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Yes, exactly. This was my mindset applying to undergrad; it's my mindset for grad. A change of scenery will be nice -- some of these places will be the best place yet, some won't, but wherever it is it'll be a change. My wanderlust has been itching me for like, two years. If I don't get in anywhere, I'll still be going somewhere and figuring out something to do. I'm pretty sure that most of the people I've talked to on this forum are going places though . And, yeah, I'll be sticking around as the process goes on too! I've got 2 apps in and 8 or 9 left to go! I'm actually getting less stressed with every app. For now anyway. Let's do this! I'm pumped.

Thanks, Ramus, for your helpful comments!

Is that what the app fees are for? Not for lining the pockets of superfluous "student life" departments? Huh... Also, congrats! Give those timid paleographers a good show. I have little good news except that my classy-ass SO's parents got us some tickets for the Chicago Lyric Opera and if we can scrape together some gas money, my broke ass is finna mingle with some gold coast socialites and rock out to some Puccini... watch out! Haven't submitted anything yet (still nitpicking and re-re-re-rewriting my SOPs) but my first four apps are going out this week and next.

^^^^ Yep. Black Books has basically been my whole state of mind during this whole process: bullshit everything because I feel like the only person doing this who doesn't know what the hell they are doing, expect failure, blame that failure on the stupidity of the human race, and take comfort in my piles of books, cigarettes, and red wine. Applying to graduate school isn't entirely healthy, I've found. My (entirely hypocritical) advice is... don't sweat the small stuff? My example would be... freak out over the small stuff until you finally say "fuck it" and give up and say it's fine because you have a life outside of this crap. Maybe. If you've kept watering it throughout this whole stupid application process. Which not all of us have probably done very well. Like me.

Mm, I'm not completely sure, but I don't think I would unless a program specifically, and explicitly, accepts that. I would *think* it would better just to mention in your SOP that it was published in so-and-so journal and format the paper how most people will be (double spaced, 1 inch margins, etc). That would also allow you a little more flexibility for tweaking things like font and font size to fit various size requirements. I don't know though. That's what I would assume given no specific answer on a program's admissions website. Some programs will say that you can put in a special note for a WS that's an excerpt of a larger work -- depending on how a specific application works, maybe you could put the citation?

Wonderfully put! I think this is probably the most difficult thing to teach, but I think many people who study literature are in some ways better prepared to approach texts than many students of, say, philosophy or history, that I've met. Literature, more than anything else (at least that I can think of), is the form of expression that forces you to suspend your own preconceptions, opinions, thought processes, etc. and try and surrender yourself to the voice of another. To me, this is an important skill -- to be able to approach a text, a situation, or another human being and just listen and try to understand before you let your own ideas or opinions get in the mix; to approach something and try to understand it before judging it is something way more people need to learn to do.

YES. My Teacher is an Alien scared the living shit out of me when I secretly read it in some dark corner of the public library that my tiny little elementary school in downtown Winston Salem, NC used. That series was fucked up. Yes, Wyatt, for how much of a minority we are, us medievalists seem to love crashing all the threads on GC. I reaffirm unraed's post wholeheartedly. I study literature for a million reasons, none of which are good. Science is so awesome when you read about it in science fiction or read science from 1,000 years ago, but then you start to read the real stuff and its boring and hard. If "real" science (pffffffff) was more similar to 12th century alchemy or to Star Trek that's what I'd be doing right now. Or if I could get away with doing analyses of the poetics of scientific writing on invertebrate mating practices or tectonic plate movements instead of doing labs, I'd be all over that. I also study literature because its impractical and useless and I have a lot of political beliefs about the importance of "useless" things in a capitalistic society. On the other hand, it's practical for me because I'm trying to make a living reading books instead of being a wage-slave. And because a B.A. in English isn't that sustainable in the Rust Belt (where I currently live). Also my dad said I should be a plumber and I was a disobedient little shit -- I said I was going to be a poet and, for my day job, write erotic novels for suburban housewives to get off to to make up for their incompetent and oppressive husbands. This eventually expressed itself as a scholarship package at a faraway college. Unraed almost exactly described my basic, theoretical interest in the Middle Ages. I fell in love with dream visions and hagiography in particular -- I was into science fiction and surrealism already, and these medieval texts seemed to outdo any modern text when it came to blurring the lines between dreams and reality. I fell in love with the notion that matter was accidental and changeable in relation to the Creator's weird plans as well as the philosophical implications, tensions, and contradictions of the notions of authority and asceticism in monastic texts. Also, medieval ideas of natural history and etymologies are just so wonderfully weird. Also: Chaucer. And marginal pictures of Asshole-Bird-Men (pardon my specialist jargon) getting trumpets rammed up their butts. And Bernard of Clairvaux being a melodramatic fop whose biggest accomplishment was getting the Virgin Mary to spray breast milk into his mouth. And Jesus' side wound. And alliterative poetry. Also, studying Europe before Protestantism came and ruined all the fun, before absolutist monarchy, before the free market and John Locke and Adam Smith (may they burn in eternal hellfire), before the stupid and incessant fetishization of individualism and the so-called "Enlightenment," before the Victorians and their boring doilies and all the other stuff I was supposed to read in school that made me regret majoring in English and not, say, French or German or Spanish or Philosophy.

Ah, I see. It does sound sort of familiar. It also sounds like the sort of thing I would have automatically declined to cut down on spam, unfortunately.

Hard to say. I think Urbana-Champaign has more medievalists (I'm assuming that's what you'd wonder about), but UIC has the benefit of being in the city of Chicago and thus being closer to the Newberry Library.

Really? I'm sorry to hear that. It's a real racket -- and yes, I've heard all the explanations about preventing people from doing casual submissions, and the explanations like "if you can't pay an application fee, maybe you can't afford grad school" : these explanations are bullshit, especially for these schools with ginormous endowments that often charge higher application fees. I often joke that the money from these fees is how they fund their grad students. But seriously, paying application fees for the 10-12 schools I'm applying to is going to be a real financial hardship for me. Obviously it's worth it to me, since I'm going to find a way to cough up where I have to, but even just a couple waivers would really help given the modest income I'm currently working with (where my use of "modest" is a textbook example of litotes if there ever was one). Frankly, the only thing keeping me from applying internationally is the money involved, but I'm lucky enough to have been born in a country with some of the best universities in the world. Which isn't to say that there aren't many, many other countries where I'd rather live

That's really awesome, but I'm not sure what "GRE profile thingy" you speak of. I haven't seen any such emails, at least not that I know of. Perhaps there's some way to do it through the ETS account?

Yeah' they're all difficult to read though, NRC I usually go by their S (student retention, completion, and maybe placement?) to a slightly lesser extent, the R rank (research). Still a pain though. USN rankings are at least as opaque though - even the subject specific ones. Yeah, I feel you. I probably won't end up applying sadly. Seems to be no point in applying to a school SOLELY for the presence of one professor...

Mm, for English UIC does pretty damned well here: http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-English/124728/. I'm less familiar with the US News rankings. That's really cool to hear about GW though, thanks proflorax!

Great thread idea. Y'all are making me think twice about my list (as if I REALLY need to be doing that). Does anyone know anything about George Washington University? I'm kind of interested in them for their Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute and for Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, but I've been on the fence because of their ranking and because I'm not really familiar with any of the faculty except him... Also University of Illinois at Chicago is a school that I feel doesn't get enough love. They are extremely well ranked (like top 20) and don't require the subject test. Not exactly a "safety school" I guess, but I would bet that it doesn't get nearly as many applicants as it should simply because it's overshadowed by U of C and Northwestern.

Hell yeah, that's just what I needed. Thanks toasterazzi!

Wow, thanks! Investigating this now...

Good for you for keeping on with it! My whole support system for graduate school has been at my college here (and my SO's family, for whom getting a Ph.D. is actually an admirable, not superfluous or "elitist," endeavor), but I think my parents started to be a little less condescending when I framed it more like a "career," telling them that I wasn't going to get my PhD (in literature) unless I was getting funded at a school with good placement rates, making it seem like getting my PhD was more like a job/stepping stone to a real career. I hate to frame it that way, because to me it's just that I love literature and want to devote as much of my energy to studying it as possible, but it got me some more respect, I think. *shrug*, I guess there's some things you never figure out -- a very weird power dynamic ensues when you find yourself becoming more educated than your own parents though. Like on one level they look to you for answers or authority on certain things, but on another it's almost like they resent you. I'd imagine that it's kind of a slap in the face when your kid goes off to college, hopefully to make more money than you and help you out when you're old and then turns around and studies literature. Oops. I think for a lot of us, going for a Ph.D. is a mixture of pursuing your passions and a silent rejection of an attitude towards life that is ultimately unsatisfying. My family has had its share of ups and downs, but on the whole has been much better off than when I was growing up as a kid. For me, going to college was like striking off on my own to create a life for myself that was different than a lot of the ways of life that disgusted me growing up. Education is the true freedom, not money. I only hope that one day education will be more accessible for everyone and that it won't require so much jumping through hoops and fundraising just to get one. As corporatized and hierarchical as so many people have been saying academia has gotten, I think the value of an education and a love of learning transcends that. For many, I think, it's a way to get a critical distance from all the bullshit. Good for you for pursuing an education instead, and I wish you the best of luck!

Move dude, fuck that. find a new place and sublet your room, there's no reason you should have to deal with that. If I were you I'd be looking for a new place and new roommates. Unless you could afford to live in a studio or something on your own. But I would just be real with them and tell them that you're leaving because you can't stand these living conditions and need to find a subletter, don't beat around the bush and ask if they have a friend -- tell them assertively that you're actively trying to move out and they need to get their shit together. I would complain to the landlord too if necessary, having sloppy irresponsible roommates can screw you over when it comes to the deposit, especially when its some slumlord. For my last place I got screwed because my roommate was filthy, never helped me clean, and was like 4 months behind on rent. Guess who had to take the fall for that? lol yeah my dad wanted me to be a plumber. My mom grew up dirt poor in the deep south and my dad was a jewish immigrant who got out of the iron curtain when he was young. Imagine the long silence on the phone when I told them I was studying Latin and wanted to be a medievalist... ugh... my parents don't know SHIT about grad school and I grew up in a place where higher education isn't valued because most people who got money in my city didn't need a college degree to get there. All the rich folks are illiterate and all the poor kids just wanna hustle to get to that same level and it disgusted me, so I left and went to college far away on scholarships and never moved back. My SO comes from a better off family who does value that kind of thing and her parents are always asking about grad schools and stuff and offering us to meet their professor friends and then we go visit mine for a week and they don't ask either of us about it even once -- like they don't even care that my SO wants to be a lawyer and I'm gonna be more educated than ANYONE in our family has ever been. But they fetishize this whole stupid American notion of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and getting rich without cracking open a book, on this stupid false hope that one day they can still get rich. Pathetic if you ask me. It's embarrassing, but I know(/hope) I'll be the first of ANY of my family to have an advanced degree and that gives me something to be proud of.

Stinky old adcomms just aren't always hip to the stylez of the future. How I'm going to feel around the time schools are looking at my application:

Um.... I think that's just how you do it, at least for our purposes!

Sure, PM me if you'd still like some feedback. Mine aren't even close to finished yet (*hangs head in shame*), but I could probably use a reader too when the time comes.

I know what what you mean, even at this point I have a couple programs I'm on the fence about. Thing is I went into this whole process figuring that I can't financially justify a humanities Ph.D. unless its at a great program where I'll be able to get a job. Even my "safety" schools are great schools and very selective and very well funded programs. There's a couple "tippy-top" programs I'm applying to and I was nervous about applying to Ivies like Princeton and Yale. I'm probably going to cut out Yale because I simply don't think I would fit with the program as well but there's always that weird feeling... like feeling like you'll regret it if you don't try... I dunno. What I'm doing is taking a hard look at those tippy-tops and determining how much of me really meshes (I think) with the program and how much is just for the name of the program, the name of the school. Were I you I would maybe browse a couple other programs that you may have thought about earlier but forgot about or wrote off. I realized within the last couple weeks that there's a couple schools I looked at early on that I wrote off for opinions I no longer have and now would be really excited to attend. If you've already sent your scores to those schools and would still think you would love going there I would do it if you can afford to. It's not going to be a WHOLE lot cheaper switching over to a new app in the middle of one than adding a school to the list. But yeah, the schools I've already sent scores to, I'm definitely going to apply to - might as well, right? If your change of heart is purely about confidence getting in, I would say that you should apply anyway since you've already started investing the time and money into applying. Because you never know! From other posts you've made here, it seems to me like you're a strong candidate!

Most if my queries have been pretty lame. I hate schmoozing, but I've gotten some pretty important questions answered regarding "fit" and stuff like whether the POI will be around, if an OE professor will be around, etc. I also got sent a syllabus-in-the-works from one POI, which made me a lot more interested in a school I had been overlooking for a while. Not stressing over it now though -- one of my profs was really pushing me to start hitting up all these people at all these schools ("you should really contact so and so") but it's good to hear that not everyone's on that same mantra, which I was getting kind of sick of hearing. When there's someone I'd REALLY like to work with I ask if they'll be around next Fall and maybe ask something about the medieval studies community at that school. But there's plenty of schools where I feel no need to ask anything but to clarify technicalities about the application. On the other hand, it'd be kind of bad to enroll at a school to work with someone only to find that they won't be there or are trying to not be there -- there was one POI/DGS I contacted who said he was trying to be on leave next year, which isn't on his profile on the department's site. Still applying there, because there are other people there who I'd love to work with but, hey, I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't contacted the guy. He also gave me a very honest assessment of what the school is and isn't good for, which was helpful for me to figure out how to diversify my applications and options, as well as for understanding the character of that program a little better. My SOP to that school (which happens to be a Very Selective And Well Regarded Institution), will probably be that much stronger because of that interaction.

Thanks, lyonessrampant! A very helpful answer once again.

maybe I will...