jrockford27

I took some time to read a chapter or two or an article by POIs that I felt strongly about but whose work I hadn't read. Gather some articles or go to the nearest university library, take a few hours, then you can write your statements with confidence. And yes, focus on recent work, and armed with your recent reading you should be able to make your SOP all that more personal and specific.

At Pitt I would recommend applying to the Film PhD program through the English department. It's not super complicated but it's worth knowing. While much of Film Studies at Pitt takes place in English, the Film Studies PhD is an interdisciplinary program that spans several departments. In any case it's a wonderful program with many folks who were English lit majors as undergrads. If you have other questions about it feel free to shoot me a private message. The DGS is also wonderfully helpful and exceptionally responsive to prospective students. One thing I will say, is that as a Film PhD student who, like you, came to Film Studies through a lit based method, you will eventually be asked - no matter the program - to make your analyses more "filmy". My adviser said to me of one of my seminar papers, "it's a great paper, but I should be able to tell I'm reading about a film and not a novel or a play or a painting or a site specific art installation, if you get my meaning." But for the purposes of applying to programs it isn't really an obstacle, I think graduate admissions committees understand that a lot of folks come to film through lit still.

Funny, acceptances are accompanied by the same things.

Totally natural. About this time last year I was certain I'd be shut out, but my results turned out pretty well. You've cast a very wide net, which I'm sure bodes well. Though having been through it, I know that nothing I say will make you feel any less nervous.

You'll find in many cases that you don't have a lot of time to spend money on the things you used to blow a lot of your money on, and that your social activities will be with other people who also have very little money, and the cost of your activities will scale accordingly. I took about a 40% paycut to come start my PhD. I still manage to eat well, keep gas in my car, pay my bills on time, go out and have a good time with my colleagues/friends on the weekends, and still have a little left over in the bank at the end of the month. This is in a mid-sized metropolis with an average cost of living. I rent a converted attic apartment from a family that lives near the university, affordable places are available if you're willing to look and be flexible. While it's not exactly easy living, I think the financial doom and gloom of grad student life is overblown if you know how to spend wisely.

What you've heard is correct, sir. Good luck to you.

I was admitted to Buffalo last year, though I didn't end up going. Two things to note. One is that they did two rounds of acceptances last year, one in late Jan and one in early Feb. I believe it's determined by what fellowships the applicant qualified for. Second, if I recall right, my application still said "Not Reviewed" for several days after I had been notified that I was accepted, don't read too much into it.

I got a waitlist admit on a Saturday morning, though I imagine the irregular nature of the waitlist probably leads to stranger timing.

I am a grad student at a major public R1, AAU university that is currently conducting a tenure track rhet-comp hire. All three of the finalists coming to visit this month come from big, public universities (none of which are in the Top 10 of USNews) that are hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. Do good work, you'll rise to the top. You can attend Harvard or Stanford, but if your work isn't compelling, you'll be in the adjunct line with everyone else.

I'm going to be the contrarian here and say that I wish I had known a bit more about everything that was required for applying to PhD programs from the get go. By the time I'd really made up my mind to do it about halfway through my Junior year I already felt a bit behind the gun in terms of putting together a good undergraduate CV and finding good contacts for letters of rec. In fact, I felt kind of behind the eight ball in general. I think the application process would have been way easier if I'd been seriously thinking about it from the get go. Simply devoting serious thought to it does not represent any kind of commitment and I don't think it could possibly hurt. With that in mind, I'll tell you two things. Make sure to take a few courses from tenured or tenure track faculty who have published in the general orbit of what you want to do. Make sure to get facetime with this professors, meet them in office hours, develop something that at least resembles a rapport. Before the class is over, ask them if they'd write you a letter down the road, and make sure to keep in touch with them once in awhile after the course is over. That was the biggest anxiety for me, realizing that at the start of my senior year I really only had one tenure/track professor I could call on for a solid letter. Luckily, I made some excellent course selections and got it ironed out in time. The other thing, which has been said above, apply for awards, conferences, etc. Nobody expects a dynamite CV from an undergrad, but it can only help you. Also, if you don't already have this, seek out an opportunity to write a 20-30 page research paper (or hell, maybe even longer, you can always excerpt a chapter) in a field of great interest to you. You really want your writing sample to represent strong (for an undergrad) research on a subject relevant to some current issue in your field, and also to be something that gives the adcomm a good indication of your interests beyond the personal statement (in which you can only say so much). While there are people in my cohort this year who wrote their writing sample specifically for their application after they'd graduated, it doesn't sound like a very efficient use of time.

The whole idea of salutations in emails is a little weird. I think most people usually just pick one thing and stick with it, and don't give it a second thought. I worked for a lawyer who ended all of his correspondence with "Very truly yours,". I always thought that was peculiar, but he'd been ending all of his letters that way for 30 years, it didn't matter what the letter or email said. Usually, I end my emails with "Thanks", "Thank you", or "Thank you for your time" depending on the context and no matter for the content, because I appreciate it when people take the time to read what I'm saying. I wouldn't read too terribly much into it, they probably haven't given it a second thought. In fact, I think that is good advice for all graduate students concerning all professor email content.

I applied to Duke, Emory, Pitt, Vanderbilt, SUNY Buffalo, Chicago, UMass Amherst*, Syracuse, Brown (Modern Culture and Media), and Carnegie Mellon, and didn't take the subject test. *UMass English requires the subject test for some concentrations, but says that it does not if you are applying with the intention of pursuing their American Studies concentration. I also looked at Boulder, who do not require it.

While it's not quite where you're at, there are people in my incoming cohort who are 33 or 32. I know that when I was an undergrad we had a PhD student in the department who was in his 40s. Naturally, people under 35 are going to be better represented because it's not all that common to start a PhD in your late 30s. I wouldn't take the current age demographics in a department to be a statement on whether they'll admit an older student. I think it will have much more to do with the fact that there are just simply more applicants in younger age ranges.

I guess I haven't asked around about it, but one of my professors, who has sat on the graduate admissions committee at Minnesota but is now at a different school, told me when I was applying that for him a 4.0 was outstanding, but that a "3.7 is enough". It's cliche because it's true: your personal statement and your writing sample are most important. According to the survey, there were people with worse GPAs and GRE scores (some significantly so!) that got into schools that I applied to and was rejected from. Likely, more people on the faculty just thought those people fit better. Or, they already had several people similar to me in the program. Or, who knows? One thing I've learned being in and seeing how departments actually work for the first time is that there are all kinds of strange things that go into the selection process. Two professors that I didn't even mention in my statement of purpose turned out to be the biggest supporters of my admission to the program I'm in now, I was told.

I had a standing offer from my old job to work remotely, part-time, after getting to grad school. I quickly found that, at least for me, it would just be impossible. With the reading load I get every week, I feel like I barely have time to go out for a drink once a week, much less work an entire job. If you're a real well organized dynamo you might be able to pull it off. I didn't want any leisure time, I bet I could arrange to maybe work a day a week. The biggest problem I'd see, is that if your work slips a bit, you're always going to wonder, "well if I wasn't working, could i have devoted more time and done better..."

Just starting to really get comfortable with expectations. The first few weeks I felt totally adrift, and when I wasn't adrift, I felt like I was on eggshells. But I gave a killer presentation this week and it had this weird way of making me feel like I actually know what I'm doing. I am halfway done with my first seminar paper (trying to get a jump so I don't get decked with too much work in December). I knew there would be a lot of reading, but one of my classes is just absurd. Yet, the absurdity is rewarding, because it's really fascinating stuff we're reading. I helped in a small way to put on the conference that the graduate students in the department put on every year, and partied with grad students from across the continent over the weekend, and saw lots of great panels from grad students that both inspired me and made me anxious that I need to start doing meaningful work. My biggest surprise is that I don't feel, with all the course reading and seminar papers, that I don't have time to pursue anything outside of class right now. I'm trying to figure out when I'm supposed to have time to do all the other academic career related stuff I'm supposed to be doing.

I might be qualified to comment on your specific question. I went to Minnesota for undergrad. I was accepted to SUNY Buffalo and waitlisted at Vanderbilt (there were plenty of other results too, but those are the ones you asked about), and I currently attend a PhD program at a school ranked in the 30s by the USNEWS list. Bare numbers. My GRE was 164v/156q/6.0w and I had a 4.0 undergrad GPA. My first year, I applied mostly to "name" programs in the top 20, because I had my head up my ass. Yes: If you go to Yale, Chicago, Harvard, Stanford, etc., your job prospects improve. Those are wonderful schools. I didn't get into them. I suspect I didn't get into them less because of the quality of my work, and more because what I was doing simply didn't fit. I'm in a fairly niche field as far as English goes, and I was silly to try and make a case for those programs. My second time around, I cast a wider net, and I found a lot of really delightful programs. In fact, I found a program that I didn't even really know about my first time around, and realized it was perfect for me. I got in there, and I'm exceedingly happy about it. Every day I'm reminded why it was an awesome choice, even if we're y'know, in the 30s. Pick programs you like, and once you get to where you are, you'll quickly forget about where you didn't get in and what your school is ranked. I tend to think that if you do good work, you rise to the top. So I don't sweat the ranking too much. Prestige helps, no doubt, but it's not everything. There are profs in my program from non-Ivy schools, and it's a school where anyone would be happy to get a tenure track position, I think. Though, at this point, I'm sure anyone would be happy to get a tenure track position anywhere!

Obviously mileage may vary on textbooks from place to place, but before committing to buying used on Amazon, I'd check Powell's Books online. If you buy used on Amazon, you'll usually end up paying shipping individually for each book. If Powell's happens to have used copies of all of your books, you'll pay one flat fee for shipping. I saved about $12 that way ordering for my first class last week. The Prime free shipping deal doesn't usually apply to the third party sellers that sell used books on Amazon. Also, if you're ever in Portland, OR, make sure to check out Powell's main store. It's something like the biggest bookstore in the country, you wont regret it.

As suggested by Lisa44201, "time boxing" can be effective and there are apps for it, of course. If you've gotten this far, surely you've developed techniques and rituals over time to help you complete your work? I am also a lit student who suffers from ADD as well as anxiety. Both can impede my work, but over time I learned how to manage them not by trying to cure myself of them (I don't like to think of myself as curing parts of my personality), but rather how to play to my strengths. Mine have served me well throughout undergrad, and I imagine I'll just continue to apply them in grad school, they're basic principles. For example, the most important thing is to give yourself plenty of time to work. This may mean missing out on leisure stuff, but it's the price you pay. If you give yourself ample time, then you can allow for lost time due to distractions. When I'm to sit down to work, I have little "rituals" that I go through every time to remind my brain that it's time to work. Depending on the subject, type of reading, era of the reading, I have different music and perhaps different food/drinks that get me primed for work. If it's a paper or exam preparation, I try to get into a competitive mindset and get myself "pumped up", before setting about my work, which is dorky, but has helped me a bunch. Confession: I haven't written a paper or studied for a test without Young Jeezy's album "The Inspiration" being involved somehow. Also, I think I proofread the final draft every major paper I turned in as an undergrad at least 5 times. As an undergrad, my classmates would ask me how I got an A on every single paper I wrote, and my answer was simple: I did it the same way every time. Obviously every paper was different, and required a different intellectual approach, but I had my process down to a kind of razor precision. If it's reading, I always take notes in pencil in a notebook. I find that it's far too easy to zone out while typing and simply forget what you're doing and not retain a thing, as well as the built in distractions a computer provides. I think pencil and paper forces you to think more about what it is you're reading and writing down. Sometimes I lose my train of thought, and I say "focus, focus" to myself, it's weird, but I find that helps me snap back into it.

Given a preference, always justified. My father was always particular about that from a young age for some reason, and today, left-aligned looks ugly to me.

I've been having exactly the same problem. My solution was simply to research the tax stuff to the best of my ability, come up with some estimates, and then simply prepare for the worst. After all, if you prepare for the worst, you can only be either confirmed in your expecations or pleasantly surprised that you have enough to buy that extra box of wine at the end of the month! I come to English from a background in employment law, and so not being able to get clear answers on my tax and employment status is a bit maddening. The federal FICA rates and withholding stuff can be found on the IRS websites and will depend upon your income bracket. That stuff is pretty greek to me, but I think I was able to come up with a good worst case scenario type estimate. State taxes will, obviously, depend on where you're going. I was delighted to find, through my research, that fellowships are exempt from state and local taxes in Pittsburgh. I came up with a budget then by looking at what my take home pay is now, comparing it to my estimated fellowship take home pay, and then looking at places to save, looking at costs I wont have in grad school (e.g. not using as much gas, paying lower rent, deferring loan payments). Frankly, I'm actually starting to look forward to the scaling down of my lifestyle in many ways. In any case, that terrible uncertainty wont last all that long, after you survive that first month and get your first check you'll know where you stand. Just try to find a real frugal living situation for your first year and don't get locked into a crazy lease. It's all temporary.

I also got the email from Pitt. asking if I still wanted to be on their waiting list. I asked for some details, and it does sound like they are expecting to go to the waiting list for admissions.

I've been exploring this, and Budget is definitely cheaper than UHAUL or Penske. I'm sure that it comes at some loss in quality or customer service, but those things might be secondary to those of us trying to move on a shoestring budget.

Funny you should mention it. I was talking to my ex-girlfriend, who is a PhD student in Phylogenetics at a big time school, on gchat about this conversation. I briefly mentioned digital humanities, and she became immediately excited, she said, "Like Bayesian methods to determine authorship of an article?" "Yeah, kind of." "Cool! I love that stuff!"

I don't exactly have time to give a full blooded response to this just now, since I've been skimming the thread while at work, but I think the idea of aesthetics being the gatekeeper to socio-political inquiry is topsy-turvy. The fascination with the aesthetics of sociopolitically irrelevant and inaccessible works is what, I think, has a greater chance of dooming English. Which isn't to say I wont call something I think is great "great." I love your Prousts, your Chaucers and even (with some degree of diiculty) your Miltons. However, I'm skeptical as to whether any culturally relevant work can be done on analyzing the aesthetics of these works in themselves. At least, relevant outside of the subcultures and disciplines related specifically to their study. Of course, maybe, for some, continuing to keep English "alive" means reaffirming the things that make the discipline insular and inaccessible to all but the most devoted nerds (that is, we, the posters here, and our ilk), but I don't think so. If we're doing this for the sake of keeping our field pure, or just doing it because we think these subjects are fun and awesome, fine. If we're doing this because we actually want to achieve an effect outside of the field, then we need to look at how texts function outside of the field! I wonder though, how analyzing Milton's meter from a different vantage point is going to help keep English pure more than it would simply contribute to it becoming stale and distant. I do think that you first need to explain why Milton is important in a cultural, social, political etc. context before you are going to ask someone other than a Milton scholar to read about it. And, of course, there are a number of cultural, social, and political reasons why Milton is important; and why his work continues to live among us today! I'd be more interested in something discussing his ideological lineage, or how the echoes of his imagery continue to manifest themselves in contemporary culture. Not only is it a conversation in which we can continue to make "Great Literature" relevant, but it's a conversation in which people who traditionally might have difficulty accessing Milton's work might access it in new and exciting ways. What is traditionally thought of as "Great Literature" is great, and often has fascinating aesthetic dimensions, sure, but it's increasingly marginal as a cultural force, and like so many other once great cultural forces it's unlikely to return. I'd rather see the boundaries of literary study challenged and expanded, rather than cling to some nebulous and obscure idea of "what English is."