I was most interested in the column by Carolyn Edelstein ’10 GS, “Going Back: When Undergraduate Alums Choose a Second Round at Princeton” (Student Dispatch, Jan. 8), and English department chair William Gleason’s statement to the effect that no departmental graduates had returned for graduate study in “at least a decade.”

In my era, it seemed there was an actual push for high-ranking English A.B. graduates to re-enroll as graduate students, and there was a designated, albeit meager, fellowship award to the individual readmitted. Since the highest-ranking A.B. graduate in my class chose to go elsewhere, I was offered the fellowship, and I chose to continue at Princeton.

With all due respect to my teachers, I share, based on personal experience, the “prevailing sense” among current faculty that a comparable but different institution, with different teachers, offerings, ideological orientation, etc., provides a much richer educational experience.

The same writers and literary approaches were in favor as in the previous four years; the same insularity ruled, with its dead white (male) bias; the same instructors taught the same subjects in the same way. A particular incident stands out: I and my then-wife applied to a program established to send white academics to teach one year in traditionally black Southern colleges. This didn’t work out, but as I remember, the Princeton English faculty who knew about it were shocked: “You don’t want to do that” was the general reaction.

Everything changes, including Princeton, but I would recommend that members of the Class of 2014 consider very deeply the benefits to be gained from graduate work in an entirely new intellectual and social environment.

Fred Waage ’65