Dr. Old Bill

I've applied to Penn State, and while I'm not a medievalist so much as I am an early modernist / poetics person, I have had a number of first-hand accounts about the quality of their program...and its interdisciplinary nature. There's truly a LOT of interplay between departments there, despite the stratification of periods listed on their Graduate English site. The two downsides to Penn State are the remoteness of the location (seriously, 2.5 hours away from any cities, and far from any towns, even), and their tardiness when it comes to releasing admissions decisions. Other than that, they've got a solid reputation for all things English.

September GRE scores are in! Using my patented emoji system, my score is... . I'm admittedly a tad disappointed. I'm in the lower end of what I thought I had scored, but I don't think my score should hurt me in applications. After all, if I've said it once, I've said it a dozen times (you know, I probably have): anything other than a bad score on the GRE subject test is likely not going to affect an otherwise strong application.

As I recall, my test started around 35 minutes late too...though I was very fortunate in that it was a remarkably quiet room. I do NOT work well with any sort of noise around. I even have a pair of industrial earmuffs at home for when I'm doing some serious reading or writing. So I would have been completely unhinged by IQ84's situation. I don't do well without my morning coffee either so...yeah. Lots of empathy from me for both of you.

Damn, 1Q84. I feel for you. I really do. The really lousy part is that you have no recourse. I would, however, file a complaint with ETS. It might not do anything, but in the remote chance that it does, it might help the next crop of test-takers avoid such a disruption. The saving grace is that the test doesn't matter too much in the long run. And the results are indeed scaled, which I think is probably a good thing for this year's instantiations.

It sounds dumb, but I'm really proud of all of you. I'm kind of reliving the feeling of completion I experienced last month. As little as the exam probably matters in the long run, it's still a monolithic undertaking when it's ahead of you...and such a relief when it's over and done with.

Excellent comments, Zanmato. Even though I took the September offering of the test, most of what you say resonates with my experience too. As I've said several times already on this thread, I would be no more surprised if I got a 700 than if I got a 500. I suspect this means that scaling is going to be more of a factor than it was on the 2010 practice exam. I have to assume that today's test was 100% different from the one given in September, but from what I've been hearing via this thread and PMs about the test content, the two were quite similar in terms of layout. Overall I recall the test being not too dissimilar from the practice test...but now that I think harder about it, there really weren't many of the "short and simple" questions that were dotted throughout the practice exam. So yes, I expect to see a wider range of scores and more scaling overall. However, I will say this: I still think it's not a test one can really study for, despite what the Princeton book says. While I don't have my results back yet, I think that my age and relative experience helped me a lot. I studied a ton of literature and poetry when I was a teenager, and read a great deal of literature and poetry throughout my twenties as well...all "self-study." Having over a decade and a half of familiarity with a lot of works -- even just glancing familiarity in some instances -- was probably more advantageous to me than spending three months studying specifically for this exam. Other than reading twenty or so GRE-pertinent novels over the summer and taking a single practice test, I really didn't study much, yet I know I didn't do badly at least, even if I don't know (thanks to the scaling question) whether "not badly" means "decidedly average" or "very well, thank you very much." The bottom line is that this test is mostly a boondoggle. If it didn't cost money and have so much pomp and circumstance surrounding it, it would have been rather fun...kind of like a giant Sporcle quiz. But therein lies the problem -- it's trivial. It's NOT a good measure of anything meaningful. I can see a subject test having value for the sciences or more quantitative fields, but literature is inherently subjective, so unless the test is mostly composed of questions like "Who wrote Northanger Abbey" or "Finish the title of this Henry James novella: 'The Turn of the _______" (i.e., things an English major can and should objectively know) it's really kind of pointless. Just my two cents, of course, and there's probably some [strange] person out there who thinks the lit test is a perfect system of gauging the suitability of future Humanities scholars. But it's best to just study however you can, but take the test lightly. I say again: it's not a valid measure of anything meaningful. Hopefully someday it will be eradicated entirely, or at least replaced by something more appropriate.

Ack! You know, the problem with prefab interpretations of literature is that they're usually not comprehensive. It really sucks to have five options when even ten are often not enough. Well, I hope it went alright for you all anyhow!

Oh yeah? In what way? Just content, or layout? You don't have to get into details -- I'm just curious about how it was different from the practice tests. I found the test I took a month ago to be quite similar.

Excellent to hear, Allplaideverything! I was honestly looking at the clock all morning rooting for you guys. Can't wait to hear some more initial post-test impressions!

Proflorax, it now occurs to me what our GradCafe English cohort has been missing: an abundance of .gifs! One of the joys of reading through old GC threads is seeing a thread get derailed, only to be confronted with a stunningly appropriate .gif...

Oh Jhefflol. You just know that Monday's going to come and you'll have a score in the 600s or higher. And if you don't? It's not going to be that big of a deal...particularly since you're casting a VERY wide net application-wise. it's all good!

I don't believe they do, no. At least, I couldn't find any information on that front on ETS' site. I know old threads here (2011 and earlier, I think) mentioned that people could pay $10 and get their score over the phone, but I don't think that's the case any longer.

I'll have my emojis ready.

Ooh...really? I didn't know that. Gee, it's almost like...almost like...Christmas with the possibility of chainsaws!

Yes! Like Jhefflol says...good luck! And it really is "luck." Here's hoping there are no obscure passages from Solzhenitsyn or cryptic analyses of Derrida!

Fit is a fairly amorphous concept, and I suspect that five different GC posters could suggest five different ways of determining fit...and all would be correct. Having said that... I sort of figured "fit" out as I went along. I researched most of the USNews top 50 Ph.D. programs for English and got a sense from the program descriptions (and their faculty interests) from each website to determine what kind of academic orientation each had. This was back in February or so. After that, I whittled down my own interests and figured out what I really wanted to achieve in graduate study. This was April or May. From there, it was a case of going back through faculty listings of the programs that initially appealed to me, as well as, quite frankly, some I had originally discounted for one reason or another. I contacted grad students to see if they thought my interests would fit well within their program. I contacted the occasional professor to see if my research interests might appeal to him or her. I talked to my LOR writers and other current professors to pick their brains about programs with similar interests or orientations as mine. I started threads on GC and PMed certain members. Basically, I spent most of May through August doing research on people and programs. When you do it for long enough, "fit" becomes more evident...though probably not as evident as it will be after you get accepted to one or more places. But in my experience so far, it's really a combination of figuring out what you want to do, and finding other professors and programs that share those interests and support the same approaches as your own. For me, I was quite surprised (perhaps even a little dismayed) to find out that most of the POIs doing stuff in my field are at top-tier institutions. I was hoping there could be a few so-called "safety schools" I could apply to, but there really aren't, other than for a random, single, strong POI here and there. But depending on your field of interest, there might be a number of schools that are mid-tier overall, but are GREAT for your discipline in particular. That's why you just have to search, and search, and search some more.

Yeah, UMD should really be on everyone's radar. It has a large and diverse English faculty, and access to all the wonderful resources in D.C. (it's easy to forget that despite technically being in Maryland, College Park is within D.C.'s beltway and only about twenty minutes from downtown). It also boasts excellent placement rates, a very good funding package, and even (for what it's worth) a superb performing arts center that hosts a bevy of fantastic, world-class productions. It's not the top institution for most English programs, but it's consistently very good for most of them regardless. And again, you shouldn't underestimate the significance of it being in the D.C. metro area. Pretty much every resource you can imagine is there. You can certainly never complain about a lack of research opportunities...

No way. I'm getting into Yale, graduating in five years, then getting a tenure track job at Princeton right away.

This is all very illuminating. Thanks folks...and sorry to Everran for hi-jacking your thread! I guess the primary goal is to get accepted to any of the programs you are applying to. That's a given. But when you have more than one acceptance, I suppose you have to look at it as leverage. I've never been particularly good at seeing the leverage side of things (it sort of dovetails with my disdain for ulterior motives, oddly enough), but like many of us, I have a few special considerations for where I attend...and more money or other benefits could be a major factor. A couple of years ago, I had a neighbor who was accepted to two law schools. I remember him bragging about how he was going back and forth between the two of them, trying to eke out as much funding as he could. I recall being slightly horrified by this at the time, but I guess it really is in one's best interest to at least try to negotiate. Interesting to chew on (well, after I get a couple of acceptances --if that is to be-- that is).

Yeah, I can vouch for retake going poorly. I don't think I've ever wasted $170 quite so spectacularly (though a night at the River Rock Casino hold'em table comes close...)

Focus on the verbal, and only the verbal at this point. 160 is "fine," but on the low end of "fine." As Mikers86 said, the quant is less important except for in funding situations. But usually cutoffs are amalgam scores (SUNY Buffalo, for instance, has a funding cutoff of 313 combined GRE, though I read somewhere that that can be fudged a bit). Aiming for 310 or above combined is probably a good idea. And since you're an English major, it's probably easier, more intuitive, and generally more sensible to work on getting that verbal up by a few points rather than getting the quantitative up. High scores across the board is the ideal, but in most cases it's chiefly the English department looking at your application, and they generally don't care if you can solve for x.

Moreover, I know a lot of institutions encourage their students to take a gap year after either the BA or MA. The thinking is that since a Ph.D. program is a minimum of a five year commitment, having a year to gain so-called "real world" experience and perspective can be helpful. I think a gap year matters less the older you are, but the bottom line is that a large number of the people applying to the same programs that you will be applying to will have had a year (or more) off as well. So long as your letter-writers remember you, and you can make a simple comment or two in your SOP about why you took a year off, you'll be fine. This process really can take up to a year. I first started researching Ph.D. programs back in late February, and most of the acceptances/rejections will come through by...late February. It's only because I took the process bit-by-bit throughout the year (and had a slow summer) that I was able to feel on top of things. I can definitely see the benefit in taking a year off for similar reasons.

Would you mind elaborating on that, Proflorax? I've heard/read this same sentiment a few times, but never with any details...yet it's something I'm quite curious about. The post-acceptance, pre-admittance limbo region isn't talked about much. What kind of info is imparted after acceptance?

I'm normally tempted to say that no education is useless education...and indeed, if you're planning on spending a life doing a lot of writing, getting the experience of formalized workshopping and structured feedback etc. can probably be very valuable on that front. However, I'm honestly not sure whether or not an MFA will be at all helpful to your chances at getting into a Ph.D. program. It's entirely possible that I'm misinformed, but the sense I get (for good or ill) is that MFAs are generally not seen as academic degrees as such. They're sort of in a category of their own. Since there's typically no (or not much) academic research or writing required in the process of obtaining an MFA, there's very little interplay between the graduate work of an MFA vs. an MA or Ph.D. Literally all of this comes down to your expectations of the respective degrees, however. There are some excellent reasons to pursue an MFA. Usually those reasons include improving one's writing in a structured environment, or having access to, and discourse with, successful authors (and burgeoning authors) in their own right. But if you're going in to an MFA program thinking that it will improve your chances of getting into a Ph.D. program, you'll probably want to do some more research and talk to more professors before you commit to that path. I can only tell you what I've heard, gleaned, and observed, and that's that an MFA doesn't hold a lot of academic / scholarly value. But as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.