I got accepted to Old Dominion University's PhD in English! Now what?

I assume it was a joke. ODU stopped being William and Mary in 1960. So it would be like going to Columbia and asking for a Teacher's College diploma with no mention of Columbia whatsoever.

There is nothing wrong with ODU. It isn't a top tier school but it's a perfectly fine school. I would probably rank it on the same "perfectly fine" level as Niagara University, for example.

At the same time, Niagara is not NYU. A PhD from Niagara is not going to carry the same weight as a PhD from Columbia. And that's OK for a lot of people and for a lot of things.

Program specific rankings can drive your employment more than overall school prestige. Your publication history can matter more than any of it.

We see this with all sorts of academic reputation issues. I remember when I was applying to school there was a pre-law advisor who was doing part of a campus tour at one of the colleges I was visiting. He had a very nuanced view of law school. He said if you were interested in public interest law, for example, then you could certainly go to Harvard. But unless you had a full scholarship that might be a pricey endeavor. If, however, you got into Villanova, it was much cheaper, they actually had a dedicated public interest law clinic and it might be the better path to your goal. He also warned against the temptation to rely on your education. Go to Harvard Law and then sit back and let your alma mater do all of the hard work. Now obviously, the elitists in the group maintained he said that because he was a small town hack of a lawyer who was making up for his own mediocre law degree (Temple). He had a private practice, he was the Pre-Law coordinator at that school and, a few years after I got out of the Navy, he became a judge. The man had a perfectly fine and respectable legal career.

Imagine, though, if he never went to Temple because it was no Harvard. He went to a school that enabled him to achieve his goals and live the life he wanted to live. Do you think a handful of snotty 18 year olds criticizing his law school's rankings mattered to him?