Letters to the Editor
-
Know your job prospects well
I'm certainly seeing a lot of people commenting who probably don't have the specific background in English academics to know what they're about. Can you contact people at your MFA school--who have been on hiring committees for English? Talk to them. Get their sense of your options. They'll know you, they'll know the schools, they'll know the market. You can't assume anyone here does.
I had two equally good PhD offers, and my undergrad faculty all told me to go look at the schools--unless I was planning to choose X, the Ivy offer (over an *excellent* state program with national name recognition). Why, you might ask? Because hiring committees do tend to short-list names from the "better" schools. Not always Ivies--often the culture at an Ivy League grad program is too research-driven and not teaching-driven enough for smaller departments that depend upon enrollments to survive the politics of their institutions (and so need excellent teachers who research well, rather than excellent researchers who can teach when forced to do so).
Now I've been on many hiring committees, including hiring Americanists. I can assure you that your job prospects will be largely at or below the school you attend. Attend #90? #89 is likely to turn its nose up at hiring you. #91 will be pleased to see your ap, assuming you've jumped through all the right hoops in the meantime.
A PhD proves your ability to experience delayed gratification. Going to the less thrilling location for a brief time might open more doors than the better location for now--and unfortunately, that's what the PhD program is all about. Get your nose to the grindstone and keep it there until the program is finished--that's how you prove to the hiring committee that you can *keep* your nose to the grindstone at least long enough for tenure, and hopefully for promotion to full professor later. That's the potential they're really looking for, particularly once you're below the "star" level institutions.
You can overcome a less-than-stellar program, if you're really, really good. That means publishing more than one article while still in grad school. Most of the candidates we've interviewed for jobs over the past five years have already published--sometimes in the very best journals in their fields. But if you're that good--it might really be worth jumping to a better program with that consolation-prize MA rather than getting the PhD from a lesser school. Of course, that means starting over (the Ivy I attended didn't give credit for MAs--the BAs and the MAs faced exactly the same course requirements). At least there's rather less ageism IME among hiring committees--many English grad students did other stuff first, so you really wouldn't be that much older than other job applicants.
The only caveat I'd add is to look at and ask about how aggressively the grad programs work to professionalize and place their candidates. But the "water"-flows-downstream issue still holds--your job prospects are mostly going to be downstream from the school where you get your PhD. Really want that nice sunny climate? Make sure your PhD program is from a place good enough to give you the option. Better to struggle with climate for the PhD years than for the rest of your professional life.
Talk to the English PhD folks at your MFA program. I suspect you'll hear much the same stuff I'm telling you here.