augustquail

Back in the days of yore, people used this program called AOL INSTANT MESSENGER. When I was in high school, I didn't have internet access until I was in 10th or 11th grade. So, I get some high speed online, and I suddenly need a screen name. I was convinced that the name was extremely important. So I sat and read the local phone book (not all of it...) and found strange names. But my favorite was some old man named "August Quail." August is my favorite month, and I think that quail is a nice bird. Also, I liked the flexibility of the words, august also meaning inspiring reverence or admiration, and quail meaning to cower in fear. The name creates a weird, poetic incongruence that I like. Yup.

Adcoms first reactions:

"She went to SUNY where????"

"I don't understand this transcript. I don't understand the first paragraph of her sop. I think the first sentence of the writing sample is too general. Only 16 pages? doesn't she having anything longer than that? Why didn't she send us her master's thesis? Why did she take Earth Materials as a sophmore and get a C? Clearly English students need to understand geology in order to get by. FAIL."

yay! i'm so glad you got a spot this season!

I almost can't believe that it's April 16th. When I submitted my first application (UCLA on December 1st), I thought this day would never come, and it has been the LONGEST four and a half months of my life. On campus visits and in the offices of my current MA, people (myself included) would always joke about "the gradcafe" and how it was a dangerous website. Some would only check the results forum. Some never logged on at all. There were debates about the usefulness of the site, particularly when contrasted with the inevitable reality that this site DOES add to the stress of the application season.

I will only say this--Regardless of anything else, good or bad, about this website, it has made it abundantly clear to me how difficult it must be for admissions committees. If I was tasked with picking out a group of 6-10 people from just the Gradcafe membership (which is just a small percentage of the overall applicant pool), I don't think I'd be able to do it. Over the last few months, we've agonized together, commiserated together, celebrated together and grieved together.

For all of that and more, I say to the Gradcafe community at large--THANK YOU!

For those that made it--Congrats!

For those facing another round of applications next year-Good luck, and we'll all be around pulling for you.

Also- I just want to plug my MA institution. I have spent the last two years doing my MA at Saint Bonaventure University in Western NY. I can't say enough good things about the program. When I look at the work I was doing before and after the program, the difference is somewhat frightening. For anyone who may be interested, Bonaventure's deadline isn't for another couple of weeks yet.

Some details about Bonaventure:

-36 credit MA
-They have a Learning/Teaching Fellowship that gives you the chance to add teaching experience to your CV
-The funding is 50% tuition waiver and then a stipend that covers the other 50% (and the cost of living is so cheap in this area that you can do the program without taking loans).
-There is support for submitting to and attending conferences. You will also gain experience (and CV material) in organizing a conference, as Bonaventure hosts an annual grad conference.
-Four of the students in my cohort wanted to continue our education (3 at the PhD and 1 who wanted an MLS). All four of us received at least one offer. The MLS student got in to the only school she applied to. Between the three of us seeking PhD's, we ended the season with a combined 5 offers of admission and 7 wait lists (including Florida, Rochester, Buffalo, Maryland and Toronto). I will be attending Rochester, and the other two will be attending UBuffalo.

Last year, two of the graduates sought to continue on. Both are now in PhD programs.

I'll digress for now, but I've had such a great experience at this relatively unknown program, and I wanted to let others know about it--particularly those who have not received good news this week.

This is the link to the program:
http://www.sbu.edu/a...es.aspx?id=8480

Accepted off the waitlist yesterday!!!!!!!!! Dr. Ray said there was one more person to notify....good luck!

RockDenali, you seem doggedly determined to get a rise out of the literary studies folks, and I’m not entirely sure why. Granted, you could have meant for the comments you made to come across ironically, however they don’t naturally lend themselves to that interpretation. Whichever you intended, I’m surprised anyone who studies languages and communication (literature or rhet/comp) doesn’t take extra special care to guard tone while participating in an online forum, where the absence of intonation and body language in conversation increases the likelihood of miscommunication.

In any case, I don’t know why seemingly apropos of nothing you’ve chosen to post antagonistic remarks in a thread where people are legitimately trying to provide the OP and others with helpful advice. We all have varying interests within the English discipline (none of which, in my opinion, maintain an inherently superior or inferior status to another, but contribute to a collective understanding of the language), and whether they’re literature, rhet/comp, Early Modern studies, Victorian studies, or flying carpet theory, there’s no need to discredit the posts of literary studies GCers (especially on the basis that we can’t seriously consider their input because they focus on literature rather than rhet/comp—which, speaking of argument analysis, I believe is an ad hominem.). Personally, I view rhet/comp methodology as critical to my literary studies approaches, so I take particular offense at some of the assumptions you make about scholars in my field. What’s more, setting one field against another is unnecessary, unproductive, and worst of all, destructive; as society continues to dismiss the relevance of the humanities, those of us who recognize and believe in their intrinsic value need to band together and endeavor to put our best intellectual foot forward for the sake of preserving the discipline. We don’t stand a chance if we’re constantly bickering among ourselves.

I assure you that I’m not trying to pick a fight here, RockDenali. I’ve read some of your posts in other topics, and I sincerely appreciate your contributions. I think you’ve made many insightful, down-to-earth comments that others have undoubtedly found helpful—hence why I’m particularly confused by these aggressive bursts. Sorry for the monologue: I just want the sandbox to be as amiable an environment as possible.

After reading your blog, I'd say your proper home is with us rhetoricians, compositionists, and applied linguists. Ditch literature. Academic literary studies is nothing but a giant circle jerk. Do you really want to be someone who can crack a joke about "The Laughing Medusa" or talk for more than two minutes about post-colonial queer theory's relation to contemporary Caribbean poetry? Psh. Useless. The work you're doing has a place in the academy. Come on over to the rhet/comp pool. Water's nice and warm.

If I could time travel to my sophomore self, I would say this: PUBLISH. Presenting at UG conferences is great, but think bigger, too. Submit original research and critical essays to peer reviewed undergraduate journals (they're out there!). Develop relationships with professors who collaborate with students on research and see if you can participate. Respond to calls for proposals; even if you get rejected by the conference, it will be great experience in writing proposals! And if you get in, you'll have that presentation to put down on your CV. Publishing is tangible evidence that you can conduct scholarly inquiry at a rigorous level. Adcomms like making safe bets.

As an ex-teacher and a soon-to-be English PhD student, this stuff really makes my blood boil. In addition to the "recovering lost scholarship" and "maintaining a level of intellectual competence" arguments that have already been made (which should be enough on their own to justify the existence of humanities research) there is a far more practical purpose for paying graduate students. We are the ones who teach the undergraduates at the universities that fund us! How hard is it to realize that, in our stead, the university would have to pay a faculty member, whether tenured or adjunct, around twice as much as they pay us! Maybe the universities should just stop paying anybody to teach English or Philosophy or History or Ethics or any kind of suspect experimental sciences. Apparently we've already made all of the advances that humanity can make. We are the pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder and all we have to do is spend the rest of eternity maintaining our current status quo. Or...OR...Plato knew what he was talking about when he recognized that a healthy society needs their philosophers (in all subjects). Unfortunately, we are on the road to raising a nation, and possibly a world, of dunces who can't read Plato because paying someone to teach others to do so isn't worth the money. Once that happens, we can all be pleasantly ignorant of the fact that invention and advancement are always born out of philosophy.

I would prefer that we continue to pay people $10,000 to $25,000 a year to teach undergraduates and tutor in writing centers while they learn to pass on philosophical understanding, and to break new philosophical ground, in graduate school. I may be a little biased, though.

Sorry, I know I'm preaching to the choir.

Oh, and wild_rose, those goes WAY beyond party politics.

But Ohio DOES benefit from research papers that aren't "lost in drawers"--i.e. those us academic folks bust our butts to polish and perfect for conferences and other academic engagements. What's more, funding research enables the RECOVERY of misplaced scholarship, literature, etc. I'm thinking specifically of Emily Dickinson's poems, which someone actually found in a desk drawer years after her death. Take THAT, John Kasich!

Agreed, Woolfie. As an aside, I think part of the reason why schools are taking so long to provide any admits at all is that funding is on the line right now, and God knows our GOP governors couldn't care less about education.

The governor in my state has vowed to cut funding to public education and has said publicly "Ohio doesn't benefit from research papers lost in a drawer somewhere." I don't want to offend or argue about politics, but just as far as public education goes, politically right now it is not valued at all and schools, at least in the Midwest, are quickly losing more and more funding because of attitudes like this. It depresses me so much that bank bailouts are okay but public school teachers are the enemy of fiscal responsibility.

Sorry for the politics rant- I agree that paying to do a PhD is probably the worst investment of all time. GETTING PAID to do a PhD is slowly become a bad investment as well, when you taking into consideration the time spent living on patlry stipends (I think some people do take out partial loans when they've got a stipend of 9K) compared with the rates of finding a job after the PhD. They ain't that high right now.

Good luck, folks! Here's to more (and funded) offers to give Fordham some competition.

For what it's worth, I think it's *incredibly* difficult to apply successfully as an undergrad, especially to PhD programs. I waited two years before applying my first round, and did quite well. (I didn't spend the time in between doing anything academic-y...though the summer before apps were due, I did start studying for the GRE's/Lit exam and rewriting my writing sample, SoP, researching schools, etc). There's something about simply giving oneself a few years to mature--and for your undergrad training to "percolate" that seems quite effective. Looking over my papers from senior year (which I would have submitted had I applied back then), it was pretty obvious that no self-respecting PhD program would have taken me at "that level"...and for what it's worth, I was a straight-A student from a decent undergrad.

So I suppose what I'm suggesting is...while I can definitely understand the desire to pay for one's MA (and in some cases, this would indeed be a wise move), it may be to your benefit to simply take some time off, find a "real" job (in my case, I tutored, waited tables, and worked in a coffeehouse...nothing glamorous or particularly attractive on my CV/resume)...and try again.

This isn't to say, of course, that no one gets into strong PhD programs applying as an undergrad. It happens all the time. But I suspect that far more promising applicants benefited from taking time off than applying "straight." Certainly, most (90, 95%) of the students at the top programs that I know of (though this varies depending on the culture/preferences of different programs) took at least 1 year off.

Back in the days of yore, people used this program called AOL INSTANT MESSENGER. When I was in high school, I didn't have internet access until I was in 10th or 11th grade. So, I get some high speed online, and I suddenly need a screen name. I was convinced that the name was extremely important. So I sat and read the local phone book (not all of it...) and found strange names. But my favorite was some old man named "August Quail." August is my favorite month, and I think that quail is a nice bird. Also, I liked the flexibility of the words, august also meaning inspiring reverence or admiration, and quail meaning to cower in fear. The name creates a weird, poetic incongruence that I like. Yup.

Dark & Stormy --- Reed's extra ginger brew, The Kraken rum, and lime juice.

Hey, we literature folk are known for our drinking! There was a recent Chronicle piece, I think, about the AWP Conference cleaning out the hotel bar.

This is my first round of applications, but so far I have three rejections, and I applied to ten schools. Last fall I was writing my MA thesis (I did a combined ba/ma), and I decided not to apply while I was writing it, because I thought my application would suffer. So I waited until this fall to apply. If I get rejected from everywhere, I will be completely crushed, but I probably will try again. That being said, I can't afford to take more classes, and it just seems like it will be harder to get in with a longer 'inbetween' period than I have this season....I'm 25, and I feel like this is a good age to start a phd...I just don't want to waste anymore time! I haven't even heard from half my schools, but I do feel like giving up already. This *is* depressing...I don't know what I will do if I don't get accepted by the second try...there aren't exactly a million jobs in the english field. I will probably end up going in more debt getting an Ma in education and teaching romeo and juliet to 9th graders who don't care.

SIGH

This is my first round of applications, but so far I have three rejections, and I applied to ten schools. Last fall I was writing my MA thesis (I did a combined ba/ma), and I decided not to apply while I was writing it, because I thought my application would suffer. So I waited until this fall to apply. If I get rejected from everywhere, I will be completely crushed, but I probably will try again. That being said, I can't afford to take more classes, and it just seems like it will be harder to get in with a longer 'inbetween' period than I have this season....I'm 25, and I feel like this is a good age to start a phd...I just don't want to waste anymore time! I haven't even heard from half my schools, but I do feel like giving up already. This *is* depressing...I don't know what I will do if I don't get accepted by the second try...there aren't exactly a million jobs in the english field. I will probably end up going in more debt getting an Ma in education and teaching romeo and juliet to 9th graders who don't care.

SIGH

Similar to the above, I am about to be 28 and I applied for a PhD for the fall, so I will be well into my 30s by the time I finish! I won't be a spring chicken when I'm done, but the up-side is that I feel much more focused than out of undergrad and even out of my first grad program...

but I know it's hard to feel hopeful it's more competitive than ever, but don't let the age thing make you think you can't give it a another shot. (my mother, btw, finished her BA in her thirties, phd in late thirties, and then finished a second phd in her late 50s/early 60s!)

I think that as more programs are clogged with hundreds of overqualified applicants, it will be more and more common for people to be in their early 30s when receiving the PhD. This in itself shouldn't be something to be ashamed of--it means that we'll be a bit more mature and clear on our goals when going onto the academic job market for the first time. As my MA thesis chair told me when she learned that I'd still be 22 when I received my MA, "we've got enough young scholars," and I kind of get what she meant. In other fields, it's typical for people to work for years "in the field" gaining integral hands-on experience before transitioning to graduate study, but because the humanities don't really have any professional component outside of the academy, we've tend in the past to be a bit incestuous in our degree-granting (the BA goes onto the MA at 22, the MA to the PhD at 24, and the PhD to a professorship at 28, where s/he will in turn produce more people to go straight through the system).

I think that the perceived maturity factor will become more of a significant consideration among admissions committees, especially as more programs, rightly or wrongly, embrace "professionalization." I'm 25 now and will be 26 when I start my doctorate this Fall, meaning that I'll probably be 31 or so when I get my PhD. I washed out of applications two years in a row and was accepted during my 3rd round (this year). It wasn't just a matter of weathering the storm, of course. This was the first year that I actually had a solid sense of what I wanted to do with a scholarly career in a particular subfield, and I believe that that came through in my statement of purpose.

Regardless, considering that the PhD is the pinnacle of educational credentials, it isn't anything to be ashamed of to be earning it in one's early to mid thirties. I knew some grad students in their 40s when I was in my MA program; those people had families, a history, etc., but they were all incredibly happy to be doing what they were doing, and they were great teachers and scholars to boot.

You mean you have ah, rhetorical questions.

and yes, I would like Brown to send all rejections/waitlists/acceptances at one go too (like princeton did). I am becoming less and less hopeful as the minutes pass

Attempt reading long hefty novels that you won't ever have time for in grad school.
Bourbon.
Cook something. Preferably something time-consuming and difficult that you're convinced you'll fail in making. Because then, when you succeed in making something edible, you'll be reminded that certain failure is not always so certain...
Clean. (I finally got around to giving the kitchen sink a thorough scrubbing in the last 48 hours.)
Attempt to learn another language.
Finally, and most important: strive to become the world's foremost champion in computer Solitaire, Hearts, and Minesweeper.

I think the key is: don't be at home at all during the day and disconnect yourself from the internet. In the evening, go dancing.

way too late. crazy is in full force.

I JUST WANT AN ACCEPTANCE. @#$^!@^#$

FUUUUCKKKKKK

FUUUUCKKKKKK