Application FAQ

Applications to the graduate program are due December 1, 2024. We require the application itself, a statement of purpose, three letters of recommendation, electronic copies of official transcript(s), a writing sample of 15-20 pages, and a CV or resume.

We will conduct Zoom interviews with finalists in January 2025. Finalists who are offered admission are invited to visit Emory and the English department during a recruitment weekend held in early March 2025.

In the early fall, the Laney Graduate School invites prospective applicants from historically underrepresented groups to visit campus in an event called Learning About Laney. For more information: https://www.gs.emory.edu/diversity/programming/learningaboutlaney.html

At Emory, every graduate student receives full funding. Currently, all of the entering students receive fellowship packages that include five years of guaranteed funding: stipends, tuition remission, and health insurance.

In addition, there are many competitively awarded funding opportunities for graduate students in their sixth year. No student, however, is admitted without a fellowship. Our stipends are competitive with those being offered by other leading programs.

Currently, the average time-to-degree for students in our program is approximately six years. While funding is not guaranteed for the sixth year, most of our sixth-year students have found internal fellowship support comparable to their five-year stipend levels.

Graduate students who arrive at Emory with a completed Master's degree in English usually take fewer courses. Please consult with the director of graduate studies about your particular case. 

The Graduate School's Professional Development Support Funds guarantees $8000 of support for each graduate student across her or his time in the program. These funds are divided evenly among three categories: conference travel, research, and training not available at Emory.

In recent years, the Department has funded studying at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell, the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth, and the Yeats Summer School at Sligo. For more information, see the Professional Development Support Funds website.

The English department gives its students pedagogical training and experience without placing on them so many teaching responsibilities that their progress toward the degree is impeded. Students do not teach in their first year of the program, and in the second year, they serve as teaching assistants for one class per semester.

In the third year, they teach their own courses in first-year writing. The fourth-year is free of teaching responsibilities, and graduate students teach one course in the final year of their fellowship.

All graduate students participate in a university-wide teaching training program called TATTO, and they also take two colloquia, one on the teaching of composition and another on the teaching of literature. Additionally, each student selects a faculty teaching mentor prior to the first primary teaching assignment.

As anyone considering graduate school should know, the academic job market is highly competitive. Nonetheless, graduates of Emory's PhD program in English have had considerable success in recent years, with over half of those who conduct national searches finding tenure-track jobs in colleges and universities. Additionally, many of our graduates find rewarding careers in areas such as policy research, archival directorship, higher-education administration, and writing center directorship.

While we are always striving to improve our placement, we believe that Emory students have been successful because of several factors: a serious emphasis on training graduate students both as researchers and as undergraduate teachers; the opportunity to work closely with faculty in developing a scholarly profile; exciting opportunities in interdisciplinary research; and strong departmental support during the process of seeking academic employment.

Emory's graduate program in English will not require or accept TOEFL scores for applicants in 2024.

Emory seeks to accommodate students in financial difficulty. For more information about application fee waivers, please visit the Laney Graduate School website at this link: https://www.gs.emory.edu/admissions/fee-waivers