egwynn

I agree with proflorax. I had the same experience of POIs and adcomms only mentioning my WS and SOP; none of them mentioned the GRE, and I would have been floored had they done so. So, were I to write or rewrite my list from my application process, I would have the GRE at the bottom. The actual application materials are such a huge part of distinguishing you from other applicants. In contrast, the GRE is something that I think you basically only worry about to the point where you think you're at least high-mid-range. (You might, however, consider discussing the GRE and your concerns about it with your letter-writers. I talked to my supervisor about it because I was not confident in my ability to raise my rather dismal score by retaking it, and I think he may have done a tiny bit of damage control for me in his letters. Even if he didn't, it was cathartic to discuss it with him. So, if you think you have a letter-writer who would be sympathetic and supportive there, you might want to give that a try.)

I'd look as well at Communication Studies departments, Comp Lit, and even maybe Art History. And/or look at journals that you read and see who's being published in them and where they're working from.

I've now progressed from making curtains to making full-fledged pieces of furniture to fill my time until coursework starts.

thanks, guinevere, that was super helpful, and so is the IRS website he links to! (http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch01.html#en_US_2012_publink1000177987) that's not to say that i know everything now, but at least i have a vague idea...

Oh, man, my primary goal was to not be in the undergrad area. When I was TAing during my MA I would always always always see my students when I was on my way home from bars, doing the walk of shame, taking the trash out at 6AM with my hair looking like a tsunami, heading out for cycling in a onesie with butt pads, etc, etc, etc. On one memorable night I saw no fewer than five of my students while I was walking home from hockey and drinking a beer out of my bag, so I was tipsy, sweaty, smelly, AND my hair looked like it had large rodents living in it. (Also undergrad neighborhoods are, in my experience, littered with trash, loud, have more petty crime than other places I've lived, and the businesses in those areas are less friendly and interesting because they're catering to the frat-minded customer.) I am living in an area with families and other grad students that is somehow by the grace of please-let-me-embarrass-myself-in-peace about a 30 minute walk from campus. It's slightly more than I want to pay and I'm tentatively planning to move quite a ways away and maybe even buy a house next year, but for now it is fabulous and I love it.

I agree with ComeBackZinc. This kind of stuff actually seems rather common. You might need to be flexible (i.e. find someone who looks at the 19th century and Regency-era romance novels or something like this), but I think you'll be able to find quite a few people in various programs who would be good to work with.

OH! And, I think this is at least half just me telling myself this so that I can feel like an amazing applicant and/or generally worthwhile person, but I felt like having a single paragraph with specific info about one uni is obvious and a bit tedious. I interspersed my stuff through the whole SOP. That said, I know a lot of people are successful with just a subbing-in in the final paragraph.

I started mine with a quotation and then a broadening analysis of it, just like I would an abstract for a paper. In fact, my entire SOP is rather like an abstract for a conference paper. I took a potentially presumptuous approach and informed the adcoms of what awesome shit I was going to do when--not if--they accepted me to their program and threw truckloads of money at me. I would quote it, but that feels like posting nekkid pics. Paranoia from watching tons of Criminal Minds, I guess. By the way, I totally echo what people have said about the SOP not being a contract. I went back and read the SOP I wrote for the uni where I got my MA (you know, the touchy-feely SOP that makes me feel abject shame now), and not only did I claim I wanted to work with someone whose seminar I dropped on the first day, but I mentioned a bunch of other stuff that I never did and, in some cases, hadn't even heard about anywhere but on the website. Tangentially from that whole changing-your-mind thing: I would recommend that, when you're looking at programs, you try your best to factor in a contingency plan for each one. I showed up to my MA excited to work with two people and discovered that I wasn't thrilled about one (just not my style) and could not stand the other. I got lucky that I accidentally found a new time period that I loved and someone who was basically the best supervisor ever. Upon applying to PhD programs, the people were absolutely not the first priority for me. They were an important factor, but I wouldn't consider going somewhere because I read a book that I just loved and I want to work with that person come hell or high water. That's what I did last time, and it nearly didn't work out. I think that, if you know you're a particular person who is inclined to strong opinions about other people (I am), you would be better served to factor that in when you're looking at programs as well. Just a thought. Feel free to ignore, obviously. This is one of those processes that you'd like to think is impersonal and entirely professional, but is there anything that's like that?

Ah, yeah... I'd be in the same spot you are. I hate when they ask that. ...Good luck!

Yes, I would keep it professional. There was nothing personal on my SOP last fall, and it seems to have worked out well. The only time I got personal was on the California apps, and that was only because they require that extra statement of hardship or diversity or whatever they call it. (And, honestly, I sort of felt like such a requirement was inappropriate.) My rationale for why you shouldn't include personal stuff is that I really strongly believe that you must prove that you can conceptualize what the profession is and therefore that you know what you're getting yourself into. I think that my first round of apps was not as fruitful as the second because I went the personal route and my SOP of purpose was (I think) awkward and touchy-feely instead of professional and driven. Furthermore, I felt that it was awkward when I wrote it because I was not comfortable hawking my childhood experiences as some sort of exhibition of academic prowess, but my supervisor had recommended the personal route, so I did it. But my childhood and my professional ambitions don't really seem related, and they certainly aren't related in any meaningfully compact or direct way. I think that the connection you're talking about making is tenuous to the point that your statement will be a bit stilted and you'll be taking precious space for something that's potentially not of any interest to the adcoms reading your app. Because, frankly, I don't think the adcoms care if you spend every night sitting in the hall and reading Shakespeare comics like I did when I was 7 or if you did whatever it is you did. They care about what you're going to do in the future, how you're going to distinguish yourself in the profession, and whether you will be a good investment because you're professionally driven and successful.

I'd say it's potentially frowned upon here, too. I frowned, at least...

Oh, I had several things I was interested in a year ago. I'm done applying, though, so I've wiped the app process from my memory with several barrels of bourbon and a brief public appearance in a flannel onesie.

I want to say that American schools get more applications for English as well, but that's based on how terrified I was when I saw this on Columbia's website, so I might just be extrapolating based on my own horror instead of actual fact. "The department typically receives around 700 applications per year for about 16 places in our sequential program." If I'm mathing correctly, that's a 2.2% acceptance rate. I know it's Columbia, but I figure the other Ivies and programs like UChicago are in that ballpark.

My letter-writers the second time were all at a Canadian institution, and they all encouraged me to apply to more schools when I came to them with a list of 10 programs. They also all encouraged me to go back to the States, but that's another issue.

I applied to 12 programs 2-3 years ago (PhD and MA programs), went to a terminal MA program, and then applied to 17 (16, sorta, as I withdrew one application a few days before they notified who'd been accepted) for my PhD. I'm really happy that I applied to as many as I did, because I had 3 options the first time and 4 the second. Given how challenging it is and how unsure even a reasonably-good-chance of admission really is, I would apply to at least as many were I doing this again. I basically applied everywhere I could see myself going (with the exception of the withdrawn application) and did what I could to manage the cost. I know that not everyone can swing 17 application fees, but I still recommend the more-is-better approach. (That's not to say that I think people should apply indiscriminately, of course.)

My moving days (one in one country, one in another) are this weekend. Lawd help me.

I think I'll end up buying next year. The rental market where I'll be is just absurd because all of the landlords are just looking for that undergrad student whose parents can/will pay whatever (and, of course, they find them!). And, to my everlasting surprise, I kinda want a lawn to mow...

I'm in the same place. The trash I have read is so satisfyingly shameful. And I'm moving from Canada to the US, so I've been on the phone with customs for all that time you've been scrubbing (and tearing my hair out at the same time). Come July, it's back to reading theory...

I felt that mine was light on theory. I read in my GRE book that everyone always says that there was a lot of what they're not familiar with because that's what they remember. I think that that is probably true, because I felt like there was a ton of modernist whatever on mine and I have almost no interest in that particular whatever. To the OP/whomever is debating taking it: despite what everyone else has said, I would take it. And I would study for it, but I also wouldn't make myself sick over it. If you're familiar with the kind of bullshit they pull on standardized tests, you're already halfway there in terms of prep. I scored in the 80th percentile with--let's be honest--not a hell of a lot of studying. I studied for like three days the second time around (this includes the time I spent to compile my materials). I was 2/3 of the way through a master's program that didn't require it and I had done almost all of my coursework in drama, early modern, or 18th century. I've never taken a modernist-concentrated course, I actively avoid reading Faulkner, I hadn't read any Romantics or American literature in 2 years or more, and I'm not super keen on poetry written after about 1850 so I basically have a Jeopardy-level knowledge of that. I got into 4 really good PhD programs, and all but one of them required the subject test. I'm going to a top-10 program in the fall. Avoiding the test means eliminating options from the start, and this is a difficult enough process that I think that's a really bad idea. If you take it, bomb it, and would rather cut off your legs than take it again, you can apply places that don't require it and you can elect to send only your general scores to your programs. So no one but you and ETS need know that you embarrassed yourself on the GRE subject test. If you can spare the money and the stress, take it.

There are people at McGill and some of the UC schools. Stefan Sinclair (Voyant, TAPoR, Mandala, MONK) is at McGill and there were a lot of projects at UCSB when I visited (they seemed to have corresponding or collaborating projects in other UC programs).

The more I think about it, the more I feel like, in your situation, I would not retake it. I scored only 60 points better when I retook it, and I took it the first time after going to my grandmother's funeral and then flying across the country to take the GRE (and then flying back to go to my grandmother's burial; ETS wouldn't let me change the GRE test location). I thought that there would be a more significant improvement given the ridiculous circumstances when I took it the first time, but there weren't really. What got me into better programs the second round was that everything else was a lot better (my LORs, SOP, and WS). (ETA: would it properly be LsOR instead of LORs?)

Echoing Hopkins. Great program, and definitely close to DC. Katia, I'm so sorry to hear. And, not that this is going to make anything better for you, but my offer for GRE material still stands. It's not awesome, but my method was to collect everything I could find. So PM me your email if you want me to send you my PDFs.

I'm going to add that, while I appreciate the fact that thinking about the job market is not really inspiration to apply to graduate school in the humanities, I feel really strongly that you need to think about it anyways. Are there other paths to getting where you want to go? Do you really want to spend time in grad school instead of working more independently or taking different avenues to arrive at the same place? Also, will a PhD/MFA/both actually hurt you? Though people tend to talk about this less, there are many jobs that will not be available to someone with such advanced degrees. I am really against the opinion that academia can be even a bit separated from practical things. And I think that, if you don't ever think about this boring crap, the chances are good that you will stumble into serious regrets and struggles come the day that you decide you want to buy a house, a horse, a boat, a whatever, or have kids, or raise flocks of geese or whatever the hell it is that we might all be doing in 10 years. It's great to know now that you want to really develop intellectually and enter into these wonderful conversations that we get to have, but it's also worth considering if, when you factor in all of the financial, geographic, emotional, and social hurdles that come with graduate school, they will prevent you from actually getting where you want to go. I do not by any means mean to condescend in saying this; it took me my first semester of the MA to figure out that there is something very essentially practical that is and must be a factor here. My realization of all of this nearly led to me dropping out of graduate school, and I still occasionally dream about running away to work in marketing, where I will surely make more money. I also want to add that you should take everything your professors say with a grain of salt. They will like you more than adcomms (unless you're an asshole, and it doesn't sound like that's the case at all). They will see more potential in you than is blatantly apparent in the written materials you will submit to other programs. Absolutely aim high and try for the programs you really want to go to, but also cover your bases. Consider that the adcomms will look at 25+ other students with similar--if not basically identical--credentials and letters of recommendation. You have to pull ahead of the pack on paper, and don't get complacent about that just because your professors think you're the tits. (I have read arguments that professors/supervisors are perhaps blinded by the flattery of their proteges demonstrating, in their desire to go to graduate school, a strong inclination to emulate said supervisors, and I think there's real merit in that consideration.) I have, since my senior year of undergrad, applied to 29 graduate schools. I've been admitted to 7, but only truly considered 3. I have never been admitted to my top choice for an admissions cycle. My profs in undergrad and my MA thought I was lovely or even amazing and they were super encouraging. Perhaps that will help you consider that there needs to be practical consideration from start to finish here; apply places that you think you might enjoy studying, even if they are not your top choice. On a less gloomy note: look into what opportunities you might have to get in touch with Cornell faculty and really orient yourself with the program and the people there. As far as I know, the School of Criticism and Theory (http://sct.arts.cornell.edu/indexLaunch.php?time=1367974302) is for grad students only, but there might be opportunities there and elsewhere for you to poke around and 1) make sure that you really like the people, the program, and the department(s) and 2) introduce yourself to some of them. Also, start saving money for apps and the GRE. They are expensive!

I'm going to echo Rutgers. I was super keen on them when I was still doing early modern. But I would also add that I think it's a good idea to have a fail safe. I thought I was definitely-no-matter-what going to work on early modern drama, and here I am in the 18th century studying Richardson. So... look for what's strong for you, but also think about whether that will close doors in case you change your mind, I guess.

Congrats!!!!! I'm in the last day of working on my thesis right now. I've edited and just have to type the edits and double-check/proofread. Why does this feel like cruel and unusual punishment? Can I just turn in the marked-up one and be like, "It's all there, I promise!!" Arghhhh.