__________________________

Wow. Congratulations to everyone!

Poser.

I'm not in college right now, but I can tell you I'm way behind on grading. I wish I was in school right now -- having work to focus on and doing research would make me so much less obsessive about this whole process. It would be nice to at least be expected and required to be working on some of the things I'm trying to go to grad school for rather than just obsessing over grad school itself. I dunno if that's any comfort. Appreciate being in school as much as you can! I assume you enjoy the work if you're applying to graduate school. Not having the required and expected academic attention makes it much harder to focus on academic interests, especially when you have a full time job to tire you out every day and divert your energy elsewhere.

Congrats to all the admits! unraed, stop being a dick and get rejected from somewhere. ;-)

Dammit. I knew I chose the wrong field...

Yeah this is awkward. It's hard to tell how flexible things can be. So far I've gotten in to two schools of pretty different ranks, and very different funding packages and cities (U Chicago and OSU). The funding from Chicago is generous (good at OSU, too! very different cities though), but I also get an impression of inflexibility: they mention no increases over the course of my study (which is fine -- it's a solid stipend) and I already know that every admitted student to their Ph.D. program gets the same package (in order to insure everyone gets funded and to reduce competitive tensions between students). As awesome as OSU's program is, I feel like having an acceptance there wouldn't translate to any leverage at a place like U of C when it comes to funding, even though Chicago's been at me pretty vigorously since I got accepted. I'm thinking of waiting until the Open House at the end of the month to ask about getting some funding for a summer language course, after talking to a couple graduate students about their experience with it. Is anyone else worried about money issues over the summer before starting a program? In a perfect world, I'd love to just get a summer language course paid for so I could feel more ready to delve into my studies again, but I'm also leaving a steady school-year job (as an HS teacher) and apartment in the town I'm living in now to pack up and move somewhere else in early August (and if I go to Chicago, school wouldn't start until mid to late September, I think). Is it a thing for schools to help compensate for moving expenses? Is that a ridiculous thing to ask for? My stipend will be more than adequate once it starts coming in, but the idea of looking at a couple months of unemployment with no savings AND having to move into a new apartment in a new town AND to have to start paying back my B.A. loans over the summer while not having a job (my grace period will end a couple months before starting a new program) is a little terrifying for me right now. I'm no stranger to scraping by financially and would obviously find a way to make it work (especially if I move to a big city like Chicago, where I could hustle some temp jobs canvassing or something), but still...

Out of upvotes, but thank Out of upvotes, but thank you so much, proflorax. I guess I still haven't gotten over the initial awe of getting in and need to just ask directly.

That would be cool, I think. Is there some way on like, Skype or something to do group meetings? I recently picked up the Bryn Mawr Latin Commentaries edition of Prudentius' Psychomachia if that's something that appeals to people. But yeah, regardless of how we do it or what we read, I would be down. I have a busy teaching schedule and a weekly OE reading group that I've been lagging on so hard just because of my job, so I haven't had a whole lot of time/energy to motivate myself for practicing Latin. A group would help with that.

Word. Thanks so much! When they have all the sketchy ones floating about sharing a page with the legit one(s), I get nervous buying things from Amazon. I will definitely be picking this up. EDIT: Didn't see you there, unraed -- thanks!

I learned Latin on Wheelock's. The Latin class I took in college was basically teaching ourselves Latin with the book while the teacher answered questions and gave us exams when we asked for them. It kind of sucked. I sort of learned Latin that way. A tutor helped a lot, as did simply taking lit classes that forced me to get better. My experience was: get the grammar basics and then just start reading shit until it starts to stick more. I still don't consider myself fluent in reading Latin, but I can work through it and do work with it. I meant to do this a couple years ago, but didn't have time because of my work schedule: https://sites.google.com/a/swarthmore.edu/medieval-latin-summer-2013-the-gesta-francorum/ I'm going to try and partake in that if it's offered this summer and if my schedule works for it this time around. We used Turpin's edition of the Gesta Francorum in my Medieval Latin Lit/Paleography course though as a sight-reading text for getting classes started, and I think you can download that text there, which is pretty amusing, especially if you're interested in medieval history writing and the first crusade. I can also affirm how legit TEAMS is -- especially since they have so much material available online for free, including meticulously annoted editions with great introductions and bibliographies. I don't have any of their physical printed editions, but they are pretty cheap. For OE, I started learning last semester with just a grammar and a copy of Pope and Fulk's Eight Old English Poems with an informal, small reading group. Recently started working through Beowulf with an even smaller, more informal reading group. Any recommendations for a good OE dictionary though? There're so many sketchy editions of A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary floating around on the internet that I don't know what to get and I get sick of just using the online edition of Bosworth-Toller all the time...

All wonderful advice. NowMoreSerious, I have been quietly absorbing and sincerely appreciating all the advice you give on this forum. I'm wondering if people know anything about the etiquette regarding asking questions about funding packages. I recently got my funding offer from the University of Chicago, and it's really quite generous, but I'm not sure about asking certain questions. The stipend is plenty generous and due to start in the Fall quarter (late September), but, should I attend there, I would also really like to be able to take a language course in their summer language immersion program. I can't afford it with my current income/debts/other financial obligations, but one of my POI's mentioned that one or two of the students she wants to introduce me to during the visitation days (from another department) took language courses the summer began they started their programs. Would it be uncouth to ask about that via email so soon after getting my funding offer (which came last night), or should I just wait until I visit and ask current students about it? I would also be curious to hear tips on where to poke around and who is the appropriate person to ask about details like placement -- particularly what NowMoreSerious refers to when he advises to "Look at the job placement in your field, and from the dissertations that were advised by the professors you might be working with." UChicago is particularly vague about their placement on their website, just giving lists of recent placements without any further data -- is this sort of information usually collated somewhere, or is it more of a matter of gathering the information yourself through talking to lots of people? So many little things I worry about and don't know about -- I've been accepted to one of my "dream" programs, but I feel so ignorant and humbled asking questions a lot of the time. This is all so new to me -- I don't know anyone else personally attending a PhD program, and no one's ever gone to graduate school in my family... I just feel like I got extremely lucky and fortunate to get such an offer and don't know how to ask these sorts of questions without feeling ungrateful... Thanks!

Re: Penn, from the history it looks like we should be hearing some time between like RIGHT NOW and early March... Blegh. It's really the only program I need to hear from before I make a final decision. And congrats, Iwontbelyeveit! Best of luck on that interview!

Oh jeez, congrats WT! Just saw that. It's an excellent school and probably a much needed and SOLID option to have under your belt as you wait for more responses. Probably means I'm definitely rejected from UMD but I'm happy with what I've got. :-)

Just curious -- was it for the English or for the Medieval Studies program at Yale?

2Pac has gotten me through countless Old English and Latin poetry translation sessions. I have no idea why. Maybe it's just cuz 'Pac and the Anglo-Saxons had an affinity for religious metaphors and alliteration...

Mad, suffocating hugs for hreaðemus and unræd!!!! Y'all are *ridiculous* underachievers. Edit: to add more exclamation points and to facepalm for leaving out Lycidas. MAJOR Congratulations!!

Yeah, I'm loving it. I keep getting interrupted from it for various reasons so I've been much more stop and go with it than I would prefer, unfortunately. Which version did you read? I'm reading the B-Text...

MAJOR congrats to hypervodka and southernscholar! (and geaux tigers!)

Congratulations!

Yeah, sometimes more "flat" noises helps when there are distracting and erratic noises about. I'm kind of anal about peace and quiet when I'm reading too. This site is great though, so thanks for sharing! My downstairs neighbor is often either yelling at her dogs or blasting really obnoxious new agey music soundscapes and white buddhist "hip hop" about TM and nirvana and shit (really wish I'd never had the displeasure of being introduced to that particular genre of music). I sometimes remedy this with some harsh noise walls, which cancel out the distracting noises and allow me to get back to Piers Plowman, or whatever else I happen to be reading, in peace. In terms of current reads, I just picked up a copy of Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism to read through as I prepare to offer remedial supplements to the high school curriculum that wants me to teach about "Cultural Studies" and have my students read some Kipling to learn about colonialism. Another small step in my quixotic journey to turn these kids into communists...

Major congratulations to mehrlicht and andalus! Both are fantastic programs from what I understand. CUNY's got some really cool modernists -- even though I'm (sort of? these labels make me angsty sometimes) a "medievalist," I almost wanted to apply to CUNY just so I could maybe have the opportunity to meet Mary Ann Caws... It seems some universities (or at least, their advertising branches or whatever) just love to take advantage of our angst during the application process to jam in as much spam and advertising as possible... not sure why... UChicago is guilty of this too. Why feel need to do this to people who may not be getting accepted? Seems kind of inconsiderate to me.

Argh, good to hear that you'll be healthy. Hopefully the good news will be a sign of more increasingly good news to come! You are in California though, so there's always O'Douls and herbal remedies. I suppose. If you're into that kind of thing. And have a legitimate medical condition. Like application season related stress. ;-)

http://www.hogwartsishere.com/ it's real...

I think this is true. My GRE scores weren't dramatically better than this, and my GPA was not nearly as high as some of the people on here who've shared their stats or attached them to results board listings. Granted my numbers weren't super low or anything, but judging from what I've seen on here, they're on the low end of very good/typical. Departmental dynamics, politics, and luck all play a role, I think: I know there were people with better GREs, better GREs, longer, more impressive resumes than me applying to the schools I applied to. Someone might be on the lookout for advisees and one applicant resonates with them personally from having a similar academic "path" or methodologies or something. Or a program can only let in X number of Renaissance studies people. Or a committee just gets bored of reading applications by people who want to write their dissertation on Paradise Lost (or something -- no offense to those who do, of course). Who knows how this shit works. Adcomms vary with each school and each year, as do applicants, financial resources of departments and schools, etc. I'd imagine it depends heavily on the program too. I could imagine a "top 6" school being more selective based on stats and GREs. But maybe I've always just imagined the top 6 schools and the Ivies as being populated by crooked old white aristocratic men hiding in their evil Victorian mansions collating the genealogies of all their applicants and laughing maniacally as they crush the dreams of 99.7% of their applicants. Or something like that. A school like Columbia states pretty plainly on their website that most admits have certain GPAs and certain GRE scores, whereas a school like the University of Chicago states pretty plainly that they don't care about seeing your GRE Subject Test scores if you have them and don't put that much weight on the general GREs either. Who knows. Not me. Obviously, if you get to an interview or acceptance/waitlist, then no one's going to seem interested in those numerical stats because they're boring and besides the point at that stage in the process. They've only asked me if I have questions and about the kind of work I'm interested in doing. I have no idea what role they play and what purpose they serve before that point though, and doubt any academic would be straight up about it due to the sorts of pretensions that are specific to the profession of being an academic.

WHAM. Rejected from Yale (Medieval Studies program, not English). Got an automatically generated email to check my status in the middle of a difficult day of teaching. Can't say I'm super bothered or surprised though.