See also FAQ posted by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

The Department has a large program by contemporary standards, which allows us to offer a wide range of courses and to admit a great variety of students. We admit students from all over the country and from all over the world, and our successful applicants have no single profile or set of interests. Broadly speaking, our department has for many years studied literary expression within cultural and social context, and has always been hospitable to comparative and interdisciplinary work.

The following guidelines are intended to assist prospective applicants in assessing whether to apply to Columbia and what to emphasize in preparing for graduate study at Columbia.

APPLYING TO THE SEQUENTIAL M.A./M.PHIL./PH.D. PROGRAM

The department typically receives around 650 applications per year for the 18 places in our sequential program. All admitted students are fully funded (with tuition, fees, and a living stipend, $19,000 for students entering in the fall of 2005). Funding is for 6 years for students who do the full program, or 5 years for students who have received an M.A. in literature elsewhere and who enter directly into the M.Phil. program. International students and U.S. citizens receive the same funding.

As we admit fewer than 5% of applicants, all aspects of the application need to be strong. We have no fixed cut-off on grades, but given our numbers, applicants are unlikely to be admitted unless they have an undergraduate GPA of 3.7 or higher (in the U.S. system based on a 4.0 scale), or its equivalent. Our admissions committee is well aware that different countries' grading systems vary widely from the U.S. system, so this remark about grade point averages applies only to students who have done their undergraduate work in the U.S.

Similarly, we have no fixed minimum GRE score, but successful applicants trained in the U.S. will almost always have a GRE verbal score of 680 or better. International applicants must have a minimum TOEFL score of 600 on the paper test, or 250 on the computer-based test, or a GRE verbal score of at least 600.

Our department does not require the GRE Subject Test in English literature, which we regard as unsubstantive and not predictive of the quality of graduate work.

More important than test scores are the other aspects of the application: the personal statement, writing sample, overall undergraduate record (and prior graduate record, if any), and letters of recommendation. In both the personal statement and the writing sample, our committee looks for a sense of a personal voice and direction, an awareness of relevant scholarly debate, and a good match between the applicant's interests and our faculty resources.

We do not require applicants to have majored in English, but if not, your statement should show why our program is a logical next step for you, and your writing sample should show relevant literary or cultural analysis. If you have majored in English, your statement should show what beyond a general love of literature is bringing you to graduate school.

Many successful applicants come to graduate school direct from college; many others have taken a couple of years off, or have gone into other areas such as journalism, the theater, or law for a more extended period of time. If you have been out of school for more than five years, it could be advantageous to take a couple of courses as a special student before applying, in order to get a direct sense of the current state of the discipline and to have a more up-to-date writing sample and letters of recommendation. Letters of recommendation from employers are not usually useful to the admissions committee, except when they can talk directly about your developing scholarly skills and experience.

As our students ordinarily teach undergraduate writing in the middle years of their time in our program, it is necessary for foreign applicants to have near-native fluency, and we look for clarity of expression in all applicants.

Your writing sample should be 15-20 pages in length, and should demonstrate your scholarly work in an area relevant to your expressed interests. Longer samples can be submitted, though if so, you should be aware that they may not be read beyond the first 15 pages, and it would be a good idea to direct the reader to a particular section if the opening section doesn't fully show your skills.

Successful applicants will usually have achieved a good reading ability in at least one language beyond English. We accept in our program any languages that students can show will be relevant for their scholarly work: examples are Continental languages in which much theoretical and scholarly discussion is carried on (French, German, Spanish), classical languages that English-language writers often cite (Greek, Hebrew, Latin), the other literary languages of the British Isles (Irish, Welsh), and languages of major colonial and post-colonial populations closely engaged with England or the U.S. (Arabic, Hindi, Vietnamese, Zulu). Any language may be offered, so long as it bears a clear relevance to the candidate's prospective work.

We do not include interviews as part of our application process, both because of the numbers of applicants and so as not to disadvantage students who are not able to visit New York. Applicants should e-mail the department's M.A. Coordinator or Director of Graduate Studies with any questions not clarified by our website materials. Our full program description is found on the department website; we have no further information in hard copy.

When we send out offers of admission in early or mid-March, we arrange a day on campus for admitted students in late March or early April; this will be the time to meet faculty and current graduate students and get a direct feeling for life in New York and at Columbia.

STUDENTS WITH AN INTEREST IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

If you are planning to go on in Comparative Literature, you should list "Comparative Literature" as your subfield on the first page of the application, perhaps as one of a pair of subfields, such as "Comp.Lit./Renaissance" or "Comp.Lit./Postcolonial." This specification will help ensure that your application is read by faculty in your areas of central interest. Please see the home page of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society for further information on the Comparative Literature program. Note in particular that students at Columbia get an M.A. in a national literature before going on to the M.Phil./Ph.D. in Comparative Literature; despite the name of "The Department of English and Comparative Literature," this department is the logical first step only if you expect to do a share of your work on English-language materials; if not, another language/literature department will be the more logical place for you to apply. You should still apply as a sequential applicant, not an M.A.-only applicant, if you are intending to go on to the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.

While the formal program in Comparative Literature is located in CCLS, our department has a long and continuing engagement with comparative studies building on a base of English-language literature. Students with comparatist interests often decide only at the end of their first or even second year whether to proceed under the guidance of CCLS or of English, so your application doesn't bind you to one route or preclude the other.

APPLYING AS AN M.A.-ONLY STUDENT

Our department has a single M.A. program. There is no separate track or set of courses for M.A.-only students. No fellowship funding is available for M.A.O. students. Typically about 13 M.A.O. students enter the program each year. For fall of 2004, the department received 130 M.A.O. applications and accepted 20%. The average GPA of accepted U.S.-trained M.A.O. applicants was 3.7; only a very few had a GPA of 3.5 or lower, and then only when other aspects of the record stood out. The average verbal GRE of U.S.-trained students was 680.

As with sequential applicants, the GRE Subject Test in English Literature is not required, and test scores matter less than the overall record, the statement and writing sample, and letters of recommendation. Letters from employers are not usually very useful to the admissions committee; if you aren't able to get substantive letters from former instructors, it may be better to take a couple of courses as a special student before applying to graduate programs, so as to develop current recommendations and a fresh writing sample.

The M.A.-only option serves a variety of students: those who have been out of school for an extended period, and want new training and a direct exposure to the current state of the discipline before applying to Ph.D. programs; those who have majored in another subject and who want to strengthen their literary training; those who are pursuing careers in publishing, high school teaching, or other areas for which advanced work in literary analysis and writing will be useful. These are some common reasons, but many other individual circumstances can come into play.

Students who apply to the sequential M.A./M.Phil./Ph.D. program but are not admitted may ask to have their application reconsidered for M.A.O. admission; no further application fee or information is needed, beyond a written request for reconsideration, which can be sent to the Graduate School admissions office or directly to the department's M.A. Coordinator.

Every year, several of our M.A.O. students apply successfully to Ph.D. programs elsewhere. Our M.A.O. students may also apply to Columbia's Ph.D. program; those who do will be assessed on the same basis as any sequential applicants currently doing M.A.s elsewhere. Doing the M.A.O. at Columbia neither gives an inside edge nor counts against an applicant. Over the past several years, we have admitted on average about one M.A.O. student to our M.Phil./Ph.D. program per year, though some years none, given the intense competition for places in our sequential program. Students intending to stay at Columbia for the Ph.D. (either in English or in Comparative Literature) should apply as sequential students rather than as M.A.-only students.