Dr. Old Bill

Seriously! Based on these dates, you should know the results of a full half of your applications in around 2.5 months!

Interesting. The Results Search shows five acceptances were sent on February 19th, with most rejections coming on March 4th (and a few later, it seems). This list is just for acceptances though. I could have done a separate list for rejections, but that would have been too depressing...

Hey folks, Because I was a bit curious, and had a bit of time on my hands, I went through and cross-referenced the USNews Top 40 Graduate English rankings with the 2014 Ph.D. applicant acceptance dates found through Grad Cafe's Results Search. It appears that some institutions sent out most of their acceptances on one day, while others opted for "rolling" acceptances and spread them out across a week or more. Please note that this list is very approximate, as it is based on third-party information, and only on last year's figures. And I don't personally endorse the USNews rankings, but it seems to be the simplest go-to guide for the top schools. People can feel free to add more schools as they wish! That said, the following list gives you some idea when acceptance decisions could be made this year. Waitlists and rejections are a different matter altogether. Berkeley – Late January to Early February Harvard – Mid-February Stanford – Late January to Mid-February Columbia – Mid- to Late February Princeton – Late February UPenn – Mid- to Late February Yale – Mid-February Cornell – Mid-February U. of Chicago – Early March Duke – Late January UCLA – Early February U. of Virginia – Early to Mid-February Johns Hopkins – Mid-February UMich-(Ann Arbor) – Mid-February Brown – Mid-February UNC-Chapel Hill – Mid-February Rutgers (NB) – Mid- to Late February U. of Texas-Austin – Mid-February U. of W – Madison – Late January NYU – Late February Northwestern – Early February CUNY – Mid-February Indiana-Bloomington – Early to Late February Urbana-Champaign – Mid- to Late February Emory – Early to Mid-February Ohio State – Late January to Early February Penn State – Varied widely UC-Davis – Early February UC-Santa Barbara – Mid-February Vanderbilt – Late January to Early February U. of Iowa – Early March UMD-College Park – Early to Mid-February U. of Washington – Early to Mid-March WUStL – Mid-February Rice – Early February U. of Minnesota (Twin Cities) – Early February USC – Late January to Early February Carnegie Mellon – Mid-February UC-San Diego – Early February UC-Santa Cruz – Mid-February Notre Dame – Late February U. of Pittsburgh – Early to Mid-February Mid-February is (unsurprisingly) the most dominant acceptance period, though Vanderbilt, OSU, Stanford and a few others seem to be early accepters. The Penn State figures are rather baffling, and a cursory glance at the Results Search page shows that there was really no consistency in 2014, and some rejectees weren't even notified. Hopefully some of you will find this helpful!

For me (and probably for most of us) it's all about fit. Fit is a two-way street, of course -- you have to fit the program, and the program has to fit you. It took me a long while to figure out how to determine fit, and honestly, it's probably going to be after acceptance(s) that it really comes into focus. What I'm getting at is that the "tier" doesn't really matter so much. I mean sure -- it matters in a broader sense -- but when it comes to deciding on schools on their own merits, it's simply more important to find a place that you will be happy to attend for five or more years. Professors you'd like most to work with. If those ideal professors are at Yale...apply to Yale! If they're at the University of Northern Alaska...apply to UNA! There are myriad considerations when choosing schools, but don't let "tier" be one of them, unless your materials are truly not in the ballpark of what they require.

This resurgence of .gifs is all our cohort needed to resemble the awesome ones of bygone GC years....

WOO HOO!!!! Funding concerns aside, this is HUGE news! And you also get the distinction of being the first of our little Grad Cafe cohort to feel the exhilaration of acceptance! You should now start the inevitable "2015 Acceptances" thread. I'm seriously thrilled for you, little Bat -- congratulations!

Oh crap. I was indeed talking about letter-writers instead of POIs. I've gone ahead and downvoted myself for that. HOWEVER, I did indeed have a POI ask me for my WS and my SOP, which ultimately supports my point that it's not rare at least.

Just a thought, but even an "Incomplete" would be preferable to an F. If you're an otherwise good/great student, there should be options, and if I were you, I wouldn't rest until I was certain that they were all exhausted.

Yep, as with Proflorax says, it's fine to have some biography, so long as it's relevant to your academic interests. Mine (as Proflorax can affirm first-hand!) starts off with how my background as a poet led directly to my interest in academia. The first draft of my SOP was a bit too heavy on the biography, but with the help of a few current grad students who recently went through the application process themselves (ahem), I managed to make the transition between personal/biographical and professional/academic interests far more natural, and perhaps even logical. Just don't talk about how ever since you started reading at the age of two, you've had a passion for literature, and and how you have always been fascinated by the written word ever since your grandmother read you snippets of Tom Sawyer just months before she died.

If you've gone ahead and completed a Master's in English and done very well, I don't see how your Engineering mishaps will affect you. You'll want to mention it on your SOP...but honestly, that sounds like a great entree into your statement! I could even envision a transition statement like "It occurred to me that I was far better at Engineering college papers than closed circuits..." From what I've read (here and elsewhere), a Master's goes a long way toward eradicating blemishes in undergrad. And considering that your undergrad was in a completely different discipline, it should make you more of an interesting candidate to an adcomm than an unsavory one. But you do need to mention it in your SOP, I think. And in my completely subjective opinion, you should frame the start of your SOP around it.

Very. One of my letter-writers wanted my WS and SOP. Two wanted just my SOP. One wanted neither. Samples of work is par for the course, I think. C.V. might be a little more unusual, but one of the rarely-mentioned aspects of the application is indeed the C.V. -- most applications want a C.V. or resume in addition to the other, more familiar, elements.

Yes, I would say that focusing on M.A. programs might be your best bet. One of the chief expectations on a SOP for Ph.D. programs is outlining a proposed course of study, which should be relatively specific and unique. That expectation doesn't seem to be quite so strong with M.A. programs. It's really a case of one degree being more advanced than the other. Roughly speaking, you can look at the B.A. as a "beginner" level, with the M.A. an "intermediate" level, and the Ph.D. an "advanced" level. You only want to take the advanced option if you're confident you have the chops to handle it with aplomb. This speaks nothing about one's character -- it just speaks to one's preparedness. I'm old and have a lot of life experience, not to mention a lot of knowledge about my proposed course of study, and a good idea about what I want to do. For me, it just wouldn't make sense to apply to M.A. programs, unless it was as a "last resort." For others, the M.A. makes a hell of a lot more sense. And if you have any uncertainty about your future path, the M.A. is probably the most logical step. It might cost some money (or the funding might be less, as it were), but it will also allow you to hone in on your interests in a way that the B.A. could not, and the Ph.D. simply doesn't allow for.

It might not be a death knell, per se, but it would need to be explained at length in your SOP. If the rest of your grades are high, and your GPA isn't brought down too low by the F, then I suspect that you might still be able to carry on. Out of curiosity, are you on good terms with the professor who gave you an F? Most professors are loath to hand out failing grades. Usually they'll work with you to rectify the situation. I recall one professor of mine saying in advance of the mandatory final essay "If you don't get it done, just hand in a blank piece of paper with your name and the assignment header on it...that way I can at least give you a completion mark." If it's truly past the point where anything can be done about the grade, perhaps you can at least get a letter from the prof, attesting to the quality of your work up until that point. If you were a reasonably good student, and the professor is a reasonably good person, I wouldn't be surprised if he/she would write a blurb on your behalf in that vein. Either way, I reiterate that I don't think (but cannot know) that this is a certain end-of-the-line issue. It complicates things, to be sure, but if it can be reasonably explained, you might find some sympathetic adcomms out there. They're all human, after all, and are well aware of the pressures of deadlines etc. Good luck!

Actually, there are practical reasons for saving as a .pdf as well. Any formatting gremlins are basically eradicated. There was one early instance where I noticed a .docx I had uploaded had some issues. Word is notorious for that, really. You can look at a document in Word, and print it off, and it will all be fine...but when you upload it somewhere, something can go awry. So since then, I've just used CutePDF to essentially "print" to a .pdf file. I was kind of fortunate with my WS in that I made it right around 15 pages, meaning that I only needed to augment it just a little bit for one or two applications. It never hurts to contact a DGS or Graduate Coordinator though -- one place says "Around 25 pages" but I checked, and they affirmed that they'd take 15-20 pages as well. It's much easier to chop than add, after all.

Yes, I'm in the same boat. I wanted my Yale application to be 15 pages including the back material. I'm sure it wouldn't have been an issue if it was 16 or 17 pages, given the amorphous nature of page counts vis-a-vis appendices and references, but I figure that since there's no pre-set standard other than page count for the WS, a minor formatting tweak or two isn't remiss. For instance, changing Times New Roman 12 pt to Arial 12 pt adds about a page and a half to a 15-page document. Surely there will be some applicants who submit their 15 pages in Times New Roman 12 pt, just as there will be some who submit in Arial 12 pt. This means that the page counts will be the same, but the Times New Roman person will be able to pack in another 500 words or so. I made a conscious decision (thanks to a Grad Cafe thread) to change my SOP and WS from Times to Arial for the second half of my applications. This had the partially welcome, partially unwelcome effect of expanding my page counts. Tweaking to make things easy to read and within the guidelines is just as much of a kindness to adcomms as it is to you, I think. Oh, and yes -- make everything a .pdf before you upload it. It just makes sense.

Great topic! I started out the same way most of you did, most likely -- started reading at an early age, preferred books to sports for the most part etc. I also started writing poetry at a very early age as well. In rhyme, no less. I can still remember the first few lines of a poem I wrote when I was ten: "A deer stood by, flickering its nose / Its tail taut, its body froze." Not exactly Pulitzer material, but hey, it rhymed and even had meter! Throughout high school, my writing of poetry turned into writing of lyrics, as I was in a few rock bands along the way (and I thought I could sing). I also played piano, drums, and dabbled in a few other instruments, also writing songs. I was a bit of a lazy high school student, but English and English Literature were by far my favorite classes. I recall only getting Bs in them, but I can remember saying to others at the time something along the lines of "I may not be an ace student, but I guarantee this material will stick with me more than for most of my fellow students." And I was right. My life took me in a bunch of different directions in my late teens and twenties, but through it all I kept my reading of literature and writing of poetry as a major avocation, to the point that I became relatively "successful" as a poet. It was after I immigrated to the U.S. five years ago that I discovered (thanks to the erstwhile support of my wife, and her parents who are both professors) that I could, in fact make my avocation a vocation. I'd had a couple of vocational degrees, but formalizing my love of literature and poetry has been one of the best decisions of my life, and these last few years have been among my happiest. It just feels good to be on a long and fulfilling path. I don't think any of us would be doing this if we didn't love it, to some degree...and that's certainly the case for me. I could easily get into deeper, more personal details as to why I came to this decision in my thirties, but suffice it to say that experience is indeed a great teacher as well.

1.9 for Yale you say? I wonder what will be thought of someone with a 1.8. I don't know who would be daft enough to do that, of course. No idea.

I really don't think there's any way any of us can answer this main question for you. It's pretty late in the game to be figuring out programs to apply to. Are you looking at M.A. or Ph.D. programs? Are there any scholars in your chosen field who you would like to work with? Do you have a long-term plan for why you're applying to grad school? As to your other question, if you send an 8-page paper to a program that asks for 10-15 pages, that's probably not a good idea. If you send a 13-page paper to a program that says "around 15 pages," then you might be okay. But the bottom line is that you should contact program coordinators / or the DGS at each program to find out how flexible they are. Just remember that the majority of applicants will have page lengths within the guidelines, so it might raise an eyebrow or two if you send in something shorter. Your GRE and GPA numbers are "fine." Not good enough to boost your application, but probably not mediocre enough to keep you out of a program if your interests / fit / SOP / WS / LORs etc. show you to be an otherwise strong candidate.

Ruh roh. Mea culpa time. I just checked, and I did not, in fact, send Harvard paper transcripts. Looks like I must have been thinking of somewhere else when I made that post a month ago. So my sincere apologies for that. Hopefully it didn't cause you any undue stress. Incidentally, despite being a generally meticulous person, the other day while going through my submitted applications to make sure one of my letter-writers' LOR was uploaded properly, I noticed that Rutgers requires hard copies of transcripts...and I didn't realize that at the time of submission. In other words, it's always good to triple- and quadruple-check (quintuple? Sextuple?) application requirements, even after you've submitted an application. I plan on doing yet another sweep through of all of them at some point soon, just to be sure. But again...sorry for the snafu, folks.

That is the most exciting thing I have heard all day! Really pulling for you, little Bat!

Incidentally, I find that watching hockey helps. I'm sure one can insert a sport of choice in place of hockey, but let's face it...hockey is the best. I used to be a mostly partisan fan who only watched his home team, but since I've lived away from my "hometown" for nearly five years, I've come to enjoy watching any good matchup. The nice thing with having Center Ice (or presumably any sports package) is that you can just sit down and enjoy a period or two, then go back to doing your work.

Thanks guys! I truly wasn't sure, so this makes me feel good and confident about doing the whole FAFSA thing again. So do we simply list all the grad schools we've applied to in the appropriate section? I'll have time on my hands in the first few weeks of January, so I'm guessing I'll bang it out then.

I LOVE Unraed's post. I couldn't resonate more with the "swinging between two poles" comment. It's rather amazing how bipolar this process can make you! And it's always the little things that set your mind to doubting. For instance, a couple of weeks ago I went for a drink with one of my letter-writers. He and I have a fantastic rapport, and he is certainly an erstwhile supporter who, no doubt, wrote me a strong LOR. Almost everything he talked about with regard to my application was positive...yet there were two very minor points he made: one was that there has already been a fair amount of scholarship done in the realm of my proposed course of study, and the other was that there was a slight (very slight) malapropism in my SOP -- I used "scholastic" where I probably should have used "scholarly." He mentioned that "scholastic" sometimes has a pejorative quality. So of course, out of all the things we talked about over a delightful hour and a half, what is it I am thinking about? "Scholastic" and the generality of my proposed course of study!! This despite him saying I should be a strong candidate, and that he'll write a letter that will make me look "hot" to adcomms (to which I replied that my wife tries to make me look "hot" all the time, to no avail). Frankly, I'm rather glad that I've got a busy semester right now. My mind has been wandering a bit more than usual lately, which is unfortunate when you're trying to close-read two novels simultaneously, but at least when I'm occupied, I'm not obsessing over things I have no control over. Oh, and despite my copious comments across several Grad Cafe threads on the lack of importance of high GRE scores, my mind cannot help but return to those unrepresentative, lower-than-I'd-like figures. Despite their relative unimportance, they're likely the weakest part of my application. Oh, and even sillier... I got an associate's degree from a 2-year community college before transferring to an admittedly well-regarded 4-year institution. I had a perfect GPA at the community college, and so far at my current college I have a strong GPA (low end of summa cum laude level), but on my transcript, the GPA doesn't factor in the GPA of all of the transferred courses. As a result, on my applications, adcomms will see the lower GPA first. Most don't have a field where you plug in your total undergraduate GPA -- they're kept separate by institution. Logically speaking, this is all incredibly minor...and yet it's the kind of thing that plays on my mind! Most of all, I feel sorry for my poor wife, who has to hear me air my application neuroses on a day-to-day basis. She's as supportive as a significant other can be, but it will be a minor miracle if she doesn't tear half of her hair out by mid-February. Or mine, for that matter. *exhale*

Hey folks, This very well may be a dumb question, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere. Like many (or most) of us, I funded much of my undergrad with student loans. These are deferred for six months after undergraduate graduation. I'm wondering -- if you get into a funded graduate program (or are expecting to) do you / should you still fill out the FAFSA paperwork? If so, do you simply list all grad schools you've applied to (if you're doing FAFSA early), or...what? Also, I'm guessing that additional funding through FAFSA is strongly discouraged, but is it even possible? (I'm not saying that I'll personally need more funding than any stipend, but it's good to know regardless). Just one of those things I've been wondering about lately.