A path to 18?

[cookderosa]

Jennifer or anyone, do you know how particular schools are about different prefixes? Such as if I had some JOUR prefixes and some ENG, would they add them together? Versus considering journalism to be "separate". I'm feeling like JOUR is so similar, I mean it's just writing? But what about COMM prefixes? Seems like they might say that's too dissimilar, even though some COMM classes even say writing in the title? Is the answer "it depends on the school"? I would need them to look and give me an "exception"/approval for the COMM class? I feel like it makes me a worse applicant if I had say 9 ENG, 3 JOUR, 6 COMM.

To be clear, we are talking only about graduate school, and for the purposes of teaching. Also, this is not my area of expertise, but I've been digging a bit since I'm also building an 18 credit English bundle.

I've seen all of the above. I've seen ads that ask for "English, Literature, Communication" degrees and I've seen "ESL, Journalism, or other specialization" wording. I read all of this to suggest that the master's would be in one or the other. While I can't say for sure, I'm still pretty sure you're better off with an 18 credit bundle in the same prefix, if for no other reason than you'll likely be up against people with full degrees in that prefix.

My master's is "in" nutrition, which is to say the degree actually says "in nutrition" on it. If my degree were in Biology, my specialization might be nutrition (nutrition is a specialization of biology), and if I were applying for a teaching job, they would be looking for 18 credits in nutrition either inside my biology degree or as an addition somewhere. I could also have a degree in Biology but a specialization in some other aspect of biology like biotechnology, anatomy, microbiology, etc.

I'm not sure how English departments divide up those sections. Journalism, I would guess, could not house English whereas English could house journalism. I'm just not sure.