BeatrizBear

For my MA, I had an adviser who was in charge of all the MA students in my program and I had a professor who was the director of my thesis. With the director we got along super well to the point where we told each other personal things. With the MA adviser, he seemed really off-putting. I remember once I was explaining something to him that I was really passionate about so I was gesturing a lot and looking really excited and he just stared at me and told me to calm down. It was incredibly hurtful and totally ruined my self confidence with him. After speaking to other students I realized that he had no social skills. It still hurt me when he said things, but I took them much less personally because this man apparently did not know how to be friendly with students. Some people just have a type of personality that won't match well with yours and you won't have the kind of relationship where you feel that person is your buddy. Don't take it too hard.

http://belltowerbooks.com/ BellTowerBooks is great. Shipping is a dollar per book and sometimes you can find books as cheap as a penny. Typically you find more of the popular books, though.

I think that's hard to tell since it's all dependent on how many people decide to accept their offer and how big the school wants the incoming class to be. I got waitlisted at Pittsburgh for a Spanish PhD and I'm unsure about my own chances as well. I think you should hold out as long as you can if you really want this spot. If you don't really want to go there and are just staying on the list for the sake of it, just ask to be removed now since you'll probably just be taking a spot from someone else. Most people know by March where they got accepted, I think, so they probably will start replying to their offers by the end of March and the school will start sending out invites to the people on the waitlist.

Except for UT Austin that just destroyed everyone here.

It wasn't me. I think someone posted about an interview earlier.

Amazing! With funding?

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/01/local/me-ucsd-reject1 UC San Diego's error was worse. They once wrongly accepted several thousand students.

I've basically been rejected from most programs and wait listed at two. I won't be hearing back from them for a long time and the wait is killing me because I know the only way I'm getting an admission is by getting off a wait list.

I'm sure whether you pick Indiana or Wisconsin you'll do well. Pick the one that you like best. Be sure to ask the coordinator about money to visit so that you don't end up shouldering a huge financial burden before you even start! Did you get funding at both schools?

If you get invited to the open house, typically the school gives you some money to come visit or they pay for the entire trip. When I was applying one of my advisers listed Berkeley, UT Austin, Princeton, and Pittsburgh for Latin America. Look at the research interests for each professor carefully. Even though you say they're all studying Latin American literature, that's a very broad spectrum. Some professors only study specific regions or time periods, so make sure that the professors study the same things that you're interested in. When did you find out that you were on the wait list at Pittsburgh? I am too, but I had to email the director to find out. They haven't been communicating with me a lot. =/ Ah! I didn't mention it before, but my research interests are: Border Studies, Us Latino literature with a focus on women writers, 20th and 21st century Spanish American Literature with a focus on women writers, and immigration in the United States.

I applied to Indiana as well and I am on the waitlist. I applied there because I was doing my thesis on Elena Garro and one of the professors at that school did some work on her plays, which I also did. Also, my adviser is an alum so I thought I might as well apply since my research interests fit well with some of the people there. Where else did you get accepted into? Indiana isn't particularly known for Latin American literature (I don't think so, at least), but it does seem to have some cool people doing some interesting things in the field. I think it's popular because it has a rather large Hispanic linguistics program, which is rare since most universities seem to focus more on literature. The results page seems to be mostly linguistics rather than literature. Did you get invited to the open house? You should visit both schools and then you can ask more questions and get a feel for the schools.

This was my case. I saw some people get rejected pretty early on and then saw people get accepted last week so I emailed and the school said I'm on their waitlist. They just don't notify students of this status.

Congrats! I haven't heard back from BU but I won't be disappointed if I get off the wait list elsewhere. They're good but awfully small.

Look at the department not the school. Each university's department sends notice at different times. Also, sometimes people get notified early if their application is really, really good or they won a special fellowship.

I don't think people regularly reject this school so I doubt I'll get in.

The coordinator told me that all acceptances to Pittsburgh were sent last week but that I'm "halfway between those accepted and those rejected" and that they will notify me in April. I guess that's waitlist? It doesn't sound like I'm high on the list.

If I get rejected everywhere I'm going to buy myself something super expensive. Like a pair of heels worth more than my library.

Depending on your field, that might be around right. I've seen some schools that take a very, very small amount of admits for the year. In my field at least. Keep in mind that how many students they admit depends on a lot of things. For instance, how many people have recently graduated. If more people graduated recently it means there are more spots to fill up. If less then it means they can take less people. Mos schools admit more students than they expect to take them up on the offer. If they admitted too many students the previous year, the following year they'll look to admit a smaller class size so they don't end up with too many students. It could be a variety of factors.

Like, that's how many people they admitted or that's how many people there are in the program total?

I heard that NYU already started sending their interview invites. I saw someone post one in the results page and other people know someone that got an invite. NYU interviews everyone that they're going to accept. I haven't tried contacting them, though.

I think besides that one person that got an early unofficial acceptance to UT Austin, we all got rejected, which surprised me since I thought someone around here would get in. All the schools I applied to seem particularly brutal this year. But I'm the same boat as you, no acceptances yet and I'm pretty sure I got rejected from the last few programs I applied to. It's a hard year for us. I'm going to re-apply I have to.

Yeah. Typically when a department recommends you for admission, it means they tell the graduate office for the university that they want you. The office then makes sure everything is in order. Just a formality, really.

Do you speak it as a native language? I wanted some more resources to learn the language. Do you recommend any books? And yeah, if the department recommends you for admission then you're in. That just means that your application has to go through the Graduate School office that the department belongs to. They'll probably just make sure they have all your credentials are in order.

Ancient languages are harder than modern languages. Languages simply over time to meet the needs of the people. That's why ancient languages are more complicated to learn. Plus, there are different dialects. When I was reading Homer, I had to specifically learn Homeric Greek because his dialect is specific to him. Same with Latin, you have different dialects that you have to learn and some writers are easier than others. Caesar is particularly straightforward in comparison to some other guys. I really do hope I can get off the waitlist, but I think someone wrote in the results page last year that they didn't take anyone off the wait list, although it was for an MA program so who knows. I think they must have divided the spots into MA/PhD and then literature and linguistics so they can get a good number of students in all fields.

I suppose, but man, there are some impressive applicants to compete against. And since some schools take a handful of students, it's not enough to just be good. =/ Did you try Wheelock's Latin book? That's what basically everyone uses when they want to self study Latin.