English literature, one of the easiest online master’s degrees, can be surprisingly difficult to get into if you didn’t major in English as an undergraduate. You don’t necessarily need an undergraduate degree in English to get into a master’s degree program in the field, but you may have more hoops to jump through if your undergraduate academic background is unrelated. If you majored in something other than English and now want to study literature at the graduate level, you may need to take some undergraduate literature courses first and consider how to best make a case for your admission into the program.
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Completing Prerequisites for a Graduate English Literature Program
Applicants to a master’s degree program in literature often have a background in literature or in liberal arts. Not having this background could hold you back in pursuing a master’s degree in literature unless you can demonstrate that you have the analytical thinking and writing skills to succeed in the program.
To ensure that admitted students have this set of skills, English Literature programs at the graduate level typically expect students to complete considerable upper-division coursework in literature prior to applying. If you only took enough literature coursework to satisfy the minimum general education requirements while you were earning a bachelor’s degree in something else, you probably don’t meet these requirements.
Fortunately, this problem isn’t too difficult to solve. Prospective literature students can sign up for some undergraduate courses to build up their background in literature. Different graduate English literature programs may have different prerequisites, so it’s always a good idea to check the specifics of what the program you’re considering would like to see. Generally, though, it’s valuable to have some upper-level coursework in the theories and concepts of literary analysis as well as classes in American literature, British literature and world literature.
Whether or not your intended graduate school has mandatory literature prerequisite courses, it’s not a bad idea to brush up on your literature studies before diving into a master’s degree in the subject. If you haven’t taken a college English course in a while, it may be easier to get back into the routine if you start at the undergraduate level. The literature coursework you complete in preparation for a graduate English literature program also provides you with recent, high-quality literary analyses that you can use as a writing sample for your graduate school application. You want the English department to see the work you’re capable of doing now, when you have decided to make your literature studies a priority, rather than a years-old paper from a time when your academic focus was on a different field.
Some universities allow students to bypass these prerequisites if they meet or exceed certain other requirements, such as getting an exceptional score on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) Tests.
Convincing an English Department to Admit You
Part of the challenge of getting into an English literature master’s degree program when you didn’t major in English as an undergraduate is promoting yourself as a prospective student. The English literature department will notice that you don’t have what it considers to be the traditional background of the students it most commonly accepts. You will have to persuade the instructors in the department that you would make a great graduate student of English in spite of – or even because of – your unorthodox background.
Is your prior field of study something that can add value to your perspective as a student of literature? For example, if you previously majored in history and want to tailor your graduate literature studies to a historical time period, you could make the argument that your in-depth knowledge of that period affords you an insight literature majors might not have. Similarly, if you majored in African American studies or gender and women’s studies as an undergraduate, you would be in a strong position to turn your attention to African American literature or feminist literature.
Perhaps you were always interested in literature, but as an undergraduate, you opted to (or were talked into) pursuing a degree that had a better reputation for qualifying you for a job. There’s no shame in going to graduate school to finally pursue a passion. You need to make that passion shine through in your application, especially because without that passion, your application may seem incongruous with your background.
Your personal statement essay provides your chance to present your argument for why you belong in the school’s graduate English literature program.
Additional Resources
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