Minnesotan

I think the term "waitlist" implies that you are officially in line for a spot. If they have a large pool for their final round, they probably don't want to send 60 wait list letters for 15 spots. Anyway, I feel your pain. I've made it past the first round of rejections at a couple of schools, and am waiting (im)patiently for an acceptance. Let's hope it works out for us.

There is a prestige factor at some schools, which may help in the job hunt, but only if all of the other criteria have been exhausted and the applicants are still equal. If it were me, I would take the program where I would be happiest and best able to live for 4-7 years.

No problem. I deleted your duplicates, and am moving this one to the proper area. Welcome aboard.

Now that you mention it, my level of sympathy is falling quickly. The "Oh, noes! I got in everywhere I applied!" problem isn't much of a problem, if you ask me. There are some very bright folks on this forum, who are well-prepared for grad work, who did not get in anywhere this year. That is a problem. Having to choose between Harvard, Yale, and Brown (Oh, bother!) is more of a luxury.

It looks like both history and english were kill zones this year. It honestly wasn't this bad when I applied two years ago. One of my programs this year had double (yes, double!) the amount of applicants from the year before. Jesus Haploid Christ! How do they expect us to avoid getting real jobs when @#$% like this happens?

If you're unionized, there is the potential for working with total slackers, who do precisely what is required of them and no more. If I stopped working at the time allotted for some of my duties, my students would not learn as much, and that's unacceptable to me. On the other hand, you have to get your own work done. If your supervisor is abusing your good work ethic, then you need to speak up. I think the real issue comes with grading papers (in the humanities/arts/ss). You could spend years marking grammar, giving advice, helping them focus their papers, but you know what? Only 3 students per class of 25 are going to read your comments! You often have to rush yourself, if you ever want to get any thesis/dissertation work done.

I had a roommate who insisted on doing that. They'll never find the body.

Yeah. The English undergrad system sounds great. Unfortunately your grad application system is even worse than the U.S. Or maybe it was just Oxford -- that was my only English app. Trying to get information from their classics dept. is like pulling teeth from an angry rhino!

If only I had 2,000 words to work with, too! Maybe then I would have had such a complete statement. But, yeah. She certainly turned a boring, boring study into a great statement of purpose. Envy.

The workload is nothing compared to the speed at which the novelty of grad school wears off and the imposter syndrome sets in. I'm just finishing my MA, and it's amazing how many of my colleagues (MA students, PhD students, and even some of the more open professors I've worked with) wonder that they're supposedly experts in their field (and wonder that someone actually thinks they belong here). Self-doubt seems to be paradoxically both the most harmful and motivating force behind the research and writing process -- something that can shut you down for a time, then make you angry enough to write like you are possessed, not sleeping or eating well for weeks! The best advice I could give anyone just entering grad school is to find a way to strike a balance between hard work and complete relaxation. It may seem silly, but when I first got here, I would not stop working whether I was on a date, at the movies, or attempting to sleep; I was always thinking about my thesis, whether I liked it or not. I hit a slump last summer that set me back a month or two, and it took great restraint to not overwork myself to catch up (only to burn out again, just when I would need to polish and defend my thesis). However you can dip your head in Lethe, do it (well, short of anything dangerous or illegal). Set up two mandatory nights off, and go out drinking, or bowling, or skydiving -- whatever will get you out of the library and into a better frame of mind. I realize this isn't manual labor, and we feel like we should be working seven days a week, but that's not healthy. These degrees aren't a race, and people who treat grad school like a competition will not only fail, but they'll also have a long list of peers who despise them, when the day is done. Be nice to others, and be nice to yourself. If you want a couple of helpful books (ones I wish I would have read before I started my grad studies), check out "Playing the Game: The Streetsmart Guide to Grad School," and "Getting What You Came For." Both of which should be available at your university's library, or on the cheap at amazon, ebay, or used book stores.

We've had this debate before, but all of my professors told me no anecdotes/narratives/'dear diary' entries. I guess a lot of people get carried away with their "I knew I wanted to be a professional historian of hellenistic philosophy by the time I was 2 years old, because my teddy bear told me that the universe is quenched in fire every 1000 years" stories, which are neither helpful nor interesting to read (and if you actually used my example, they might just think you're looneyshit!).

I love that you called France a small country. Obviously someone (I) would need to set up a central bureaucracy to maintain the database, check references, contact undergrad institutions for transcripts, etc. Students would pay a nominal fee (*ahem*ETS*ahem*) for my services.

Why go to a school you're not thrilled about attending, though? Attrition rates are high enough among people who are in their top choice programs. Leave the spot for someone who really wants to go to grad school there.

I'm sure that's why they arranged things that way. If you don't care enough to take a chance, then you likely don't want the fellowship, or their program, badly enough. The strategy seems to have worked, considering you don't want to go there, anyway.

If I must. Come on in the room.

They often impose such restrictions in case you turn them down. They would prefer to offer the funds to another of their top candidates, I'm sure.

We'll sneer derisively and go work for Michigan, who seems to like the Grad Cafe folks. =)

What external fellowships have application deadlines this late? I would love to know.

*ahem*

While I see where you're coming from, I think the problem comes fundamentally in our very different ways of looking at the world. For instance, the idea of 'reverse racism' is a racist term, in my book. It implies that all cases of racism in the world have been perpetrated as a function of "white" vs. "other," and that suddenly in the last few years this situation emerged where white people (or some other "majority" group) can now be discriminated against. I don't think either situation is the case. Moreover, to call a legitimate college political organization (I think it was the Young Republicans, or some such mainstream group, in the case of the Michigan scholarship) a white power organization is highly offensive. It implies that any attempt to make better the lives of white people is somehow targeting other races for hate crimes, or illegal discrimination. As it stands, private scholarship committees and philanthropic organizations have the right to hand funds to whomever they choose, based on whatever criteria they think fit. To say that scholarships for blacks, or oranges, or purples is okay, but scholarships for whites is not inclines me to think that racism is an issue, only it's what you would call "reverse racism." Anyway, the reverse of racism is equity, which is what most people say they want. To mandate that the American public makes up for historical wrongs, no matter how we justify it, is really just a nice way of granting vengeance to anyone who feels their group has been mistreated in the past (even if it was before they were born). I've seen firsthand what happens when nobody steps up and forces a truce in these situations, where one group feels slighted by another, and takes vengeance, leading the second group to cry foul and want vengeance on the first. I don't think, as everyone cries out for more for their own self-identified group, that people realize the situation they are creating, the results of which can be quite devastating. Philosophically, my point is quite simple: either everyone has to be treated equally with regard to race, or we're promoting racism. And, to be clear, this philosophical consistency is how I try to live my life -- I'm not just talking about the issue in abstraction. If I knew of someone of any race being discriminated against because of their race, I truly hope I would have the courage to stand up for them, no matter what the consequences to me. Whether the object of the discriminatory practice was hispanic, african-american, or anglo-saxon, it should not matter.

The use of "ure" likely does have a negative correspondence to intelligence. =)

Harvard is probably just jealous that Yale got all the "best" and "brightest" of the Clinton and Bush families. Thus, they've lowered their standards in hopes of attracting more slackers from the aristocracy who are being groomed to become politicians. =) That, or Harvard's library is about to get a new wing donated. lol Either way, save me a spot on the skepticism bandwagon.

lol... it's time to cultivate some karma, DMH. I think the universe is screwing with you. Is the school you're waitlisted at a better choice than the Mich?

Sorry, I was making an Affirmative Action joke, which I think is a method of fighting past racism through current racism, which cannot be helpful to society in the long run. The idea that people should be given or denied jobs (or spots in grad programs) based on their race is one of the problems that caused some groups of people to be in worse situations than they should be. I don't see the logic in fighting an evil against one group through the use of that same evil against another group. Again, offering scholarships based on race is a tricky issue, and needs to be examined. Especially after that fiasco in Michigan, where a student group was disbanded and disciplined for forming a scholarship for white students. All I am saying is that equality is what we should be striving for. That's not what we have now, when we examine the current policies and practices in academia.

There are a few Writing BFA programs in the U.S. that could really give you a step up. I would look at them, and make sure to take all of the screenplay and scriptwriting workshops they offer (as well as their fiction and cnf. Taking independent workshops without academic credit may teach you something, but it's less than worthless when applying without an English or Fine Arts degree of some sort. Why you'd want to change from a career with a future to one where you need at least an MFA to succeed is beyond me, though. Then again, all of my degrees are useless, so who am I to talk?