allplaideverything

University emails've got me so jumpy now that it's February! I did my MFA at Indiana, and I just got an email about "Prospective Student Visits" and freaked out--only to realize I'm still on the listserv, and they're just asking for current students to help out with it later this spring.

Congrats, lo.lee.ta! I, too, grew up in Minneapolis, and I did my undergrad at the U. Happy to answer any questions you might have, too.

I agree with the others that you'll be getting some good news, WT. You seem to be both careful and committed as a thinker, and some universities are going to see that.

Nah, I just meant, like, why not?

IDK // I'm gonna keep refreshing the results board every fifteen minutes and elevating my heart rate because Saturday!

this is everything.

Are people serious with their "Imaginative, unprecedented research" & "groundbreaking in my field" stuff in the results postings? Is this the field we're (hopefully) going into?

I wanted so badly to do my dissertation on the poetics of rap music--I got to assist my mentor at my MFA program in a lit class on hip-hop as poetry--but I was told that applying in 20th/21st C is so much more competitive. :/

Good luck // Have fun!

Berkeley has also sent out some waitlist notifications, so I imagine we can now assume rejection. But schools that have sent out a few acceptances and (as far as we know) no waitlists could do staggered acceptances, so we can't reliably predict anything (other than that we can always reliably predict that we won't get in because the odds are against us :/). SUNY Buffalo had three acceptances on GC the other day, for example, but they were all in Poetics and university-wide fellowship candidates, so I'm not writing that off as a rejection for me yet.

Congrats to SIUC and Berkeley admits!! What an exciting day already!

Lol, I feel the same way about U of Oregon on my list. I feel like I crossed it off my list 3 different times and it just kept popping back up.

I was composing my list based almost entirely on perceived fit and geography. So I looked at course offerings, recent dissertations, faculty areas of specialization, designated emphases or tracks, etc. If the word "queer" didn't appear in any of these listings, I dropped a school immediately. If a school separated queer & sexuality studies from gender studies & feminism, I took it as a good sign. I looked for lots of queers, any mention of transgender studies, radical politics, Marxism, critical race theory, etc. My interests and approach are heavily "leftist," and I know I wouldn't be happy in a program that wasn't set up for that--nor would a program uncomfortable with radicalism be happy with me (or offer me admission). I guess it's certainly possible that there are Marxists and queer theorists who I wouldn't be compatible with as thinkers/scholars/people, but I didn't dig much deeper than "are there queers and radicals here?" for fit. One of my schools has already contacted me, and said they're excited about my application and how my interests fit with the program's strengths. (They wanted a second writing sample to help with final admissions decisions.) And what's interesting is that, while they're a radical- and queer- heavy program, they don't really have a single 19th Century Americanist, which is my proposed period--so sometimes, I guess, methodology can suffice for other discrepancies in fit? But yes, as others have said, no way to know for sure. Fingers crossed for us all!

No, I don't think they're done, personally. A friend who did his MFA in creative writing at OSU says their department accepts its university-wide fellowship candidates first, then has to apply to the univ. for the fellowships and wait a few weeks to figure out how much money they have left for TAships. I imagine many schools do this--Indiana's MFA program did this, too, so I'll bet their PhD program is the same way.

This is exactly right. Especially after you're finished with coursework, you're going to be pretty much self-directed when it comes to studying for comps and working on your dissertation. While the culture of the program is definitely important, I think you need to bring your own rigor. But, for what it's worth, looking at your application list in your signature, DramaDuck, I imagine you'll find yourself surrounded by plenty of committed scholars.

I don't think this is common, though this is my first (PhD) application season, so I'm not sure. I'm coming from an MFA, and all my recommendations are from creative writers, so I think they want to see more evidence of me as a critic/scholar before making a decision. Sure makes me wish I'd had a lit person write me a letter!

I got a request for a second writing sample from UC Riverside! I didn't know this was a possibility, so it's exciting and terrifying. I am not under the impression that they're asking all of their possible admits, and I am under the impression that they'll be making a decision relatively soon (but not immediately soon).

I love this thread, and all the reading recs! It's been nice to read your varying approaches to identity in SOP's etc. My research interests and methodology are very influenced by my identity, but I think I still sort of dog whistled it or left room for multiple interpretations (of my gender identity & sexuality)--talked about how "my trans/genderqueer approach...would contribute to the diversity of the program" or something like that. But I did definitely foreground my working class background, and my radical politics. Maybe that was a bad idea...

I agree with cerena re: Analytical Writing scores. If an admissions committee digs your work, they're not going to change their mind because of something like that. I assume, at least. I only applied to one creative PhD, USC, along with a bunch of English programs. Best of luck to everybody!

Congrats to all the early admits! I totally forgot about GradCafe, but coming back to this thread has definitely upped my anxiety levels. Such an exciting time!

Hot damn, that was a fun and bewildering test.

Between Fields is right that the in-person stuff is super important, professionally. But if you were able to get accepted into a PhD program later on, you could take care of a lot of the professional stuff then. Something else you might consider looking into would be low-residency MFA programs in creative writing. Obviously that requires that you be interested in creative writing, but it could be a way to get an advanced degree while keeping your current job.

No, you're absolutely right that that would be strange. I hold an M.A. in English/Creative Writing and an MFA in Creative Writing--Poetry. I'm hoping to switch to the scholarly side of things for my PhD.

Thank Jesus for Victorianists!

Of course the job market in academia is especially rough--I went on the market last year, with a book and teaching experience, and got 0 interviews--but it's worth remembering that job markets in other fields suck, too. Some of my friends who went to law school have told me that that's no longer a guarantee of a decent job, either, and that many people are pursuing JD/MBA joint degrees, now. Wild! Anyway, yeah, it definitely is tough. And people here have given good advice. But at the end of the day, even if the PhD doesn't get us jobs teaching at the college level, there are so many ways to frame teaching experience and research abilities when interviewing with private sector employers. Doing a PhD, so long as you actually want to do the kind of work a PhD requires, isn't going to leave you worse off than you are when you start.