pannpann

Good luck!

Yes yes yes!

I turned down my offer at UVM. I was #2 on the waitlist for funding so hopefully that will help someone out! Accepted funded offer from Villanova.

Sorry (not sorry) to bring a thread back from the dead, but I was wondering who has heard from, was accepted from, received funding for, and/or plans to attend Villanova this fall. I know the accepted students day is coming up but I have no idea when it'll actually be. I've chatted with some current students, but I'm very curious about prospectives like myself. I'm about 95% sure I'll be attending Villanova, and I'd love to speak to everyone else in that boat.

I haven't watched the show but if you like it at all then READ THE COMICS. They are phenomenal, and (I find) an even better distraction than TV. Kirkman is a genius. Edit: I don't know about the show but the comics are more "how does society and the individual function/exist in post-apocalyptic world" and not really horror. Not sure if it's of interest.

Thanks! Just got an email. Indiana is out. So Villanova it is! Unless Vermont offers more impressive funding, which I rather doubt.

Accepted to Villanova with grad assistantship! I am through the roof. I'm bummed about (most likely) not getting into a PhD program, but full funding is nothing to scoff at. Has anyone heard from Indiana, by the way? I called them last week and was told that all decisions have been made but not all acceptances have been notified. I know the first wave went out in February.

The value of a pre-application visit is debatable, and depends on the school. Some schools encourage it and some strongly discourage it. But once you've done your faculty research and know enough about your POIs to make serious inquiries or have relevant questions, if you feel confident enough to get in touch with them about your interest in the program, and if they respond, I don't see what the harm would be in asking if you could meet up in person, or speak on the phone, etc. I think it would be a bad move to just show up, not because it's presumptuous necessarily but because it could be rather intrusive. Also, I can't guess your gender, but if you are a woman I would highly recommend not telling the program that you hope to attend the school due to proximity to your boyfriend. Academia is wary of married women and women with children, and I don't think citing your boyfriend as the cause of your interest in the program will do you any favors. (Not that there is anything wrong with your choices, just that even the most educated people were raised in this patriarchy and institutional bias prevails.) Slate article on the pay gap/tenure gap of women with kids here.

My heart beats for 1950s literature and cultural studies. War and postwar culture are just so fascinating, and I've only just begun scraping the surface. I wrote a thesis in undergrad on the role of WWII in JD Salinger's fiction. I'm especially interested in discussing the why certain authors/texts are written off by academia as too middle brow to be taken seriously (Salinger, Shirley Jackson, Richard Yates, Kurt Vonnegut) and what those exclusions say about the society that forms them. I am also very big into the Beats, especially the female perspective of an ultimately patriarchal artistic community (if you haven't read How I Became Hettie Jones you are doing yourself a disservice.)

I concur! Seeing everyone finish their list makes waiting all the more brutal.

Last fall when I was in the thick of research and beginning to choose programs, I finally watched Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and oh my god I am already eager to re-watch it. Every time I've applied to school (for college, for transferring to another college, for grad school) I rewatch the episodes of Gilmore Girls where Rory is applying to Harvard and Yale. I find it oddly comforting.

Thank heavens for Netflix. I binge watched Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and I'm completely bonkers about it. I also love that you can tell we're all English scholars because we italicize the titles.

I don't know about you guys, but in the final stretch of this application season--waiting on funding, waiting on one or two schools, waiting on waitlists-- is brutal, anxiety-inducing, and just plain distracting. There's something about seeing some people with all their proverbial ducks in a row that makes the time feel more panicked and crunched than it should be (we've got over a month to get/make decisions, right?). So in light of the ever-present need for distractions--what films or shows are you watching these days?

I received a personalized imprint stamp as a gift and I love it. Feels better to me than a sticker or my own handwriting.

I didn't think I was a big fan of theory until I took a course on The Frankfurt School. Dialectic of Enlightenment or better yet Minima Moralia totally blew me away. It was partly the subject matter, but moreso the approach the professor took. We spent the classes analyzing particularly interesting small passages of longer texts, digging into them until we struck gold.

What I've been told from professors and what I've read as personal anecdote on here--schools will not begrudge you changes in your application like this so long as you are honest with them. I would definitely recommend you mention it to them, whether you just get a POI's opinion or the DGS. I'm sure it won't change your status, CarolineKS, but I think it's still worth being honest.

I would talk to the specific programs about it. I remember during senior year my friend was accepted to Cornell's PhD program for Environmental Science before having to withdraw from a Statistical Chemistry (?) course. She emailed her POI about it and he basically said "it's fine, you can just take that class here, you're still just as qualified." Now there wasn't a certification on the line then but I'm sure many programs (if not all) would be understanding about those circumstances. Your best bet would be talking to them about it directly.

Official rejection from Penn today (via random website check). It was my biggest reach and came as no surprise, but as my top choice it stung all the same. Congrats to those accepted, the program looks like a dream. Unless by some miracle Indiana pulls through (I called their grad department and was informed that not all acceptances/waitlisters have been notified), it looks like I'm going for my MA. I feel oddly at peace with this.

I've said it before another thread, but if you applied to the school something must have appealed to you about it. Take the opportunity to try it there, and if you don't like it you can always transfer. You may be a stronger candidate after you've got some more experience under your belt for those top choices. Or you may find that those schools you weren't as keen on were a great fit in the end. Just remember, you aren't ever really stuck anywhere.