Hashlinger: Thanks for chiming in! Great feedback here--- So, it sounds like you might have gone through a few application seasons (or MA and then PhD apps)... As a returning student, what do you think most helped you land a good spot? It makes sense that there'd be even more pressure on us older applicants to produce a super-savvy SOP and WS. I just finished my MA, but I know I need to use the next year to deepen my knowledge of the current lit-crit scenes relevant to my research interests, and build that awareness into some killer app docs.
Any suggestions for how to bone up on current work? Besides reading the past several years of journals in the areas that interest me, I'm planning to wade through some full-length studies that excite me (newer and classic ones I never got to), browse the paper abstracts for key conferences from the past few years, and mock up a profile of each of the POIs at my target schools with a list of their publications and research interests and recent course descriptions (I go nuts with lists and charts sometimes, but it helps). Any other thoughts? Anyone else, feel free to jump in too!