despejado

THIS.

I have two implied rejections and absolutely nothing else, so that's pretty weird for me. Hoping they're rolling admissions but I know they're not, so I've pretty much crossed those two off.

Nah, neither one (math or subject) really matters THAT much. For what it's worth, you did better than me on math and verbal, and I also bombed the subject test! I think we'll all be fine

98th percentile

Glad this seems to be the general consensus haha. I also bombed it pretty terribly. Mine was mostly medievalist stuff, Horb. You'd have aced it.

Yeah, I'd do some crazy shit to have 98 verbal.

Yeah! Good to know I'm in good company.

Triplets, actually!

Wow that is frustrating. I have heard stories of departments liking applicants so much that they overlook things like that, but it surely doesn't feel great to start off at what could be considered a disadvantage. Hopefully she got everything else in at a decent time and you'll get into somewhere wonderful.

Also applied to both. Had a late recommender at UChicago, but their DGS was very nice about it. Lelmore97, your professor never got the letter in at all? Did you end up with the requisite amount of recommendations?

Yes, that's exactly what I meant haha. I surprise myself more often than not when I read stuff I wrote a while back, so I'm glad none of it is floating around for people to make judgments on

I'm curious as well. I know if I had published some things I wrote as a sophomore or even as a junior, I might be worried about other people seeing them haha

Wow, that's a pretty cool thing to do. I feel you about people not taking your work seriously, I have definitely felt that way before. Sometimes, as an undergrad, it's hard to take my own work too seriously. Glad to have met someone in the same situation, definitely makes me feel better. I'm inclined to say we'll both be fine and find somewhere that appreciates us swimming upstream in non-humanities driven universities haha.

In the same boat as you with the huge public research institution that doesn't value humanities. They didn't push publishing on me until earlier this year, so there are no publications to speak of on my apps. I applied to sixteen schools, so going with the "if I throw enough shit at the wall, something is bound to stick" approach.

You and I are the same person. How many places did you apply to?

I think you're looking at it the wrong way, and also the right way. Your writing sample IS an indication of what you can do, and of course your SOP contains ideas that have yet to properly manifest themselves, so I wouldn't worry too much. If I've noticed anything, especially in myself, it's easy to get far too worked up about nothing. Relax, good things are coming

Definitely sounds like you were, although I don't claim to be the authority on Jane Eyre. I wouldn't worry about it too much, I'm sure it's great.

This is precisely what I was thinking; I didn't get too heavily into theory, although I did use some.. I'm just hoping I didn't write on something (Absalom) that's already beaten to death.

Sounds like an awesome sample. I've been doing an internship with a focus on militarism and masculinity, so it sounds like we have some similar interests despite you being a Medievalist and I an Americanist!

Oh wow.. I don't know how you guys did that. I had a hard enough time editing and adding to an old paper (which I also feels reflects my interests at least decently well), I seriously doubt I could have handled writing a whole new piece.

Curious; were most of your writing samples papers from classes, or thesis projects...? Mine was a paper from a class that I expanded on with the professor who taught the course after the fact.

Haha I didn't want to either! Especially to Texas, which requires something specific like a 650. It definitely rocked me, so I purposely chose to only apply to two schools that required it.

I did have an abysmal subject score, but only two schools I applied to asked for it so I'm not that concerned. I also applied to some top 20s, but I did try to be more broad than that and applied through the 60s (seems like I got the same advice as you, Julia). Probably should have applied further down the rankings too, but I am very relieved to know that my combined General score being one point shy of 310 doesn't have as much potential to hurt me as I thought.

Speaking of, is 310 mostly for top 20 programs, or is it more broad than that?

It's even worse because my figure is a 309.