poliscar

MIT deserves a mention here in my opinion. It's a small program, but they have an absolutely stellar placement record. 

I'd have to disagree. I negotiated a higher offer from a fully-funded program (in relation to an offer from another) and it was treated as a totally normal part of the procedure. I was also told by the DGS of the second program to email him if any programs offered me more money. Obviously you don't want to be too aggressive or pushy, but I think it's difficult to come across that way when a lot of programs expect a sort of miniature "bidding war" for students. I'd also say that there are clear upper-limits to funding; while a lot of programs will ask you to forward your highest offer to them, not many will match a stipend like Stanford's. 

TLDR: ASK FOR MORE MONEY

In at yale, oh my god

Just got into UPenn! Finally, some tangible news. 

I can't speak directly from experience here, but I'd imagine that most things outside of direct monetary funding would be more difficult, since they'd likely be more out of the control of the department. You might be looking at broader graduate school decisions for housing, etc. Teaching might be something you could negotiate, but sometimes that is also tied to a source external to the department, like a "writing centre" or something. I have heard of people negotiating for some smaller, but significant perks, like extra language/conference/research funds,  etc. That said, those probably aren't things to be concerned about unless all of your offers are pretty similar financially.

I'd have to disagree. I negotiated a higher offer from a fully-funded program (in relation to an offer from another) and it was treated as a totally normal part of the procedure. I was also told by the DGS of the second program to email him if any programs offered me more money. Obviously you don't want to be too aggressive or pushy, but I think it's difficult to come across that way when a lot of programs expect a sort of miniature "bidding war" for students. I'd also say that there are clear upper-limits to funding; while a lot of programs will ask you to forward your highest offer to them, not many will match a stipend like Stanford's. 

TLDR: ASK FOR MORE MONEY

Got a call from POI at NYU. Voicemail said they have some “very exciting news” ... That means I got in, right? Right?!?! I’ll roll over and die from embarrassment if it means they referred me to their master’s program lol. 

Congrats to the Berkeley acceptances! Looking forward to meeting y'all at visit week  Feel free to message me if you have any questions about the program.

Congrats to the Berkeley acceptances! Looking forward to meeting y'all at visit week  Feel free to message me if you have any questions about the program.

Congrats to the Berkeley acceptances! Looking forward to meeting y'all at visit week  Feel free to message me if you have any questions about the program.

Geez—I just got into Berkeley. Did not think that would happen. What even.

Woooooh congrats see u at the visits??

Yesterday I was informed that I was rejected at the University of Minnesota (English).
Today I was informed that I was accepted at the University of Michigan (American Studies). 
 
 

Accepted at Johns Hopkins and I am freaking out!!!! ?
 

Also, if you have any intention of working with Shannon Jackson at Berkeley, know that she recently gave a job talk at Yale. 

My PI's lab is on Danforth campus so it seems like it would be about a 15 minute bike through Forest Park and worse comes to worse, I can take an uber since the apartment is only 8 min away (according to google maps)
 
I'm just going to go ahead and post this here. It's the map I send to first year/prospective students who are looking for housing near the med campus (so it's highly med-campus focused). Hopefully it will help some people. If anyone is more familiar with the Danforth side, please feel free to update/save/repost a version of the map with more details on that side of Forest Park: 
 
Here's the map I refer to in this e-mail (let me know if you have trouble viewing it): https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=znSq18U6Bxo4.ka_fNS8CoCMQ   Just to orient you on the map: The medical campus is the green square to the right of forest park (large green rectangle). I've also labeled metrolink stops with red markers. There's a blue marker that marks the 4444 building, which is where many of the genomics labs are located (though many of them will be moving to the main campus in the next year or two).    I'm sure you've heard quite a bit about the Central West End (purple and red on map) during the interview process. It's a great place and I highly recommend looking there for apartments. Some of the older buildings have extremely reasonable prices, while some of the newer ones can get pretty pricey. The Del Coronado is (in my mind) the gold standard of what you will find in the CWE. It's new, super close to campus and has a parking garage...but its prices reflect those benefits. I do, however, think it serves as a good comparator when looking at other buildings. If you have a car I highly recommend putting affordable, provided parking high on your list; parking in the CWE without an assigned space or garage can be a bit crazy.    I live in the Debaliviere (DEB) area, which is north of forest park (Blue on map). It's right next to the metro link and I metro to work most days. If you live in either the CWE or DEB, there is a shuttle that runs every 30 mins from campus from 5pm-midnight:30 (M-F) that will take you directly to your door on your way home. I love living where I do. It's not as frequently-travelled as the CWE, parking is easier and I feel very comfortable walking around at night. The CWE is generally safe but it has a lot more foot traffic coming through.    There's an area between the CWE and DEB that is highlighted on the map in pink. A good number of students live there but it's not immediately adjacent to any metrolink stop so transportation may be a bit more difficult, though there are some beautiful buildings in that area.    Another place you might want to look is The Grove (brown pentagon on the map). There is lots of affordable housing in The Grove and it's an area that is getting nicer over the years...but it's not a place I feel 100% comfortable walking on my own at night. I do, however, know a lot of people who live there and have never had any problems. There are several apartments outside of the pentagon that are perfectly safe/nice but I can comfortably vouch for the brown-covered area being filled with happy graduate students.    Also highlighted in green is St. Louis University (in orange). There are tons of apartments in that area, but again, you have the commuting issue that isn't a problem in DEB or CWE. I also highlighted the Tower Grove area (in black) at the bottom right. This tends to be a place students move to in their second or third years. I wouldn't recommend it during your first year.   In yellow is the undergraduate (Danforth) campus and the Delmar Loop area. There are labs that some students may want to join on the Danforth campus and the Delmar loop is a great place to live. Unfortunately, I don't know much about the area. I recommend living close to the medical campus (green) for your first year at least since so many of your classes/journal clubs will be there.

I think it's also important to pay specific attention to the placement records of students who have worked with potential POIs, as well as placement by field/subfield. A department may consistently place Medievalists in TT positions, but rarely have success in Africanist or Modern European searches. You'll notice as you look closely that there are some scholars whose students are hired on a very reliable basis, and others whose students rarely get jobs. While this is often tied to prestige, it's not always the case that superstar scholars have the best placement rates, so be careful.

Practically speaking, I've found that you can get a rough idea of the placement rates of specific advisors/chairs by going through Proquest, and then googling the names of the various dissertation authors. 

One upside to German is the easy availability of money. The DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) has a very ready supply of funding for students learning and/or doing research in Germany. Obviously there are comparable opportunities in Italy, but with nowhere near the same level of funding, and with a lot more competition. 

I honestly don't buy the 700 applications statistic from Columbia. For comparison, Stanford mentions that they get 300+ applications and admit 9, and Harvard lists a similar ratio of 300-350 applicants & 10-15 students admitted. The same goes for Brown, with stats of approximately 300 applications/18 admitted. Really, even if living in New York is a significant draw, I don't see how that would lead to a difference of 350-400 applicants, especially since the programs in question are all of comparative quality and reputation.

Part of me wonders whether Columbia is including MA applicants to inflate the overall number, but I can't say what the motives behind that could be. Something about their statistics seems pretty off though, regardless of motive. 

Today, I found myself extremely bored. As a result, I complied a list of when schools typically notify for first-round acceptances using data from the results page. After, I rearranged things in order by  when programs typically notify.

Michigan State-Dec 10? (Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures)
OSU-Jan 25
Wisconsin- Jan 28
Duke- Jan 29
WashU- Jan 31-Feb 2
Northwestern-Jan 31-Feb 2
Berkeley- Jan 31-Feb 2
Chicago- Feb 1/2
Minnesota-Feb 2
Vanderbilt - Feb 2/3
Texas- Feb 3/4
Indiana-Feb 3/4
Purdue-Feb 3-5
UCLA- Feb 4/5
Johns Hopkins- Feb 5
Davis-Feb 5/6
Penn State- Feb 5/6
Pittsburgh-Feb 5/6
Nebraska-Feb 5-7
NYU-Feb 6/7
Maryland-Feb 7-9
Rochester-Feb 8/9
Emory- Feb 8-9
Irvine-Feb 8-9
Illinois- Feb 9-12
Brown-Feb 10-12
LSU-Feb 11
Rice- Feb 12
Buffalo-Feb 12
Missouri- Feb 12-14
Delaware-Feb 12-14
Kansas-Feb 14
Carnegie Mellon- Feb 14/15
Alabama-Feb 14-16
Cornell- Feb 15/16
Miami University-Feb 15/16
Michigan-Feb 16
Connecticut-Feb 16
CUNY-Feb 16/17
Santa Barbara-Feb 17-19
Stanford- Feb 17-Feb 20
Princeton-Feb 17-20
UVA- Feb 19/20
Rutgers-Feb 19/20
Harvard- Feb 20-Feb 22
Columbia- Feb 20-22
Penn- Feb 20-22
Utah-Feb 22
Notre Dame-Feb 23
Yale- Feb 24/25
Washington-Feb 25
Syracuse-Feb 26
Chapel Hill-Feb 26/27
Oregon-Feb 27-28
Iowa-March 2-5
Florida State-March 4-7
Mississippi- March 5-7

I honestly don't buy the 700 applications statistic from Columbia. For comparison, Stanford mentions that they get 300+ applications and admit 9, and Harvard lists a similar ratio of 300-350 applicants & 10-15 students admitted. The same goes for Brown, with stats of approximately 300 applications/18 admitted. Really, even if living in New York is a significant draw, I don't see how that would lead to a difference of 350-400 applicants, especially since the programs in question are all of comparative quality and reputation.

Part of me wonders whether Columbia is including MA applicants to inflate the overall number, but I can't say what the motives behind that could be. Something about their statistics seems pretty off though, regardless of motive. 

Do not retake it. 

And ignore the poster suggesting that qualifying exams are related to the GRE. They are not related at all, in any way, shape, and form. The Subject Test is an arbitrary, standardized test, designed to make money for the ETS. Qualifying exams are purposeful, carefully designed examinations of material vital to your field. They involve consultation with your advisor and other faculty members, and require actual critical thinking & knowledge. The conflation of the two is one of the most misleading things I have ever encountered here. 

The academy is, almost by definition, not the place to look for "unacademic criticism." I will say the there's far more diversity within programs than you might expect -- while certain schools do have certain flavors, there's usually a wide range of methodological approaches taken by both faculty and students at any given place. But graduate programs in literary study are (for better or worse, given the job market) designed to produce scholars of literature that engage with literary studies as an academic discipline.

I understood that OP wants to do literary journalism. I advise them to start a blog.

Where did you get that impression?
Complit is by nature more interdisciplinary than English, so they do attract students with broader interests, but I haven't seen a program that doesn't *require* its students to do research in two primary languages (ie literatures). The fact that complit programs offer more theory courses rarely reflects on the dissertations of the actual students that they release. National literature department dissertations are these days just as theory-heavy as complit dissertations. If a person enters any graduate literature program without interest in theory, people will look at them askance.
As regards your question to me, 100-200 looks about like the number of the real competition, though that depends on how you define competitive. That's likely the number of people who submit all the required materials, and all of those materials are more or less coherent and polished, but the number of people that a department can actually see paying 100k in just salary for? Probably like the results of a typical faculty search, scaled appropriately: 10-20.