diehtc0ke

*shrug* I mentioned that discourse and was able to deftly describe that which was most pertinent to my own research without naming many names (only one, in fact) and did just fine.

So, I'm going to preface this post by saying that I love the CUNY Graduate Center and not only because I did my undergrad at a CUNY school and some of my favorite professors were grad students at the Grad Center at the time. I know we're in a recession and blahblahblah but even knowing what I knew about funding I still spent the $125 to apply last year and would have been willing to make it work had it been the only school to accept me (which now in hindsight I'm glad wasn't the case). Their website's info is ambiguous because it seems like they're always ambiguous with their funding because it's not that great. From what I remember there were a number of those fellowships that you mention and that covered five years but there were plenty of teaching opportunities at CCs and often at some of the four year colleges. For those who did not receive a fellowship (and that was the case for me when I was accepted), there were teaching opportunities from day one but I think they paid something that was pretty much less than a livable wage in many places but especially in New York City (if you want exact numbers from what I got with my admissions packet I can PM you). I didn't ask how many fellowships were given out but while speaking with admitted students at the Open House, most seemed to have gotten one (that might just have been lucky though so take that with a grain of salt. Perhaps someone else has an actual number). That being said, though many of my grad student professors complained about the funding, they were able to work with some really wonderful people and with an exceptional group of graduate students so I'd take that into account as well. Even knowing what I know now, were I applying this year I'd still be sending an app there.

That sounds like you're in a good place, then. I can't say that my statement of purpose was akin to a "micro-dissertation-type proposal" but I definitely was able go somewhere beyond "I want to study death in literature." All I can say is do more than just point out what that area of interest is--give them the stakes of your current and future research. This isn't a space for answering the questions that you have but use those questions to talk about the issues that you think need working through. Why do these issues/why does your research matter? I know my professors couldn't stand my drafts until they pointedly asked me that question and I was able to give them an answer. Hope that's helpful.

Hmm. I actually hadn't heard of that distinction in terms of what it means for admission but I know every time I tell a professor that I took that year off between undergrad and grad school they commend me on my forward thinking or something like that. I mean, it definitely gave me the time to figure out what I wanted my focus to be and I was able to construct a completely new writing sample (which, even with that extra time, didn't completely align with my statement of purpose even though both were in the same general field of "black queer studies"). With that being said, have you gotten the impression that there's a significant distinction to be made? I know in my own case it was the combination of free time and pointed research that made me a more successful candidate than I would have been had I really given it my all in applying during my senior year. As for the original question, my cohort is small with a 1:1 ratio of MA holders to non-MA holders. I wouldn't rest on the idea that BA holders are possibly judged less harshly in terms of focus, though. Especially if you only have a bachelor's, showing that you've given significant thought to a particular and narrow project should put you in good standing with a lot of PhD program admissions committees.

I really can only answer based on my own experience. I don't go to any of the schools you're applying to but it's comparable. 1. No. 2. I doubt it will help significantly. I applied with only a BA and had only taken one graduate level course. Take them because you want to and focus on the statement and the sample. (Thankfully I just looked at Chumlee's post because I have those same questions about your coursework.)

They STILL haven't fixed that clock? Ridiculous.

I hadn't really planned on it but the school I'm at now has an exchange program with all the ivies, Chicago, MIT and Berkeley and, without ever having given it much thought, I was considering taking a year to study at Berkeley because of the nice weather and Judith Butler. Now, I'd just be going for nice weather.

Well, that just means I'll be a visiting student at Columbia rather than Berkeley now. I definitely should have applied there in hindsight.

I thought she wasn't actually leaving Berkeley--that she was just going to be a visiting professor in the Spring of 2012 and the Spring of 2013. http://chronicle.com...olumbia-u/28217 And I see you're commenting on my possible misinformation after I edited lol.

Really? Weird. I still haven't encountered this as common but I've seen single spaced weekly response papers. Oh well. Then I stand corrected.

That narrative that your professor is talking about still has to be there but it needs to be condensed because the focus should be on how that past leads to some sort of foreseeable future. What you've written in the past and the theorists you've used are only important insofar they relate specifically to the work you want to actually do in a PhD program (this isn't to say that she's telling you to throw the kitchen sink in there but you can't relegate talking about a future project to a scant few lines at the end). I just looked at that thread you're talking about and I think inextrovert lays down some wonderful and crucial advice for how to proceed.

Three pages for a statement of purpose? That actually seems a bit long to me. I'm also going to go against the grain and say that I think a singled spaced document is probably not okay. After reading a couple hundred papers, the last thing many professors would be willing to put up with is a document that's difficult to read.

What does the rest of your statement consist of if you only have three sentences that sketch out a future project? Showing that you can take research that you have been doing and expand it into larger work that you've been thinking about should take up the bulk of the SOP. To put this into perspective, a good page and a half of my two page statement spoke about some future project, did a fairly rough tracing of how I would get there (this included the fit paragraph which spoke about how professors' research interests could fit into what I wanted to do) and outlined what's at stake for this line of research and analysis. I also didn't mention specific texts or figures and it certainly did not have the same level of detail as a dissertation proposal but you should be able to say a little bit more about what you see happening with "the semantic drift of narratives throughout cultural production."

This. Especially given the fact that these rankings are based on data from 2006, I think they can be used rather generally to give applicants a general idea of how programs (holistically speaking) are seen in terms of reputation but a lot more legwork must be done after the fact. From what i remember, I thought the difference between R-ratings and S-ratings was that one was based more on subjective criteria and the other was based on more objective criteria--which is which has been lost at this point. I find these to be more useful than the USNWR rankings but, as bigdgp has said, what matters more than a program's overall strength is its strength in your particular subfield.

Yes, congratulations! To answer the question I've quoted above, that's something we've discussed and debated quite extensively before. Check out and and

If nothing else, it will save you a fair amount of money. It also took me two tries--the first was during my senior year while I was trying to write an honors thesis and get A's in seven classes (succeeding in two out of three goals wasn't bad, though). The grad school application got sent to the backburner because it was the only thing that could be delayed for a year. I ended up being able to focus on the application and figure out exactly what I wanted to do after I was finished with undergrad. That time to mull it over led to successful statements and samples (even though, admittedly, it still took a few months to get myself together. I still wasn't done with my writing sample on December 1st which meant there were two schools I was interested in and then couldn't apply to and the personal statement that I sent to schools on December 15th was quite different from the one I would have sent out to a school on December 8th [Duke's wonderful deadline, which I also missed]. I'm quite the little procrastinator).

+1 to just getting out there and figuring out how to research through what interests you. And yes, "Research is something you learn by doing" but it helps to have a solid foundation to build off of--I wish I had had one. I've actually never heard of that guide, poco_puffs. I might check it out for shits and giggles. If you want a more general book on how to conduct research, I'd recommend The Craft of Research (http://www.amazon.com/Research-Chicago-Writing-Editing-Publishing/dp/0226065847). It does a good job of guiding students on how to come up with research questions or topics in the first place.

Off of the top of my head (and on top of the places strokeofmidnight referenced), I'm thinking UCLA, CUNY Graduate Center and UPenn.

This made me laugh out loud.

Well now I'm offended (kidding!). In my defense, I figured the section would be easy and so I never looked up what they were looking for in an essay (which means not seeing what a "6" essay looked like) nor did I even look up the instructions for the section before the day of the test so I ended up having to read those while I was taking it, meaning I had even less time. I suppose my natural writing style warranted demerits.<br><br>edited because I think strokeofmidnight said what I wanted to say better than I did...<br>

I really have nothing to add to this but I'd like to say it was 684 applications at Penn. Figure it'd be worth making those numbers seem (ever so) slightly less ridiculous.

? No, that's not what I meant. The question was whether a low writing score on the GRE would negatively effect an applicant's chances and I responded that the section is a joke not because no one bothers looking at it (though, as I said, I was accepted to a top school without the adcom having even seen my scores) but because the writing sample by and large eclipses the AW score as a tool for judging an applicant's writing ability. In this specific case (and I really only wrote that post as a response to this specific case), the writing score isn't low enough to pose as a red flag, especially if the sample is spectacular. I probably should have been a little more descriptive in my position but I was on my iPhone and suddenly remembered that I got a 4 on that section as well. I think. It might have been a 4.5 but it was definitely nothing more than that and maybe it's for this reason that I came off seeming more authoritative on the subject than I am. I had a similar score on that section and was fairly successful in applying last year. I didn't want the OP to think for another minute that he should completely give up on the application process because of a middling score on one of the least significant parts of the application (that is, the writing section and not necessarily the GRE as a whole). Though, I would say the exact same thing if someone came on here asking whether a high score on the writing section would help offset a mediocre writing sample because it wouldn't.

Yeah. Plus, (and I feel like I've said this before somewhere) I was accepted to a top 20 school without them having even seen my GRE scores. About two weeks after I got my official acceptance the DGS e-mailed me asking if I had ever sent them and only needed them for the Graduate School's records.

You don't have to delay anything based on your AW score--adcoms realize that section is a joke. No one bases your writing ability on that score especially because you'll be sending in a writing sample. Even if you had the time I would have advised you not to bother retaking.

Just to second strokeofmidnight's post, I'm also not so sure that contacting professors will definitely be beneficial even if you do take heed of the three caveats that have been presented. I know we're not professors but the first-years in my program (including me) have already received inquisitive emails from people who will be applying and across the board if we weren't turned off by the presumptuous tone of the e-mails or their timing (one came several weeks before the term had even begun), we just weren't interested in starting correspondences with random people while starting graduate school and taking four seminars. This isn't to say that we were callous and unhelpful (I did respond even to the letter that I got in early August) and most likely this was just a particularly bad set of messages but it definitely put bad tastes in our mouths and I'm not sure how responsive I will be in the future. I'm sure more than a handful of professors feel similarly. Academics are a notoriously fickle bunch with elephantine memories (in many though not all cases) so unless you truly have a burning question that must be answered before you can fathom applying to the program, I would tread cautiously.