unræd

Oh, no--my "including names in my SOP already feels grubbing and vaguely smarmy enough as it is" above was not at all meant as a comment that including them actually is grubbing and smarmy, just that it feels that way to my default state of taciturn midwestern reserve! I very much see how it could be taken that way, though, and it's not at all what I intended--sorry! As ComeBackZinc says (and he'd definitely know better than I) it does seem to be standard practice, and I'm doing it with the vast majority of my applications, too. One of my letter writers often sits on the department's admissions committee, and during our long talk about SOPs his advice was that while it is occasionally controversial (I saw on another board here that Stanford, for one, hates it?), I should definitely include names--with (again, as ComeBackZinc says) the understanding it has to be done carefully (you need to have actual ways your research intersects), and it has to not be fawning (fear of appearing which is partially what inspired my comment above).

No, of course, you're all right! I'm hoping I'm just getting all the overthinking out of my system early on, in a sort of cleansing purge. Thanks, proflorax, for reminding me what the damn purpose of the writing sample is, anyway. And ComeBackZinc's point is especially well-taken: what, if it were an issue, I'd remove them? Yeah, no--that's just plain crazy talk. Wyatt's Torch--given your list and what I know of your interests, I've made a five-dollar bet (with myself) that yours is Helen Vendler.

I realize these fora are pretty dead over the summer--everyone's already accepted/attending, or deep in their GRE flashcards, or blissfully not even planning their apps yet--but there's something I'd like to ask others' advice about. So, as I've been simultaneously expanding/contracting my list of programs I'll be applying to in the fall, I'm running into a--well, I don't know if it will be a problem. It might be a good thing? Two of the programs I've recently added to my list both feature potential POIs who show up in my writing sample. (There's a third who was already on the list, but she's so superstar/probably-near-retirement-and-not-taking-on-students/teaching-at-a-ridiculous-reach-school anyway that I hadn't even considered it an issue with her, or even thought about it until this post.) One provides cogent discussion of the methodological basis I use in the paper's first half, the other treats a very closely related linguistic crux to the one I'm discussing. This makes sense, I suppose--they're POIs for a reason. But including names in my SOP already feels grubbing and vaguely smarmy enough as it is; I'm worried that if these people show up in my writing sample, too, they'll think that I've just shoehorned their research into the thing in the app process (and I'm way, way too lazy to attempt something like that!), or chosen this sample just because it draws on their work--especially since it's not coterminous with all of the specific interests in my SOP. Problem? Or over thinking? Should I acknowledge it when I talk about them in my fit paragraph in my SOP--"and her work on knottyproblem has provided" etc etc etc--or just leave it unsaid?

You're right--that does sound like great advice! One of the things I found about using past work to guide narrowing my focus is that it's allowing me to say "Oh, I've written about this, and this, and this," especially since my writing sample--while on my very narrow historical subfield, and easily the best written, most methodologically careful research I've done--is not quite as aligned with the theoretical interests in my SOP.

THIS. Or, rather, these. On the first, formulating an area of specific interest has definitely been the hardest part of the application process thus far (I say, as I'm not actually very far into the application process). My interests have always been very narrowly focused on the medieval period, and specifically on an even narrower slice within that, but I was never able to formulate a specific project; I kept meeting with professors/mentors about grad school apps and saying--quite honestly--that I'd be perfectly happy studying anything. We'd discuss possible ranges of topics, they'd give me reading lists/scholars to look at, but I'd still flap around like a bird distracted by a shiny object that doesn't quite know where it wants to go. What I found most helpful in formulating what I want to do was to get out of my head a bit, stop over thinking it, and look at the problem a bit more concretely. I literally lined up all of the papers I'd written for classes more or less on my period on my desk, and said, "Well, okay, Unræd. Just what are you really interested in?" I took a good hard look at the papers' topics--and perhaps more importantly, their methodologies--and some real areas of coherence began to emerge, ones that I found I could plausibly construct into a (good God, hopefully) compelling SOP narrative. It's been hard to realize that as I come up with a firmer project I'm in the process "fitting" myself out of several schools I'd otherwise love to attend, but we'll see. As to the second, from everything I hear the impostor phase doesn't really go away. I'm currently at a school with a program that is well respected within my field, if not tippy-top-tier, and the graduate students I know--who are all busy spending their summer researching in fancy European libraries or presenting at conferences--say that they still think everything that comes out of their mouths sounds "insane/dumb/ignorant," too. So we're in good company?

I know exactly what you mean about even just posting about it making it seem real and concrete--which is an odd thing, when you think about it--in a way that all my prior discussion about it hadn't. I'm not making two packets, but I briefly considered it. I am (probably, we'll see what my profs say) considering having two general 'tones' for my SOP, to try to make myself attractive to both the most hidebound and modern of programs--so not two wildly divergent applications, but maybe a slight shift in emphasis between the two.

Ugh, that sucks. Sorry to hear that!

Woot! Thanks for the notice.

Hah! The organization is much less kudos-worthy than it appears; it's not out of any actual drive so much as that I know my default state is slothful indolence, and if I don't start planning months in advance my tendency toward procrastination will keep me from doing things on time. It's a bit like setting your watch fifteen minutes fast, really. And I totally understand the hat-in-hand feeling about requesting letters, even from professors who've been enthusiastic about writing them in the past. I remind myself they do this all the time, the more notice the better, etc. But--again with the slothfulness--I started the letter process early because it's the one that requires the least actual work!

Nope, I have no idea beyond their cryptic "July," and it's annoying me as much as the programs who say their online apps will open "in September."

I seem to recall seeing a really old book published by ETS w/ practice tests floating around Amazon, but the reviews all said that the tests contained therein were too different from the current test to be useful. Anyone else familiar with this? Given their scarcity, my current plan is to use the one in the Princeton Review book (yes, cocktail party!) to prepare and then take the practice one on ETS's website after the bulk of my studying, only seeking out others if I completely bomb that one.

Will do! It'd be nice to have someone else who's going through the process as an "older student" to talk/commiserate/weep with.

How delightful to know that others do the whole borderline-obsessive Excel spreadsheet gambit, too! For what it's worth, here's where I stand thus far: My list of schools has been pretty well finalized, which is a good feeling--although I have the vague worry I'm not applying to enough places. The writers of my LORs have all been given notice that I'll be using them, but they all will want to see/give feedback on my SOP before they start drafting in earnest, so that's a bit on hold. My writing sample, which was a research paper I did for a graduate seminar I sat in on this last spring, is in pretty good shape. I need to clean up a bunch of little errors, of course (bleh), but my main informal advisor/mentor/professor for whose class the thing was written only has two edits she'd make for applications. The first is easy; the second will involve a bunch of additional research time spent trudging through dusty German etymological monographs, so it'll take a bit more of a slog. The real trick will be editing it down; it's a perfect length for all of my schools but one, which requires writing samples of only 10-12 pages. This morning I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly sitting down and banging out about half my SOP, although mostly in the form of a bunch of disjointed sentences, unconnected paragraphs, ledes trailing off into nothing, etc. My goal is to have a draft by mid July that doesn't make me want to vomit (a tall order, looking at what I've currently got), submit it to my English department's advisor for undergrads considering grad school, and then to my letter writers, with my grad school friends reading it at some point in there, too. I start my GRE studying in earnest next week--which I realize is tomorrow, actually. Ugh. Pace your approach, Wyatt's Torch, I'm going the more cocktail-party knowledge route for the subject test, and won't actually be rereading much except short verse. It's flashcards and plot summaries for me! As far as what I'm focusing on when, I'm deliberately trying to frontload the much more intellectually intensive parts of the application--the writing sample and the SOP--earlier this summer, so that during the fall semester I'll just have the tail end of my GRE studying, the CV (required for some of my schools), and the actual application-filling out minutiae left to worry about. That being said, I've never done this before, and--like Wyatt's Torch--would be very interested in recommendations from those also starting the process and from those who've been once through the mill!

I'm in a somewhat similar boat--I'm just a few years younger than you, and also just entering my senior year. Neither the professors who have been shepherding and nudging me through the grad school application process nor the graduate students in my subfield at my current university have thought my age an issue, though! That being said, it was a concern I've had, too, and so I'm very much on the same page as sacklunch's advice: at this point (and unless the readers for my SOP advise otherwise, of course) it's not something I'm going out of my way to mention in my SOP, since my prior work experiences out of high school are entirely irrelevant to my application, previous education, and research interests. I'll let you know if I get different advice as I continue the drafting process, though!