Rodomonte

Way to pigeon-hole an entire gender (and you're working on PhD? And in education to boot???) Men often get flak for doing this to women.... like most fair-minded people, I'm all for parity of the sexes, but I don't think sexism is really what anyone has in mind.

I was accepted to CU Boulder as well yesterday via e-mail! Tuition waiver and TAship! I did my undergrad at CU and loved it so much I decided to get my Masters here as well. If literature is truly your thing, you'll love it too. Trust me! There are so many wonderful and brilliant language/literature professors here (especially from the Italian and French department) it's not even funny. What are your languages?

Hell's Kitchen

Deadline for my top school was yesterday. It's weird: I submitted the application about a month in advance, and all the pieces seemed to fall right into place. LORs, SOP, GRE, transcripts, writing sample---I felt good about it all because I spent nearly a year putting it all together. And everything was sent and received smoothly, too. No complications whatsoever. Supreme confidence. Ecstasy. Now here I am, one day out, and all that confidence just vanished. Overnight. At the beginning, it felt as though I was floating on Cloud 9... now I feel as if I'm floating on a wing and a prayer. I keep thinking: "Gee, that all seemed to go by just a little too easily... something's terribly wrong here." I'm so f'cked. Man oh man.

White Hot

You know, I've come across a ton of posts on this site about contacting POIs, and it's always astounding to me that I have not seen anyone point out a very obvious resource: your undergrad professors!!! Especially your LOR writers. Go and talk to them about professors in their fields. Naturally, I assume your LORs are coming from the same field you're gunning for. Moreover, I assume your LORs are professors who know and love you (and if they're not, they should be). They can easily put you into contact with POIs, which of course bypasses all the awkwardness that comes with approaching a total stranger. Essentially, you're asking a friend to serve as a buffer to introduce you to someone you want to meet. Plain and simple. That method is by far the most effective. I'm also in the midst of preparing my grad school applications, and already I've had one of my LOR writers e-mail two of her colleagues on my behalf from one of my targeted schools. And guess what? One of them has personally contacted me! Not the other way around! He even asked me pointed questions about my background and interests! That's a hell of a lot better than trying to tell some random person who's never heard of you how great you are. Networking is important. I would argue it is the most important aspect of the whole song and dance. If you're applying to graduate school (especially Ph.D programs), obviously you should have professors who know you fairly well. Use them, for pete's sake! That's what they're there for! They'll tell you that themselves! Good things will happen, I guarantee it!

I'm aware that MAs are typically not funded, and that's definitely something I'm taking into consideration. Some of the schools I listed do offer both the MA and the PhD (Rutgers, Indiana, Wisconsin), and they typically do offer funding (MA and PhD alike). Indiana and Wisconsin in particular have some of the strongest Italian departments in the country--even more so than the Ivies. I have tenured professors (native Italians) who are alumni from those schools, and they've recommended them to me based on the strength of their respective departments. I don't care about the school's overall prestige as much as I do about the quality of their departments. I'm not trying to undermine the Ivies---after all, Harvard is Harvard and Yale is Yale, etc---but the reputation of those schools often precedes their individual departments (barring the professional schools, of course), especially as far as Italian is concerned. An MA is only as "useless" as the person who holds it. As you rightly guessed, I'm not sure if I want to pursue the PhD just yet, which is to say that I am not considering the MA solely from the perspective of academia. Statistically, an MA is far more likely to land a job (outside of academia) than a PhD. Georgetown has excellent internship programs abroad, not to mention the perks afforded by being located in the Washington D.C. area (think about the consulates, for example). The only downside is, as you mentioned, lack of funding. All and all, I'm trying to be as provident as possible, not just in regard to finances, but also in regard to job prospects. An MA is more practical with respect to the so-called "real world," but if it turns out that I want to stay within academia, the transition to a good PhD program won't be difficult. Either way, it's a gamble: with an MA, I risk running up debt, but I'll be more salable outside of academia; with a PhD, I'll get funding, but I risk anchoring myself to an 8 or 9 year commitment, and I have no way of knowing what my mindset will be that far down the road. Obviously, I love Italian, otherwise I wouldn't be pursuing it, but that timeframe is a very, very long time... I guess you could say I'm planning on using the MA as a springboard. As I mentioned, the list I made is tentative as I'm still researching schools and trying to narrow my interests. As such, thank you for your advice! It's difficult to find anyone else in Italian studies, so I really value your input! As far as my specific interests are concerned, I'm primarily interested in Renaissance literature. I wrote my senior thesis on a 16th century transcript from the fiaba tradition that was written by a little known author (Lorenza Selva e Della metamorfosi di un'uomo virtuoso). I also wrote an analytical comparison between Ludovico Ariosto and John Milton and their epic poems (Orlando furioso and Paradise Lost). I'm also interested in 19th-20th century literature---as a secondary interest, I'd like to study the works of Luigi Pirandello (I wrote a piece on identity in his Enrico IV). At the University of Virginia, there's a professor (Enrico Cesaretti) who specializes in Palazzeschi and Pirandello, so that's one of the main reasons for my consideration of UVa. If you don't mind my asking, can you tell me more about yourself? Where and what are you studying? Are you in a PhD program?

Ciao a tutti! I realize it's pretty early for the Fall 2014 application process, but everyone has consistently told me that it's never too early to plan. So I guess you could say that I'm just trying to find my bearings. I would like to hear from other prospective grad students who are planning to apply to Italian grad programs, as well as those who have already applied and have been accepted (or rejected) by their schools. I'm trying to get as much information as I can, especially since Italian seems to be a very small discipline when compared to other languages. I recently graduated with a BA in English and Italian, and I've compiled a tentative list of schools that I'm looking to apply to: University of Virginia (one of my professors is an alum and actually recommended this to me) Georgetown University (my aforementioned prof was a visiting professor there, and also recommended this to me) Rutgers University-New Brunswick University of Wisconsin-Madison Indiana University-Bloomington (another recommendation from an alumnus) Middlebury (I've heard the MA program is awesome, but for some reason, I can't really find a whole lot of info on it) University of Colorado-Boulder (my alma mater; they actually don't have an Italian graduate program, but their comparative lit program is fantastic, which would be the closest thing to what I'm interested in... you could say I'm using this as a "safety" school) I should note that I have my sights set on MA programs. E allora? Che ne pensate voi? Vorrei sapere un po' di più da parte vostra (specificamente sulla vostra esperienza e/o speranza riguardo al processo). Fatemi sapere! Grazie!