Minnesotan

Only in "The Jungle Book." He was kinda cute.

Yup. Some humanities programs will drag it out until the summer. I've told multiple schools to trash my application because they were so damned slow (and I'd already accepted an offer).

Same here. I don't think you'll lose points either way, though.

If your SoP is a PoS, I wouldn't bother applying.

You're confusing intellect with creativity. Many creative people are completely nuts. You got me there. But to say you can believe in completely ludicrous things like people living in whales, talking bushes, magical transformations of bread into fish and the like, walking on water, a space zombie who fathered himself only to have himself killed to rectify the mistake he made when creating us (even though he's infallible -- it must be a test!), and vampiric blood rituals, while still being an intellectual is patently absurd! You cannot be an intellectual child who believes in fairy tales and talks to invisible friends while still being an adult intellectual! Delude yourselves however you must to justify your faith, but don't try to cover me in your deluge of bullshit.

Are you serious? I've never been anywhere that even approaches the friendliness of the upper Midwest, and I've lived all over the world. I find it troubling that it all comes down to race for you, too. Are you sure none of these racial tensions are projected? I know in my hometown class was a much bigger separating mechanism. Either way, you're obviously from the East if you think people out East are friendly.

It's really a shame that they can't find smarter grad students to grade these essays. I, for one, am skeptical about the idea that a five-paragraph essay needs much metacommentary beyond a slight nod toward the "here's what I'm going to do, here's what I'm doing, and here's what I've just done" approach I teach my comp. students to consider using in their real essays (of at least 5 pages). How lost can a reader get in a well-written 5-paragraph essay?

I disagree. I think the idea of faith undermines any attempt at being a genuine intellectual. Intellectuals base their conclusions on evidence, whereas faith is the systematic dismantling of systems of evidence and reason. The two are mutually exclusive. You cannot subject knowledge to belief and still consider yourself an intellectual. The religious intellectual cannot, by definition, exist. More likely, we have a whole lot of misled intellectuals who claim to be religious and misled religious folks who claim to be intellectuals.

The worst they can say is "we don't know." I would give them a polite phone call, if it doesn't show your stuff on the tracking page.

You'll find that in the "Lobby" forum.

I got pretty stressed out once mid-February hit. Many of my schools notified at the end of the month or in March.

Heh... it's always the religious majority who are the first to scream "Persecution!" I was merely playing along with the comment about karma. If it's okay to denigrate an "exotic" religion or philosophy but not xianity, then forgive me. I didn't realize I had offended the agents of the Grand High Theocrat, once again. So that I'm straight about the rules, Abrahamic religious rituals cannot be mocked, but Buddhist concepts are fair game? lol

I'm still waiting to hear from the University of Melbourne's MFA program, to which I applied three years ago. Obviously results may vary.

Did you call him a bloody rascal and challenge him to a duel? I believe that is the appropriate response in most cases.

Some writing programs are trending back toward formulae/exempla. Gerald Graff (a well-known English dork) has a recent book geared toward freshman comp. students that is basically a bunch of paradigms and instructions for their use. It just goes to show you that the history of writing instruction, much like other topics, is circular.

Normally you only get a grace period for things that are partially out of your control, such as xscripts and LoRs. It never hurts to ask, though -- a lot of deadlines are "postmarked by" dates, while others are for receipt of materials.

Why not do a conference paper of about 8 pages, and a short article of about 17?

Some programs do interviews, but only very few. More likely, you'll be unofficially interviewed throughout the course of a weekend visit, which is somewhat dishonest, but much more laid-back. Just don't drink too much until the professors leave.

*grumbles something about computer nerds and moves the thread*

Prayer is genuflection, submission, groveling to an invisible friend. It's only because religious people have low self-esteem that they make their invisible friends more important than themselves. Suckers!

Very much so. Humanistic disciplines are all about the flow of ideas, not the numbers. SoPs, LoRs, WSs are what matter. GRE and GPA might get you past an initial cutoff, but they won't get you in a program on their own merit. As for my Pedantic Man persona, I've been toying with a new superhero name, and this is what I've settled on for now. I'll test it out on my students after xmas.

Because some of the programs I applied to had a 1% acceptance rate last year. GRE and GPA are quantifiable, and are therefore the easiest to use as a guideline for the first major cut. I'm sure adcoms are happier folks when looking at a stack of 60 applications, rather than 600.

Haha! Genuflecting to a jealous universal force that seeks justification? Come on! What are we, 4?

Pedantic Man says: 'begging the question' is a logical fallacy (Lat. petitio principii), meaning that you are assuming the proposition which you are trying to prove. It drives Pedantic Man nuts when people misuse the term. Carry on.

Professors are human, too. They will understand if this was a one-time occurrence. That said, if you only applied to the most prestigious universities, they might have plenty of applicants with 4.0 gpas and no excuses. I don't know. Just remember that gpa is only one of many parts of an application. You've still got a decent overall average, so you will be able to make it past any initial cutoffs based on grades.