SilasWegg

I don't have the time right now to speak to how you should tailor your SOP, but Max Cavitch at Penn works at precisely this intersection. 

Also, FWIW, psychoanalysis is still major in many avenues of theoretical thinking today. If you wanted to pursue it as a project, I think, with a little tinkering, you could easily make your interests sound relevant and up to date. We can talk more over PM if you want to discuss these things in more depth/ get some recommended texts. 

Hey @yanicus congrats on the Rutgers acceptance! I'm a second year in the Rutgers English program. If you have any questions, send a message. 

Got a lovely call from a wonderful professor at Rutgers this afternoon! Honestly I hand't really expected half the acceptances I've gotten, but it's been a pretty crazy couple of weeks... and still three notifications left.

I think you might want to consider the MA at Virginia Commonwealth University. There are a number of faculty there working on Southern Lit, 19th Century, and/or African American. Definitely check out Les Harrison and Kathy Bassard. The stipend is in the ballpark of the other programs you are considering but the teaching demands are a little less. Richmond is a great city, housing is relatively inexpensive, and there is a ton of civil war history and really great resources and research opportunities for that. The department is a good size and the faculty are all lovely. I had 2 great years there. I'm at Rutgers doing a PhD now but I really miss my VCU times. GO RAMS!

I think you might want to consider the MA at Virginia Commonwealth University. There are a number of faculty there working on Southern Lit, 19th Century, and/or African American. Definitely check out Les Harrison and Kathy Bassard. The stipend is in the ballpark of the other programs you are considering but the teaching demands are a little less. Richmond is a great city, housing is relatively inexpensive, and there is a ton of civil war history and really great resources and research opportunities for that. The department is a good size and the faculty are all lovely. I had 2 great years there. I'm at Rutgers doing a PhD now but I really miss my VCU times. GO RAMS!

I'm wait listed and this is my first non-rejection. Would love to hear anyone's perspective on the program! This is my top choice outside of California. I love how thorough the wait list email was. I really appreciate how upfront the program is!

Interesting that's in the anonymous results section though. Now I'm imagining this applicant uploading that comment in the "supporting docs" section of his/her app to Cornell, and Cornell's reply:
Dear sir/madam:
While your metrics and research interests align well with our institution's standards, your xenophobic comments do not. It is not our policy to admit internet trolls to the program. Unfortunately, we are rescinding our offer and accepting an international candidate in your place.
Regards
Cornell's DGS
-------
Ok I'm done. Let's get back to congratulating people.
 
 
 
 
 
 

I got accepted in UCincinnati on Friday, with a very kind email! I know it's not really a 'high-class' program, but I'm beyond excited, because I'd already received 3 rejections and 2 implied rejections! So I was certain I'd be rejected at every single other school I applied to. Basically, I'm delighted to have gotten a fully funded offer anywhere! A huge heavy weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
Congrats to everyone who has gotten acceptances! We did it.

Hey! UChicago: yes! Ohmygosh.
I have absolutely no idea what to say--as you can see from my signature, and the number of places to which I applied, I had some confidence issues about getting accepted at all and.....I just don't even know. This is crazy. 

I applied to doctoral programs during MA coursework. It was brutal, distracting, nerve-wracking, and incredibly time-consuming. When you are already stretched pretty thin with your time commitments, it is important to allocate your resources wisely. If you can, assemble a little squad of supportive professors who can walk you through the process, lend a supportive ear, and hopefully write amazing reference letters. Without the support of these good people, application outcomes are dubious at best. 
1. When did you start preparing for the GRE Literature Subject Score? Did you study with a friend or professor?
I think you should aim to get a score that breaks 600. Some may disagree but I imagine some adcomms use the subject test as a cut off. My background is in American lit so I really had to beef up on English poetry, especially before 1900. Getting a grasp on major trends in 20th century literary theory helps too. Make flash cards, take practice tests, but don't over commit your time to this aspect of your application. A lot of schools don't require it and, for those that do, it appears to be mostly a formality.
2. If you needed to retake the GRE to make your scores competitive, did you prep during the summer?
I took it twice. My score only bumped 10 points on the retake despite countless hours of preparation. I might have had a bad test day but, in retrospect, I truly wish I had applied the law of diminishing returns here. Certainly, my time would have been better spent doing almost anything else. 
3. How did you manage to work on your applications (i.e. writing samples and SOP) during a busy schedule? Or did you submit  your applications after finishing your MA?
I reworked a chapter from the MA thesis as the writing sample. This was a really good two birds/one stone scenario. Profs were already giving me tons of support in composing the thesis project so retooling for the writing sample didn't tax those relationships. SOP is a different story. Though it is a short document, it has to be air tight. Make sure to be forward looking: outline a research project, explain how the degree will aid you in developing professionally and intellectually, maybe describe how working with a particular faculty member at the program will be beneficial to you. Strangely, none of this is as easy as it sounds.
4. Is it okay to ask a professor you work closely with to look at your writing samples
Get as many people to look at your writing sample as you can. More importantly, get help with the SOP. The statement of purpose is a genre unto itself, one which applicants rarely have had practice in writing. Also, you want to get a nice conversation going between the SOP and the writing sample. The support of faculty will certainly help in conceptualizing the broader connections between these documents.

I did a multi-year application thing. The first time through I was basically clueless and got shut out. The second-go-around I had the support of some amazing faculty, a clear research vision, and a much better application "strategy" over all. Even though I was a MUCH better qualified applicant on the second pass, I got served a hefty portion of rejections, especially early on. I thought I saw the writing on the wall in January but in the coming weeks I received strong offers from programs I didn't think I had a shot at.
Even though its tempting to consider all the ways you could beef up your app for next year, the fact remains that you have your hat in the ring right now. Like you, I sent out apps during the last year of an MA program. It was incredibly difficult to focus on the press of here-and-now work as it seemed my future was hanging in the balance. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't been so gloomy and anxious in those brutal months of waiting. To me, it sounds like you applied to a nice range of schools, have a clear focus, and the support of some excellent faculty. There's much cause for hope and little reason for despair!
This is all to say: rather than considering ways to improve next year's apps, think about the happy dance you will do when you get the phone call.

I think it's really complicated. My own program has a surprisingly generous funding offer, with plenty of fellowship funding, but I'm not sure you can say it as simple as a commitment to the humanities so much as a bunch of factors (including a union, a high cost of living, and a tendency to attract commuters) that together influence the offer. Also, there's no reason to think that Yale, or whatever, has a higher commitment to the humanities; they just have more money generally. See the recent drama regarding the raiding of the Classics Department's funds for students by the general university budget to see just how much Yale cares about the humanities in particular. 

now that this thread has touched upon the great un-charted and under-examined topic of academic fashion... 
this year i don't have to teach but i have a ton of coursework. this is the first time in a long time that i haven't had to put on a funny little blazer or a plaid tie everyday. reveling in my new found fashion freedoms, i have begun dressing like a teenager for class. no more suede elbow patches for me! however, more and more, i find myself wondering if wearing band tshirts, jeans, sneakers, and ratty thrift store sweaters and/or third generation hand-me-down flanels to seminar makes me look like a filthy slacker who just finished huffing gas in the parking lot. is the seminar NOT anything goes fashion-wise? am i supposed to be going business casual to these class meetings? or is there a happy fashion code middle ground which i have transgressed with impunity? 

now that this thread has touched upon the great un-charted and under-examined topic of academic fashion... 
this year i don't have to teach but i have a ton of coursework. this is the first time in a long time that i haven't had to put on a funny little blazer or a plaid tie everyday. reveling in my new found fashion freedoms, i have begun dressing like a teenager for class. no more suede elbow patches for me! however, more and more, i find myself wondering if wearing band tshirts, jeans, sneakers, and ratty thrift store sweaters and/or third generation hand-me-down flanels to seminar makes me look like a filthy slacker who just finished huffing gas in the parking lot. is the seminar NOT anything goes fashion-wise? am i supposed to be going business casual to these class meetings? or is there a happy fashion code middle ground which i have transgressed with impunity? 

Remarks like this remind me that our discussions regarding the academic job market are in dire need of a privilege check. To suggest that admitted doctoral students in English should consider working at a fast food restaurant instead of pursuing an advanced degree grossly minimizes the very real and very devastating abuses of the labor market in the service industry. Obviously the job market in academics is bleak, a fact which has been reiterated in many different ways and in many different threads on this board, but to suggest subjecting oneself to the abuses of a massive consumer-driven soul-crushing service market in order to ward off minimal losses in opportunity costs legitimizes these exploitative labor practices.
 
What's worse, this comparison equates white-collar labor anxieties with the struggle of hard-working people to fend off generational poverty. The service industry, even in a fun kitchen working with cool friends, offers no advancement, no self-improvement, makes it impossible to start a family, own a home, or ever even feel "okay." I like shift drinks and tips sometimes add up if you're lucky. Then you catch a slow shift and make fifty bucks in eight hours and there's no beer in the fridge. Though $3500 for teaching a college course is exploitative, your time is your own, opportunities to advance are plentiful, the work is meaningful, rewarding, (even) stimulating, and you don't have to clean the grill. By the way, earning $3500 (at a higher service industry wage) means over 400 hours of work time. I don't think anybody on this thread would want to do 4 hours working at a Wendy's, let alone 400.
 
It's not even oranges and apples. This comparison implies a very troubling disconnect between our worldview within the university, a noted engine of inequality, and the devastating reality of consumer-driven economics. I do believe we need to keep stirring the pot on this issue but we have to realize that our struggles go hand-in-hand with everyone whose labor is undervalued. Let's not lose perspective.

I've tried talking it over with faculty of color a couple of times, but it's the same feeling of simultaneous support and lack of support that I feel academically. One thing that makes it difficult is that the faculty is actually more diverse than the student body, so they're really not experiencing what I'm experiencing. Most of the faculty of color got their PhDs at universities where they were pretty much the only student of color in the entire department, so our program is paradise in comparison. They all feel like diversity is important to instruction and happiness, of course, but they also feel like this program's environment is the environment that should make me happy. They want me to succeed, but they also want this to be the program where I succeed, and I can feel that, and it makes it difficult to diving too deeply into anything I'm feeling.
 
I'll try to make it a goal this year to talk about how I'm feeling more openly. I hope I start to enjoy it here, especially because I'm kind of worried that leaving the department early (it takes longer than two years to get the Masters at my program) will have an effect on my academic career (if I still want one).
 
Thanks a lot, you guys. I've lurked this board since I before I started. You are all all-stars, and I really appreciate you all making me feel less unusual.

The princeton review study guide offers a decent introduction to the test and is a great way to get started. HOWEVER I must caution that it seems like ETS might be experimenting with the test format and some of the strategies which the PR study guide recommends may not be useful. In fact, preparing for ID and super-POE type questions might be a waste of time. I took the test in October and was surprised at how few ID and POE questions were on the test. Instead, there were far more long reading passages and interpretation questions. There were very few stand alone ID questions and there were ZERO super-POE.
 
I'm not sure how this may alter your approach to test preparation. These changes in the testing format make the test much more difficult to prepare for (as if it wasn't an impossibly difficult test to prepare for already!). You may want to spend more time on the interpretation questions of long passages and poems in the extant practice tests available online, maybe dial back on the ID and POE questions. More than anything, be prepared for a speed reading test. 

Hey this thread is way more interesting than the grad school ponzi scheme thread ive been trolling for the past 20 weeks.

Hey this thread is way more interesting than the grad school ponzi scheme thread ive been trolling for the past 20 weeks.

Hey this thread is way more interesting than the grad school ponzi scheme thread ive been trolling for the past 20 weeks.

I agree that there is a distinct form of exploitation in the academic job market and that there can be a degree of deception in our training in the humanities. Also, I believe you put it well in describing this as "alienation." The shortfall between our expectations and the realities of the job market induces a particular kind of despair, yet I must maintain that these emotions are entirely distinct from the long-term social and economic impoverishment that attends the service industry labor market. This is exactly why this comparison fails to index the set of emotional turmoils that accompany our field, leading to a very unproductive (and I must reiterate classist) conversation regarding the problems in the academic job market.
 
Rather than co-opting the narratives of exploited labor in the service industry, we can surely develop a more precise vocabulary. There is a very distinct set of deceptive and exploitative practices in our field that delimit our careers. Let's talk about this deception and exploitation in terms that are grounded within our field. I believe this will generate a healthier and more productive conversation on this important issue.
 
Here, I'll start. I adjuncted for five years at an urban public university, teaching a 4/4 load and earning around 30k with no benefits. I was tapped for administrative duties and departmental service routinely and I was never compensated for my time. Because I believed undertaking these additional duties would protect my professional standing and lead to advancement in the department, I willingly committed my time and energy to these projects. No one ever told me that it wouldn't matter and that because I didn't have a PhD there was a pretty low ceiling on the possibilities for advancement. Instead, tenured faculty and handsomely compensated admins hoisted their duties onto me and seemed to imply that I was being "ramped up" for some kind of promotion. When the department announced they were bringing in five new faculty, I applied for one of these 12-month contracts fully believing that I was a competitive applicant. My job-talk was polished, the responses were glowing, my interviews extremely positive, etc. Then they brought in five people from outside the department and asked me to accept an even more exploitative contract: a pay-grade based on contact hours rather than credit hours. I quit on the spot. It was crushing.
 
In my many years of service industry work, this complex set of exploitation and deception finds no corollary. It would be really weird if I said "this was like when my boss at the restaurant bumped me off the dinner shift because he wanted to give it to his new girlfriend." My adjuncting experience is far more complicated and resulted in emotional upheavals of a very different sort. Again, let's not play fast and loose with these comparisons.

Some gas for the flames...
 
http://www.artandeducation.net/school_watch/entire-usc-mfa-1st-year-class-is-dropping-out/

Having just finished the MA thesis I can say that this process really helped facilitate PHD admission and may have laid some groundwork for dissertation research. Though the entirety of an MA thesis can't serve as your writing sample, one thesis chapter is about the right length and can be easily adapted for a WS. In addition, doing this kind of self-directed and rigorous project gives you kickass material for a personal statement. Also, putting together a committee helps in getting letters (and gives the LORs good material). Really, I have to say, if you do an MA and plan to go on to doctoral study, doing a thesis is a logical fit for the application process.

One major drawback is that it's a tremendous amount of work. I had a heavy teaching load and some tough coursework this semester. Completing and defending the thesis has been awful. I haven't had my head above water all semester and I haven't been able to commit as much time to the thesis as I would have liked. Whatever. It's done and I passed. Still, if your MA requires you to teach or has a mandatory course load (like mine) you might want to consider an exam or directed study or something.

Also, if you plan to write a dissertation, I can see how the thesis could be seen as a kind of very time consuming high stakes "practice." Hopefully, when I start a dissertation in a few years, this writing project will provide some kind of research scaffolding for whatever I take on. I'm reluctant to say I will pursue the same topic for a dissertation but maybe I can broaden the scope and sophistication of the thesis into something more? At the defense I sorta got the feeling the committee's questions were geared towards a dissertation type defense... Maybe they were trying to get me to think dissertation..

USC just emailed. I'm. in. 
 

 
Actually crying real tears right now as I sit in a pile of books. 

I'm shipping off to Purdue!