hypervodka

Take it, absolutely. If breadth of study is only one of the criteria they use to assess your performance, it doesn't seem too dire to take two (out of what? eight courses your first year?) disability-centered classes. You'll be able to make up any lapse in "breadth" next semester. In any case, your classes do seem to be covering a broad range of topics regardless.

Yes, VM wants people to pursue the PhD only under very specific financial circumstances, gaining a Masters at most to pursue something outside of academia. That's not something that I have or will take to heart, probably, until it's too late. Hopefully, the last link I posted makes it obvious what I want people to do, what I want to do: when this system (statistically inevitably) fails the people working under it, I want everyone to know that you can and should leave it.

Even if all participants perform perfectly within a capitalist system, some of those participants will absolutely always be unsuccessful in a free market. Professionalization MAY help, but only individually--and VirtualMessage played the game, had the publications, had the networking, had the Top 6 degree, and still did not succeed in this market. Professionalization, even if it helps you individually, will do nothing to change the fact that three-quarters of the hopefuls scrambling through grad school right now will definitively not get the job that they have been training for nearly a decade in order to do, whether they are thoroughly professionalized or not. What do you DO when you wind up in VM's position, jobless or virtually jobless, 30 to 40 years old with no savings and a **Liam Neeson voice ** very particular set of skills? What do we do then? It's the question that seems to be driving VM's posts, and it's one that no one has moved to answer very well. http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/03/20/the-be-yourself-myth-performing-the-academic-self-on-the-job-market/ http://theprofessorisin.com/2011/11/29/the-facepalm-fails-of-the-academic-interview/ http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/02/21/be-professorial/for tips on professionalization http://www.selloutyoursoul.com/for when the system does not work with you in it.

Can I say, as one of those newly entering graduate students this thread is nominally directed at guiding, that nothing about this thread has actually been at all helpful?

I think it's a great idea. And be sure to mention that someone had told you that you'd hear by the end of last week (which is a good excuse).

Right back atcha, tenfold. I'm hoping for the best!

I know both of the students who turned down the offer (because I'm one of them ), but I only know about the two students being invited to interview through the grapevine.

It is in my (limited) understanding, that two students have just been pulled from the waitlist and invited to interview. I know that at least two out of the original seven spots have opened up, and I believe that the department has already started moving toward filling the available spot.

Isn't this thread amazing? This time last year we were all swapping GRE study guide tips, and now.... Like, nine months ago, unraed and hreathemus were joking about the fact that they may eventually join the same cohort ha ha ha and now it's actually happening. Congratulations, everyone!

I went to an unknown school as well. My first advice to you is: that is not a bad thing, and don't apologize for it. Do not sell yourself short. If you are doing good work, no one on the adcomm is going to care what school you went to. I did pretty well this season, so I'll speak to my own experience. I studied hard for the GRE--I knew that no one was going to accept me just cause I got a 780 or something, but I also knew that because my school was unheard of, getting a solid score was a great way of showing, even subliminally, that, yes, I actually learned something in school. Multiple adcomms mentioned to me that my letters of recommendation were really, really strong. All of the writers were full professors that I had known between three and six years. That's a great thing about going to a small school. The most important document by far is the writing sample. My writing sample was not something I wrote for a class, so don't stress about crafting the perfect essay in your sophomore year of college. I would strongly recommend taking a year off--to study abroad, yes--but also so that you have plenty of time to devote to finessing your sample into the perfect specimen. Taking time off meant having time to make my personal statement and writing sample sample identical. Your personal statement gives adcomms an idea of the research questions you most anxious to explore in graduate school; I made sure my writing sample did a thorough job of beginning to answer those questions. The one thing that I wish I had done while I was in school was, I wish that I'd taken advantage of our school's internship program, in publishing or in marketing. I wish that I had taken advantage of external funding earlier, as well. For example, Sigma Tau Delta and other English fraternities have all of this scholarship money that's pretty much up for grabs.

Congratulations, IQ84!

Congratulations! Great news, great program. What's complicating the decision?

Lying about the schools you applied to would be the absolute worst thing you could do, and it would do nothing to actually help you. Tell them what schools you applied to and what schools you were accepted to, but emphasize that the waitlist school is still your top choice. It's perfectly reasonable for them to ask what other schools you are considering. Just be upfront. You also can't quite trick schools into thinking you are more "in demand" than you actually are. After the initial culling is done, many schools separate the admissions committee into subcommittees, and each subcommittee identifies which applicants they most want, forming a ranked or unranked list. Some students appear on every list--those are the students that get "topping-off" fellowships and incessant phone calls. In this way, a lot of schools already have their own internal list of students who are "in demand" for that particular program. No one's going to think, "Oh, she was accepted to Harvard WE SHOULD ACCEPT HER QUICK QUICK QUICK" if it wasn't the snuggest "fit" in the first place.

Turned down offers from USC and UCONN. By email, both times. In the case of UCONN, I emailed my star POI before I emailed the DGS. Best of luck!

I'd like to recommend the Smart Student's Guide to the GRE Literature in English Test. It looks very suspicious, but it was actually supremely useful. I'd skip the Shakespeare section, though, because there's just not enough questions on the test to be worth it. Translation: "Exactly how badly did ETS screw up that they actually managed to compensate you in any capacity?"