HesseBunuel90

I'm 20th Century as well but more mid-century/post-war. I'm not sure if we'll be directly competing against each other or not (we applied to five of the same schools).

hypervodka: What century of US Literature are you focusing on?

hypervodka: how did you get the interview call? Via email/phone call etc? I hope that does not mean that I was automatically rejected.

It does make sense. I am just fairly ignorant to the admissions process. I had assumed that ad comms would look over them mid month, which is when most schools come back from winter break.

Wyatt's Torch: How do you know that the ad-comms are meeting today?

I just finished Oscar Hijuelos' The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. It was an incredible read, full of passion, sensuality, vivid characters, and a superb sense of time and place. I just started reading Studs Terkel's Working; it is the third book of his I have read, and it once again proves what an essential and singular chronicler of American life he was.

hreaðemus- where were you accepted? I cannot tell if these two instances (the other being that acceptance at U of I-UC) of being accepted mere days after submitting an application is a positive occurrence or not.

My plan B is getting a MA in TESOL/ESL, as I have had some experience in it and I quite liked it. Of course, Master's Degrees generally do not have the funding offered by MA/PhD programs.

I am hoping this is the case. While indeed concerns about the job market are warranted, a lot can change in 5+ years. The fact that such a popular program as Rutgers (one of my top choices) would extend the deadline makes me feel a tad better about my (and all of our) chances.

I would suggest two things drown soda; apply to more than 3 or 4 schools (I applied to 17) and try for fully funded programs (the Fordham MA wouldn't be). While 159 isn't amazing, it is only a point below the competitive score of 160. It still is in the 80s for percentile, and if you have original ideas for research, and find a program that fits, your score will be irrelevant.

My favorite writers are William Faulkner, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth, and Yukio Mishima. I have countless favorite novels, but some of the books that have resonated with me most are Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain. Right now, I am reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain; it is truly masterful so far, but very dense, so it is not exactly a page-turner.

TeaOverCoffee: University of Illinois-Chicago or University of Ilinois-Urbana-Champaign?

I'm going back and forth between Richard Farina's dated but satirical and whimsical odyssey of an alienated student at a thinly disguised Cornell (Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me) and Richard Ford's characteristically enthralling and emotionally involving Lay of the Land.

Where did it say incomplete? I also applied to Ohio State, and the status merely says "Pending," not complete or incomplete. If you check all the application requirements, you can see if all are complete.

Ha I did the same thing in the first few apps before I noticed it. The thing is, these schools get hundreds of applications, all with long writing samples. I am sure a couple misused words and an extra source will be ignored and dismissed. It's just so stressful.

I sent out all my applications, some of them months ago. I just have realized that I used a word that is the opposite of what I meant to convey in the writing sample. The professor who looked it over said nothing, so I figured that I used the word correctly. I probably am panicking over nothing, but can anybody who had similar mistakes in past writing samples tell me they still got into a graduate program? I need that little bit of reassurance.

I'm applying to a total of 16 schools, and I would be happy if I got into any one of them. There are several reasons for each school; for one, I always have wanted to live in/near NYC, which is why I applied to NYU, CUNY, and Rutgers; the fact that they are great programs and are well aligned with my interests (and my writing sample) seals the deal. I would also be happy in Boston, D.C. and Atlanta, hence why I applied to BU, U-MD and Emory; all of which are well aligned with my interests. I have identified two main subfields within my interest in modern American Literature; one, gender and sexuality, is common at essentially all the programs I'm applying to. The other, Jewish-American Literature, is much more scarce, and unfortunately, many of the programs that do have professors who specialize in this are either too far a reach (UCLA, Johns Hopkins) or too low-ranked for job prospects (U Miami, GWU). I have found professors who either focus on Jewish-American literature (Ohio State, Illinois-Urbana-Champaign) or modern Jewish studies in general (Vanderbilt, University of Wisconsin). Finally, I have chosen schools that give decent funding in areas with low cost of living, such as Rice, Pittsburgh, and Washington University in St. Louis, in addition to solid research fit.

This is an interesting topic. I have applied to a range of programs, and while none of them are top 10s, all are in the top 50. This is due to job prospects partially, but mostly fit. And personally, my undergraduate institution was far from a prestigious one, (it was not even ranked by UNWP) and many of my professors received their PhDs from Harvard, Columbia, UC Berkeley etc. (As an aside, jhefflol; three Ivies' PhD Programs do not need the subject test: Brown, Columbia, and U-Penn. I applied to Brown, which is my biggest "long shot," but it is also well aligned with my interests.)

Hello, I am currently in the midst of applying to English PhD programs. I have already applied to five schools, and I am working on two more applications currently. Several schools I plan on applying to need the English subject test, which I am taking this Saturday. However, as the results for the exam will not be available until the end of October/early November, my intention to apply to schools early in the process may not reach fruition. Could I possibly apply to programs before the subject test results are available, or must all aspects of the application be fulfilled before I can send in the submitted app?

Hello, I uploaded my writing sample for Vanderbilt's online application (the first application I started filling out), and when I previewed the upload, the first line on the works cited page got moved up to the bottom of the last page. As this was not the case on the original document, and there is no way to edit the preview, what should I do? Or would this be irrelevant to the writing sample's content?

Okay, it's just that some schools (although probably not ones I'm applying to, unless I score extremely high on the Subject Test) indicate that community college transcripts aren't necessary. Yet others, such as NYU, evaded the question when I emailed them, and the admissions at Emory said "it's up to the applicant whether they want to upload one transcript or two." Like I said, I have received mixed messages.

Hello, I am planning on applying to MA/PhD programs in English literature, as soon as next week. I have a question that has not been entirely resolved from contacting various graduate programs. I started my undergraduate studies at a community college, before transferring to a 4 year university and obtaining my Bachelor's. Should I simply submit my Baccalaureate transcript, because it reflects the coursework from the 2 year school, or not, as the transcript does not reflect the grades from those courses? I don't want the schools to think I may have got a 2.6 or something at the community college, when in reality (coincidentally) I received the same GPA at both schools (3.86). I have received mixed messages regarding what I should do in this case- Thank you.

Hello, I first took the GRE General Test, which is required by all the English Literature Programs to which I am applying, in July. On the verbal section, I scored in the 89th Percentile, which, while certainly solid, was slightly lower than what I was aiming for. I scored better on the analytical writing section, with a 5.0 out of 6, but I have been told that most schools put greater emphasis on the verbal section rather than analytical. I continued to study and retook the exam a month later. Unfortunately, I ended up scoring one point less in both verbal and quantitative. As many schools look at an application holistically, I was not overly discouraged, as I had several professors look at my writing sample and statement of purpose and I have worked hard on both, and my undergraduate GPA was high (3.86). However, the analytical section score was just emailed to me, and I actually scored higher, and I am now in the 98th Percentile. Although I am proud of this, I don't know if this would cancel out the slightly lower verbal and quantitative scores. Should I send the initial scores or the retakes? If only I could mix and match and choose the best individual scores, but, alas, life doesn't work out that way.