crutch

Yeah, I've been meaning to read some Crime and Punishment for quite some time. I think I'm going to go through Lolita first, though.

Books on my list include: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky As I lay Dying by Faulkner Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler There are a lot more, but those are on my immediate horizon, since I've been meaning to get to them for some time. I'm also in the middle of Dune, but I just can't seem to develop the desire to keep going through it.

Not going to happen, unfortunately. Received my official rejection notice today. I'm 0/5 now, and I'm starting to get really, really worried. I've still got 9 applications out there, but I'm pretty sure I have NO chance at 3-4 of them, at least. Looks like this could be a long year for me...

Where did the rumor that they are only accepting 5 come from? The information on their website doesn't seem to give any indication that this year's class will be smaller than average... Did someone have an inside source or something?

Well, their graduate coordinator did tell me on Friday (via email) that they still had acceptances to send out. Since there have been no acceptances posted since last week, it is quite possible.

Yesterday seemed to be a day of adding to the wait list, today seems to be a day of rejections. I was hoping for an email today, but I sort of hope I don't get one now! Maybe the rest of the acceptances will go out later... or maybe they're just going through one person at a time, regardless of the decision. Who knows, but I'm nervous again.

Congrats to all those accepted! Princeton was very high on my list, but, alas, it must now be removed!

Anyone want to claim the acceptance? Could you also let the rest of us know what time you received the call? Many thanks!

Duke rejected me last week, apparently before most of the other rejects. Some guy on the committee must have shouted, "Get that despicable application out of my sight now!" and someone rushed off to notify me immediately. My application was just too poor to put it off any longer. Duke wasn't one of my top choices, but I would have been thrilled to have been accepted. Now I'm looking at an official rejection from Duke and implicit rejections from Chicago, JHU, and UVA... if I don't get some positive news from somewhere soon, I may start panicking. Still, I agree that it is nice knowing I will not be in Durham next year. It takes a little bit of stress off my mind, as I no longer have to do the basic "what-if" planning for the move there.

Exactly!

There was another one posted this past Friday, so I think there have been a total of two posted acceptances. However, another poster mentioned that he knows of another acceptance, someone who hasn't posted on here. So, unfortunately, I would suspect that they have sent out the majority of their acceptances already, if not all of them.

The focus of my dissertation, which, by the way, was the weakest of my four papers due to a number of personal issues that came up as I was writing it, was 18th-century satire, particularly that of Alexander Pope. More specifically, I researched the use of militaristic language and violence in The Rape of the Lock, Windsor Forest, The Dunciad, etc. I'm hoping to continue this line of research in a doctoral program, and am thinking of examining how Swift, Fielding, Dryden, Butler, etc. treated violence in their works as well. I also wrote a paper on Colley Cibber and one that critiqued Samuel Johnson's transcriptions of Pope's Iliad manuscript, which I found to be rather misleading. My supervisor for both the program in general and my dissertation, in particular, was Freya Johnston. She is incredibly nice and knows a ton about the 18th century, especially Samuel Johnson. However, I also did a paper on Milton and penal law, which was an offshoot of some research I did for the New Milton seminar, which was led by Sharon Achinstein. She was also my college supervisor. One of my good friends stayed on after the MSt program to do his DPhil there, and she is now his DPhil supervisor. Sharon is a wonderful teacher, but you should know one thing: she expects A LOT out of her students. This, in my opinion, is a very, very good thing. However, some people seem to be intimidated by her, especially when they first meet her (myself included!). She will be incredibly harsh with your work when it deserves a good thrashing, but she doesn't do it just to make you feel bad. She does it because she knows you're capable of better. She will always be there when you need her and she always has great advice on what articles and books to turn to when you're drawing a blank. All in all, you will be a better scholar after working under her. I hope this helps!

And so the acceptances begin...

Don't you start waltzing around here with your encouragement and your apologies and your frowny faces, and expect everything to be okay... We are pissed off! How dare you post something that made you happy?! The only way to rectify the situation would be to contact UVA and tell them you hacked the application system in order to steal my application files and use them for yourself. I fully expect an offer of admission in my inbox by 8:00AM (Central Time) on Monday morning. Just kidding, of course. Huge, HUGE congrats, and I, for one, am glad you posted the acceptance.

While I can't tell you anything concrete, I will say that I completed the 1550-1780 MSt program last year and that the people running it are (for the most part) very laid back. So I wouldn't think they will be too harsh with your application just because you only have two academic references, especially since they state that a third is unnecessary. As with many applications, I'm sure the big things they'll be looking at are your writing samples and your SoP. Good luck, and enjoy yourself if you get in. I loved the program and I loved Oxford. If you're accepted, I'm sure you will too.

I applied there also. However, I honestly don't know very much about the program at all. I wanted to apply to approximately 15 schools just to maximize my chances of getting in somewhere. I found about 12 schools that I thought were good fits. Then, at the end of the process I added a couple more schools that I really didn't know anything about, other than the fact that they were well respected. So I don't really expect to be admitted to JHU, nor do I know much about it. Basically, I'm useless here.

This is good to know, but I still can't shake this pessimistic feeling!

I wish I could claim it, but I can't. I was having a great day at work, and then I saw it sitting there at the top of the page taunting me. I decided to check my inbox and, alas, there was nothing there. Now I've somehow convinced myself that I should prepare for a rejection.

I definitely didn't follow the Kaplan or Princeton Review formats, and I got a 6.0. Maybe you caught the grader on a bad day?

I might have to check my status page every two minutes tomorrow, as opposed to every three and a half.

But, but, but... My GRE scores are awesome! And I'm smarter than half of their tenured professors!

I'm from the Austin area, but I did my undergrad at Texas Tech. I just recently finished a Master's at Oxford, so I'm hoping that the committee's positive perception of Oxford's academics will outweigh their negative perception of TTU's. I'm hoping that the other schools to which I applied, mostly schools in the northeast, will overlook TTU's disrepute as well.

Did anyone else here apply there? I noticed the rejection posted on the results page and was wondering if anyone else had heard anything. I'm guessing if rejections are being sent out, not hearing anything right now is a good thing, right?

All of my stuff went to the online application as well. Nonetheless, I'm fairly certain that, even with all of my materials submitted properly, I will be rejected.

Wow, I can't imagine moving abroad with twins - major props there! I think the hardest thing about the move was getting our son on a decent sleep schedule after every flight. He also had trouble learning to enjoy British foods... It was also sort of difficult because we never encountered any other parents who were our age. It made it somewhat awkward at social events when we were the only ones in our early twenties having to chase around a toddler. There aren't a ton of young parents where we live now, but there are definitely more than there were in Oxford. Most of our great friends there were in their mid-thirties. Not that that is a bad thing, of course. We were just at a different place than a lot of the other 20-year-olds we met.