Romanista

Anyone applying to UFlorida? You have to paste in your essay from a word processor but it doesn't allow underlining, so they recommend that you keep the formatting as simple as possible. I'm debating whether to remove some sentences that contain underlined book titles...

How is everyone approaching the "what other programs are you applying to?" question? I'm planning on not listing all of them because I'm paranoid that the adcoms (particularly for MA programs) will think "this fellow is applying to a lot of programs so we needn't admit him since he will probably go elsewhere."

For those applying to FSU: apparently the deadline has been moved up to tonight due to some technical issue. However according to the email I received you don't have to submit the SOP and WS until 3 January 2014. Next monday they will send out information on how to send the SOP and WS later on. The problem is that you can't submit your application until you have uploaded something for both SOP and WS. I don't really feel like rushing out a SOP when I have another 3 weeks to do it so I'm thinking of just uploading a document that says "SOP will be sent later etc." Has anyone else made sense of this? It's almost enough to dissuade you from applying to FSU at all.

UCR applicants, has anyone been able to clarify whether the SOP must be 3,000 characters or less? The grad school application page says this but the department does not mention a length requirement. This was discussed in the Fall 2013 application season thread but I could not find a definitive answer...

I submitted my application last night. I never realized I had until the end of the month...And I was going to retake the GRE too. Bugger.

Feel free to report me to Procrastinators Anonymous about this, but will it be a problem that I submitted my application at 12:08 am when the deadline was (supposedly) 11:59 pm yesterday? I say supposedly because the school did not specify the exact time or time zone other than December 2, and the school is on the west coast.

Roughly how much higher is the percentage of acceptances? I'm trying to determine whether it would be in my interest to apply to multiple UK programs. From what I have seen, American MA programs don't tend to accept more than 60% of applicants (if that, though strangely Villanova accepts more according to Petersons). How does this compare with British programs? Also, are they more interested in accepting international students (for the higher tuition obviously)? I may be able to get the EU tuition rate as I am in the process of getting an EU passport.

This is so frustrating, because the adjunctivization of American academia makes this even more difficult. I took 16 undergraduate courses in English, of which only 4 were taught by tenured professors. Of the 4, 2 were survey and introductory courses, which leaves just 2 advanced courses taught by tenured professors on my transcript. Only 1 of the 4 courses was taught by a Full Professor, who retired and moved out of the country after I graduated so I can't ask him for a LOR even though he's in my field. If it weren't for this site, I would have no place to rant.

Generally speaking, will schools consider GRE scores if taken a second time after the deadline has passed? In other words, if I apply to a school before the deadline passes and then afterwards retake the GRE will the school take that second score into consideration? I'm particularly worried about this with regards to UCLA, as their deadline is a month from now and there is no way I could submit two GRE scores in that time...

How much of an impact do you think alumni is on an application? Either through using a "recommender" who either taught or received their PhD from the school or alternatively having a family member that received a PhD from the school?

Other than the fact that the test should never have been made, I have only one complaint. There was a question that asked one to compare the style of a passage with a cinematic technique...I thought the test was about literature? Which by the way, is such an enormous subject that ETS could compose a subject test on the works of Trollope alone. It wasn't that I thought the question was very hard, it was just unfair for the test writers to think "well people that are taking this test have studied literature in college so they must know what a fade out shot is, right?" I mean what next, a GRE subject test in film for those interested in film studies programs? In Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace is hesitant to tell Vincent Vega her Fox Force Five joke because A. She is cognizant of a superior being B. As a woman she is faithful to her husband Marcellus C. To do so would go against gender norms as the joke is not funny D. To do so would be an example of zeugma E. She is ambivalent about the afterlife

My admission ticket has my nickname and not my full legal name. I called ETS about it and apparently it's up to the proctor to decide whether I test or not. Extraordinary that a bureaucratic mistake could allow one to not be able to apply to certain schools.

I'm curious as to whether anyone is applying to a program with just one faculty member in their field of study. Is it even worth applying? Assuming that the one professor fits one's research interests adequately.

Thanks for that. The site seems to be gone, you can't even access it on the internet archive.

I was just going to post this. Seems I'm not the only one...

Have you considered a Fulbright grant? Lots of unis to choose from and not all of them have a lot of applicants. http://us.fulbrightonline.org/countries/selectedcountry/244

For those who are planning on sending scores before taking the exam, have any of you contacted the departments to let them know that you are applying?

Has anyone contacted a school and asked if they allow you to reapply the next season if you don't get in? In my case I want to go directly to a PhD program with just a BA but I am also going to apply to MA only schools if I don't get in to the former. Sometimes the department website tells you their policy on reapplying but sometimes they do not...

I really want to apply here because they have both a DH Lawrence specialist as well as a professor who writes on Englishness. But I don't think I'm going to because the funding situation is dire. So dire that the department doesn't really hide it. I believe somewhere on their website it says that the majority of their PhD students supplant their income with part-time jobs in addition to teaching and going to class. I suppose that there will always be some people who need to do that in order to make ends meet, but it just seems like a place where you are expected to partially pay for your PhD. I may still apply just because it happens to fit my research interests.

Has anyone used a letter of recommendation from a professor emeritus? The only course I have taken in my period of study was taught by someone who retired after that same semester.

Do schools really care what you do (if anything) the year before you enroll? I'm thinking of loafing a la Larry Darrell.

I wish there was a way to separate the professors who specialize in James Joyce from those who specialize in British Modernism. There are so many of them who list that as their specialty and yet 75% of their publications relate to Joyce only.

How experienced with languages must one be for admission to an MA or PhD program in Medieval Studies? I understand that you can't really be a medievalist without at least two foreign languages but what do they expect one to have mastered prior to admission?

If contacting the school directly does not work or if you don't trust the Director of Graduate Studies, there is another way. If the program lists recent dissertations just search for the name of those who have defended and graduated. Like..."John Doe" AND professor AND university...if these people are employed in academia they are bound to have some kind of digital footprint. Also, if the department does not list recent dissertations you can still find them in some university library sites that keep track of them, or else on ProQuest if you have access to that. The only problem with this method is that sometimes it won't tell you if the newly hired graduate is in a tenure track position or not.

For those that have taken it, do you suggest taking the subject test before the general test or after?