diehtc0ke

Haha that's good news then. Good luck tomorrow! And, yeah, that's probably exactly why they put him on there.

The Lit GRE has definitely become more theory heavy since that Princeton Review book was published and my test last October certainly had more than three theory-centric questions on it. I had to know what theorists were associated with which kinds of theories generally and then book titles of specific theorists (Umberto Eco was the one I remember but there were a couple of others). They weren't the most challenging questions but I hadn't taken a theory course so I was pretty lost there. It's probably a little late but don't go in to the test thinking that it won't have much theory on it.

Doubtful; as anecdotal evidence I remember seeing those spaces on a few of my applications but I left them blank and still got in.

Most of our bickering took place here: I think we were talking about PhD applications in that thread but I'd venture a guess that contacting professors would be even less necessary for MA applications. I wouldn't mind standing corrected, though.

I'm in a bit of a rush right now but I do want to thank you for placing your views in that context. Like I said, I think I'm just used to the American way of doing things and was (possibly) unfairly critical of how American literature is treated in British coursework on literature. If the notion of electives and students choosing their coursework is lost in the British system, so be it. I didn't mean to make the claim that anyone would be "unqualified to study English" but now I'm understanding that a British degree in English is vastly different from an American degree in English and I think I'm ultimately going to leave it at that.

My last comment was unnecessarily snarky and I apologize for that. I didn't realize it came off that way until I reread it just now. I've been reading Derrida and de Man for the past few days and perhaps I brought my frustrations with those texts into this discussion. The fact of the matter, however, is that I think I was trying to defend American literature as a body of work that, especially given its relationship to British lit, warrants more than just a couple of survey courses, which (at least in an American system) would gloss over a century and a half's worth of material in a semester, sometimes creating a thematic thread through the course and sometimes not. I never intended to argue for teaching a course on Du Bois (though a semester's worth of work could be made there; he's prolific enough) but an undergraduate curriculum wouldn't have enough space for any electives in topics of American literature? The whole underlying script of this conversation has been that American literature isn't voluminous enough or impactful enough or something else enough to warrant these kinds of courses in an English system. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by survey courses? If they're really just broad and sweeping courses that take on centuries of work in a short amount of time, then I find a problem with that. And perhaps there are these kinds of elective courses offered (which I couldn't grasp from your responses thus far) and you've only been saying that American literature courses aren't required for the degree. In rethinking this entire discussion, I'm painfully aware of the dilettante-ish nature of American colleges which have distribution requirements and aspire for well-rounded graduates. This is a model that I have adopted for what a college education is supposed to do and, of course, that model isn't shared by everyone. edit: Oh, and to clarify what I meant to say in my last post, I was worried that my responses made it seem as if I had a problem with you, vallensvelvet, telling me that American literature only received a handful of survey courses in the British English curriculum when I was more concerned with these kinds of systematic value judgments that would say to a British student studying English that it's okay to only have a tenuous grasp of American literature (at best) when he or she receives a Bachelor's degree. But, maybe I overestimate what having a Bachelor's degree actually signifies.

What I'm saying is that American literature is not just some throwaway part of "English" as a subject of study. I suppose my gripe would be more with the British educational system than you personally if it makes a student of English think that they're a degree-worthy candidate without knowing a thing about American literature. My post became more a response to your original inquiry about why British English departments should see American literature as something worthy of being "on the radar" as you put it.

Please tell me I'm misinterpreting this post and you're not saying that as a British student in English you don't need to know anything about canonical African-American work. Being ignorant of Du Bois? Fine. Saying he has no place in an English curriculum? Ridiculous. He's not just some random minuscule piece of American trivia. edit: Rereading your post, I'm probably stretching your words too far. I think you're definitely undervaluing American literature as a corpus of work but the conclusion I made doesn't add up. Your analogy is still out of whack, however. I understand that British English curriculums (and I suppose British educational systems in general) are more focused and purpose-driven than American systems but for you to not understand the importance that American literature has had on literature as a whole so that a British course on American literature would not be akin to an American course "British Kitchen Sink realism" is frightening.

So, given the tone of your response, I'm not quite sure we're on the same wavelength but I hope you know I was joking and being facetious. I probably should have added a to the end of it or something. I am, however, going to have to argue that Wheatley's poetry, though it does mostly reflect her experience as an educated slave in Massachusetts, definitely has transnational implications. Her poetry was published and read in England and, more generally, I'd find it really difficult to talk about slavery in the 18th c. as a specifically (or solely) American concern, even if it is an American slave that is writing. If I remember correctly, she even went to London to prove that her poetry was indeed her own and her poetry was circulated by the British abolitionist movement to show that Africans weren't inherently incapable of being intelligent. I'm not trying to say that of course you should have read her but to say that her poetry had no bearing on British social thought would be incorrect.

Haha. My first reaction to the bolded part was, "Well, we study YOUR literature! (Grumble, grumble.)"

I've actually only read The Souls of Black Folk but mostly because though I'm a 20th c. person now focused on Af-Am Lit I was a romanticist up until senior year. I may be in grad school but I still have a ton of catching up to do. I'll have to check that out because it sounds really interesting and the man's a genius. Plus, your post was more thorough--I probably shouldn't assume that if someone doesn't know Phillis that they'll know she was a lettered slave.

FWIW, I definitely said nothing about wanting to teach in my SOP and I was fairly successful. And the wanting to research part came out of my outlining my interests.

W. E. B. Du Bois and Phillis Wheatley? Two really important African-American writers (the former from the late 19th/early 20th c. and the latter from the 18th c.)? Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk (of course, he wrote other things but that's probably all the Lit GRE will care about) and Wheatley was a poet (my favorite of hers is her elegy to a Mr. Whitfield...or Whitefield...one of them). This made me sad.

Exactly. These exams really vary based on program. I can tell you that while Penn does require you to be proficient in two languages and though it would be easier on you personally if you already knew two languages, you can fail these exams an unlimited amount of times and only have to pass the two by the end of your fourth year. Plus, you can take these tests in a classroom, in the library or at your house with a dictionary or (I suppose) the internet in front of you. You really should check with the programs before you freak out about that. I'll let everyone else weigh in on the MFA side of your question.

The only thing I'd be concerned about is sending a 20-25 page paper to a school that has a 10 page limit. I know NYU only wanted 10 pages and it was easy for me to knock down my 25 page paper to about 12 pages because I spoke about a novel and a short story. I ended up just taking out the parts about the short story and left it as a "fresh" paper about the novel.

+1. Adcomms would appreciate 15 pages of tight, solid writing over those 15 pages with a five page extension tacked on just because. If you can find a compelling reason to make the sample longer, go right ahead. It has nothing to do with laziness.

I believe that if the percentile score changes (and it does somewhat over time), the GRE website reflects the updated scores. I checked my scores recently and I noticed that the percentiles had changed slightly from when I applied last fall. I took the GRE two years ago and the subject test about a year ago. I'm not quite sure how the test is scored (to be frank, I didn't study all that much for the test and ended up scoring in the mid 500s as well) but I don't think it could possibly be on a point per question scale. Most around would probably say anything around 650 is a pretty safe score whereas anything below 600 is somewhat of a gamble. Clearly your score won't get you into any programs but some might use it as a cutoff for consideration and still others might say they take the score into account and disregard it when it comes to actually evaluating packages. I was unhappy with my score but didn't have the opportunity to take it again (I registered for the October test and didn't get the scores until after the deadline for registering for the November which is how they designed it I imagine) and yet I was accepted to schools that claimed 600 as a minimum score. With that being said, had I been able to register for the November test I surely would have.

In that case, it probably wouldn't make for the best writing sample.

Why would you assume that that's a bad thing? It already implies that you're a good fit for that school if you're using this scholar's work in your paper.

Is this on a semester or a quarter system? I'm in English too and at first I was somewhat jealous but then I realized I thoroughly enjoy the subject matter of all four of my courses and hopefully that should propel me through. I'm not sure what I would do if I could only really pick one seminar for my first semester. My program is similar to that of inextrovert in that I take 7 or 8 courses for the first year, four courses during the second year along with a TA-ship and two courses during the third year along with teaching a course for the writing program with a topic of my own design. After that, I only teach if I really want to and that's only for the fifth year and beyond. Fourth year is dedicated to dissertation research/writing.

I'm just starting a doctoral program and I'll be taking four classes this semester and probably next semester as well. I'm also hoping that I'll be able to take one of those four classes at another university which will add a commute to all of this craziness (I live a five minute bike ride from my school now). Classes start next week so I don't know exactly how my reading/study habits will pan out but I'll be on campus Tuesdays from 9AM - 6PM (with a three hour break between classes), Wednesdays from 9AM - 12AM and Thursdays from 3PM - 6PM. I don't have any teaching obligations this year or anything like that.

I know I'm only one person but I can't help but feel like my experience confirms this. Perhaps the schools that rejected me did so because of my lit GRE score in the 53rd percentile; I don't know but I do know there were some discrepancies for those applications that would have overshadowed even the best of scores (like sending the wrong statement of purpose to an Ivy that shall not be named). I would also point out that 50% of my cohort is also coming in with an MA in hand and I attend another top 10 program. edit: I forgot to also draw attention to the fact that though I've said somewhere else that stated research interests from a BA applicant can be somewhat messier than those from an MA aplicant, there's also an element of having more to prove for certain schools. As an applicant with only a bachelor's, you are a riskier investment and the writing sample is critical in showing the kind and level of work you're capable of (which is why a lot of us here always advocate for paying more attention to samples and statements than to standardized tests). So, woolfie, I would definitely try not to bank on being rejected from all of the PhD programs you're applying to because: 1) I haven't gotten any indication that you're not ready for them at this point and, 2) you don't want to subconsciously psych yourself out before the applications even get into the mailbox.

I'm going to have to go with this being the best bet, especially in this field. I have no idea how chemistry applications work but I know that there's no possible way I would have been able to convince every single top 20 English program that my research interests strongly aligned with their's without some serious manipulation of those interests. I ended up applying to 11 schools and probably (actually, definitely) could have done okay with only sending out five or six applications. Of course I'm making that judgment with the knowledge that I got in to several programs but I realized that a couple of those schools actually weren't a good fit when I did further snooping. It's those five or six schools that had more than three professors I could see myself working with. OP: apply to those places that you can tell would be a good fit for your future research on paper--only you (and I suppose your bank account) can come up with that comfortable number. Visiting weekends are when you figure out which are a good fit in practice. edited to fix a glaring typo

Probably one of the better pages of its kind on the internet as I find that a lot of advice is primarily geared for grad students in the sciences whereas this one is more open. Thanks for the link.