Caien

Thanks @yanaka It sure has been a busy day on these boards, but I think I speak for many of us when I say that @Wyatt's Terps acceptance is a fantastic thing to see; it makes me think there's something to that whole karma thing after all...

Sincerest congratulations WT, as others have already said, its very well deserved!

I'm actually earlier - they've asked for this week or next week. I might drop you a PM after the visit weekend to get your impressions?

Thanks Wyatt! I'll be a skype interview - the email said they're only allowed to fly in domestic students to campus, but to be honest having to go over would be an added stress; at least now I only have to worry about the 30-60 mins or so we'll be online. Are you going? What's your subfield?

I got one I got one!!! Completely over the moon - an interview isn't an offer obviously but I struck out last year, this is the first good news I've gotten!

Ah that's great guys! Well done

Upvote for marching @anxiousgrad You Americans sure know how to make protest signs

Shoutout to the other international students counting down to 9am EST every day...

You make a good point here. For months I've been in the library after work and at weekends, and put off visiting home or going out with friends to work on application materials. When I explain I'm applying to PhD programs, people always assume its just a matter of filling out a form and maybe firing off an old essay. Even when I explain all the research and preparation required, it really doesn't seem to me that people appreciate the amount of work and dedication involved just to get to the point where you hit submit. Part of me seriously thinks that the real purpose of the GRE is to make us jump through as many hoops as possible in order to weed out all the people who might only apply out of curiosity or because they think grad school is an easy way to put off joining the work force for a few more years. Given that the consensus seems to be it signifies almost nothing about our ability or potential as scholars (particularly the Subject) and its ridiculous stress and expense, it must really reduce the numbers of applications the adcomms have to wade through...

Feeling you WT, this is my situation with Notre Dame. If I don't even make the interview round...

Today was the application deadline for the English MSt program's...

Thanks Sunsy, it looks like in the past the interview phone calls have been spread out over 2-3 days, so I'll hold out hope I suppose...

No interview notice for me what's your sub field? Did a POI call you or the DGS?

Always a plus.

This is likely a ridiculous thing to be worrying about at this stage (or at any stage) but... is anybody else wondering what they're going to say if a DGS or POI calls them on the phone? Not even talking out research or the program etc, but like, the first thing out of your mouth? Because my instinctive response is going to be a swear word, and I'm not sure how I'm going to stop it.

Congratulations @JessicaLange

I'm not entirely sure I understand your question, you're looking for recommendations for schools (academies) that are unacademic? Harold Bloom was a Ivy League professor. Are you asking as you are scoping out schools to which to apply for the PhD? If you mean criticism that is not so heavily influenced by the literary theory schools that emerged in the mid-20th century, structuralism, marxism, pschoanalysis etc., that we refer in shorthand to as 'theory' literary criticism was still theoretically informed before the theory wars, if not so patently 'pre-defined', to borrow your own term, into subgroups. (In my opinion, it is more that the assumptions on which literary criticism was based were less rigorously examined and systematically applied, but that is another conversation.) If it is less theory-orientated in this sense that you are getting at in your request, the British Isles is much less theoretical than either continental Europe or the US, 'Anglo-American' is a bit of a misnomer in my opinion. The approach in the UK/Ireland is in many way old historicism by default. I did have a professor who was wasn't so much anti-theory as perplexed by it and told us he basically ignored it hoping it would go away for 40 years (he's just retired). He was trained at Cambridge and wrote criticism much like that of Harold Bloom, focused on meaning as derived from a reading of themes and characters. Its just my two cents, but I reckon you'd be hard pressed to find many professors like him these days, let alone entire schools. Its difficult to simply ignore theory as it has transformed the discipline so much. That said, Harvard make a point of having no theoretical leaning on their department website, but I can't speak to the reality of such a claim.

This thread from a few years back:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre... That poem actually gave me nightmares when I was at school. This is an excellent gif.

Does insomnia worsen gradcafe thread stalking, or does gradcafe thread stalking worsen insomnia? It's January's 5th and I'm already loosing my mind.

Write the Great Irish/American/Scottish/French/Canadian/Japanese/Indonesian/Sudanese/etc. Novel

Thanks @unræd, that makes me feel a bit better

I hadn't intended to reread @Wyatt's Terps, my WS had been read by three professors and four of my friends with humanities degrees, and I myself has proofed it so every comma was exactly right. But, in a horribly ironic twist, my writing sample was published just a few weeks ago. I proudly sent an online link to my mother to read, and when I got home for Christmas: Me *pleased as punch*: Did you read the editorial before the article? Mother: Yes, but um... Me: What? Mother: I don't fully understand the title. Me: What do you mean? Mother: There seems to be a word missing. Me: ... What? Mother: Its probably just some English literature-y way of saying it that I don't get... but shouldn't there be an 'a' in here? Me: ...I'm going to go cry now. Where the missing 'a' went will remain a mystery, it is in an older version of my WS then disappears around November. Somehow I must have been so used to the title that my eyes skimmed it, and my proofreaders must not have looked at the title. Suffice to say, it has somewhat spoiled my first publication. Also I had my mother proofread my last few SoPs...

So I found a typo in my writing sample... In the title

Does anyone know if Columbia English interviews? I can't find anything concrete on it