Do you have any advice for a sophomore?

Nov 04, 2011 01:48

I'm currently an undergraduate sophomore, and have just declared as a Philosophy major.  Ideally, I would probably be an English major, but I attend a small school that has a pretty weak English department.  The Philosophy department, on the other hand, is one of the school's strengths (they run the only PhD program at my university).

My question is ( Read more... )

advice, preparing for grad school, preparation, general tips, philosophy, * tags:advice, english

Leave a comment

roadtophd November 4 2011, 11:05:18 UTC
While you're building those relationships with professors as mentioned above, you could also seek their advice on graduate study. Being at a small school give you a big advantage in terms of getting to know professors. I was easily able to get 2/3 of my LORs from them even though I didn't apply to grad schools until I was 2.5 years out of undergrad. (The other letter was from my boss.) I'm a PhD student at a huge state school right now and I feel bad for the undergrads that have to jump through more hoops than I ever did. My adviser, for example, will only write letters for students working in her lab. Doesn't matter how brilliant you were in her class.
/soapbox

Also, as far as English goes, you might consider a semester/year abroad, especially if you might be doing work in a different language. In some study abroad programs you end up taking easy classes only with Americans but in others you have to take some or all of your classes in local universities. This is what I had to do when I studied in Argentina. I was fluent in Spanish but the readings, the theory, the length of the papers I wrote-- everything was harder than what I did in the US. But I worked hard, did pretty well, and was very proud of some of my work. Had I decided to pursue Spanish lit I probably would have spruced up one of those essays for my applications because they were much more like graduate work than what I did back home.

Reply


Leave a comment

Up