angel_kaye13

Trying to contact the department at your school for transcripts:

 
Trying to contact your professor for LORs:

 
Trying to contact ETS about sending your GRE score reports:

December 2–March ???

 
 
When I think about getting in to Stanford (or insert any other program with an acceptance rate below 10%):

 
And when I think about the reality of the situation:

 
 
When my advisor/boyfriend/friends tell me they know I'll get in somewhere and everything will be fine:

 
 
but I keep telling myself

The three stages of checking my email/GradCafe results:
 
9 AM, with coffee:

 
3 PM, after coffee has worn off:

 
10 PM, when coffee is not an option:

How I feel when I check my email and there isn't anything new:
 

 
How I feel about stress eating during the waiting process:
 

 
How I think my SOP sounds in hindsight:
 

 
 
 
OH GOD THIS IS FUN! 

I love .gifs. I am also exhausted of waiting for a decision that will most definitely affect the direction of the rest of my life.
 
So, let's make this a fun situation! Post any hilarious/funny/jokes .gifs (feel free to spam this many times) that adequately describe your feelings towards this waiting game or application season in general. This thread may well turn out to be just me repeatedly spamming myself over and over again, but you know what? I'm okay with that.
 
I'll start it off!!
 
Staring at my empty inbox:

 
Realizing my life is built around checking GradCafe for new daily results submitted:

 
"Won't you find out about your applications soon?":

 
Talking about future plans with anybody who will listen:

 
Actual future plans:

 
Surviving grad school:

 
 

I would also contribute to a doc for future applicants, but there are so many criteria to take into order that may or may not change over the years. I am also horrified that I won't get in anywhere, and this makes me think that we should include the same kind of documentation of rejections as well. Right now I am feeling like I have a much better shot at "sexy" interdisciplinary programs like Rhetoric at Berkeley and MTL and Stanford than I do at some of the less competitive programs I applied to—of course I need to wait and see how things go, but the type of writing sample and project I chose are probably less intriguing to more traditional forms of scholarship produced in places like the University of Chicago.
 
On that note, I am going to try to list some criteria that have been discussed in this thread/results board already as well as advice I received from my advisors along the way.  
 
Previous degrees: 
 
B.A.: where did you attend? Was it a college or university? What was your GPA? Did you graduate with honors/awards? Did you transfer schools during that time? 
 
M.A.: did you pursue/receive an M.A., M.F.A., or professional degree? Where? Was it at an institution that also offers a phd track? What was your GPA? How many years was the program? Did you receive any special scholarships, fellowships, teaching positions, etc? Are your thesis advisors well known/regarded? 
 
How many years did you spend out of either program before applying? Are you applying outside of your previous discipline(s)?
 
 
GRE:
 
What were your scores? Percentiles for your year? Did you take the subject test?
 
 
Connections:
 
Did you reach out to faculty, a POI before/during the application process? Do you have any connections to faculty, students, administrators, etc, at the university? Do any of your letter writers have professional and/or social relationships with faculty in the programs to which you are applying? Did they attend/teach/postdoc at the school?
 
 
 
Personal background:
 
What is your gender? Age? Race/ethnicity? Socioeconomic background? What are the highest levels of education that your mother and/or father received? Are you an international applicant? If so, are you applying with funding from a program in your country of origin?
 
 
Your work/ SoP:
What are your topics of focus? How specific was the project you laid out in your statement? How "disciplined" was this project? Did you name any professors in your statement, and if so, how many? Were they "star" professors (i.e. Judith Butler, Frederick Jameson, Sianne Ngai)? How long was the statement? How did you begin it (quote, anecdote, "i am applying to...", etc)? Did you incorporate quotations/citations/references to scholars in the field in which you hope to be studying? 
 
 
Writing sample:
What kind of writing sample did you choose? Was it related to the topics you discussed in your statement? How long was it? How would you describe the style of the writing (traditional, experimental, very specialized/specific to your sub-discipline)? How did you begin the writing sample? Did you include a lengthy footnote within the first four pages situating this paper within discourses surrounding the same topic in your discipline? Would you/could you include an abstract for others to view (I understand if some want to avoid this for reasons of anonymity)? Has this paper been/will it be published? Is it part of your B.A. or M.A. thesis?
 
 
CV:
Presentations (where and what)? Publications (where and what)? Teaching experience? Fellowships? Research experience? Work/jobs related to your academic pursuits?
 
 
Letters of recommendation?
How well-known are your letter writers (in and outside the field)? How well do they know you/how are you connected to them? Were they from undergrad, MA, or a mix? 
 
 
 
 
oof. enough for now.

This is a bit random, but has anybody noticed that the majority of people who are accepted to Ph.D. programs post minimal information (GREs sometimes, comments rarely - and then somewhat vague, like "Second choice. Excited!") while people who have been rejected tend to offer a list of achievements (GREs + "Three pubs, 2 first author, three years research experience. Their loss.")?
 
I have two thoughts on this. First, I totally understand. When you're admitted, the pressure is off - you're free! Woo! Your entry in the database is a celebration, and really you'll never need those stats again, so who cares? And when you're rejected, you feel defensive - you worked hard for this! You're awesome! This is so arbitrary. Those responses are totally natural and totally human.
 
BUT. It would be so useful for me, and other prospective grad students, to know the specific qualifications of successful applicants. So this is really a very heartfelt request: when you get in (and I have so much faith!!) PLEASE include your stats. Pleasepleaseplease. And if you've got research experience, an MA, publications, etc, it would be awesome to know that too!! We all want to be successful applicants, after all - sharing your particular qualifications would be, in my opinion, very generous.
 
Just a thought as I wait impatiently for Jan. 31st!

Hesse and Wyatt: also out of up-votes, but it's encouraging to hear some healthy thinking out there; I, for one, appreciate it. It's very easy to take things personally, and you see a lot of that on this forum. And people think English majors suffer from the most psychosis! ;-) :-D It IS just business, in the end. All the same, I like to let people know there are others who are there, in the joy AND the sadness. Just think: We may be the sanest, most supportive bunch here!*^^* :-D

On the coattails of all the well-earned congratulations, I also want to extend sincere "lo siento"s to those who recently received rejections, especially the UWis-Mad crowd, as there seem to be a lot of you. It sounds like many of you are taking it in stride, but the bite always sucks. I think it's safe to speak for this community, though, that you've got a group of supporters here, and here's hoping for some success stories, to take off the edge of the little sadnesses.~ {fingers crossed and good vibes sent your respective ways, for more acceptances!}

Thanks, Angel_kaye! I'm actually in good spirits, personally, thanks in large part to this forum in general, and to a trio of members in particular who have truly been my "rocks" behind the scenes throughout this whole process.
 
And I certainly never hold any ill-will whatsoever toward the program(s) that reject me, nor the folks who get accepted in my stead. It's just a big process, largely subjective, and there are invariably far more strong candidates than a program can ever reasonably take. In the end, it's really "just business," so the only moping I will ever do is over the simple fact of rejection, and not the circumstances surrounding it.

On the coattails of all the well-earned congratulations, I also want to extend sincere "lo siento"s to those who recently received rejections, especially the UWis-Mad crowd, as there seem to be a lot of you. It sounds like many of you are taking it in stride, but the bite always sucks. I think it's safe to speak for this community, though, that you've got a group of supporters here, and here's hoping for some success stories, to take off the edge of the little sadnesses.~ {fingers crossed and good vibes sent your respective ways, for more acceptances!}

On the coattails of all the well-earned congratulations, I also want to extend sincere "lo siento"s to those who recently received rejections, especially the UWis-Mad crowd, as there seem to be a lot of you. It sounds like many of you are taking it in stride, but the bite always sucks. I think it's safe to speak for this community, though, that you've got a group of supporters here, and here's hoping for some success stories, to take off the edge of the little sadnesses.~ {fingers crossed and good vibes sent your respective ways, for more acceptances!}

Agreed! Chin up, Wyatt's Torch - don't give up before you have a reason to!
 
Right now this is us (and the cupcakes are our schools):
 

 
But I have no doubt that soon you'll start hearing back, and then you'll feel more like this guy:
 

I've only had one Skype interview for an Am. Studies PhD program, so I can only speak to that. It was very quick (around 20 minutes), and it was with both the DGS and the Program administrator. They basically only asked me one question ("Why us?") and left the rest of the time for me to ask questions. I *think* the purpose of this interview was to confirm my interest/fit in the program. It was a great chat, and overall, nice to meet people on the other side. 
 
As for preparation, I felt that as long as I knew my SoP, my sample, and generally the intellectual priorities of the program, I would be fine. That turned out to be the case.

I can only speak from the one experience I had with a program interview; I'm sure much of what goes on varies by program.  I'll also say before I go on that my interview was an in-person interview - I don't know how doing an interview over Skype will alter things (outside the obvious, like not having to shuttle around between different events). 
 
Notre Dame has an entire interview weekend, which involves several program information sessions, panel-style Q-and-A's with current graduate students, informal dinners and lunches, and three one-on-one thirty minute chats with individual professors who specialize in a subfield at least somewhat related to your field.
 
Questions varied by professor. The first professor I met with was a Dante scholar, so we didn't get into the nitty gritty of the state of criticism or anything like that. He mostly asked me questions about my teaching philosophy -- which, as a twenty-one-year-old college senior, I didn't have the faintest clue -- and how I would explain/justify the value of pre-modern lit to undergraduate audiences. Going into the weekend, I didn't think I'd be expected to figure out how to teach before I'd actually been in front of the classroom, so I made up some vague BS on the fly. I'd suggest that you at least talk with your professors about teaching philosophies if you don't have one in place, as the question might get brought up, especially if you have an MA.
 
The other two interviewers asked me specifics about 1) what I was interested in, 2) my methodology, 3) plans for expanding my research, 4) and specific questions about my writing sample. My advice for addressing each is the same: practice what you're going to say and anticipate potential objections. For example, I primarily employ something like a historical formalist angle in my own writing and research; one of the questions an interviewer raised was whether my approach offered a way of addressing the presentist challenge in early modern studies, which has been dominated by historicism for thirty years. As an undergrad with no sense of the state of early modern studies, I had no F'n clue how to answer that. So my advice is to have, at the minimum, a sense of what people are doing in the field now (last five years, not last twenty-five) and be able to situate your own work in relation to that.
 
And just a bit more about #4. When I applied to graduate programs the first time two years ago, I had never written a paper that was more than twelve pages long, so my writing sample was written from scratch a couple weeks before my first applications are due. The idea I wrote on was an interesting one, but it wasn't very well researched and needed more time to incubate before it was sent off. Well, as chance would have it, it essentially staked out a position directly counter to that one of my interviewers (a big name in Milton studies) had outlined in a book published a couple years before. So, naturally, when we sat down to chat, he pulled my writing sample up on his computer, and went page-by-page asking questions about the claims I was making. I didn't stand my ground and essentially said "I'm not entirely sure -- you're probably right in your book when you take the opposite position." Needless to say, this didn't go well at all. But the takeaway, again, is that you need to be very sure of your writing sample and be able to defend it if it gets brought up in discussion. 
 
And, again, Skype interviews probably won't go down exactly the same way as my interviews did. If you're worried about staying on message (I know I ramble when I'm nervous), you might print off a bulleted list of subjects or main points to come back to. Just a thought.
 
Hope this all helps with you prepare! Good luck! 

I think you just say that you're thrilled to be accepted, and that you look forward to making a decision after the process plays out.
 
There's a strange and sudden balance of power that occurs once you get an acceptance -- you go from being at the mercy of adcomms to them being somewhat at the mercy of your ultimate decision (albeit on a smaller scale). Fortunately they understand that you likely have options. It's pretty rare for someone to accept an offer of admission immediately, and they know this. Just be grateful and appreciative, and make sure you'll let them know as soon as you can.

I have just been accepted to my top choice PhD program with full funding. There is one other top choice program I am waiting to hear back from, but I have three other pending applications. I now have no interest in these other three programs. From what I understand, PhD programs (or at least the ones in the field of history/east asian studies) don't have waitlists, and the first round of offers sent out will be the only offers sent. I don't want to deprive a program of a student and also deprive an applicant of a spot in a program that I don't want anymore. Is it normal for applicants to withdraw applications if they've heard back from their top choice school very early? Also, one of those applications I would really like to leave be and find out whether I was accepted, solely for validation purposes. So, if I do go ahead and withdraw the other two, would it be completely unethical to leave the third one be just because I want to be able to say I was accepted to that institution? Or am I worrying about nothing with all this and I should just let my apps run their course?

I withdrew several applications once I was accepted to my first two choices and it became clear to me that I would not attend the other schools whose applications were still pending, in case I got accepted. I also made sure to decline offers from schools as soon as I wasn't considering them anymore, in case that could be helpful to anyone. I wasn't entirely sure whether these schools had a waitlist, but anyway I thought the decent thing to do was to save others the uncertainty of being on the waitlist or possibly getting rejected. I understand how it would be nice for one's ego to be able to count those applications as acceptances, but to be honest in the long run I've drawn a lot more satisfaction from knowing that I didn't deprive anyone else of the chance to go to grad school than from knowing that I might have been admitted to these schools (and immediately declined). After all, I got into my top choices and had a great grad school career. Once you're in school, no one really cares what other offers you had. I think it might have been discussed in the beginning of our first year, but it's not really been a topic ever since.
 
As for your second choice, I think you need to sit down and be very honest with yourself. Are you considering this option at all? If you might consider it, then you should give yourself a chance to get the offer and evaluate it then. If you do get the offer, you will have earned it fairly. As long as you are still considering it, I think it's fair to wait and see. However, if you are definitely going to attend your first choice school and you don't see any chance you'll change your mind, then I think the mature thing to do is to let go of it, despite the possible "damage" to your pride. 

"It is sometimes a mistake to climb, it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt... [When you climb and fall,] sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly." - Neil Gaiman, "Fear of Falling," Sandman #29

This is probably going to sound like one of the most pretentious titles ever, but nevertheless...
 
I took a course my senior year of college called "Joyce and Lacan" and it was amazing. It was co-taught by two professors, both of whom were experts in each subject. The class was mostly about close reading and viscerally responding to the texts—we generally received lectures about contexts and backgrounds after we completed our readings for the day. It was a lot of fun and taught me how to look into and around a text without necessarily having a point or argument but seeing the multitude of ways that language/context/narrative express meanings. 
 
Considering that I am an English/Literary Studies person, I am actually very unenthused about a lot of the works I read. Joyce is one of these exceptions—I always enjoy reading him and have read Ulysses all the way through at least three times and Dubliners so many I can't even remember. Both levels of Joyce's complexities are intriguing but still pleasurable to read. Theory reading is different for me—its being difficult is like solving a puzzle and is fun for me in a separate way. So this course was delightful because it was fun and challenging. Because of its nature, I did not produce any usable writing, but I learned/was exposed to a lot that inspired much of my later work.

Earlier in the week, I had a really rewarding (and long!!) phone conversation with a POI, so I'd just like to cast another vote for reaching out to faculty members and graduate students at the universities to which you're interested in going. Particularly at this school (UCLA, but this could apply to Emory or UMD as well), I had two POI who gave me valuable insight--and not just information about the graduate program.
 
They gave me suggestions for developing my writing sample, puzzled out the obstacles in my research and offered strategies to tackle them, told me about their own experiences in graduate study, managed my expectations for graduate school and scholarly work, recommended points of contact at other universities I'm applying to, and suggested faculty members in other UCLA departments who would be of further use to my research. All of that goes a long way, not just in preparing an application to UCLA (because, obviously, the deadline has now long passed), but just serves as a way to hit the ground running in your scholarship, rather than simply playing the waiting game.
 
I'm probably looking at POI contact this way because I've been out of school for awhile, so when I email POIs, I really appreciate any advice they can and do give me on my current research project--basically, they're professors, and I'm emailing them so that they can teach me something. I know hreaðemus's advisor at UC Berkeley has... not exactly cautioned against reaching out to POIs, but definitely downplayed their value. But I think it actually really is helpful (especially if you're not just emailing them: "Hi! My name is Stan and I'm applying to Northwestern. -Stan").
 
For the record, in the case of this POI at UCLA, HE actually asked ME what schools I was applying to, told me those professors that would be useful, and strongly encouraged me to email them and drop his name. And vigorously emphasized how important it was to talk to graduate students before choosing a program. So, obviously, POI contact is important to him as well. 

turtle power

If you're admitted to a Ph.D. program, particularly at the schools listed in your signature, you will be funded.  MAs may or may not be funded. Based on your list, you'll probably certainly be offered admission to NYU's MA program if not admitted to the Ph.D. and that will likely not be funded.  I would strongly advise not to do it based on the cost, the cash cow reputation of that program and U of C's MAPH (which I did do with about a 50% tuition scholarship for disclosure purposes), and the fact that you could do a funded MA elsewhere and get research and teaching experience.  The prestige of the MA program doesn't matter as much as whether it was funded.  The tippy-top schools, like the ones in your sig, tend to prefer direct admits with an educational pedigree (browse the student pages).
 
As far as scholarships, other than super competitive Rhodes or Marshall scholarships (or similar ones) for the UK, I'm not really familiar with any.

Canterbury, you say? I'm sure you'll have lots of TALES to tell!
 
 
(Seriously though...congrats again! Thrilled for you!)

I did a workshop series for applying to Phd programs with an "esteemed" (i.e. very published and connected, if somewhat arrogant) professor, and he recommended writing one core statement (or multiples if you are applying to vastly different disciplines) and then tailoring 1-2 paragraphs that talk about faculty members and specifics of each of the programs. I think this is just what everybody does. Your statement isn't generic, it's just...duplicated. Programs aren't going to call each other up to verify if you had verbatim phrases in both SOPs.