Dr. Old Bill

Anything relevant to your field, really. Mine has education (including "in progress"), a couple of field-related jobs, most of my poetry publications, academic honors I've received, academic references, languages studied, and areas of specialization. I'm a bit older, but I made a conscious decision not to add all of my non-relevant work experience, and even my non-relevant educational background. A C.V., while more cumulative than a resume, should still have a focus. You still want to present all of the things that matter.

Whew. Thanks guys. My GRE general wasn't bad. 89th percentile on the verbal. Not quite as high as I'd like, but good enough to not raise any hoary eyebrows, I think.

Okay. I need someone to tell me that a score below 600 is no big deal. I was preaching this psalm a few weeks ago, but now I'm starting to worry again. Reassure me, good people!

If it's any consolation, I got a mediocre score too...and I did study poetry extensively!

Hypervodka may be right, though I would still be inclined to make it clear that material has been truncated. Even the classic * * * between portions might be worthwhile. While it's true that one can technically always cut down a paper, I still think it's important to show that you have done more work on the topic than what 10-12 pages allows for. In other words, it should be able to stand alone, but at the same time there should be an indication that it doesn't have to, if you know what I mean. (For what it's worth, I would have a footnote or a square-bracketed sentence or two talking about what was removed from the original paper).

Congrats guys!!! Y'all did better than I did, so quit yer complaining, Zanmato! ALL of your scores are high enough that they most certainly won't be a factor against you in your applications. That's what matters most. Super glad that all of us here on GC are now in the same boat from a completion standpoint.

Oh, don't get me wrong -- I'm an obsessive tinkerer too. Truly. Every time I look at one of my poems, even if it has been published, I'll invariably change something, whether it's a punctuation mark, a single word, or even a few words. And the same is / was true of my SOP. The key is to have a baseline of satisfaction. I wouldn't have sent something out that I didn't think was "very good" or even "great"...but that's not to say that I didn't tinker with every subsequent version of my SOP, changing little nuances along the way. If I looked back at the SOP I wrote for Penn State (the first one I submitted), I'd probably curl up into a ball. Not because it's in any way bad, but just because it's the earliest "complete" version, and it hasn't undergone the (very) fine tuning of the others. Again, I know it is well-written and on point, but I think one could tinker with a SOP infinitely. I mean seriously, with three more years of regular tinkerage it could probably be so much better, right? That's a good question. I remember looking at their program, but it just didn't jump out at me. Now that you bring it up, I'm tempted to look at it again, but I'm going to force myself not to. 17 is enough. 17. Is. Enough. Still, I'd give my eye tooth to live in California again. In the perfect fantasy world where I receive multiple acceptances, the California factor could very well weigh into my decision-making process.

It's very true! But judging by the number of wonderful medievalists on this forum alone, I'm glad I'll be representing the period just afterward...

Nah -- you'll get your scores overnight tonight. Mine arrived at 6:30 AM EST on the Monday after they were "sent" to my institutions, so I assume yours will show up around 3:30 AM PST. Also, I think (but don't know) that the scores are actually snail-mailed to the institutions. I know that most of mine didn't actually receive theirs until a few days later. So worry not: if you bombed, you'll be the first to know!

Love the new profile pic, 1Q84. In fact, I just finished writing a paper on "Lycidas" this morning. "Blind mouths" has to be one of the best conceits in the English language. That's a good question. I came to academia from a creative writing standpoint, in that I wrote and published a bunch of poetry before I realized that I could actually spend my life studying the discipline. Since almost all of my poetry is "formal" in that it is mostly written in traditional forms (sonnets, villanelles etc.), I suppose it follows logically that I would have an interest in the nature of form and meter. Sonnets have always been my "specialty," as it were, from a writing standpoint, and a research seminar on Shakespeare's Sonnets in particular had a major effect on me. Not only were both professors (it was co-taught) fantastic (and both became LOR-writers)...the content was somewhat transhistorical, delving into Petrarch and even Ovid as traditional inspirations for Shakespeare. My proposed course of study is something of an extension of that, though at once more specific and more broad (if that makes any sense). But it all seems to work together, in my mind. I also happen to love a lot of Early Modern writers simply on their own merits. I truly enjoy a lot of Milton, and my love of Shakespeare extends well beyond his sonnets. I have a healthy appreciation for Donne, Spenser, Sidney, Jonson, Marvell and others as well. Having said all of that, I'm a generalist at heart, and it will be a little sad to exclude some of my favorite periods / genres from graduate study, but at the end of the day, if I can spend my grad school years focusing on transhistorical prosody, grounded in the early modern era, I'll be happy as a clam. Assuming clams are, you know, happy. (I think it's safe to say that these clams aren't)

I'm not the "praying" type, but if I were, I would be kowtowing to every deity known to man right now, beseeching the heavens that you all get great scores. Or have a computer glitch in your favor. I'm not a picky heathen.

I wouldn't get paranoid about it. Good scores are good scores, and unless (like Chicago) an institution specifically states that they don't want subject scores, the worst that's going to happen is that they won't be a factor either way. A good rule of thumb is to check with the DGS of a program first, however.

Yes, applying there just feels right to me. I had valid reasons for not applying, but I'm certainly glad I have. The downside is that they traditionally don't send out acceptances / rejections until March. Still, I think that even if I get offers from other schools before that, I'll hold out on accepting until I hear from UCI. My interest is quite piqued for their apparent plans.

I basically started doing them as soon as they became available. UMD and Penn State were both done in mid-August. Essentially, I made a point of writing my main SOP and polishing my WS by the beginning of August, and began several applications as soon as they were open. It was just a case of doing things systematically and keeping things organized via a spreadsheet etc. I was happy with my SOP in mid-August, but there were definitely some minor variations over the next couple of months or so (not to mention more dramatic variations for certain institutions). But really, once you have all of your principle documents done, and you have your LOR writers ready, it's just the hour or so it takes to fill out the application itself. Oh, and paying the money and sending GRE scores and transcripts, of course. They had no problem with it. I stopped by one's office first thing in the morning yesterday, and she responded with an emphatic "of course!" I emailed the other two, and both replied within a few hours, saying they had no problem with it. Remember that your LOR writers usually think well enough of you to write on your behalf to begin with, and chances are that they have a single "form" LOR that they make minor modifications to accordingly. It probably doesn't take them much time at all, and if they are truly supportive (as I know mine are), it's a non-issue. Having said that, I did make a point of asking them first, and wouldn't have applied to an additional school if they weren't willing or didn't respond etc. You're right that it is getting pretty late in the game to add another school, but since I had all of my documents assembled and just needed to write a "fit" paragraph for my SOP, it wasn't much of a problem.

So I was almost convinced that I was completely done with my applications for this season, with the total number at a nice, round 16. But thanks to some new information I learned about UC-Irvine (thanks Rdsull89!), I decided to take the plunge and apply there as well. I had been on the fence about it for a long while, and even created a thread to that effect a few months ago. But there are a couple of POIs there who are very close matches, and it seems as though the program there is trying to focus more on poetics...and the kind of poetics I'm interested in to boot. An amusing side-note: my wife often demurs about California, and it's part of the reason why I haven't applied to one or two other programs in that state. I personally love California, having lived in the greater L.A. area for half a year, and having visited the Bay area multiple times. So this morning, my wife had to fly to San Diego, arriving in California for the first time. Her first text to me after arriving? "It's gorgeous here. We should plan a trip here some time." I'd move back to Cali in a heartbeat. It's obviously a tertiary consideration, clearly subservient to the other practical reasons to choose a program ("fit" and "quality," in my view)...but I can't deny that I'd enjoy the weather and general opportunities afforded by Southern California.

I can't speak to the rest (though I seem to recall coming across this question in past threads), but I will say that I didn't list my poetry publications in the "previous publications" fields, even though I have several in high-profile journals. Even at the schools where there isn't a lot of disconnect between creative writing and academic study (Yale, for instance), I suspect they're more interested in your academic publications. I did list most of my print publications on my C.V., however, and made reference to a few in my SOP. If it's an integral part of who you are, then it's worth mentioning somehow / somewhere.

Well, it's worth remembering that it would put you in D.C. with all its Smithsonians, Folger Shakespeare Library, and various other major research centers. And as Proflorax suggests, there are other local schools in the same consortium.

All of the schools I applied to allowed me to send my recommendation requests before the application was submitted. I think it's standard practice in the U.S., at least. Even though I got most of my applications done very early, there was still one letter-writer who managed to upload his LORs before I had submitted a few of them.

I actually loved the town of Claremont. When I lived in Rancho Cucamonga, I used to drive there every few weeks to load up on CDs (Rhino Records was/is a fantastic independent record store), and occasionally catch a live band at a coffee shop called the Press Club. I did briefly consider their program, but funding / fit / placement issues prevented it.

Still in the USN top 50, but Brandeis has a very good reputation, yet never seems to get the love it deserves. I didn't apply for various reasons, but Ramie Targoff is one of the better scholars in my field, and it would have been a joy to work with her. From a research perspective, one subtle strategy is to find programs that have reciprocal agreements with more reputable / established programs. A student at Rutgers, for example, can utilize many of the resources at Princeton. Rutgers is obviously no slouch unto itself, but there are many other examples of "lesser" programs affording their students the opportunity to benefit from some of the "better" programs' faculties, research centers, libraries etc. Always worth looking into, at least.

You don't receive copies in the mail. All I got from my September test was an email. The October test-takers should get their scores delivered via email in ten days or so, I suspect -- perhaps Monday, the 24th.

For what it's worth, I did (as an example): MY NAME CRITICAL WRITING SAMPLE AWESOME UNIVERSITY MONTH & YEAR Top left corner, of course. In my SOPs, I put "Graduate Admissions Committee" where the professor would normally go.

No...late January. Looks like most acceptances went out on January 28th and 31st this year.

Yes, this is definitely a more "frame of reference" thread. Like everything else in the admissions process, even the acceptance dates are subjective. But the list should give a very general sense of when acceptances are sent out, if nothing else.