Conscia Fati

Hi everyone, I just wanted to jump in on this- I'm an advanced ABD student at a strong program. I'd argue that the situation really is as rough as some are suggesting, and I feel that it is incumbent on current ABD students to speak up and offer our perspectives, although I'm not doom-and-gloom all the way.    I'm quite happy with my choices up to this point. I am in a pleasant department, have supportive faculty, a dissertation that I have enjoyed working on, and great financial support. But I also know that the hard part is yet to come-- the job market. I want to second what Sappho said about watching friends who have been superstars all through grad school crash on the job market. It is absolutely frightening- and I've seen it happen every year that I've been here.    There are, of course, people who are successful on the market. But there are many who aren't, and the difference between the two groups is not always clear from my point of view (so, grad students who are, as far as I can tell, good scholars, respected and collegial members of the community, and who have significant research output and teaching experience nevertheless fail to find TT jobs even after applying widely 3 or 4 years in a row). What distinguishes the successful from the not-successful seems to be luck, as much as anything else. Maybe, of course, there's some quality that hiring committees can see that I can't-- it is totally possible-- but I have no idea what that may be, or whether I myself have it. I think that this is a very important point to emphasize, because it speaks against the narrative that things will work out if you're a strong student. They might work out, but it's far from a sure thing. And, we're still shy/ embarrassed about discussing alt-ac careers, so there's a lack of open communication about these opportunities.    As I am about to embark on my first year on the market next season, all of this is deeply sobering. While I understand that some people are pursuing a PhD out of personal interest, I entered hoping that I'd be able to make a career doing this, since I enjoy it and have  spent the last n years getting quite good at it.    When I applied to PhD programs, I was aware of the bad job market, as I can see that many of you are. But I'm not sure that I really appreciated how random the whole process is, or how very low the success rates are, even in a great program. Furthermore, in today's world, VAPs and post-docs are now the norm. But I'm not sure how often these lead to TT jobs, because it gets hard to keep track of people after they've been gone for 3 or 4 years (I mean, obviously I know where my close friends are, but I don't have a good grasp on the wider field).    I am, however, completely certain that we're all working without real data, since statistics about post-graduation careers are so opaque-- this is really something that our field needs to address. For the time being, ABD students usually have the clearest sense of departmental track records in recent years (since we've been around longer than other students). Reach out and talk to us, even if we might not be around during interviews or visiting weekends as much as the grad students in earlier stages.    Like I said at the beginning, I'm not wholly (or even mostly) negative about grad school- I've had a somewhat low-paying but stable job for the last years (low-paying relative to national statistics for college graduates, but comfortable to live on in the city where I am). And, it is a job that I've really enjoyed, which is worth a lot. But, what comes next-- the transition to a long-term career-- is really brutal, and we do our fields no favors by sugar-coating it.

I don't have the time to post something as detailed as actual did, but here are my results and thoughts.
 
accepted: UCLA (after interview), UWashington (no funding)
rejected: Princeton, Cornell, Stanford (after Skype interview), UMichigan, UChicago
 
AOI: Historical linguistics, prose stylistics
 
degrees: Bachelor of Science (Mathematics-Computer Science, Classics) from Brown University, Master of Arts (expected - Classics) from University of Kansas
 
GRE: 169V, 170Q, 5.0W
 
GPA: 3.93 undergrad (3.86 in Classics), 4.0 grad
 
professional stuff: no publications or presentations. 5 semesters experience TAing Latin/Classics (4 as instructor of record) [5 semesters experience TAing computer science]
 
greek & latin: both since high school; transcripts show 6 semesters advanced undergrad Latin, 4 semesters advanced undergrad Greek, 5 semesters graduate Latin (1 taken while an undergrad), 3 semesters graduate Greek.
 
other languages: german (3 years), italian (1 year), french (1 semester reading course).
 
writing sample: The introduction and first section of my MA thesis, a stylistic commentary on Cicero's Post Reditum ad Quirites.  This was a bit of a gambit because it's atypical as a sample.  Both UCLA and Stanford mentioned enjoying it.
 
letters of rec: Three from classics professors at my MA program, one of whom is very well known, one who is fairly well known, and one who is rising in the field.
 
advice for next year's applicants: I have no idea how this process works still, and it feels kind of random.  The school to which I was accepted with funding is the school to which I submitted a personal statement with a blatant typo.  It was, however, the best fit given my interests.  The other school to which I was accepted was naturally the worst fit given my interests.  I'd echo actual's advice of changing more than just the last paragraph of one's personal statement for each school.  The importance of reading lists depends on the school (KU admits to essentially ignoring them, for instance).  Additionally, check to make sure your person of interest is young enough to be still taking on advisees.  It was heavily implied by Stanford (during the interview, no less) that, although they expected me to get into a good program and do well, they would be rejecting me because my person of interest was no longer taking on students.  And finally, days on which you receive multiple rejections are hard.

when i was applying at the beginning of this year, i really wished i had access to a good sample of student profiles with admissions data.  i got my last result back this morning, so i'm checking out of the grad cafe--nice getting to know some of you guys, and i'm sure we'll all be seeing more of one another in the future!
 
here are my results, my stats, and general retrospective advice on the whole process.  it would be great if others could post something similar in this thread once their season is over.  that way future generations won't have to spend hours wading through old threads trying to piece together information.
 
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accepted: harvard, yale, princeton, columbia (clst), ut austin.  (all of these but austin interviewed before accepting.)
interview: brown, but i withdrew before it occurred.
rejected: stanford, michigan ann arbor, chicago.
 
AOI: ancient philosophy, ancient medicine, epic
 
degrees: bachelor of arts with honours from a new zealand university.  no further degrees.
 
GRE: 170V, 154Q, 4.5W
 
GPA: this is difficult since i'm an international and my university's gpa scale is weird.  my transcript showed four years of straight As.
 
professional stuff: no publications. one presentation at a plenary session of an anthropology conference.  no teaching/TAing experience.
 
greek & latin: four years of each.  plenty of reading done outside of courses.  in greek: four dialogues of plato, two works of aristotle (one lengthy), eight books of homer, all of hesiod, four tragedies, one comedy, two hippocratic treatises, one gospel, assorted shorter things.  in latin: maybe half of that.
 
other languages: german (2 semesters), french (1), italian (4), old norse (2), sanskrit (2).  also a couple of other languages, self-taught and extremely crappy in both.
 
writing sample: i had two: one was a strictly philosophical paper intended to display competence in ancient philosophy.  it had a bibliography of about 85 secondary sources, with about 15 items in modern languages other than English.  this one went to yale, princeton, austin, stanford, michigan, and chicago, so about a 50% hit rate.  the other was a wackier, more general-interest paper that made grand, sweeping, shakily supported statements about the development of the ancient greek mind.  it didn't have as big a biblio, or as many modern-language sources, but it did utilize a very broad range of greek primary sources.  this one went to columbia, harvard, and brown.  i got far more comments about the second than i did the first.  tentative lesson: ambitious displays of "potential" are better than "safe" displays of competence.  but that probably depends on what stage of your career you're at, and safe and competent is no application-killer.
 
letters of rec: three from classics professors i'd had good relations with, none of them superstars, but all of them (the equivalent of) tenured faculty.  i had a fourth, which i sent to harvard and columbia for reasons specific to those applications, from a tenured english professor.
 
 
advice for next year's applicants: 
tailor your statement of purpose to each school.  don't just add an extra paragraph at the end--write a new statement in each case, so that the fit comes across organically.  name names if you've read something by the name.  it's no problem to stress certain interests for certain schools, provided they are genuine interests.  you're never going to cover all your interests in one statement anyway, so play to the strengths that you picked each school for.
  the nice thing about classics is that there are a lot of substantial markers for your abilities and seriousness as a student, mostly in language preparation.  this makes admissions far less of a crapshoot than disciplines like philosophy and literature, where a huge amount of emphasis is placed on bullshit like undergrad pedigree, reputation of recommenders, and whether you have some mysterious "x-factor."   the best thing you can do to strengthen your application is learn german, french, or italian, and preferably learn more than one.  you don't have to be great, and it doesn't take much coursework, because all they want you to do is read.  german is valued more highly than the other two, but that's because it's harder.  it's certainly possible to get to reading competence in any of these languages within one year.
 
another really good thing to do is set aside an hour or two a day to read greek and latin.  pick short works that you can finish in a reasonable space of time (a short dialogue of plato, a book of vergil, a tragedy), this will keep you from burning out on any one piece.  keep a list of everything you read and attach it to your application.  don't be shy about this; if they don't give you a specific form for it in the application, put it on your CV.
 
one major weakness of my application was that i didn't have any coursework (as in, none whatsoever) in either ancient philosophy or modern philosophy.  i had several concerned comments on this from philosophers at interviews.  i had, however, written an honours thesis on ancient philosophy, and i had read a lot of philosophy in greek on my own time, and this seemed to reassure them in most cases.  i also didn't have an abundance of coursework in classical civ/history, and none at all in art or archaeology.  this didn't come up once in all the interviews i had.
 
GRE didn't matter at all, though that may not be the case for US students.  i didn't hear anything about my letters except once, and it was vague, so i don't think they are that important, provided of course that they are positive.  i would strongly recommend going through all your online applications and sending out letter requests a month in advance.  i didn't do that, and on one occasion ended up having to frantically email people begging them to submit their letters for two applications which were due the next morning.  pretty embarrassing.
 
for international applicants: i spent one year on exchange in undergrad at a somewhat-selective US college.  i think this helped my application, because it showed i was familiar with the way they do things in the USA, and i also had a transcript that was more familiar to the adcoms than my new zealand ones were.  i think that year was really beneficial in terms of improving my greek and latin, too.  (incidentally for those worried about the cost of an exchange, i ended up saving money in the year i spent in the USA compared to a year's living costs in new zealand.  it depends on the cost of living in your home country, obviously, but the USA is really cheap to live in, so it's not a bad idea if you have the time left in undergrad.)
 
 
at the interview:
my skype interviews sucked.  i thought i blew them completely, but i didn't.  i think that's just the nature of skype.  take how well you think you did in any skype interview, multiply by about five, that's how well you actually did.
 
on-campus interviews are a whole other matter.  these were the most fun i've had in ages--lots of free food, meeting excellent people who will be future colleagues, and seeing the cities you could be living in next autumn.  best and weirdest of all, the celebrities of your particular corner of classics will talk in depth about your research and writing sample.  milk that shit.  give them extra papers to read and comment on.  this is a very rare chance to have your work reviewed by the top scholars in your field.  if they like it, you might even keep the contacts if you end up at a different school.
 
i wouldn't panic, though, about proving your intellectual worth.  they liked your stats, they know you're good; that's why you're there.  the interviews seemed like they were mostly about showing that you'd be a good student and a good colleague.  to that end, try to be friendly above all; ask people about their interests and try to get to know them.  lots of faculty you talk to aren't going to share any research interests with you, but that's not to say you won't have personal interests in common: these in-person visits are a good opportunity to display a bit of breadth that doesn't come across in your applications.  you probably have a number of interests outside of classics; don't be afraid to talk about them.  i ended up talking to various people about hume, proust, milton, ralph ellison, blues guitar, rap music, and other stuff.  these conversations seemed as important to the interview as ones about my research.
 
try to read something important by most of the people you might end up working with at each school.  don't shoehorn it into conversations with them, though--just read it to get a sense of who they are as scholars.  if it comes up naturally, go ahead and say you read it.
 
talk to grad students who are in the dissertation-writing phase.  they're much happier to be frank with you.  keep an eye on how happy they seem, how confident in their work they are, what kind of relationship they seem to have with their supervisors.
 
keep your ear out on your visits.  you learn the most about the departments you're visiting from other departments you're visiting.  pay close attention to rumours: most of the stuff you need to know isn't written down anywhere, so the only way you're going to learn about it is by word of mouth.  ask especially about climate for women, placement rates, and attrition in other departments.  ask people on hiring committees which schools produce the most competitive candidates in your subfield.  be aware, though, that everybody is perfectly happy to badmouth everybody else (this surprised me).  the vaguer the criticisms, the less likely they are to be true.
 
the most important thing: take a notebook.  every time you get a break, write down notes on everything you learnt in your last few conversations.  otherwise you'll forget it all within a week.
 
good luck!

Χαῖρε, ὦ Τραιάνε,
 
1) Provided you can get in to a solid MA program, I don't see why you would choose a post-bac over it. The key reason for taking time off before applying to a classics PhD is cultivating your languages skills. You should be able to do that really well in an MA program. (You'll also probably get a solid writing sample out of it if you don't already have something lying around.)
 
2) No "hard" cut-offs for the GRE, but I do think that a 165+ verbal and 5+ writing are par for the course for most serious top-10 applicants. These numbers will ensure that your scores don't stand out as particularly low in comparison to the rest of your application (which should be strong if geared to a top-10).
 
The #1 one thing you can do at this point is read more Latin and Greek (esp. Greek if you've already done a fair bit more Latin). You need to be at the "advanced" level (whatever you take that to mean) by the time you're looking at PhD programs. Continue with a modern language (e.g., German as you're doing). Pick up a second if you've got the time, but it probably won't make or break your application. Write something that will showcase your ability to interpret ancient texts in their original languages and deal with relevant classical scholarship (in English is fine). And get strong grades in your MA to show your continued upward trend. A 3.9+ in your MA should get you in the running.
 
Oh, and congratulations on the choice.

congrats in advance! 

Just to set the record straight: these six students are being interviewed, and are not yet accepted. I believe the classics department plans to make offers to two of these six prospectives. They have already made one offer to a current classics post-bacc at Columbia.
 
I cannot speak to the admissions process in CLST.

Oh, and good luck everyone, and congrats to those of you who've already heard good news!

Just to set the record straight: these six students are being interviewed, and are not yet accepted. I believe the classics department plans to make offers to two of these six prospectives. They have already made one offer to a current classics post-bacc at Columbia.
 
I cannot speak to the admissions process in CLST.

i just posted an acceptance from columbia (clst), and i should have said in the submission box that i got the impression from the admission email that there will be another round of acceptances.

I think it must have been a pre-screening - I got an invite to the weekend today. I assume given that for them to cover my travel is expensive they wanted to talk first. N

Thanks Petros! I never knew the results board existed and that is extremely helpful! I was talking about Seattle, so it sounds like no one has heard back.

Also, looks like we got into Georgia together! I thought about applying to Kentucky to but didn't like the campus. I was to scared to apply to Notre Dame. Good luck on funding!

Speaking of Notre Dame, has anyone heard anything from them? I see on the results board that they have informed around this time in previous years. Having already heard from two of my programs, I find that I'm even more anxious to hear from the rest!

Just got an email from Notre Dame. Skype interview next week.

Congrats to all with acceptances and interviews so far!  I just wanted to chime in and second/third/fourth all the people who have had mysterious results in this cycle so far -- I too have gotten acceptances from surprising places, but only silence from others that I thought were better fits.  However an undergrad mentor of mine reminds me that academic merit or intellectual fit are often only two of many factors in play.  Sometimes, counterintuitively, an adcomm sees where a strong applicant has applied and rejects them because they think they have no chance of getting him/her.  And then, sometimes, there's politics, whether between individual professors or even departments; you never know if one of your recommenders has had a tiff with someone at the place you're applying to.  So, bottom line is when things get confusing, it can just as often be about them rather than about you.  While that's definitely frustrating if it means you're prevented from attending a top choice program, it doesn't mean at all you won't be successful in the long run, which is what ultimately matters.

That's me! Prof. Corbeill emailed me this morning. I'm pretty ridiculously excited. Doubly so because it's my first piece of good news this season.

Got an email (at 11:00pm on a Friday ) saying I'd been selected for the  interview shortlist at Michigan.

Hi all - a lurker from last year's application season deciding to pipe up for a minute - for those waiting to hear from UT Austin, do keep an eye on your application status and on the results board... last year when I was applying, acceptances and rejections were being posted all over the board, but I heard not a peep from them... turns out they had put me on a wait list but didn't bother tell me! By the last day of March they still hadn't updated me. I didn't end up going anyway (obviously) as I got funding elsewhere, but for those of you who are unsure about them, I'd recommend emailing sooner rather than later if you're feeling anxious and want to check up on things. Although I'd agree that it's still very early! But, as a very anxious person myself, I thought it might be good to point this out to those who've brought it up. 

This wasn’t directed at me, but I’ll answer it because I want other people’s answers, as well. Haha. 
 
I have a two-day interview/meet-and-greet at a potential university, so here is what I’m planning on wearing:
Day One: The dress in this picture (http://www.modcloth.com/shop/dresses/work-with-me-dress-in-black) with grey tights and a pair of sensible heels. I’ll have a couple of jewelry pieces, but nothing distracting. Day two: Skinny black slacks tucked into these boots (http://www1.macys.com/shop/product/tommy-hilfiger-hamden-tall-riding-boots?ID=880577&LinkshareID=QFGLnEolOWg-Y3yKXNwMtWYnJdPRE7Avfw&PartnerID=LINKSHARE&cm_mmc=LINKSHARE-_-5-_-63-_-MP563) with a camel-colored sweater, a colorful blazer, and a statement necklace. 

hi, that's me!  i heard from katja vogt, who heads the classical studies program.  i know that applications for that program are handled separately from the classics department applications, and i am an international applicant--they may have a different procedure for domestic applicants.  bearing all that in mind, and seeing as mine is the only report up so far, i wouldn't give up hope yet.

I emailed my POI, who says there will be campus visit invites for interviews, and unofficially told me that I've got one.

So there is more to come from UT Austin I think.

Penn's committee has met, or so I've heard. Good luck everyone! 

Penn's committee has met, or so I've heard. Good luck everyone! 

Just heard back from OSU.  I got in.  Hopefully this bodes well for me getting into a school besides my safety!

It would take an entire book to do justice to this topic (and a good number of books on the subject have in fact been written) but if I were obliged to offer what I consider to be the single most important point about writing such essays, based on more than 30 years of experience assisting hundreds of applicants, it would be this: Unless the specific instructions dictate otherwise (always pay careful attention to the instructions), think of this type of statement as an intellectual autobiography.
 
Writing at its best - ALL writing - is storytelling. Here, you are telling the story of your intellectual development, as it relates to your proposed field of study. If you are wondering about whether to include something, ask yourself whether it belongs in this context.
 
Follow the guidelines of good storytelling. A good story, for example, always begins in a way that gets the reader's attention. It flows logically from one point to the next. It doesn't cause the reader to suddenly stop and wonder what the writer was trying to say. It doesn't seem too long or too short. And the most successful stories are the ones that the reader would likely remember and want to tell to others.
 
The single biggest and most frequently recurring mistake that applicants make is not giving themselves enough time to write this critical and challenging essay. Contrary to an earlier comment, it is NOT the case that the statement of purpose can only help you and cannot hurt you, in terms of your chances for admission. In competitive programs for which admission is selective, these essays are routinely used as a tool for screening applicants out.
 
Don't be afraid to get help. This type of essay calls for a very special skill set, which few applicants have developed, even those who may be considered good writers. Some of the applicants you will be going up against will inevitably have sought out expert assistance. Those who do not will be at a disadvantage. Reading the thread here at The GradCafe Forums is an excellent first step, so congratulate yourself for heading in the right direction.

I have not heard that the IFA has had problems funding its PhD students, although I do have friends in their MA program who did not receive funding. Everyone whom I know who is in their PhD program has full funding.