jazzyd

Went to UChicago's visiting day yesterday and it was in short awesome. Despite living in Illinois all my life (and relatively close to Chicago) I had never been on their campus before and it's really quite striking. I've also never been to a private university before, so all the enclosed gates and required authorization to enter the library and such was new, but oddly comforting. Every faculty member I spoke with seemed really engaged and though yes it was a visiting day, the grad students gave the impression that while this was by no means a snapshot of daily life, even the most distinguished professors regularly answer e-mail. That's always a concern since at schools it's very possible to have a "superstar" committee who hardly ever offer feedback. And now I finally have my spiel down when people ask, "What do you do?" !

Same. I never had my test scores mentioned (as I've mentioned before my subject at least was pretty abysmal) and while one professor did mention "So-and-so said so many great things about you," he was really the only one who had any sort of relationship with any of my letter writers. So the programs I did get into it was mainly my SOP and sample that sold me. I had an opportunity to get pretty close with my letter writers, if only because I had known I wanted to pursue graduate study for so long. But none of them are what I would call "famous" in the field (yet) and all of them are relatively young (all are now associates, but they weren't when we met). So while I don't doubt they wrote wonderful and specific things about my progress and preparation as a student since they've read my writing for so long, if LORs are all about "prestige" I definitely was lacking in that area.

If you're an exercise fiend, you might want to check out the ARC when you visit: http://www.campusrec.illinois.edu/facilities/arc/ It's so awesome

Yeah, I've got Chicago this week, LA to Providence next week, then driving down to PCB (spring break festivities). From there I'm working on finding a flight to high tail it out early to make it to Michigan's visiting days, and then it's back to Champaign. But from it looks like, others have much crazier March schedules than I!

Yeah I'm feeling a little bit like a fish out of water right now and I'm not even there yet! I have a flight booked but am not sure how to get from the airport to campus.

Does anyone else absolutely dread flying? The thought of getting on a plane next week is making me sick. I've flown plenty of times in my life, but especially in the past couple years it is just not an activity I enjoy. And going from California to Rhode Island will be a loooooong flight (from my perspective at least!).

The bolded above is why I see no problem offering them. The majority of physical education courses here (including non-major dance classes) are only worth 1 credit hour and do not satisfy a gen-ed. Meaning, a student is paying to take the course without receiving much of a benefit themselves besides pure enjoyment. Physical education courses that are more than 1 credit hour and satisfy gen-eds have non-P.E. portions whether it's learning about how the body works in motion, the cultural history of yoga or dance, etc.

You might want to read through this thread where people have posted about their experiences in MA programs: Obvious this might be hard to determine, but if you can determine where the weaknesses were in your applications that might help decide whether an MA program is worth the expense. If it were me, I would go through at least another cycle before going for the MA, and maybe apply to a couple funded or partially-funded MA programs in addition to PhD programs.

Nope.

Fwiw, my GPA is lower than yours thanks to a semester and a half of engineering curriculum freshman year. I got a C in Chemistry and B in Chem Lab. I also got a W in a computer science class. As far as applications go, I think I'm in a pretty good spot. So it's not as if a poor grade puts you out of the running. I would work my ass off if I were you to get that C though.

Has anyone reached out to professors at schools after receiving an acceptance? A couple have reached out to me, but there's also other faculty whom I think have interests who fit mine. Should I wait until the visiting days? Or after April 15th? What if my decision more or less rides on who will be able to work with me at a certain school?

Well, Penn's rejection letter was very nice at least :|

I'm assuming it's a case of the iceberg problem.

Agreed. The Princeton Review had a hierarchy of pieces that were MUST READS, pieces to be familiar with, and stuff that maybe could pop up. Sounds great in theory, did not pan out for my test even remotely. Again, I'm glad that reputable programs even know how bull---- it is. Yes I realize it is the Literature in English test, but I wasn't aware that literature hasn't progressed past John Donne.

True. Granted, even before finding this forum I was told that not hearing anything before March is a bad sign, if merely because of the logistics of setting up travel and visits. I guess the good and bad of GradCafe is having basically up to the minute knowledge of when acceptances start to go out. Otherwise I might still be hanging hopes on quite a few schools instead of using this time to evaluate my current options. @gwarner13, yes I am!

Columbia gave out acceptances last week. I don't know how they do waitlists and what not, so we might just have to wait on that (no pun intended).

March 11-13 Fwiw, unless I just completely fall in love with the location (a possibility) enough to over look faculty fit, it's likely that I won't accept.

A professor I spoke to said similar things about the program as people on this forum, that it's highly (almost overly) competitive and can vicious... but then admitted that this is from information a student gave him over 10 years ago. He also mentioned that this atmosphere he was told came primarily from the MA program (which must be gone now, unless this was the MAPH). Another professor who attended more recently hasn't mentioned anything like that. He says that [in comparison to another program I won't name] there is less coddling. It's more like a train that's zooming along, and you either get on for the ride or get off if you can't hang. But I suppose all PhD programs must be like that to an extent? I highly doubt UPenn is lacking in rigor. Forgive me if you've already mentioned, Porridge, but have you done any visits yet?

As one who's spent close to 4 years in quite literally the middle of nowhere (B1G school in Illinois, take a guess), albeit as an undergrad, it's really not as bad as you might think. And it sounds like you'll have more than money to dry your tears... you'll have amazing resources and best fit faculty. But if in your heart of hearts you won't be happy at anyplace but school 1, then that's important too. It comes down to how much you trust the faculty at the other department. There's nothing that says your interests have to be so close to your advisor's that you're practically book club buddies, but they do need to be a little extra great to be able to guide you in something that's not directly in their line of expertise.

This is actually somewhat comforting to hear. I scored around 40-something percentile on my Subject test. The majority of schools I applied to that required the Subject rejected me (except for UCLA) and the majority of schools that didn't (except for UPenn, NYU, Columbia) accepted me, and I've been beating myself up about that feeling as if I could have gotten a better look at places had I gotten a much better score. My mentor rationalized it as, a bad score won't doom an applicant, however it makes them MUCH harder to fight for. If Professor A thinks Student X is better, but Professor B thinks Student Y is better, Professor B can remind the committee of Student X's abysmal Subject Test and sway them that way. But it really must vary from school-to-school, correct? For example, Columbia is pretty transparent about the fact that students w/o 95+ percentile GRE scores and a 3.9+ GPA need not apply (of course I did so anyway!). Anyway, I'm glad to see that a lot good programs do not require or even consider the GRE Subject. It's completely unbalanced and places any budding Americanist at a distinct disadvantage.

Stanford does not miss a beat! (Yale was pretty fast too) Not that it stings any less, but I feel like it's a positive (small positive) to be notified this quickly. Now I can stop hanging by my phone (well, still waiting for news on Rutgers though...).

What are your research interests?

I'm actually not sure if I'll be able to make it up during those days, but since I am relatively close (w/i driving distance at least) I probably will try to visit to at least see the campus sometime in March. You're the second person to tell me that today. Hmm.....

Having not taken that many non-comp English courses, what is it that draws you to the discipline? Just curious.

Congrats!!