SleepyOldMan

btw: If you visit during the low season, the most fabulous place to stay (in a very Old School way) is inland a few miles at the hotel in Rancho Santa Fe. (Rates are exorbitant during the high season.) Especially if you are visiting with a SO. (Trust me, you will thank me later.)

Hmmmm. Not sure I'd agree about the food being "great," though that's probably relative to where one has lived previously. Superiorly authentic Mexican food is to be had at Bety's Tacos in Encinitas, about 15 minutes north of campus. (Most people have not had real Mexican, and this is what it tastes like.). El Pescador is a truly excellent fresh fish market in downtown La Jolla if you cook, though somewhat expensive. Graduate student housing is rather old, but the price is right, and the location is on top of a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, so you conceivably could have an ocean view. The beach at Del Mar, just north of campus, is perhaps the prettiest and most user-friendly. When the tide is out, take your mountain bike to the beach and ride for miles on the wet sand south back towards campus, through Black's Beach and below the cliffs of Torrey Pines State Park. Campus architecture is mostly brutalist on the outside, and uninviting on the inside. The library (google it) is spectacular looking but extremely cold. If it could talk, the library's main plaza would say, "This is what the end of the world looks like, and I will be here long after all of you are gone.". (If you visit, you will see that this is no exaggeration.) The vibe from walking around campus is that students, generally, seem withdrawn, unhappy, stressed, perhaps depressed. This is not the only UC campus at which this seems so. Very little interaction, little in the way of school apirit. The sky is blue and the temperature is warm most of the time. The setting is highly enviable. The desert is not far away by car and should not be missed. But the university environment cannot be characterized as warm or traditional in the sense one might be used to in the east. But if you visit, and if you're not from California, your physical senses will likely be overwhelmed.

Many thanks for the references. Other than Ashbery, really no one "exotic." Faves include Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Stevens; James and Joyce (outside the genre); Flaubert and Proust (outside the language); Plato and Kant (outside the discipline); most anything on artificial intelligence (outside the humanities).

Let's recall that this thread is about getting into the "top tier" schools. It may be that academics in general say that undergrad institution does not matter, but the question here is whether it matters to academics (and adcomm members in particular) at the top tier schools. The prestige of the university at which they teach assuredly matters to them; and, I would guess, many of them went to name brand UGs as well, the prestige of which also matters to them. I would also note that it would be highly non-PC for an adcomm member to come out and "say" that UG institution matters a lot. It sounds too elitist. But it is hardly rare in human affairs for people to say one thing and actually do another. As in any profession, the primary question the group of insiders ask themselves in evaluating an outsider/applicant is whether the outsider is likely to become "one of us." The more the applicant "looks" like one of the insiders, the more the insiders are likely to give the applicant the benefit of the doubt. To someone whose self-image is defined in very important part by academic pedigree, applicants who have a "lesser" pedigree immediately have another hurdle to clear, because they immediately appear as "other."

One might also keep in mind that at the most prestigious grad schools of English, there may be upwards of 400 applications for 8 or 10 spots. So, they may be admitting perhaps 2% out of a pool of applicants that presumably includes the "the best and the brightest.". What would it take to stand out in that crowd? When this process is over, it would probably be interesting and helpful if those people who are in fact accepted to Yale, Princeton, Berkeley, Harvard and Stanford describe their pedigree, qualifications and how they wrote their applications.

I would second the comments of hashslinger and comebackzinc. 1. Most professors at most top schools went to a name-brand college and believe that name-brand colleges (and their students) are better than non-name-brand colleges (and their students). It's a pretty general rule of human nature that people are more comfortable with and view in higher regard other people who are like themselves in relevant respects. This is one of those cases. It doesn't mean you cannot be admitted from a non-name-brand school, but it does mean that you have higher hurdles to overcome. 2. If Professor A at your PhD school helped you get a job at University B, then, when Professor A calls you (or writes a LOR) and suggests that undergraduate student C would make a fine graduate student in your department, chances are pretty good that you will make the extra effort to see that C is admitted to your program. Similarly, if PhD school D manages to place one of its PhD's at University E, chances are pretty good that when professors at University E lobby strongly on behalf of student F for admission to D's PhD program, D is going to think twice before denying F admission. No mystery here. Just the way the world works in general.

davidipse: Does anyone at the schools you applied to write about or teach Ashbery? I enjoy his poetry, but didn't see his name mentioned among faculty interests or publications at any of the schools I looked at.

Fit is relevant only from the school's point of view, not the applicant's. The question is how the committee members view you and how you fit within their collective vision of what they want their group of graduate atudents to look like. It should go without saying that we, as applicants, have little or no sense as to what each committee may be looking for. We just don't have any reliable information about that. They are departments full of human beings who have complex interrelationships with one another, personal, social, political, historical and much more. All of that, none of which we are privy to, goes into the process whereby admissions decisions are made. Part of the process is no doubt rational, but much of it would doubtless strike an observer as quite irrational. It's more like a black box that spits out decisions, but whose interior working are mysterious. Accordingly, it matters zero how well any one of us may think we fit into a particular program. It could hardly be less relevant. The best you can so is present yourself in the best light possible, so the committee will get a clear sense of who you are. Then let them do their job. What I think is important is to avoid saying anything in your application that could serve to easily weed you out. Remember that the committee members are all exceptionally well-trained, critical and perceptive readers. They will immediately pick up on and hone in on anything in your application that seems odd, weird or, worst, potentially unprofessional. They are looking for people who will in some form or another go on to represent the department, so ideally they would prefer to view successful applicants as potential colleagues. IMO the very best thing you can do is show your SOP to the one or two people you know who have the best judgment about practical matters. Ie, the very shrewdest people you know. Ask them how your writing reads, and what suggestions they might have. They will be able to spot, objectively, any flaws in your approach and suggest ways to fix them.

1. A little parable about "fit": One male talking to another about the object of his affections: Male 1: I just love her. I know we would make a great couple. Male 2: What makes you think so? Male 1: She has blonde hair. I love girls with blonde hair! [Later, the object of Male 1's affections is talking to Male 2 about Male 1]: I don't think we have much in common. 2. If you receive a request for hard copies of your transcripts, you are in (unless the unofficial copies you submitted with your transcript were fraudulent). Universities are like corporations, and to understand how they operate, try think like a corporation. One main concern of corporations is what they call "controls": Ie, they put systems in place that are designed to prevent the corporation from making mistakes that make it look bad, paying out money that it isn't obligated to pay out, etc. Here's how I think it works in the grad school application context: The university is mostly content to have departments to make decisions as to whom they want to accept, and they want the process to be as simple as possible, without generating excess paperwork that needs to be filed, kept track of, etc. Hence, in most cases, no official transcripts are asked for at the start. But when it comes time to make offers of funding (i.e., committing university funds), then the corporate governance system wants to make sure that offers are not made on the basis of transcripts that have not been officially certified. So, if they ask you for official transcripts, they are probably at the stage where they are going to the graduate school administration to ask them for funding of some kind, awards, fellowships, etc. 3. Although we may have little else on our minds besides graduate school acceptances, the departments themselves, and individual professors in particular, have lots of other things on their minds. This afternoon's lecture. Tonight's hot date with a colleague from the computer science department. Taking time to pay one's monthly bills. So, it really shouldn't be surprising if not all decisions are made at once, or, even if they are, if not all notifications are made at once. Ie, surprising as it may seem, it's really not all about us.