maxined93

Thanks much! I have edited a good bit, streamlining and updating. I'm glad I don't have to change too much, though.

Hello all! I applied to eight English Lit Ph.D. programs last year and was rejected by all. I'm trying again this year, in hopes of greater success. I'm going to reapply to a few schools, but was wondering if I should entirely rewrite my statement of purpose for those I've already tried at. I was told by everyone who looked at it last year that it was quite good, so I don't want to start from scratch. But would it hurt my chances of acceptance if someone noticed it was largely the same document as I used to apply last year?

PRAISE THE APPLICATION GODS. I haven't the time to fluff the darn thing, so I'm too relieved this is the case. Thanks, all!

Thanks all for the lively discussion--and WBWhitman, for the real talk I was hoping for.

Hello all! I'm an English major getting ready to apply to Ph.D. English Lit programs for Fall 2016, and I've run into a conundrum. Princeton's wording on their writing sample requirements is a little vague, saying they want one of "approximately 25 pages". Do you think my 19 page rant on Henry James and the creation of homosexual identity is close enough to this limit, or should I expand it to the aforementioned 25 page length?

Thank you all so much! I was told to contact grad students directly, but I wasn't sure if it was the done thing in the humanities. In response to 1Q84 and Wyatt's Terps, I'm interested in a wide range of historical/genre areas, but all my interests are filtered through a gender studies/feminist lens with a bit of postcolonial thrown in. The usual undergrad mix, I suppose.

Hello all! I'm an English major getting ready to apply to Ph.D. English Lit programs for Fall 2016, and I'm in need of real talk from someone who's already gone through the process. Specifically, I want to know what other folks have experienced at my top 5 schools (from any specialty/program) and if there's any caveat I can use to narrow down my choices. I'm clueless, so ANY help is much appreciated. My top 5 are: University of Southern California Columbia University Penn State Emory University University of Virginia But I'm also thinking about: Princeton Yale Harvard Stanford University of Georgia Please help a girl out, as application time is drawing near!

Just took it this May, and my advice is threefold: read the Romantic poets, relearn poetic/rhetorical terminology (anapests, ect.), and make as many educated guesses on authorship as you can. Being widely-read has its benefits; I was able to recognize one writer simply by the tone of his work, which I'd been reading since I was small. If I had been more experienced in the above areas, I would have done better.

Thanks. As noted, a bit clueless here.

I'll be the first to say I don't have experience in your field, but I do know what degree you need depends on your career path. If you're interested in teaching or researching, by all means get the Ph.D. now. If you're interested in actually working in civil engineering, though, you might want to look at job listings to see what employers require; otherwise, you might become overqualified and so have a harder time getting a job.

Hello all! I'm an English major getting ready to apply to Ph.D. English Lit programs for Fall 2016, and I'm in need of real talk from someone who's already gone through the process. Specifically, I want to know what other folks have experienced at my top 5 schools (from any specialty/program) and if there's any caveat I can use to narrow down my choices. I'm clueless, so ANY help is much appreciated. My top 5 are: University of Southern California Columbia University Penn State Emory University University of Virginia But I'm also thinking about: Princeton Yale Harvard Stanford University of Georgia Please help a girl out, as application time is drawing near!