TeaOverCoffee

49. Puke profusely on January 20. 
50. Ask myself again and again why I didn't apply to Canadian programs to be with Justin. 

Today, I found myself extremely bored. As a result, I complied a list of when schools typically notify for first-round acceptances using data from the results page. After, I rearranged things in order by  when programs typically notify.

Michigan State-Dec 10? (Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures)
OSU-Jan 25
Wisconsin- Jan 28
Duke- Jan 29
WashU- Jan 31-Feb 2
Northwestern-Jan 31-Feb 2
Berkeley- Jan 31-Feb 2
Chicago- Feb 1/2
Minnesota-Feb 2
Vanderbilt - Feb 2/3
Texas- Feb 3/4
Indiana-Feb 3/4
Purdue-Feb 3-5
UCLA- Feb 4/5
Johns Hopkins- Feb 5
Davis-Feb 5/6
Penn State- Feb 5/6
Pittsburgh-Feb 5/6
Nebraska-Feb 5-7
NYU-Feb 6/7
Maryland-Feb 7-9
Rochester-Feb 8/9
Emory- Feb 8-9
Irvine-Feb 8-9
Illinois- Feb 9-12
Brown-Feb 10-12
LSU-Feb 11
Rice- Feb 12
Buffalo-Feb 12
Missouri- Feb 12-14
Delaware-Feb 12-14
Kansas-Feb 14
Carnegie Mellon- Feb 14/15
Alabama-Feb 14-16
Cornell- Feb 15/16
Miami University-Feb 15/16
Michigan-Feb 16
Connecticut-Feb 16
CUNY-Feb 16/17
Santa Barbara-Feb 17-19
Stanford- Feb 17-Feb 20
Princeton-Feb 17-20
UVA- Feb 19/20
Rutgers-Feb 19/20
Harvard- Feb 20-Feb 22
Columbia- Feb 20-22
Penn- Feb 20-22
Utah-Feb 22
Notre Dame-Feb 23
Yale- Feb 24/25
Washington-Feb 25
Syracuse-Feb 26
Chapel Hill-Feb 26/27
Oregon-Feb 27-28
Iowa-March 2-5
Florida State-March 4-7
Mississippi- March 5-7

Lovely, Warelin!

What's funny is that I made this list for my own programs and pinned it to the wall just yesterday...

C'mon OSU!

49. Puke profusely on January 20. 
50. Ask myself again and again why I didn't apply to Canadian programs to be with Justin. 

@TeaOverCoffee, you are living my dream!!! I love the program at Ole Miss for M.A., and the reason I am applying to Syracuse for M.A. is because I love their PhD program so much! Also, we clearly share a life motto (case in point: my profile picture). 
... That didn't further the topic at all, but I had to fan girl a bit. It's nice to see familiar goals, outside of the realm of the Top 20. 

Ouch! Hopefully that means they'll forget about the typo while reading the sample!
I've just submitted my last application. At this stage of the process, I'm not sure I even feel relieved... Now I just want to know and move on. Or not move on, but at least I'd know. 

@KikiDelivery Hello to a fellow Legend of Korra fan~ (and I'm guessing a Miyazaki fan, too?)

Panicking. Can't think in complete sentences. WHAT DO I DO WITH A MASTER'S DEGREE IF I DON'T GET ACCEPTED TO ONE OF THE 12 PROGRAMS TO WHICH I AM APPLYING? (I am screaming, inside and out.) Console me. Coddle me. Halp. 

Got it. Do you currently have a Masters? University of Washington requires you to have a Masters before you can apply to the PhD program. If you don't already have one, they may have put you in the MA applicant pool as a result. This is from their website:
A Master's degree in the discipline is required. Applicants without a Master's degree must apply to the M.A. program first and indicate the Ph.D. as their final degree goal. Because our M.A./Ph.D. program is fully integrated, students entering at the M.A. level can progress internally and non-competitively to the Ph.D. program given satisfactory academic progress.

Also: I would strongly suggest you not consider a MA program that makes you teach a 3/3 load at any point. That amount of teaching should signal to you that the department is less interested in you as a developing scholar than as a source of labor. 

I still have my list from last season about which schools require the subject test. Would you like the list of schools?

I'm toying with the idea of NOT retaking the GRE Subject Test and NOT applying to any schools that require it this cycle. This would be a major decision for me, as I've traditionally held Yale and Princeton as my top choices, but I'm starting to wonder if it's worthwhile, given the sizeable number of programs that also look good to me. I didn't have a competitive score the first time around, which surprised me at the time, as I felt good coming out of the test (though my decision to make educated guesses on every question I didn't know probably backfired)...but do I want to put myself through that again? I suppose I've got a couple of months to decide.
Anyone else making a conscious decision to skip the lit test this time around?

Seeing these numbers really stresses the fact there are no "back up" schools. Thanks for putting this together, hypervodka! 

Why?
Seriously...if you just acknowledged that you're making the same thread, why make it at all?
My reasons for going down this road should not concern you. I'm pretty sure most folks here read The Chronicle and various state-of-the-industry publications, and are told by many that we should not pursue this course. Clearly those of us posting here are, and I doubt many minds will be changed by an anonymous, dissenting voice on an Internet forum.
I just can't read a post like this without getting a strong whiff of ulterior motive.

Hi all,
I, too, am applying for PhD programs in the fall. I complete my MA program next April, so I'm looking into several universities with strong eighteenth-century faculty. I currently only have about eight programs on my list, so I hope to get that to ten by the summer. 
I look forward another application process with my future looming in the distance like a faint, desolate mirage. 
 

Yale just hired Jonathan Kramnick and also has Jill Cambell and Joe Roach and is doing a junior search this year. Harvard just hired Deidre Lynch and a junior person. Penn has Chi-Ming Yang and Suvir Kaul. On the west coast, Stanford has John Bender (close to retirement) and Blakey Vermeule. UCLA has Helen Deutsch and Sarah Karim (Nussbaum just retired).
Those are the best places to do eighteenth century, in my opinion.

Oh no problem! I'm not sure how Rutgers uses the GRE scores, but the only "good" part of the score that I had was the verbal. Both my quantitative, and probably more importantly, analytical writing scores were also abysmal, so I wouldn't necessarily write Rutgers off because of it. (My GRE lit was also quite laughable!)
 
The only thing about UConn that I know about is Jean Marsden, but really it's just the name that I've heard tossed about. I don't really know anything about the specifics of the program or the 18th C concentration, sorry!

Hey TeaOverCoffee,
I can give you the schools I applied to as a Restoration/18th C applicant.
I successfully applied to: University of California - Los Angeles, University of Indiana - Bloomington, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, and Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey.
Other schools have 18th century professors as well, but not as highly concentrated. UPenn would be the next highly concentrated, but mostly on the Romanticism end of the spectrum. Columbia for instance really only has 1, Jenny Davidson, with one or two Romanticists who may dabble in the latter end of the century. Yale also has two that I know of, but both are relatively older. Both UCLA and Rutgers have new hire 18th century professors which means they both have a great mix of stages for professors. Hope this helps! 
 

We've been building our 18th c. profs.  They're especially good if your interests include theory or philosophy (Tony Brown and Amit Yahav), though if you do cognitive work at all, Andrew Elfenbein, though he more does 19th c., works with some 18th c. grad students.  Our Romance poet specialist is Brian Goldberg.

I agree with what a lot of the other threads have said: I specialize in British Lit of the "long" eighteenth century (c.a. 1660-1830), and it is true--there are significantly less graduate students who apply to schools with that specialty in mind--Nineteenth Century/Victorian, 20th c./Modernist, and Renaissance/Early Modern are the most (over)populated specialties in lit. programs. That being said, you'd have a significantly lower applicant pool but, as others have stated, your competition is pretty stiff, since most 18th centuryists are notoriously well-read and informed in their field (....it really is an eighteenth-century thing). While many of the areas of specialty have tight communities, the eighteenth-century community is a rather intense one (in the best sense), and as a prospective graduate student in the field there will be certain things you need to demonstrate, both in your statement of purpose (SOP) and writing sample, that the programs to which you apply will expect you to know already.
As for programs, it depends on what type of "fit" you're looking for: if you want to aim for the cream of the crop, UC-Berkeley is currently ranked #1 for 18th century studies. UVA is also on there (I think at #5), and so is UChicago, Stanford, UPenn, WashU, and Indiana (#10). Most of these programs, you'll find, have an intense pool of eighteenth-century applicants. Beyond simply knowing your field, you'll most likely need to demonstrate some deftness in a foreign language (French or German are pretty standard for 18th c.), as well as have some decent work done either at conferences (if you're an MA student) or in your writing sample (BA or MA), if you hope to compete with these other applicants. Not to mention your GRE and subject test scores need to at least hit the 90th percentile (over 660 on Verbal, over 670 on the subject test)--at LEAST. Most exceed 700. On the Canadian side, University of Toronto and McGill (in Montreal) have stellar eighteenth-century programs, but they are basically the cream of the crop in Canada and equally difficult to get into.
If you're looking for really strong programs that aren't necessarily in the top 10, there are several schools that are very highly ranked, and also very competitive, that have excellent eighteenth-century programs: Illinois-Urbana Champaign, UMaryland (College Park), Penn State, WUSTL etc. etc. These programs look for strong GRE scores and previous academic record, but they seem to pay a lot of attention to your writing sample, SOP, and letters of rec.
Then there are, of course, really good programs that aren't exceedingly high ranked (not quite in the top 40) but that are still nationally ranked (top 100) which house really good eighteenth-century scholars: Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, Tufts, Auburn, Connecticut, etc. It all depends on what you want to do and who you want to work with.
Either way, my best advice (I can't remember if you really asked for it or not, but here it is) for you is that, if you are considering applying as an eighteenth centuryist, to really pinpoint exactly what makes the field appealing to you (i.e., demonstrate what you know about where eighteenth-century studies has been and where it is now) and what critical questions you'd like to interrogate should you get the opportunity to do graduate study (i.e., demonstrate where you think eighteenth-century studies should go, in your own research, at least). And again, like others have said, don't pick a specialty because there is a seemingly higher demand for it--especially the eighteenth century because, if you don't love it, you'll be thinking "WTF" the entire time you study it. Best of luck, and should you decide to go all the way in 18th c. studies, I'd have to say: welcome to the field!

As for as I know, any funded MA program is a reputable one. There is no ranking for MA programs, so just make sure you do good work, produce a stellar writing sample, and make strong connections with faculty wherever you go. 

I wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who responded to my initial post. I know it's technically too early to worry about re-applying next year, but it helps me so much to have a game plan. Since I'm open to the possibility of reapplying next year, I'm currently finishing a paper that could serve as a new writing sample that's a bit more streamlined to my current research interests. I'm trying to stay somewhat active in academia in the interim between my MA and PhD with conferencing/publishing opportunities. In short, I'm trying my best to channel all of this uncertainty into productivity. 
My two primary mentors have both told me that while I'm a strong candidate for a PhD program, the reality is that this might become a multi-year process. While I trust their judgement, I don't have any friends who have applied more than once, so the thought of reapplying feels so daunting/impossible. Having access to your perspectives is really wonderful. So thank you so much for your stories and encouragement! @bee120 @ProfLorax @Wyatt's Terps @jrockford27
This is all really good info to know! If you could point me to the direction of that article, it would be much appreciated. 
I tried to be really strategic with my selection of programs, but I know there was room for improvement. I chose English programs that "ranked" in a range from 20-100. There were a couple of programs I was drawn to based on location only to retroactively realize I was a terrible fit. For instance, I applied to a program that only admits comp lit students who work with multiple languages when I only aim to work with contemporary American texts. (I want to specialize in gender/sexuality/queer studies as well). I wish I could take that application back, honestly, haha. Personally, I'm not aiming for an Ivy League; I want to find my way into a program where I'm a really good fit. 
This is so good to know. It might be different, but I emphasize interdisciplinary studies in my own research, and wasn't sure how to work that avenue into my statement of purpose. I threw it out in a line or two, and it almost felt disingenuous to not devote more time to it. But it makes so much sense that your SOP should be "categorical." Since I felt like my SOP oscillated between my two current research interests, this is something I can re-strategize for next year. And also good luck to you with the next round! I'm sure you will do great.
Again, thank you to everyone who responded. I'm new to the forums, and I'm so grateful for your support/words! 

My favorite time of year... the season of celebration gifs! Congrats, BarAndFrills! It's so nice to know this early in the game that you have an acceptance in the bag. 

I wouldn't retake it, unless you hear from a program that really wants it. At least one program on your list (the one I'm in) doesn't use it at all, and, to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't carry much weight in this field. Universities want a minimum standard, and it may help qualify for university fellowships, but as an MA you likely (read: probably) aren't eligible for them to begin with. Also, and I say this with all seriousness, but I wouldn't expect you to see too many candidates out of undergrad with better qualifications than you listed here.

I'm firmly in the camp that suggests including personal information in the SOP, but only if you can make a connection to your research interests. Since you mentioned your interest in class disadvantage and your personal experiences with such I think it should definitely go in the SOP. I had professors at each of the schools where I was accepted make a connection with me over the personal information I put in the SOP and I think it helps them understand not just what you do, but who you are and where you come from.