SilasWegg

I have the sad honor of starting this thread. My rejection from UVA sorta broke my heart. I've been living in Virginia for the past six years and I'm terribly sad to leave but I have an offer at Texas A&M. On the other hand, I didn't really feel like I was a good "fit" for their program and the only reason I applied there is because of location. Maybe they sensed my lack of enthusiasm... more likely they scoffed at my writing sample, threw my file in the trash can then put on a Dave Matthew's Band cd then went out for dried out gross ass bubby's bagels. charlotesville sucks. nevermind. I never wanted to go there anyway.

I'm writing a thesis chapter on "Bartleby" right now and I can't help but wish I was more like him. I really would "prefer not to" care about if I get in, where I get in, stipends, POIs, adcomms... but like the story's narrator, I am confounded by my own inability to withdraw from the conundrum. "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"

I'm gonna read brown as an implied rejection but hold out hope for a few more CUNY admits.

Super Tuesday.

I think some departments have more time and energy invested in recruitment than others. I would imagine if they accepted you they want you there. This is the sort of thing you might not want to read too much into... Difficult for us lit peeps not to do!

I really wasn't expecting an acceptance on a Saturday! I got an offer from Texas A&M. Full funding, 13k stipend, TA position, five years. This is the first decision of the season and it's VERY encouraging to begin with some positive news. While it's not my first choice, this is a real solid option for me. For Fall 2013, I didn't get any funded offers, so this is a very sweet victory. Gotta say though, I don't really love the idea of living in rural Texas but there are some very good people for me to work with at this program. I have tons of questions about the program. There will be a recruitment weekend March 23-24. In the mean time, should I start reaching out to POIs and getting a read on what to expect if I do plan to attend?

It's officially eight weeks since I applied to UMD and OSU. I'm on the edge of my seat for some news... What do you think? Will it be today?

I second Mike86. One thing to avoid with an unfunded MA is RELOCATION. Giving up a job, comfortable living situation, close ties to friends and family to do an unfunded MA is not a good idea. Not to mention paying out of state tuition! Some may disagree, but an MA in English from your local state school is probably just as valuable as one from Pratt or wherever.

My Berkeley app status has not updated. I'm going to go ahead and consider this one an implied rejection. I don't think my application was competitive in that pool anyway. This was my long shot so I'm not at all sad or surprised.

I don't know if Grad Cafe believes in this sort of thing, but Susan Miller's Astrology Zone has been a major source of comfort for me in the application process. I don't believe in the power of prayer but I do believe our fates are largely dictated by the alignments and disalignments of celestial bodies. If you are a Pisces, like me, Susan Miller predicts big things for us this month: The full moon on February 3 will be a big moment in your timeline. Something you have worked hard to achieve will be ready to be unveiled and shown to the public or to influential people. The critical acclaim that will result from seeing your work will be enthusiastic and heartwarming. In fact, you may be amazed at how positive the response will be for your work. You are taking a leadership role in your industry now, but you may not even be aware of this truth yet, but later, in hindsight you will see how your career life took an important turn in the first quarter of 2015, and that you are clearly growing in stature and evolving into new and untried roles, the reason all this is so exciting.

I like how much talk of bad brains, converge and now TOOL there has been on this thread lately. I wonder if the English department of the future might offer classes on post-hardcore studies.

Sorry grad cafe! I had too many hoppy beers last night and posted some sorry stuff! I really appreciate the encouraging responses. I think I might stay away from the results board for a while though.... It seems to promote panic attacks and depressive behaviors on my part!

So it seems Ohio state posted acceptances today. Since I am not one of them (and this was a program that seemed "realistic") i am starting to feel pretty bleak about my application season. I've already decided to not chase good money after bad and do another round of apps. I turn 34 next month and it feels pretty now or never. I can't help but believe my undergrad performance (despite perfect grad gpa) has sunk me. Feeling very low and regretful. The tears in my late night snack! I know it's early in the season but this does not bode well!

WVU has a pretty good program but they have a 2/2 course load for their PhDs. I'm not sure if this is completely the norm for lower-tier programs though. I'm doing 1/1 now and it can be pretty distracting from coursework obligations. Definitely something to keep in mind when (if) some offers are on the table.

Another thing to keep in mind as we attempt to discern the inner-workings of the adcoms is that they are probably more concerned with your ideas than with the nitty gritty of the WS. For example, if you had a perfectly edited document in chicago style that just retread a bunch of outdated scholarship, chances are you aren't getting any offers. Another thing to consider is the originality of your topic. I would imagine if you submitted a WS that was suited to the department's strengths in an applicant pool that is mostly far afield from departmental interests, it really boosts your chances. I would think demonstrating an engagement with good scholarship and an understanding of the area of the discipline you are writing on far outweighs the "catty" infighting of the documentation wars. Wyatt, I too wrote in a "hybrid" MLA. Maybe if I were working up a journal article or a dissertation I would take up chicago but for applications it hardly seems like it would matter.

I need to revise mine so it reads more like this. I also wanted to test out my "signature"!

600 even. I only brought up my score by ten points from two years ago. I feel like things could have gone better on test day.

An issue I'm running into with more "top tier" programs is that many appear unwilling to accept many (any) credits from my MA studies. While I love the idea of going to a prestigious PhD program, I'd rather shave off a few semesters of course work at a more "mid-tier" program. I don't necessarily view myself as a strictly "mid-tier" candidate but I feel my application season drifting in that direction...

I put this in scare quotes knowing that there really is no such thing. If you've done your research, you know that even lower-ranked schools only accept about 10% of applicants. Also, rankings are completely subjective and tell you very little about a program's relative strengths and weaknesses. If there were such a thing as a safety school, everyone would apply there and it wouldn't be safe anymore. I hope for this thread to start a little conversation about "sleeper" programs; in other words, programs that might be undervalued or overlooked by applicants and the robots that put together the rankings. We are all probably trying to apply to a mix of schools, some reaches and some seemingly less competitive. By sharing our ideas about middle of the pack or even "lower tier" programs we might get some new ideas about where to apply. For instance, I'm putting in applications to Florida (#52), Texas A&M (#59), Temple (#63), Delaware (#63). These programs are all pretty strong in my field (C19 American) and all offer funding. To me, they seem just as appealing as Brown, UVA, Duke and the like. I'd love to know about more schools outside of USN's Top 50 (pointless distinction) that are solid in my field and have good funding opportunities. Also, I'd love to know about other "sleeper" programs in other fields. Let's get this going... maybe you will get some ideas to make some last minute adjustments to your application strategies. You might even get an acceptance to a really great program you had never considered before. There might be some truth to notion that more prestigious programs are more likely to land a tenure track job but, at the end of the day, if you distinguish yourself, it doesn't really matter where your degree is from, right?

I'll never forget the valentine's day massacre of 2013 by the CUNY Grad Center. So many valentine's day broken hearts!... my heart included

This was definitely a rule made up by high school english teachers to prevent students from writing opinion-based analyses, i.e. "I think Hamlet is lonely and I feel the same way." In my freshmen comp classes, students really want me to settle this issue for them, once and for all. I remind them that different instructors and different disciplines have different takes on this policy but a good rule of thumb is to say what I "does" and not what I "thinks/feels." So you can say "I argue" or "I study" but not "I believe" or "I like."

True the whole test is bogus... but I think I understand why the people at ETS want to scale back on matching type questions. It just makes the test seem even more arbitrary, more like an AP English exam. One test-taking strategy I would like to recommend for interpretation questions is to work backwards. When the last question is an ID question, answer that first, then backtrack through the interpretations to see if the answers are consistent with your ID question. For example, you identify the passage as Juliet (as per Wyatt's example) but then when all the interpretation questions cite passages about the Nile River, you go back and revise your initial theory. OR you identify the passage correctly, and then the interpretations become clear because you have a working theory about the text.

I just visited this thread after a few head-scratching days post subject test. A kind of weird malaise and self-doubt is pervasive but also a hedged optimism. I agree that the test was much more interpretation-heavy than the Princeton Review had led me to believe. There were only a few purely identification questions. The major challenge, of course, was getting to all the questions in time. The upside was that there were a lot of slow pitch interpretation questions. I don't know about you, but I've mastered the art of identifying phony paraphrases which makes POE on these questions pretty easy. I actually think the reduced number of ID questions will help my score and I believe that its a more fair testing format overall. Let's be honest, in no way is MATCHING a good indicator of graduate student success.

CUNY Grad Center has a very concise 15 page limit. The writing sample I plan to submit clocks in at a long 17 pages. I don't really want to cut it down to fifteen... its a chapter from a Master's thesis on social critique and editorial politics in Herman Melville's fiction in Putnam's Magazine. Cutting 3 pages really hurts it. Do you think they are hard and fast about 15 pages? They must realize its a pretty tight limit, right?

Wyatt are you in Fredricksburg? I'm in Richmond. Would you like to study for GRE subject test sometime? Maybe compare writing samples? PM me!