allplaideverything

I applied only to English departments, but I suspect I'll be doing some interdisciplinary work with American Studies, too. Weighing offers from USC, UC Davis, and UC Riverside right now. Anybody here considering USC? I'm visiting this week. So excited and anxious!

I went through this sort of thing during my MFA admissions season a few years back, but I think their incredulity / surprise is meant to make you feel better, meant to say "We really think you're so great! Sorry it didn't work out for you this year," and not, "I did my job, you must not have done yours." They love you and want you to succeed, and their disappointment is almost certainly in commiseration with you, and not meant to make you feel worse.

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out that first chart.

Well, USC's is the only creative program I applied to for a few reasons. I already have the MFA, and I'm serious about making the transition to the scholarly side. But USC considers themselves a dual program. I need to visit & learn more, I guess. Still, blown away and so thankful.

Holy Holy, I got into USC's creative/critical PhD off the waitlist today. They only accept 3 poets and have stellar funding, so this is a surprise on top of a season of surprises, for me. Waitlisters DO get accepted! My fingers are crossed for everybody!

Hm, my friend who was going to drive me from LA on Wednesday morning, and pick me up Thursday evening, got into a car accident today. He's fine! But now I need to figure out a new travel plan. 1Q84, have you figured anything out yet?

I didn't visit my M.A. or M.F.A. before attending. Your decision does indeed seem to be pretty straightforward, but do whatever you feel you need to.

Caroline: as long as your programs already have your official transcript, there's almost certainly no reason for them to find out you've dropped a course until you're already there. Once you sign the papers, you're fine. (More generally, I doubt they'd want to rescind the offer anyway, but I still wouldn't tell them, if I were you.)

Uff, I had my fingers crossed for you at Penn! Think there's another 19th C Americanist accepted at Rutgers?

I feel similarly. My only peer / friend who had applied to English PhDs had a super rough application season right out of our M.A., only got into one place off the waitlist. And she was smarter than me, so I kinda assumed I'd get shutout this season. My profs told me to apply to a good number of less competitive programs.

Who all is coming to the recruitment events? I can't wait!

Mine says pending too.

Declined my Oregon offer today. I hope somebody here gets the spot!

I just found out I'm waitlisted at Rutgers--which is amazing and terrifying--and I wanted to say how helpful this thread is! Thanks for sharing all this info! Congrats to admits!

Checked my online status due to other commenters, and I'm waitlisted at Rutgers! (!!)!

I just declined my offer at Syracuse. Feels super weird. I called Dorri Beam, and she's amazing--I hope somebody here moves up off the waitlist!

What color is that dress though?

Dude, Caroline, Oregon!! Congrats!! I talked to Lara, the DGS at Oregon, last night, and it sounds like she has made two thirds of the calls, and I don't think there will be a waitlist. She didn't give me a time line, but I suspect she'll finish making calls this weekend.

we should be frenemies at UCR

Well, OK, I think lots of folks have been notably clear that they're worried about more than simply not getting hired at an Ivy. If this is a good faith discussion and you disagree, we can dig more deeply into some quotes. More generally, though, I think there are ways of talking about all of these issues together without holding them to be "comparable" or one to be "a symbol for" another. Instead, the thing that connects professorial hiring woes with other kinds of social inequality is causality. If we're interested in dismantling oppressive and unequal systems, then we need to look at how those systems work and what effects they have on a broad scale. I agree that not getting hired at an Ivy is not as important as, say, the rising problem of student loan debt, or the racial gap in income and wealth. However, all of these problems are caused, at least in part, by the same system--and part of that system is the concentration of massive resources in protected and exclusionary zones (whether Ivies or SLACs or universities in general).

I think Apppp...'s point is a good one, or at least clarifies that discussions of power and privilege aren't limited to what kind of TT position a humanities PhD can hope to be hired for based on their grad institution's prestige. Indeed, if that was what anybody was saying, that'd obviously be lacking in vision. Instead, the problem with the Ivy League isn't limited to humanities PhDs, or professorial hiring, or graduate school at all: the problem is that all sectors of our society, both economic and political, reify the prestige of a small network of massively wealthy institutions, and the institutions combined with their networks work hard at maintaining their exclusive power. That's a social problem at large which isn't at all limited to "the Ivory Tower." And indeed, while the main benefits conferred upon students of elite institutions are largely socioeconomic, the problem is exacerbated and compounded by the fact that Ivies and other elite institutions (and, really, most 4-year universities across the country regardless of prestige) make admissions decisions which adversely affect people of color, trans* folks, working class immigrants, and other already marginalized groups. So, yeah, I think "trans* people get killed so fuck your TT position conundrum" is maybe not the best articulation of the argument, but Appp is right to expand the conversation beyond the woes of professional academia. EDIT: and this is indeed what I mean when I talk about "fuck the Ivy League"--not that the folks who do their English PhDs there are bad people, but that the very nature of such a "League" is grounded in systematic inequality based on prestige and inheritance.

Postwar, congrats! I just got back home to Bloomington today, and have some business on campus--I'll see if I can't dig up some info for you (/ for us, as I applied here too).

Yupp!!!

Just got a voice mail from DGS at Oregon! Sounds like an acceptance! (didn't add it to the board yet.)

Somebody reported that they checked the SUNY Buffalo application website and were waitlisted, so I checked mine, and it also says I'm waitlisted.