OVERVIEW

The NYU Department of English warmly welcomes qualified applicants who wish to pursue advanced study towards an MA in English. We are a large department that values historical coverage of the field but also embraces innovative approaches to the discipline.  We teach in a wide variety of areas and have research clusters among our faculty and graduate students spanning medieval to twenty-first-century literatures, as well as modernist, postcolonial, African American  and Black Diasporic, Latinx, and Asian American literatures. Students in the department’s MA program explore and deepen their scholarly interests, develop their skills in critical thinking and writing, and write a 35-45-page Master’s Thesis under the supervision of a faculty advisor. The program is typically taken over two years, with the thesis written in either the Fall or Spring of the second year.

Together with the department’s PhD students, MA students originate, organize and receive funding for their own working and reading groups, which currently include Critical Theory and Medievalisms; Cultures of War and the Post-War; Creative Writing; Early Modern Literature; the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature Working Group; the Marxism Working Group; Modern and Contemporary Colloquium; Politics of Empowerment; Postcolonial, Race and Diaspora Studies Colloquium; and the Organism for Poetic Research. 

The English MA program can be taken as part of the Library and Information Science Dual Degree program with Long Island University, and we also offer an Advanced Certificate in Digital Humanities. Please note that NYU’s Creative Writing Program, while affiliated with the Department of English, is administered separately, and a different application process is required for students interested in their MFA Program. See: https://as.nyu.edu/cwp/graduate.html

NOTE: Students admitted to the MA program in English and American Literature will receive an English Department Scholarship, which covers 50% tuition (not registration and services fees).  

MA Handbook

SCHOLARLY AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE M.A. PROGRAM

Our MA degree recipients pursue a variety of professional goals, including 1) further study in the fields of literature or cultural studies, usually with the long-term goal of college or community college teaching; 2) professional advancement and training for  middle and high-school teaching careers; 3) careers in publishing, especially in the New York City area; 4) careers in related fields such as journalism, law, and non-profits where expertise in writing and critical thinking is highly valued; and 5) the learning of digital skills transferable to all the above as well as to other professional goals. We hold yearly workshops on diverse career paths for MA graduates (for example with a panel of recent NYU MA Alumni) and on applying to PhD programs.

In recent years, our MA graduates have gone on to a wide variety of careers in publishing, teaching, the digital arts, marketing, library and archival work. MA alumni employers include: W.W. Norton, Penguin Random House, Springer Publishing, the New York Public Library, the New York Department of Education, Bogota Board of Education, the Mellon Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, and more. Students have also gone onto PhD programs at universities including Columbia, NYU, Brown, Princeton, UC Boulder, Vanderbilt, UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley, Penn State, CUNY, UCLA, USC, Rutgers, Duke, University of Illinois, Oxford, University of Virginia, and Toronto University. 

MA Alumni Profiles 

APPLICATION DEADLINES

M.A. only applications for Fall 2023 due January 16, 2023, with late applications accepted until January 31, 2023.

All application materials must be received by 5 p.m. eastern time on the deadline date. If an application deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal U.S. holiday, then the next business day will be the deadline date.

Your application to the M.A. program should consist of the following components:

1. The Online Application.
2. A Curriculum Vitae (CV) or resume. This should provide an overview of your academic and, if applicable, professional experience.
3. A Statement of Academic Purpose. Your statement of purpose should avoid excessive personal or autobiographical anecdotes and offer a clear sense of your training in literary studies, your strengths as a scholar, and the reasons you are applying for the masters or doctoral degree. While applicants need not indicate a precise field of specialization, it will be helpful to the admissions committee to have a sense of their main area(s) of scholarly interest and the critical questions and/or conversations that drive their interest in pursuing the degree. Finally, applicants should address their particular reasons for wanting to work within the Department of English at New York University. No more than 1200 words.
   
4. A Writing Sample  should not exceed 20-25 double-spaced pages. Candidates with a good sense of their area(s) of interest would be well-served by submitting a writing sample that matches or reflects their area(s) of primary interest, but this is not required. Please do not send a sample that exceeds the page limit with instructions to read only certain pages; applicants should instead edit the writing sample to meet the length requirement. Please do not send a sample that exceeds the page limit with instructions to read only certain pages; please also do not send several short pieces of writing that add up to 20-25 pages. Your writing sample should be one continuous piece of writing.
   
5. Three Letters of Recommendation. It is important to have strong letters of recommendation that come from professors and instructors who know you and are familiar with the your academic work. Applicants who have been out of school for several years should make every effort to reconnect with former teachers to ensure that their letters of recommendation address their academic preparation and abilities and their readiness to pursue the degree for which they are applying. http://gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/gsas-application-resource-center/faqs/letters-of-recommendation.html
6. Transcript. An official, electronic copy of your transcript. http://gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/gsas-application-resource-center/faqs/academic-transcripts.html
   

The department considers applications for the M.A. program in English and American literature for fall admission only. Applicants for the M.A. programs are accepted into that program only; admission to the the Ph.D. program requires submission of an application to the Ph.D. program. Applicants whose native language is not English must submit Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) results unless they have received their undergraduate degree from an accredited American college or university where the language of instruction is English. Near-native fluency in English is crucial for successful completion of all the programs offered by the department. All application materials and supporting documents must be submitted online through Graduate Enrollment Services (see the GSAS Application for Admission and Financial Aid for instructions). Applications submitted directly to the department are not considered. The department withdraws from consideration all applications that are missing supporting documents one month after the posted deadline. http://gsas.nyu.edu/admissions/gsas-application-resource-center/faqs/testing-requirements.html

For further Admissions information, please visit the Application Resource Center.

If your question is not answered, please contact the Director of MA Graduate Admissions: Professor Jini Kim Watson.