Advice on transferring from a Masters Program to a PhD Program

[loveridden88]

Hello everyone,
I've already been admitted and committed to a Master of Arts program in English this coming Fall, however, I recently decided that I'd like to pursue a PhD and therefore am thinking about applying to PhD programs this coming Fall and, if admitted, transferring Fall 2011...does anyone have any experience with this? Is there any advice

Comments

[circumfession]

At the risk of being too blunt and poking my nose in where it doesn't belong--it's your life. You'll have to make the well-informed decisions yourself. I find that most family (even those familiar with academia) have no idea 1) what being in an English PhD program is like or 2) that "prestige" does and doesn't mean in this context 3) what are the best decisions for you.

It is probably true that it will take longer to obtain a PhD, overall, if you went through an MA program first. But considering that you'll be paid the entire time--and the job market is horrific--unless you have other pressing concerns, why rush through this process? If you already have a sense of what you want to write your dissertation on...what academic conversations you want to enter, than it may (maybe, very maybe) make sense to forego the funded MA to take your chances in the PhD pool. I still think that would be foolish--why not take the opportunity to strengthen your skills?

The CV is honestly not that important. My perspective might be biased in that *most* of my friends in top programs (top ten, ivy league, etc, etc) had pathetic-looking CV's when they applied...but it was their very strong sample, SoP, and carefully "fit" to their list of schools that got them in. My own experience has been that conferences are nice but not overly impressively, and publications are unnecessary--I was accepted over students in my field (hence, we were directly competing for spots) with multiple publications. I have none (though now that I'm actually a grad student, I've been working to change that).