Minnesotan

What do you lose by asking?

Thesis work makes for a good distraction. If only I had stressed out a bit less during this process, mine would have been done by now. =) Anyway, good luck. I think you should feel fairly confident, since programs rarely allow you to move your application around like that unless they like you. You can take heart in that (though nothing, of course, is guaranteed in this business).

Then again, if you take driver's training in the UK, then in the US, it might be a bit confusing. It might be better to first learn the laws in the country in which you plan to drive.

What she said. I realize you're anxious, and it's good to stay on top of things, but at the same time you do not want to seem overly needy. I've heard a couple of people tell stories about how their anxious phone calls twice a week might have landed them in the rejection pile.

My MA program sounds quite similar to yours. They basically threw me into the deep end and said, "Take a year of coursework, and then write a thesis of no more than 200 pages." After that, getting advice was all about polite persistence and the ability to make meetings at odd, odd hours of the day. I probably got the most advice from meeting one of my professors at a local pub a couple of times per month. So, yeah. MA theses are often without structure from the institution or program. Buy some beers in exchange for sage advice, if that's what it takes. There's always a way to get people to meet with you -- sometimes you have to be creative.

Five days is not enough time between mailing supporting documents and pestering the department.

Seriously! Who gets viruses these days? Stop surfing the pr0nz! =)

His noodly appendage touches all of us, and His church is found within our hearts.

The Alienware laptops may be more expensive, but they make me feel all funny inside, like when I was climbing the rope in gym class. I think I want to make sweet love to them.

12 might be better with the predictions of an even larger applicant pool next year. Just make sure you gather as much information as possible from websites, potential advisers, and persons from outside the program before writing your statements. "Fit" really makes the application.

I use my Mac notebook all the time while I'm watching a Richard Pryor movie on Betamax, or while listening to my favorite Foghat 8-track!

Honestly, I think the Black List idea is absurd. Maybe, just maybe, a professor or two will remember your name if you were completely unprofessional and somehow made enemies during the application process, but the likelihood of anyone remembering that this even happened is very low. That multiple professors would hold grudges about it is even less likely. Even withdrawing after accepting an offer of admission, though unethical, happens often enough that it likely does not seem much more than a aggravating non-standard activity to an admissions committee. Sure, it's bad form, and it can inconvenience quite a few people. Does that mean they'll all write your name down and remember 4-7 years later to give you hell when you're looking for a job? I doubt it. While I wouldn't bother trying to get my money back, I honestly doubt the incident would ever become anything more than a humorous (and anonymous) anecdote to a program director, if he happens to remember it beyond this application season at all. In reality, the only consequences the OP will receive are more stress and a big run-around trying to deal with the bureaucrats who have long since cashed his check!

My girlfriend cries for three days straight, every month. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm doing anything wrong. Then again, I'm still to blame, whether I did anything wrong or not. Wait. What was the question?

That would be as useless as Rate My Professor, where final grades correspond directly to professor rating. Anyone who got accepted would rate the school well; anyone rejected would rate them poorly.

Ermm... U of Waterloo is in the Kitchener/Waterloo area, about 1.5 hours drive SW of Toronto. It is the University of Western Ontario that is in London (which is not that small), a little more than 2 hours SW of Toronto. Guelph is in the city of Guelph, located in between Waterloo and Toronto. York and UofT are in Toronto. All of which are respectable schools within two hours' drive of one another. It's a good thing this isn't the Geography forum, or you all should be ashamed. =)

Showing them that you are a good fit with the depatment is probably the most important part of the SoP. Don't try to be too clever or cute -- just illustrate that you are ideal for their program.

We've had this conversation before, but I think the GRE is mainly used as an additional tool for finding red flags in an application. As long as you hit some minimum marks (for English, I would aim for 700v, 5.5w, 550q), you should be fine. I did extremely well on mine, and it may or may not have helped me. This year, just like in 2006, I had mixed results with my applications. I wasn't one of those cats who gets in everywhere, but I did get a few offers with funding. Most people say o the GRE that it can't help you, but it can hurt you. I would tweak that a bit and say, the GRE can hurt you, but it can also help you if you scored an 800v (and you're applying in English or certain humanities fields). The likelihood of it being the reason you were chosen is very low, but it might act as a good tiebreaker, or it might be something that sets you apart from the crowd a bit. Who knows? I still maintain that the grad application process is a crap shoot.

Ditto McSpitto. Your acceptance is one of the small bits of leverage you've got, and program directors will jerk you around quite a bit if they think they can get away with it. Do not accept on half-promises or insinuations. If they want to fund you, fine. If not, then don't accept and hope that they will later come up with $15k/year out of the goodness of their hearts.

It depends. If they didn't even evaluate your application, then you paid a fee for a service they did not provide. On principle, it seems worthy of mention. In practice, it would look petty, though.

That's a good idea. If you're particular to a time period, quite a few schools have interdisciplinary 19th Century Studies (or 18th, 17th, etc.) programs that could fit your interests, too. It's worth having a look.

Did it turn out for you, commoner? I've got offers, but I don't think you want any of them (if I remember from your PM a while back, you're in a completely different field). I'll be turning down my last school and accepting the lucky winner within a week from now. =) Anyway, don't give up hope until you get the rejection letters in your hands. I recall getting an offer off the waitlist at one school (this was in 2006, when applying to MA programs) about mid-July. I had already accepted elsewhere, but it certainly shocked me (and gave me a little ego boost, I suppose). You never know when someone's going to flake out and decline their offer, opening up room for a waitlisted person.

I was the same way, all through undergrad and my MA. I got generic humanities degrees, then decided to specialize. I applied to both disciplines (History and English), and it ended up working out. My best suggestion is to find programs that fit your interests, and to make sure you have a variety of applications out there -- that is, if you have one in to Prestigious U, make sure you have one in at Mediocre U and Podunk U, as well. More often than not, fit is what will get you in, but it's also important to remember that the Prestigious U's of the world get hundreds of applications for tens of spots. Best to send out lots of apps to a variety of programs. Also, a few PhD apps wouldn't kill you. If you've done work in U.S. History, you might just have to fill some deficiencies when you get to your PhD program. I would contact the program directors and ask them what they thought. That way, you can get some PhD apps out at the same time as your MA apps. No sense doing a second terminal MA if you could earn an incidental one during your PhD program.

English departments are fickle. Send out lots of applications.

Yeah. Make them tell you about the money before you choose.

Better to earn a PhD at a good program than drop out of an excellent one. I think I would have made the same decisions as the above posters. You don't need to attend an Ivy to succeed. You might, however, need to attend an Ivy if you require a lot of ego stroking.