasons for this in your Statement of Purpose, and perhaps point toward another area where your talents have been more visible. There is no special reason for concern if your quantitative score is considerably lower than your verbal score: this is true of some of our students, and not true of others. We accept both the new analytical and old analytical scores.The scores must not be more than five years old, and an official copy must be sent to the Graduate School Admissions office, institution code number 5156, directly from the Educational Testing Service. We do not have a "departmental code." The Graduate School Admissions office will give your scores to our department. Personal copies are not acceptable, nor are "attested" or notarized copies. As a general rule of thumb, combined scores on the quantitative and verbal GRE of less than 1200, an old analytical score of less than 500, or a new analytical score of less than 4, might be seen as unusually low. But low scores do not eliminate you from consideration.
13. I am an international applicant, and my native language is
not English. But still, I've done all or a large part of my education
in English, and I've even attended another US institution. Do I still
have to take the TOEFL?
We sympathize with your position, but we cannot waive this requirement for you since it is not a requirement of our department but one of the Graduate School. The Graduate School stands firm behind the requirement that all international students whose native language is not English must take the TOEFL exam. However, the Graduate School does consider exceptions to this rule if the medium of instruction for all or most of your primary and secondary education was English or if you attended a college or university in the United States. If you would like to request that the TOEFL requirement be waived, you may do so at the time that you submit your application for admission. No waiver requests are considered until the Graduate School has received your application and supporting documents and is able to evaluate your English proficiency. Please note that there is no guarantee that your waiver request will be approved.
14. Do you have a cutoff undergraduate GPA?
The average undergraduate GPA for students entering our program in a recent year was 3.65. But there is no cutoff GPA for admission to the doctoral program in English, and while good grades are obviously a good thing, they are not the only thing. We will look at your undergraduate transcripts, but your specific GPA will be of less concern to us than seeing that you've taken a variety of English courses and done well in them, and demonstrated a pattern of success and consistency in your achievement overall. If there are any departures from this pattern in your transcript, then (at your discretion) you might want to make some brief reference to why they need not concern us in your Statement of Purpose.
15. Is there a foreign language requirement for admission? As
part of the requirements for earning the PhD?
Demonstrated competence in a foreign language, whether through course credit or by other means, is not required for admission. However, demonstrated competence in at least one language (again, not necessarily through credit in a course) is the minimum requirement for completion of the PhD. And depending on your field of interest, you may really need to learn two or three languages: your committee will advise you on this issue as you are developing your PhD project. For a description of the PhD language requirement, consult the Student Handbook. Resources and funding to help you in learning languages will be available at Duke: see this brief account, or consult the Student Handbook. Although there is no language requirement for admission, we'd advise you to consult mentors who share your interests in order to find out what languages are likely to be most useful to you, and get started on language study as soon as possible. In some fields where multiple languages are likely to be needed (e.g. medieval, postcolonial), the fact that you have begun work on your language training may be advantageous to you in the admissions process. And having a head start will definitely make your life easier as you are working on your PhD.
16. Who should I ask to write letters of recommendation for me?
Do the people who write for me need to be in the field of English?
The Graduate School requires at least two letters from specialists in your field of study (for this purpose, that means English professors). One of these letters in your field should be from someone who knows your work especially well, and one (if possible the same letter) from someone who works in the historical field, or on the same main focus of interest, that you are claiming as a special interest in your application. If possible, avoid requesting all your letters from part-time, untenured, or emeritus professors: while these people can certainly write excellent letters and we do take their opinions seriously, at least one of your letters should come from a tenured scholar (or equivalent) actively engaged in mid- to senior career, since these letters often carry the most weight. If there is more than one professor outside the field of English who you'd like to write for you (say, because you've done extensive work in History or Philosophy or Classics or a modern language), then consider submitting four letters rather than the minimum three. The same would apply if you're currently working in a job related to your future career (say, teaching or publishing) and would like to submit a letter from your boss in addition to your academic letters.
You can help to ensure that your letters are as good as the writers can make them by speaking briefly with each recommender to update them on your activities since you last had contact with them, and providing each recommender with your Statement of Purpose and Writing Sample, your transcript, and perhaps with papers you wrote for them in the past. If you have letters on file that were written in the past, then it is often a good idea to ask your recommenders to update them, if possible. Using a dossier service that will send your letters to the Graduate School as a package, or asking for your letters long in advance of the deadline, can help to ensure that all the letters you want to be in your application are indeed there when it is read.
17. What sorts of things are you looking for in the Statement of Purpose
that is part of the Graduate School application? How important is this
part of the application?
Within the English department we call the Statement of Purpose the Personal Statement, and it is just that: the place where you can speak in a direct, personal voice about your reasons for wanting to engage in doctoral study in English. The Personal Statement and Writing Sample are by far the most important parts of your application, and the parts you have most control over. While students at some institutions receive intensive coaching in the writing of their Personal Statement, others receive no help at all, so the following tips are offered in an attempt to level the playing field. Even if you are not being coached, do show your Personal Statement to the people who are writing letters for you, and to others whose opinion you value: this is a difficult genre to get just right, and other eyes will be a great help. Having read your statement will also help your recommenders to write better letters.
Pay attention to style and tone. Remember, the Personal Statement is the place to speak in a direct, personal voice. One of the skills that very good writers possess is that of fluently modulating between styles, and this is something we're looking for in your application. Thus, while we might expect complex language and lengthy sentences in your Writing Sample, in your Personal Statement you should strive to describe your interests using shorter sentences and more ordinary language. Avoid lapsing into long, complex sentences loaded with abstractions in your effort to fit everything in. As for tone, it can be easy to veer into what sounds like arrogance or false humility when describing your accomplishments (something we often avoid in polite conversation for just this reason). Try to be as straightforward and authentic as you can as a way to escape this: avoiding the temptation to provide a biography or list (see below) can also be helpful here. Showing your Personal Statement to other readers will help with both these issues.
Keep your audience in mind. Remember that you're speaking to people who are spending their lives in the field where you hope to study. You don't need to justify your interests for this audience in the way you might for friends or family. Instead, try to be as specific and detailed as possible about the things that you love studying and want to pursue further. Convey your enthusiasm as vividly as you can, but don't waste space justifying it.
Work for depth and focus, not a biography or a list. It is rarely effective to list all the courses where you've excelled, to attempt to provide a full intellectual biography, or to provide lengthy lists of theorists or literary writers who interest you. Instead, be selective (see below) and work for depth and focus. We'd really like to see you pursue and develop an idea, or a small cluster of related ideas, with all the depth and complexity possible within such a short statement. The rest of your application can do the work of telling us about your accomplishments and recounting your intellectual career thus far. If you feel that the application form doesn't fully represent what you have been doing, then consider submitting a short CV in addition to your other materials, rather than wasting your Personal Statement on this purpose.
Choose anecdotes or examples carefully. There are several ways to craft a good Personal Statement: you should choose the one that feels best to you, or develop your own variation. Some people begin with a brief anecdote about a pivotal experience in their studies which led to their current interests. Pick a good story if you do this, obviously, and work on making a smooth transition to the in-depth description of your interests themselves. Some people begin with a concept that fascinates them, then follow out the connections to the kinds of reading and thinking they most enjoy. Make sure that this is clear and interesting and seems fully explained to people other than yourself. Some people begin by explaining how they became fascinated with one particular historical field (perhaps through a specific class, perhaps not), then go on to describe which particular topics and/or texts in that field they find especially interesting. Keep the explanation brief and limit your examples, rather than describing every class you've taken in this area in detail. Whichever method of zeroing in on the your ideas and enthusiasms you may choose, make sure to limit the number of examples or personal experiences and explain their implications fully.
Keep one eye on the future. Talk not just about what you've already done and thought, but about what you hope to do next. What ideas do you want to pursue further, and how? Any specific ideas you might have about how you might do this at Duke are definitely worth mentioning : do you want to work with particular faculty members? engage in some specific kind of interdisciplinary work that would be easy to do here? etc.
If appropriate, explain possible concerns without being defensive. If your GREs or GPA are unusually low, or if your undergraduate record has some unusual aspect, then you might, at your discretion, want to include some brief acknowledgement, and possibly explanation, that could work to allay concerns about your future success that these features of your application might raise. You don't need to defend yourself: people are not machines, and plenty of successful people have blips in their official records. But a brief acknowledgement, usually appearing close to some statement of your future plans and goals, may be useful.
Keep it short. Remember that your audience may be reading more than 200 of these statements. Don't go beyond two pages; and feel free to manipulate font, margins, and spacing in order to achieve this goal, but not to any ridiculous extent: keep your statement easy to read.
18. What sorts of things are you looking for in the Writing Sample
I send directly to the department? How important is this part of the application?
Your writing sample should be 10-20 pages long: remember that your audience may be reading hundreds of these, and do not send us more. It should be a copy of an essay (nonfiction), preferably a critical or scholarly essay submitted as an academic requirement in a literature course. Your name should appear on each page in the top right corner. It should be sent directly to the English Department via our online writting sample upload process (follow this link.) Please upload the sample in MS WORD format. If it is not possible to use the online services please mail it to the English Graduate Studies Office. Staple the top left corner: don't use any more elaborate form of binding. Send it at the same time that you submit your materials to the Graduate School, and definitely on or before the final mailing deadline of 15 December. Our mailing address is: Graduate Studies, English Department, 316 Allen Building, Box 90017, Duke University, Durham NC 27708.
Since we care a great deal about the kinds of intelligence and insight that are visible in good academic writing, and since these qualities will be crucial to your success in graduate school, the writing sample is probably the most important single item in your application. Make sure that it is a clean, unmarked, legible copy, as correct and complete as you can make it in every respect. An offprint is acceptable, if you have published something (not that this is expected). We want to see you pursue complex ideas in depth: ideally, we hope to find in your essay a fluent expository style, a fresh, original voice, and awareness of current work in your field. The essay should represent the best of your current work. If you are in school, you might even want to make your course selections for the coming term with the goal of producing a new writing sample in your field of greatest interest, let the professor know of your goal, and work especially hard on that essay (then get a recommendation from the professor, too!). In nearly every case, the best strategy is to submit an essay in the historical field, or focused on the particular interest, that you are foregrounding in your application. Be aware that if you do not do this, then you are making your application much harder to evaluate. If you don't have a piece of work you're really proud of that is related to what you hope to do in graduate school, and you can't produce something new for the purpose this term, then consider revising an older paper to make it more appropriate as a writing sample.
Some students may wish to submit an excerpt from an undergraduate thesis
or some other kind of longer paper. If you do this, then choose your excerpt
wisely. The introduction is often a poor choice, since it typically starts
ideas off rather than pursuing them in depth. The section you are proudest
of from the middle, perhaps with a short introduction and conclusion written
especially for the purpose, might be far more effective. In some circumstances,
you might wish to submit the whole longer paper, but with the shorter
selection you are asking the committee to read (for example, the introduction,
one section from the middle, and the conclusion) clearly specified on
the front page.