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After
Graduation
Students from the department have chosen diverse careers after their graduation from Haverford. However, they have consistently taken with them from the major in English those focal interests of the discipline in a clear, cogent and articulate prose through which increasingly sophisticated theoretical and practical problems of both cultural inheritance and cultural exchange can be negotiated.
Students who are interested in graduate study might begin by going to the Haverford and Bryn Mawr sponsored website for graduate study, the Graduate and Professional School Internet Forum.
Ph.D. English majors have been accepted into and offered scholarships to the most highly regarded of doctoral programs in English, among them Berkeley, Cornell, Columbia, Irvine, Emory, Duke,Chicago, Brandeis, Stanford, Iowa, NYU, Nottingham (England), and Edinburgh (Scotland), among others. Another recent graduate is pursuing the M. Litt. at Oxford in late Victorian literature. The critical sophistication that the major promotes has found them both ready and more than able to meet the demands of these programs. Nor have these been only programs in English: a former English major has entered the Ph.D. program in Religion in the Divinity School at Chicago, continuing his hermeneutical pursuit of texts in a different register. Two former majors, after teaching at the secondary level, are pursuing a Ph.D. in Education.
M.D. The field of medicine has been especially interested of late in students entering into medical schools with a broader understanding of the humanities and of the moral and ethical issues located therein. The department has supported many students who are also pursuing a premed curriculum and who have later been admitted to such programs as Johns Hopkins, NYU and Thomas Jefferson in medicine. Often these interests have coincided: a student much interested in Irish literature later held a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Dublin; a student wrote an admirable thesis in 18th narratives of medicine and women where she drew upon her research in the medical archives of Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia. Former majors have also been accepted into post-baccalaureate programs in medicine which lead to medical schools, such as the program at Harvard, demonstrating the interest that medical schools now have in students in the humanities, even those without significant science backgrounds.
M.F.A.. A recent graduate who elected the Creative Writing Concentration while at Haverford is entering the M.A. Program in Creative Writing at Temple University. Another recent graduate and recipient of the Kreiger Prize for Writing in the Junior and Senior year for her "director's notebook" on Shakespeare's The Tempest will be entering an M.F.A.. program in dramaturgy at Brooklyn College. Other students who have aligned their English major with their work in the fine arts at Haverford are working as an art directory in a Chicago advertising firm, as a consultant to the New York City public schools, and as an administrator of an arts program for the Philadelphia public schools. A former major works as a filmmaker in Philadelphia; another works in an art museum in Chicago.
Other degrees: Students have always been accepted to law school--among these Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, Temple, Boston College, University of Virginia--where they have acquitted themselves well and entered into practice in a wide variety of fields within the law. Former majors have entered an M.B.A. program to pursue interests as diverse as the international art trade to working in computer technologies. Students have also entered programs in public policy and journalism.
Teaching at the secondary school level: Students have chosen to pursue a specialized M.A. in teaching through programs at Penn and at the Bank Street School of Education. Former students teach at both public and private schools, traditional and alternative. Two students are currently teachings in alternative high schools in New Hampshire and in the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina. Several have participated in the JET program in teaching English in Japan, as well as in Teach for America.
Several students have had exceptional careers, and increasingly, national reputations for their work as novelists, writers of short stories, and as poets. A former major attended the writing program at Iowa; most have had their work recognized in other ways as well, such as poetry published in such literary journals as The Painted Bride Quarterly.
Students have also pursued professional writing, as journalists for both alternative and traditional newspapers, including The Washington Post, Philadelphia's City Paper, the Jewish Exponent, and Philadelphia Magazine; National Public Radio and NBC; writing for the financial journal Kiplinger's; writing for trade journals, and writing for travel magazines. They work as editors and editorial assistants in publishing houses in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and specialize in everything from medical publications to cookbooks to science fiction to children's books.
Arts and Entertainment
Increasingly students have found a place in the entertainment world: acting and working in theater production with the People's Light & Theater Company; screenwriting in Los Angeles; pursuing an MA in directing at the American Film Institute; producing concerts for Festival Productions, the entertainment division of American Express; as an Education Assistant at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Brooklyn.
Haverford's emphasis on public policy issues and on a larger community beyond the College has encouraged students to work for nonprofit corporations, including working for the Pew Foundation in Philadelphia , the James Beard Foundation (the latter while also publishing independently a 'zine, Drama Queen); fundraising for the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Third Millennium; and as a "program describer" for the blind at WGBH, the PBS station in Boston. Former students work as well for the Red Cross in Washington, D.C. and an institution researching the UN and conflict resolution in New York.
Students have worked in banking in Boston; in advertising; in management for Price Waterhouse Cooper, for J.P. Morgan, Sony, and Nike; for a professional baseball team; on an organic farm; as freelance software developers; on the Internet; and in merchandising as a partner in a custom shoe boutique in Argentina!