drownsoda

Thanks fuzzy logician, that's what I assumed. I've never made a CV before so mapping it out was a whole new experience for me. My internship is definitely on there!

I was born and raised in the Portland area, and am about to get my B.A. from Portland State. Portland is a beautiful city; similar to Seattle but a bit smaller. It rains a lot, which is off putting to some people, but I grew up in it so I'm well acclimated. You can always tell when people aren't from here because they either 1) Carry an umbrella in the lightest of rain, or 2) Drive like 90 year olds when it's raining. Lots of public transit, and you can live on campus, though most people don't. The PSU campus is in southwest Portland and is in the middle of downtown, so you're very much in the city. As much as I love Portland, I am not interested in going to graduate school here, so I'm not applying to any schools in the city. The only real M.A. program in English is at Portland State, and I don't want to stick around there. It's not that PSU is a bad school (their MBA and urban planning programs are nationally lauded), but English is not their strong department as far as grad studies go. I will say I've had some brilliant professors here who have come from impressive backgrounds— I've had English professors from Columbia, Northwestern, University of Chicago, and Cornell— but I just don't feel like graduate school here for the humanities is worth the time or money.

I feel you so much on this. I just had my finals last week and the entire semester has been a living nightmare for me. I think I averaged about 4 hours of sleep per night just due to workload and stress. It's my last "real" semester of undergrad (I'm taking one last English class this upcoming semester because I need a measly two more credits), and I was beyond busy. Trying to put together my grad school applications was probably my #1 stressor though for sure.

I addressed an illness in my SOP but didn't go into detail. Granted, mine was not a mental health problem, but I did have cancer and had to drop out of school for a year because of it. I just mentioned a "serious illness" that interrupted my life that year, and briefly said in a sentence that it changed my perspectives and marked a turning point for me, tying it in with my academic interests coming into focus after I went back to school. I wouldn't go in depth on a mental health issue per se, unless it's somehow detrimental to explaining a part of your application. For me, I wanted to address the year-long gap in my transcript, so I decided to say something, but I didn't dwell on it whatsoever. I never even mentioned the "C" word out of fear that they'd think I was begging for sympathy.

Glad I'm not the only one! I'll try again and maybe just leave the page running since you had success with it. I waited at least five minutes and it still would not upload so I assumed there was an issue. All my other application uploads took less than twenty seconds each so it seemed wrong.

Or is that only reserved for conferences outside of the university? I had in internship at a community college working in a writing center, and I wrote a brief essay on the pedagogy of writing and the mechanics vs. content debate in which I related my experience tutoring the students, and I shared my thoughts and the essay with the other employees and tutors in the writing center there. Should I include this on my C.V.? If so, what section/header should it be put under? I also was part of a panel in which my task was essentially to give a personal critique of a secondary source on a text I had read, but this was a class assignment so I don't believe this counts for a C.V., right?

I have considered applying to a couple more, but 1) I have had trouble finding a school that I feel is a good fit AND that is feasible for me to get into; and 2) I literally can't afford that many applications right now. If I get my loan disbursement for my last term, which I should on December 26th, I might try to squeeze in a couple more applications before the January deadlines, but that's all depending. The problem with finding fully-funded English programs is that your stats have to be essentially flawless in order to get into the schools where funding is a possibility, and I'm not good enough for that. The Fordham program does provide funding, but you have to submit before the early deadline (January 3rd) which is what I'm doing. I believe you can apply before the April deadline as well, but if you apply after January 3rd, you won't be considered for funding whatsoever.

The deadline for the English program is remarkably late— January 13th— so I'm not freaking out yet, but I do want to get it done. I have my other applications all finished aside from one last letter of recommendation that I'm waiting to come in. I'll try again today and see if it works, but if it continues to glitch, I'll contact someone about it.

I appreciate all of the encouraging words, you all. I will drop into the lit./rhetoric forum this week. I (like all of us) am just a huge critic of myself and have a problem of constantly second guessing my ability. As far as applying to programs that "make my heart soar," that's essentially what I'm doing, but I've been as realistic about it as possible, and there are only three of them that I feel truly compelled to apply to. I originally was going to apply to the program at my current university, but I withdrew my application midway through because a.) I felt like I could do better, or at least attempt at doing better, and b.), It simply doesn't seem worthwhile to me. While I've had some great professors there, their English program is not that great, especially grad studies. I just feel like it's time for me to move on, and I don't think I would be happy there because I'd always be asking myself, "Could I have done better than this?" At least if I apply to these other programs, I won't have that "What could have been..." to deal with. I tried to apply to programs that may be reaches for me in some ways, but I'm happy with the Statements of Purpose and I trust my professors who have written my recommendation letters, so it's simply the best I can do right now. My GRE scores are okay (as someone pointed out, my verbal is not stellar for an English program, but I'm proud of my writing score). I'm at where I'm at I guess, and that's how it is. I'm incredulous enough to know that the thought of getting into a school like Stanford or Columbia is insane for me, and I refused to fill out applications for the U. of Chicago and Claremont even though they sent me letters asking to apply. I figure NYU is the biggest reach for me, with Fordham second and U. Washington third. Like I mentioned, the prospect of Fordham sets me on fire, but I don't want that feeling to be transmuted into some subconscious self-assurance that I'll get into their program, because that will only set me up for major disappointment if I don't. That said, their acceptance rate for their M.A. program is cut to a 52%, so I'm telling myself that I at least have as good of a fighting chance as anyone else. At this point I'm sort of wondering if it's best to just make the assumption that I'll get rejected by all, or maybe that'll send out some bad energy? Who knows? Thanks for the words of support though, everyone. We're all the same boat. Like you said, this is a labor of love— damn right it is.

I tried multiple times yesterday and twice today, and for whatever reason cannot upload documents to their application. I get a continual loop of "We are currently processing your document. Thank you for your patience." It's happening with the Statement of Purpose, writing samples, resume— everything. I'm at a loss here.

I believe that the standard these days is usually by email and/or mail. I'm sure phone calls happen, but I think that typically your acceptance/denial into a program is given to you in written format just for the sake of documentation.

First off, I have to say THANK GOD for this forum. I was on College Confidential talking to people and trying to get advice, but that site is made up mostly of rich kids in private high schools talking about their twenty different extracurriculars and how many AP courses they were in— basically, they had no advice for me. Here's my deal: I am graduating with my B.A. this winter from a public university in the Northwest— it's a decent school, but nothing super esteemed. I am currently applying to graduate programs for English, and I am really bad at gauging what my options are, realistically, so I was wondering if some of you could weigh in. I anticipate to graduate with an overall GPA of 3.8, and around a 3.9 in my major GPA. I took my GRE in November and did awful on the math (145), but I scored 159 in verbal reasoning, and scored 5 on my analytical writing section, which I've been told are both above average scores. As far as extra curriculars are concerned, I don't have a whole lot as I mostly worked nights throughout my time as an undergrad waiting tables— didn't have a lot of time for ECs. That said, I did have a three month internship in the writing center at a local community college where I tutored college students, so I have that under my belt (worked with a lot of ELL students and others who just needed general help with academic writing). I also did unrelated volunteer work in high school doing errands for the elderly and things like that. This fall I completed an internship at a local farm teaching kids about sustainability and farming practices, but it was in correspondence with my university capstone requirements. I have three letters of recommendation from people I'm comfortable with— one from a hard-ass of a professor who I took several classes with my junior and senior years, who I felt I learned most from out of me entire academic career. I sought him for a letter before any of the others because he pushed me a lot with my writing, but I did extremely well in his classes; he told me to rest assured that he would write me a very strong recommendation. My second letter is coming from the leader of the writing center where I was an intern. I worked with him for three months and he was a good mentor for me when it came to the art of "teaching" how to write. My last letter is coming from my capstone course instructor, who I sought because I wanted to have one of the letters in my application come from someone outside my main field for the sake of objectivity I suppose. She was a great professor and a really positive influence. I have chipped away at my statement of purpose over the past five months. In it, I have lightly outlined my academic career, what I'm interested in in the field of literature and how I came to be interested in that, and briefly addressed my future goals. All this considered, I am having a difficult time trying to gauge what I should be expecting with the stats/story I have. It may be absurd of me, but I don't really feel compelled to attend graduate school unless I can get into a solid program— I feel like going into a mediocre program is simply not worth my time or money. That said, I'm not banking on Harvard or Columbia or anything like that— I think I'm somewhat realistic, but you tell me. I am applying at the University of Washington, NYU, Fordham, and my current university (which I'm not even sure I'd want attend for grad school if I did get in). I know that NYU is probably a stretch, but I really have fallen in love with Fordham and am wondering if I have a fighting chance at their program. UW seems feasible, but still not necessarily easy to gain admittance to. I looked up Fordham's stats and the average GRE verbal score from their English department was 161, while the average writing score was 4 for M.A. students and 4.5 for PhD students, which seemed surprisingly low to me— I scored a 5, so that makes me feel a bit better. In all honesty, I am worried sick about this and am not sure I can deal with the next several months waiting to hear back from these schools. I feel like my entire future is hanging in the balance and I literally can't stop thinking about it. There is a gap on my transcript in which I took a year off from school which bothers me a bit— I had cancer, but I didn't want to flat out say that in my statement of purpose, so I just acknowledged in a sentence that I had to take a year off from school due to a "serious illness." I avoided bringing that into the equation because I felt like it would be tacky and sympathy-seeking, but I had to acknowledge the year long gap in my records somehow. Basically, I'm just unsure of myself and don't feel totally privy to what I should be reaching for in terms of graduate programs, or what realistic goals are for me. I have gotten some emails from the University of Chicago, USC, and Claremont asking me to apply to their programs (I believe this is because of my GRE scores being put out there by ETS), and my friends and family are confident in my applications because of this, but I am so unsure of myself it's absurd. I know this is totally tl;dr, but I'm curious as to what other people would say based on this information. Are the schools I'm applying to totally out of reach? Is my head in the clouds on these? Like I said, I'd die to get into Fordham, but I'm not holding my breath on any of them because I don't really know what I'm worth to these schools. I am trying to pick one last program to apply to that I know is within my reach (Fordham and NYU are stretches I think), but I can't narrow it down, and deadlines are approaching. If you took the time to read this incoherent rambling, by the way, you are my hero!

I ended mine with basically a reiteration of what my primary interests are within the field, and a rather vague outline of how I wish to apply that to my career goals. I think a reiteration that highlights your future plans is probably the most appropriate, in my opinion anyway.