Vavasor

About University of Oregon, I don't know who it was that was rude to you on the phone, but in general U. Oregon is great in terms of the atmosphere and in terms of professors being really dedicated to their students (I did my undergraduate work there).

1) I would recommend investing some time reading renaissance and restoration era texts if that's not an era you have a lot of experience with. For one reason. A lot of questions will give you a passage and ask you what a word means in it's given context. Sometimes it's something as simple as knowing that the word "want" used to mean "lack" and not "desire" Other times it can be more complicated. Anyway, they could take a toll on a test-taker who doesn't have much experience reading in that era. 2) Don't put too much stake on what any strategy guide tells you. I get the impression the testmakers are good at staying one step ahead of that stuff.

Yeah, I admit I was refreshing the results board pretty compulsively for the last three days. With my email opened next to it! But I got my admissions offer email from University of Rochester this morning before the results started pouring in. Its the best feeling in the world to relieve all that tension at once. The crazy part was I was keeping such a constant watch on the email inbox, but the second the mail from Rochester appeared I was too terrified to open it. It took me like fifteen minutes. Maybe a lot of us are torn like that, we want to know but we're afraid to look!

I'd be shocked if they made much of the Writing section of the GRE. They have a 10 to 25 page sample of the kind of writing that matters (research writing) which by comparrison should have a lot more weight for obvious reasons. As to the subject test, my undergraduate advisor said that if I applied there for graduate work (I didn't) my score could be an advantage just because so few of their applicants have a decent one.

Some Henrick Ibsen, some Elizabeth Gaskell, may dip into some of Robert Browning's more complicated poems. Probably a good deal of Hawthorne. Lots of Cambridge Companion Chapters, some articles from the journal Nineteenth-Century Literature, Mill's Utilitarianism, possibly some Strindberg. George Eliot's Felix Holt. John Ruskin's Praeterita. Probably Tourgenev's On the Eve, among other things.

I'm having something like that with one of the schools I applied to (though not one of the ones on your list). The impression that I get is that some schools are just lazy about informing rejectees while others rather than (or before) doing an actual waitlist will call accepted applicants and if anyone declines call the next person down on the list.

Congratulations! With any luck maybe I'll get something like that by the end of the week!

Am I the only one who woke up from a nightmare this morning about another rejection?

Thanks!

I apologize in advance if this is a dumb question.

Well, I'm looking at the board and several people have gotten acceptance phone calls from WUSTL. I'm afraid to step away from my phone! I'm on the west coast so naturally I'd expect to get the call later than someone a little further east. Still, with every passing minute it's seeming less and less likely.

That's awesome that you're reading some Carson McCullers. Of all her books I remember really liking The Member of the Wedding.

I'm not pissed off. Sorry if you got that impression. I really am happy for the info (as you say, it's better to know now). I've got some exciting places that I still have to hear back from (including a few where I was wait-listed last year) and it only takes one! So I'm still in pretty high spirits.

I hear you! At any rate. It looks like you've already been accepted at some impressive programs, so congratulations on that!

Lots of Rutgers on the board, but no English department acceptees or rejects.

Dang! Well it's almost 4:00 on the east coast and I haven't heard from them yet, so it looks like I may be in trouble!

Feel like speculating on my chances at any of the other places I applied?

Well, thanks for the info!

Wow! That's convenient. I haven't heard from them. Do you know how long ahead of time they notify the people they plan to interview?

My numbers GPA 3.91 (3.95 in the major) GRE Subject 85th percentile GRE Verbal 95th percentile Applying: U Rochester, Rutgers, Notre Dame, Penn State, WUSTL.

If I haven't heard back from Rutgers yet, is that good, bad, or is it silly for me to speculate at this point?

Does anybody know whether or not there are any patterns regarding times of day, days of week schools typically get back to applicants and more importantly do they (a) Notify acceptees and then send out the rejection letters later ( notify out-right rejectees and then decide who of the remainder is accepted and who is waitlisted © Do something completely different from either of those?

Well, I feel bad sometimes that I didn't really grow up reading literature. It wasn't really until my senior year in high school. I'd read a lot of Simpsons comics in the past, and Matt Groening makes a lot of literary allusions and I wanted to understand them so I started reading things like Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust, and so on. I decided I wanted to go to college and be an English major, and by fall of my sophomore year I had more notes on literature I'd studied independently than I had for any of my classes. Making up for lost time!

The DGS at my undergraduate institution said to be extremely leary about mentioning names of faculty members because often they'll get applications and either (1) The person is dead/retired (2) The person doesn't work with grad-students so it wouldn't make sense. Of course there are some applications I've filled out that specifically ask you to mention what professors you could see yourself working with. So I guess the rule of thumb would be do it if they ask you to, or if there is a scholar whose work you're very familiar with and see your own work as contributing to similar critical debates it can't hurt to mention them, but if that's the case they would probably realize that such was the case without you mentioning them. Botton line, error on the side of caution!