cleisthenes

Just get a tape cassette recording of Zizek screaming at you. You won't regret it.

The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry - highly recommend it!

Most private institutions lost 20% to 30% of their endowments in 2009, but since the markets have recovered about 60% since their low-point, one can reasonably assume that a lot of this money has been recouped, although probably not in time to have a significant effect on this year's admissions. Public institutions, in a way, are far worse of, since they generally do not have a lot of capital in the form of an endowment, relying instead on state or federal funding which, once decreased, is extremely hard to get back.

In the parlance: Penn = UPenn Penn State = Penn State

congrats. i guess you are not so veroordeeld after all did they mention funding yet? i have to say im jealous

considering my two top programs have apparently already given their first round of admits and i didn't receive one... extremely pessimistic. ...spending a great deal of time beating myself up about what i could have done better on my application... ...actually physically ill at the idea i just spent upwards of 1 grand on applications and will probably have nothing but a pile of rejection letters to show for it. the sad part is that i feel grad school, while wonderful, it's really *necessary* for what it is that i want to do, in a strict intellectual sense. what's necessary is the professional affiliation with a university and the credibility one's ideas are given by virtue of belonging to an academic department. it's very difficult to conduct the kind of research i want to do and be taken seriously without such an affiliation, no matter the quality of one's work. bleh.

congrats. mind sharing your subfield?

bnips - did your friend have anything to add about statistics? how many admits vs how many applicants? this is sad.

so should we extrapolate from the fact that some people have been called that this concludes their first round of admits?

samuel weber makes me moist... oh, and andreas huyssen. sweet, sweet andreas huyssen. michael jennings is pretty hot too.

I've had this problem with almost every school. Turns out there was a minor error on my GRE report that caused it not to be filed with the rest of my application. I would contact each program to verify that they have your GRE scores and that it is associated with your app. Send them your registration # as well as your test date.

Actually, I would consider those the core elements of your application. In most places, GRE scores are the most "peripheral" aspect. GPA is important, but if you're applying for a humanities or social science field, not as important as your writing sample and SOP.

I would echo what has been said, particularly about parsing compound nouns, but also just parsing words in general, particularly understanding the thrust lent to a phrase by the use of a given prefix. For example, you wouldn't have to know that "Entzauberung" means disenchantment literally to figure out that it has something to do with that idea. If you know that "Zauber" means magic (and you should, if you've ever read Mann's Zauberberg - if you haven't go read it), and thus "Zauberung" must be some sort of process involving something magical/enchanted, and you ALSO know that the prefix "ent" has to do with a sense of moving outward and away, or of going out and forth, then you know this has something to do with a process that projects or releases/reveals forth something magical/enchanted. Another name for a revealing of something magical or enchanted is a "disenchantment." Of course, this kind of knowledge comes with time. But think about it - we do this with English frequently, and it's perhaps one of the more important skills for reading difficult german texts, as German writers (in particular academic writers) love to invent new words using these linguistic building blocks. Cheers.

yep, grad_wannabe is absolutely correct. what you want is to be applying to programs where you professors did their graduate work, not where you did your undergraduate work. even the possibility of appearing nepotistic is anathema to most academics and certainly for adcoms at top programs. for less competitive programs, this certainly happens, but it's always look at with a slant.

i would echo what has been said-- think about it logically. not all opinions are created equal. of course, there's no way of knowing what the particular professor(s) on the adcom reviewing your application think of the particular professor who wrote your LOR. if your recomender is a jerk despised by his/her colleagues, then it might *hurt* you, but the same is true of any kind of recommendation in any context. i had a hard time not applying to one program where *three* of my professors did their grad work. unfortunately, though a top ranked program, there was no one there for me to work with, so i forwent it. still, definitely not a negligible factor.

well ill emerge from lurkerdom in a vain attempt to make myself feel less crappy 3.77 undergrad gpa from a well respect slac with a rep for rigorous grading 680v/650m/5.5aw gre, kind of underwhelming but don't profs have to be aware that it's just BS? hopefully excellent recs, unless i'm living in a fantasy world (and usually i am) an SOP i worked hard on, so it had better be good ditto for my writing sample ah waiting for decisions... kind of like occupying the liminal space between the pits of despair and the escalator to joy i'm humanities by the way- all top programs, around 5-10% admit rates in a very competitive sub field (damn I can't even avoid going into negatives) anyone else feel as if their soul is slowly fossilizing waiting for this to be over?