queennight

100% this. While my close family (and close friends) have come to terms with the fact that I'm applying for an English Lit PhD, I wouldn't say that they're exactly falling head over heels for the idea that I want to pursue 5-6 years of my life studying poetics, in a different country, no less. Applying for this discipline is definitely a labor of love.

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DETOX WAS MY FAVOURITE QUEEN, I can't stop laughing at this!

Trying to contact the department at your school for transcripts: Trying to contact your professor for LORs: Trying to contact ETS about sending your GRE score reports:

Fully calling somebody out, but there was an acceptance to University of York (UK I'm assuming rather than Canadian) for English (PhD). Congrats to whoever it was!

I love .gifs. I am also exhausted of waiting for a decision that will most definitely affect the direction of the rest of my life. So, let's make this a fun situation! Post any hilarious/funny/jokes .gifs (feel free to spam this many times) that adequately describe your feelings towards this waiting game or application season in general. This thread may well turn out to be just me repeatedly spamming myself over and over again, but you know what? I'm okay with that. I'll start it off!! Staring at my empty inbox: Realizing my life is built around checking GradCafe for new daily results submitted: "Won't you find out about your applications soon?": Talking about future plans with anybody who will listen: Actual future plans: Surviving grad school:

Sorry about this situation. If I was in your position, I'd be asking myself: 1) If I ask him for a reference, what are the chances that he'll give me one/write me a strong letter? 2) Who else can I turn to? Assuming that it was a bad break-up and question 1) has an answer of "He will most likely refuse/use this as emotional leverage over my wellbeing", the only thing that you can do is focus on other professors. Luckily, I think you're operating under the presumption that professors need hugely strong relationships to agree to write references -- which is not entirely true. If graduate school is your ultimate goal (and you need/want to apply next season of 2015-2016), I'd suggest starting to send off email queries to your old professors - mention that you used to take their class (even if you didn't know them particularly well), remind them of your grade/essay etc., and mention that you're interested in applying to graduate school and would like to get some advice about it. It's January - there's a perfect amount of time to schedule a coffee or drop in on office hours with a prof who you never strongly connected with earlier. Very few people will turn down (especially good professors) an opportunity to mentor or guide an old student. My advice would be to make the best of a rough situation: it's great that you've identified the problem (the relationship) - now, if your goal is to reach beyond that, you certainly have enough time before applications to remind an old professor of your face and to ask them for professional advice. Once you've established that coffee date/lunch/office hour meeting, it'll be easy to return to that person in August and ask them for a reference then. All you really need is that one coffee date connection to begin with. In my opinion, this should be a strong option for you to consider. Will it be potentially awkward? Yes - but life is never smooth anyways. If you can start making the mentally difficult decision to stop focusing on your disgust of this professor's 'using you' and change towards the outlook of chasing your dreams, you'll be fine. Many other women (and men) have struggled with these same 'academic' relationships: success is the best revenge, and I hope you achieve that. Best of luck!

White Knight

I don't think you did!! I think it's interesting that you included this caveat at the end of your post, however. Finances are clearly such a difficult thing to discuss. At the end of the day, I hope that writing ability is the #1 thing being measured by these programs (the craft of your WS, for instance, in my opinion is the best indication of whether you fit a program). When these schools do consider grades/scholarships/work experience/etc, on some level there should be discussion about personal circumstances if those are lower (mental health issues, gap years, financial ability, military experience, etc.). To me, these should be the basic requirements of a fair educational system. Somebody coming from a family worth $2 million dollars will not have to work at all and will be able to afford private tutors (assuming their family supports them); someone from a family with less means will have to struggle along. There's a clear difference, and it has nothing to do with an individual's capabilities, merely the socioeconomic background that they were born into. Then again, I'm definitely an idealistic leftist, and many may disagree with me.

I'd also like to add that I think the inclusion of asking students about 'discriminatory experiences' on some of the applications I filled out seemed like a positive move by some graduate schools. Whether that discrimination be financial, age-ist, sexist, or relating to your sexuality/gender/ethnic identity, it was something that I thought was relevant and a good move. I didn't have to work full-time during my education (I worked full-time summers, and took the occasional shift during the year), but being able to discuss how that would have impacted my GPA is something that should be included on applications, in my opinion. Ironically, I think there were more questions about this to answer for my law school personal statements than graduate school.

I think this is a really taboo subject that we're talking about, but I'm glad that you brought this up for discussion. It's a great question, and a difficult one to ask. My own decision to apply to 6 programs was definitely limited by finances. However, I don't think that this means that somebody who applied for 10+ programs necessarily is rolling in the dough, as this thread I think is starting to suggest. We all have credit cards, extra jobs, the ability to take on debt - it's a personal decision as to how much extra cost we want to invest in this process. There's nothing wrong with a decision to apply to 3 schools, just as there's nothing wrong with applying to 25, if you so decided. Either way, I honestly believe that graduate English schools do not keep your socioeconomic background in mind. As students, at the main top programs, all accepted are offered the exact same stipend and tuition refund. Smaller schools may take fellowships into account, but in theory, it shouldn't affect the large schools acceptances. As a side note, I think it's very interesting reading this question in conjunction with my own personal experience. Those of you who have private messaged me might already know this, but I'm applying to both graduate schools and law schools in Canada and seeing where my dice falls (I have interests in both areas). I'd actually argue that for other professional programs, such as law, your socioeconomic background plays a huge role in whether you decide to pursue a certain career or not (at least in Canada - and I know in the States this is even worse). I know many people who couldn't get loans out for law school and thus were rejected by the schools, simply on the basis of finances. I'd argue that in comparison to these brutally expensive professional programs, graduate school is much more of a equalizer (at least the larger, funded programs are). Certainly, there are schools that are assholes and don't relinquish application fees, but by comparison, professional school is a blood bath. If you are born into money, there's a good chance that you'll be able to afford the ridiculous fees for professional schools, and you'll be able to attend. If you don't have the money (even if you have the talent/academics), you're left with extraordinary debt loads that push you into certain areas (Bay Street/Wall Street, for example) or kill your finances until you die. More and more so, it seems to me that professional programs aren't just weeding students out by virtue of their academic success, but by virtue of their socioeconomic background. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, etc. If you are lucky enough to be born into a certain wealth, than by virtue of that wealth you will be able to create wealth of your own. Money makes money. A relevant article was published in Toronto Life (here) about the 'bank of mom and dad' that is propping up housing prices in Toronto. Undoubtedly, in my opinion, all of this will create a future recession, if not depression. So, at the end of the day, while I agree with you that some schools are assholes about fees, in comparison to certain professional programs (pharmacy, law, medicine all come into mind) I'm ecstatic at the fact that full scholarship options are available, albeit are insanely competitive.

OHHHHHHHHHHMYGOSH. CONGRATS!!!!! that's absolutely incredible!! (not surprising at all, since your SOP was GREAT - but still AWESOME!) EEK!

Bahahah SO TRUE. +1 Also if this is hypervodka, I'm insanely excited for her. ON ANOTHER NOTE YOU DUMMIES POST HERE FIRST DAMMIT

game theory

The final comment reads (in case anybody can't be bothered to scroll through the whole thing): "Other areas of humanities are also experiencing declines in the number of graduate applications they receive. Some departments even resorted to playing some moves with entry barriers. One hand, there was Rutgers, who extended the deadline for English PhD apps from Dec. 15 to Dec. 22 although the two-part application system, where the applicant first enters personal information and then waits 24 hours for the ability to upload supporting materials, may have played a part in this and, on the other hand, there was Fordham’s English department that announced that MA applications were 50% off (they used to cost $70, now they cost $35 but this is an university-wide move). So, if these two anecdotes actually were indications of a wider trend in English, then philosophy is far from the only field experiencing a drop."