blakeblake

Alex-- I have known quite a few international students who have received PhDs in literature at U.S. Schools or who have been accepted into graduate programs in U.S. institutions. Many institutions want to admit students from non-U.S. backgrounds since it makes their classes more diverse. You should definitely apply if you think that you can get some good application materials together. As far as your GRE scores go, I do not think that your scores would keep you from being accepted to many good programs. However, if you want to go into the very top schools or be more competitive for fellowships and other funding, it would probably help to improve your Analytical Writing score a bit (48% is a bit low for an English program). Since your English skills are very good, I think that you can do this. The GRE scorers want a very specific kind of essay, and if you learn more about what they want, you may well be able to pull up your score. Even if you do not want to apply for fellowships or apply for the most prestigious schools, it might be worth retaking the GRE since a better score might help you stand out among other candidates.

Skybythelight-- Penn is pretty notorious for last minute decision letters. Like, April 13th-last minute. It's not entirely their fault--they get more applications than the average school and have to wade through all of them. Not that the process isn't frustrating for those of us who are still waiting to hear . . .

Don't worry, TheCleve. I got my BA and my MA at the same institution. It was a little awkward at first. There are formalities to navigate (It's "Dr. Smith" to my undergrads, but grad students can call me "Janet.") Very awkward = one of my former teachers (a TA PhD student with full responsibility for one of my undergrad classes) and I started going to the same parties. After a month or two, everything falls into place and you get used to things. Don't be afraid of taking classes with your former undergrad profs. It will delight them to see your academic and professional progress since you were a wee sophomore. And don't forget: your department hand-picked you to come back for another round because you're awesome, so go out there and give 'em hell!

HopefulScribbler makes several good points. Teaching is hard work, especially when you have your own papers to write and books to read. Nevertheless, I would try to go the TA route if possible. I have been told by professors in the know that teaching looks good on a PhD app because: A) Anyone who teaches as a master's student knows whether or not they like/ can handle teaching. It is very unfortunate for a student to get accepted to a PhD program, start teaching, and then realize that she does not actually like teaching or want to teach longterm. If you find this out about yourself in a PhD program, you might well leave the program. Admitting students who already have university-level teaching experience helps programs guard against this scenario. Programs prefer to admit experienced teachers because those applicants will be better teachers for the college's undergrads. It is true that many students are admitted to PhD programs without teaching experience, but the admissions process is still competitive; I see no reason to deny yourself a line on your cv that may be the deciding factor in your admissions decision at a particular program. Also, bonus: If you teach during your MA, then that experience makes you eligible to adjunct during summers or for a while after you earn your MA in case you decide to wait before applying for a PhD program or are forced to wait by circumstance. Given that as an English MA, you are not necessarily the hottest item on the job market, the ability to adjunct can be invaluable.

I've found that it's really common for new TAs to be shocked by the "the overall standard of writing and level of student engagement" in freshman comp classes. However, if you think about it, that makes perfect sense: A) As English nerds and people who are masochistic enough to want to attend grad school, we tend to have attained high levels of writing ability and engagement that do not appear in the average freshman student. We have likely taken honors/AP/ other advanced English classes over the course of our educations. I don't know about y'all, but I never took classes with people at my students' level. I AP-Examed my way past boring, slow-paced freshman comp. Then, one day, I was assigned to teach it. The same may well happen to you. C) Many colleges' admissions standards do not require that admitted students pass a writing test or achieve certain grades in high school English or even submit an application essay. Public colleges have been hit by years of declining funding. Most of them are desparate for tuition dollars and will accept as many students as possible, even if these students are not prepared for the rigors of college coursework. I have taught some of these kids and I feel badly for them. Their parents or the bad job market pushed them into college, and they're going to lose their investments in tuition when they inevitably drop out. But they are in your classes so you have to try to teach them. Of course, you will probably also teach a number of students who are too advanced for your class, as well. It's all a big balancing act.

You can wait until mid-April to make a decision. Here are a few things that you can do: 1) Wait to accept or decline and hope that funding will materizalize before you have to decide, 2) Look into GAships, scholarships, and other sources of funding that universities sometimes make available to grad students without funding from their particular departments, and 3) Be very wary of accepting an offer for which you will not get funding from any part of the university (or outside fellowships). Depending on the cost of attendance at an institution and your current student debt rate, you could consider going into an MA program without funding. If you were accepted into a PhD program, however, then I would not under any circumstances advise going without funding.

bunny-- It does look good to be a moderator at a conference, but that credit is just one of many things that you can put on your resume. Unless this particular conference will bring you some fantastic, unduplicatable networking opportunities or a similar reward, skip it. You will do better to have your own work accepted to a conference. That being said, if you are interested in moderating a panel for a conference, I would suggest that you contact the folks who put on the graduate English or interdisciplinary conference at your institution. As someone who one helped plan such a conference, I can tell you that conference planners love it when people volunteer to help out. Anything that we can't find enough volunteers to help with (checking people into the conference, moderating panels, reading submissions, etc.) is something that we have to do ourselves, so we often welcome emails and/or in-person offers of help. ;-) If you feel that you must help out at a conference for another institution, then for the sake of your car and your wallet, choose an institution close to yours with a cheap entry fee.

I would not worry about the gaps in your theoretical knowledge. Everyone has them. If you didn't, you'd have your PhD already. ;-) However, it seems very strange that you haven't taken a single course in the area where you hope to specialize. Would it be possible for you to take some Contemporary Am Lit classes in the summer or the fall before you have to apply? Another concern: It is good practice to write your grad school writing sample/try to publish articles about literature in your field. If you have not taken any classes in your field, then you have much less essay material to function in these capacities. You'll probably want to write some new essays in Comtemporary Am Lit before your applications are due. (These papers may not be easy to write if you lose the ability to check out books, interlibrary loan, and request articles from your university library after graduation!) At any rate, you will likely have to explain your lack of classes in your field in your sop. Otherwise, the AdComm will wonder why someone who claims to love Contemporary American couldn't be bothered to take a single class in the area.

If you are not sure about your future career path, I would suggest (if it will not be too crushingly expensive) staying in school for an extra semester. That course of action will allow you to complete both majors and take a few extra non-major-realted courses. Also, you will have time in the spring after college to get an internship/job/whatever else that looks good to AdComms or future employers and/or that will give you a jump start on finding a job in case you need more than one application cycle to get into a grad program of your choosing and scrape up some money before your not-so-well paid grad school days. It is true that AdComms do not discriminate against non-majors who are otherwise qualified for their programs. However, it may be worth asking whether your recommenders will be put off by writing a letter for a non-major. I imagine that most recommenders would be cool with writing letters for a non-major who did good work, but others could interpret a refusal to major in their subject as a lack of dedication.

I never know what to think. I get really paranoid, too. I start thinking: wait, why has only one person posted about acceptance to X program. What if the person is just making the acceptance up to mess with me/us/the world? Then I see tons of people claim that they were accepted to Y program and I start wondering how many days it takes to send out all of the acceptances and aretheremorecoming and if so, how long will thattake and ifnot amiwaitlistedorrejected andwhenwillifindout??? It's brutal, this waiting.

My tactic is to choose either he or she, hopefully in equal measure. Singular they still rubs me the wrong way, even though I recognize its usefulness and think it's only a matter of time before it becomes the only "correct" word to use in cases of ambiguous or genderqueer gender.

Rose Egypt, It's got to be a good (or at least not bad) sign if the Ad Comm wants to see your transcripts. If they were planning to reject you on the basis of your cv, your GRE scores, your Letter of Intent, or anything else, then they probably wouldn't be bothering to ask for a better copy of your transcripts.

It depends a bit on where you are going to school. The further east you go, the dressier everyone (grad students, undergrads, community members) will be. The further west you go, the less dressy everyone gets.* *If you go to a very upscale school or live in a very upscale community, ymmv.

Do not worry about your Quant score! English programs don't care that much about the Quant score, so long as it does not drag down your overall score too much (and yours doesn't). I'll bet that the 68th percentile is better than a lot of us English folks can muster on the GRE Quant portion!

Do you know what kinds of scores the programs that you would like to apply for prefer? (Or what the average score is for people accepted into your programs of interest)? As far as I can tell, your high Quant score is around 52% and your Verbal is around 96%. For many programs, those scores are perfectly acceptable. I would assume that international relations prefers a high V score to a high Q score anyway. Check and see what your scores need to be (check your programs websites, but email them if average or minimum scores are not listed). If those scores are not just a touch lower than your scores, you may be putting yourself through a lot of aggrevation for no reason. Try to relax. Also, I did better on the actual GRE than I ever did on a practice test--probably because the questions are reviewed so carefully before they go on the actual test. So take the real GRE and see what happens. You can always retake if you are truly unsatisfied with your score.

Contact ETS via email and confirm whether they will/will not keep your data on file until November.

It may depend somewhat on your field, chron, but the following advice should be good for most fields: It can be appropriate to list two areas of interest on an *application* (say, 18th Century Literature and Russian Literature), but in a *letter of intent,* stick to just one prospective topic of research (perhaps in Russian lit, perhaps in 18th, perhaps on 18th Century Russian lit). Also, in your letter, you should probably only list one professor who can provide special insight into your research topic, but feel free to contact all the professors that you can--who knows, maybe one of them will be a better letter of intent prof than the person that you were thinking of in the first place.

I was told that the big issue with the "love of literature" is that it's such a given. Of course you love literature, you are actively trying to dedicate the next 6+ years of your life to reading it, teaching it, and writing about it. Now if you want to use the element of surprise instead, you might be able to write your letter something like this: Dear Adcomm, I hate literature, but I am going to study it anyway because I am a masochist. My research interests include the Marquis de Sade. At your university, I would like to study Sade's work through the lens of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, which I haven't read, but the title sounds good. I have heard that Professor X from your institution is especially difficult to work with, so I would like him to supervise my thesis. My career goal is to become a tenured professor, which I am sure that I can do because I have no social life and would appreciate any possibility of one being withheld from me while I publish 4 articles a month and continuously explain to the freshmen in LIT 100 that no, Jane Austin did not actually write about zombies. Please, please let me into your program. Thank you for your consideration, Ms. Student Q. Studentington

My sentiments exactly, Damequixote. Except for that whole "patiently" part.

I'm going to have to second (or third or fourth) David Foster Wallace. Not so much because I hate him (he's competent, though the way that he dwells on his own very special brand of oddness is irritating), but because he inspired so many legions of fourth-rate Wallace knockoff writers. I can't pick up an "avant-garde" novel or journal without wondering why, if this author is going to imitate someone else, can't it at least be a more talented someone else than DFW?

After hearing about all of your challenges, I feel like I really have it good. I need to figure out how to get move my car and some things either 500 or so miles away or 2,000 or so miles away. Honestly, my biggest challenge is just getting accepted/funded, but it feels extra-important at this time in my life. I've wanted to continue school for some time, but lately, I've been particularly anxious to move. I love the town where I'm living, but I want to go live somewhere else for a while since I've always lived in the same state and since my job prospects are dicey here. My longstanding relationship imploded pretty spectacularly just before I really had to make any real decisions about applying for this admissions cycle. Obstacles be damned--I want to restart my life. I'd like to get an acceptance or two, move across the country, and hope that I feel like dating again by the time that I get there.

Your professors wouldn't believe in someone who couldn't hack graduate work. If you don't get in, it just means that your materials were not in order or that you weren't a good fit for the programs that you applied for or that the adcomm was asleep when they looked over your credentials. There are more qualified people who apply for grad school than can be admitted. Your professors know this, even if you don't. So don't feel bad if you don't get in. You can always reapply next year (and those profs will be happy to help), or you can get a kick-butt job. That will make your professors proud, too.

Have you thought about trying both? The economy being what it is, it may be hard for a college grad to get a retail job (in some cities, mine included). It may also be hard to find a lab job. It may be worthwhile to try for both types of jobs. You may not get hired until you hear back from your programs, anyway. In the meantime, you can go to Chicago for interviews and not worry about getting a place there unless you get a decent job offer.

If you were paid, ask your professor/department what your title was. If you were not paid, call yourself a "Research Volunteer for Professor X" and list the position in the volunteer or service section of your cv.

It is better to list just one specific area of interest (and often, one professor who might help you study it) and talk it up for an entire pragraph. You can always change your mind--saying that you want to study area X does not mean that you are required to do so, but it shows that you have direction to focus on one area of interest. If naming multiple areas/ professors was such problem that you do not get into any programs this year, then live, learn, and write your letter differently during the next year's application cycle.