Medievalmaniac

I think that the most important thing is to be consistent in your choice of documentation style. It's silly to leave the course and instructor in the heading; this is now a (revised, hopefully) version of the paper, being used as a writing sample. As such, I think the heading just needs to have your name, your identification as a candidate for admission, and the pagination. I have chosen to employ footnotes over in-text citation, because I find it cleaner and less distracting visually, and also because that's how so many articles are formatted in my field, so I figure this indicates my ability to revise and restructure for publication. Initially, I did not think a cover page was a necessary item for the writing sample; in retrospect, I think perhaps a cover page with further identifying information might be warranted. Might be best to check with the department(s) to which you are applying to be certain one way or the other on that. I don't think MLA is "required" - after all, many publications in the humanities also make use of MHRA or even APA style. I think the most important thing, as I said before, is that you are using a recognizably and consistent form of documentation.

Just seconding what others have said - this varies from program to program and you need to check carefully. Some top programs want 2 different samples that showcase your range as a writer, others want a single, sustained argument. ALL are serious about the page requirements, and the 25 page limit is almost always inclusive of works cited, i.e. you are expected to turn in 25 pages or less, total, not a 25 pages paper with extra pages for the works cited. (I have been told that if you go over by a page or two, they won't be terribly upset, but more than that might be an annoyance). Remember - ostensibly, they are supposed to read all of this. That's a lot of reading. Also, in many cases the 25 pages is a limit, not the number of pages you "have" to turn in - so a strong, 15-page paper in that case would be fine as a sample.

There was no Old English on the exam. The oldest text presented to us was Chaucer. Most of the passages were historical or theory-driven and came from the 18th century on. As far as the man's procedure for test administration - you should ABSOLUTELY file a formal complaint with ETS on several grounds. 1. The room must have a working clock, because that is the "official" time for the test. If the person is going by his or her individual watch, s/he is obligated to allow you the chance to set your watch by his or hers, i.e. "By my watch, it is now x:00. The examination is 2 hours and 50 minutes long. You may begin" or something to that effect. Otherwise, too easy to claim the timing waswrong and invalidate the whole group. 2. He must take care of all of that procedural crap BEFORE the exam begins, or AFTER the exam is over. During the examination period, you have the right to an uninterrupted, 2 hour and 50 minute period. Although we cannot do anything about sneeze-girl or sniff-boy or bathroom-break guru, the administrator of the exam is obligated to provide as optimal an exam experience as possible - this does NOT include multiple interruptions from him or her for procedural activities! 3. "I almost went balistic on him the second time because he took the test booklet while I was in the middle of reading a question and then HELD ONTO IT while he answered some other test takers' question. I'm sure it was less than 5 minutes, but it felt like forever and I had to start all over again on that particular set of questions (i.e. re-reading the poem, re-reading the questions, etc" This MUST BE REPORTED. You were penalized all of that time - and five minutes can equal several questions answered or unanswered. This is absolutely unacceptable. No, reporting will not change your score, but ETS needs to be informed that this occurred. At best, you will be offered a chance to retake at no charge. At worst, nothing happens. Ideally, you will be able to explain the circumstances as you explained them above and have a formal complaint filed with ETS that supports your claims; I would demand a letter from tem verifying what you stated as reported, so you can send that to programs along with your scores. They might or might not provide you with one - but honestly I would make a big stink about this, because you were treated in a VERY unjust way and it certainly could have affected your score negatively in multiple ways. I would not let that go. Bottom Line: If admissions and fellowship programs require these scores, and ETS is the only way to get these scores, then ETS needs to be held accountable when circumstances beyond your control and completely int he control of the test administrator arise to cheat you out of your best possible score.

Honestly, the more I think on it...I think I probably did get a decent score. What I find to be my biggest issue with this test isn't the length or the difficulty level. I can handle long, hard tests. In fact (and I'll tell everyone you are lying if you reveal this off-board! lol [j/k]) I actually kind of enjoyed the Praxis II literature exam (secondary teaching licensure test), because while there were certainly questions I didn't know the first thing about, mostly it reinforced for me that I am a capable individual and have a good base of knowledge to work from. My problem with the GRE subject test we took yesterday wasn't that there were a lot of questions I didn't know the answer to, or a lot of text blocks I had never seen before. It was that there weren't very many that I honestly felt I did know the answer and know the chosen reading. It's that the practice examination the ETS sent out truly didn't resemble in style or format what we ended up seeing yesterday. No blocks of identifications. Only three or four questions on Classical mythology, all based around two myths. Hardly any drama at all, and no modern drama, which the practice book had plenty of. One section on literary theory, and two of the theorists FAR closer in their style and subject than we were led to believe we would see (they told us in the practice materials that the chosen theorists for such questions would be clearly working in different traditions, but three of those quotes were from the same movement). No theory application, which ETS made it a point to tell us to expect and which is actually much easier than straight identifying, especially for an undergraduate just out of a BA program. There were a lot of questions where if you hadn't had a class in that time period, you couldn't have known the answer - survey courses don't cover the more obscure works by writers. For example, you're looking for Herrick's Julia poems, or "To the Virgins", or "Corinna's Gone a - Maying", and they've chosen "To Find God" [they didn't, this is just an example of the sort of thing they did do]. No Paradise Lost, so if you hadn't had the chance to read any other Milton - and would you, in a survey course, necessarily?) you might have had trouble there. Questions like, "Who was the editor to whom this poem was dedicated?" REALLY? How is that a reasonable thing to expect a wide cross-section of students from all over the world enrolled in English classes to know about a poem - any poem - much less a particularly difficult one that is NOT usually featured in survey courses because the author has a more easily accessible and equally impressive one to work with (fortunately, I teach the one in question, or I promise you I would not have known that answer). We should have been able to expect a lot of reading comprehension questions - but it was more like 50% of the exam than 25-30%, and ate up a lot of time because the passages were long and for the most part not from easily recognizable texts. I tried the two-pass strategy, but by the time I was done with the first pass, there were only about 10 minutes left. I could do the work, but most of the first pass was eaten up doing the work I could do - reading comp. I recommend to anyone taking it in the next go-around to go through and skip all the reading comp sections, answering only singleton questions - that will take you less than thirty minutes, if the test is structured anything like what we saw yesterday - then go back and do the reading comp. For yesterday's test - people who work primarily in 18th, (19th - these were the types of question I could handle aside from older works) and 20th century literature and literary theory probably found the exam to be much, much easier than I did. The thing is, I have spent the p[ast four months working specifically in the 18th and 20th centuries and literary theory trying to prepare for that, but what they gave us to work with didn't match up at all to what they ended up issuing on the text as regards chosen readings and identifications. So unless you've read much more widely, say for a course in that era, you are at a very distinct disadvantage no matter how much you have studied. (In my case, because I have a family and a full-time job, I have been waking up at 4:20 EVERY MORNING [OK, not on Sundays, but Saturdays and weekdays, yes] since September for an extra hour and a half to study before my day began. And that may have picked me up one or two extra points - it wasn't worth it.) I'm not upset that the test was long and hard. I do think that ETS should be sending out practice materials that reflect the exam you are going to see, and they did NOT do this. And for those going on to take the exam in April - don't bother with the Princeton Review or even with Vade Mecum, either. I think the earlier exams probably did resemble these study aids, but what we saw yesterday was nothing like it. Your best course of action is going to be to just randomly open Norton Anthologies, read whatever is in front of you, and see if you understand it. If you don't, then figure out why. Also - know the historical events surrounding each literary movement, because there were several questions of the "what was going on politically when this writer was active?" variety. In the end, I probably did OK. But I doubt highly my score will in any way reflect the work I put into preparing for it or what I am really capable of. That's frustrating to me. The only thing I can say is, I know I did everything I could and that I was as prepared as I could have been to take the exam, and with that, I must lie content.

I thought it was absolutely hell on Earth. I got a perfect score on the Praxis II English exam last year to get certiification to teach public school English courses. For the GRE subject test, I took two practice exams and studied my a** off based on the works that were featured on them and on the Vade Mecum website - and then only about 40% of the exam today was on the same sort of material. After 13 years of teaching and the same amount of education, I can honestly say that I didn't recognize the vast majority of what was on the exam, or only vaguely so. No Woolf, no Gray, NO DONNE...what kind of English literature subject test doesn't feature Donne?! ONE question on Chaucer. Three questiopns with anything to do with Shakespeare, and no Marlowe. Beowulf in a modern translation only, and no Old English at all, just Middle. And after all the focus on Restoration during practice exams and in the Princeton Review- only one question on the Restoration comedies. No Wordsworth or Shelley. Oh. My. God. I don't even know what time period I was working in for most of this morning. I only know I correctly identified a litote, and got a couple of history questions right. If I scored in the 60th percentile, I might have to be thrilled. GAH.

Anglo Saxonists: Catholic University of America. Dr. Lilla Kopar. She is, actually, from Scandinavia. Old Norse would not be a problem here! Florida State University. Dr. David Johnson. (no Old Norse) WashU. Dr. Wolfram Schmidgen (I "think" he can do ON) - but you would be hard-pressed to find a better A-S.

This is actually my area, specifically: Arthuriana, the crafting of national identity in texts, pagan elements in Christian texts and Christianization of pagan texts - the whole shabang. You've got some good schools chosen for that sort of work. I will say that University of Lampeter Wales just trotted out an MA in Arthurian studies, working with Karen Janulak, who is Geoffrey's newest biographer (her monograph on G. of Monmouth just came out last month). Fordham is especially good for Anglo-Norman, or French of England, studies, in a partnership with University of York - and their website on the matter is drool-worthy for the bibliography provided! Columbia is getting Judith Butler....drool. Drool, drool, drool. I'm surprised, with an interest in Arthuriana/Wace-Lazamon, that you are not applying to Penn State (Norris Lacy, french / medieval literature - editor of the New Arthurian Encyclopedia) among other schools? Trinity-Dublin = John Scattergood and the Book of Kells - drool, drool, drool. I do understand that there are a few professors in Harvard's English department working specifically in postcolonial/national identity, and I think this is specifically in medieval texts - I was encouraged to apply there by professors in the department for that work in particular. If you stay in the UK and want Wace and Lazamon, what about Judith Weiss, over at Robinson-Cambridge, or W.R.J. Barron in Exeter? Most recent editions of the R de B and the Brut, respectively. Have you read Crane's Insular Romance, or Warren's History on the Edge? These are two of my favorite works in medieval national identity.

You are honestly the only one who can answer this question. I would say, take a look at the past five years of preparation. How much of it was because you want to be a college professor, and how much of it was because you want to meet your goal of getting into a program and not feel like this has all been a waste of time? There is a difference. If you can honestly say you have done all of this work because you want to be a professor more than anything else, then it's definitely the right choice. If you believe you want to be a professor but you've really been focused mainly on the process of getting into a program, then you might have some thinking to do as to your real goals in all of this. If your central goal has been getting accepted and you have only vaguely thought about what happens if you are accepted, then you might really just be in it for the challenge and because you don't want to feel as though you have wasted your time/ let yourself or others down. There's no shame in saying "You know, I thought this was what I really wanted, but now I see I just liked the idea of it, and in reality that is better for me, at least for now". There's also no shame in saying "What I've got going on now is fantastic, but it just isn't being a college professor, so I'm going for it." But you have to decide which of those paths, or what path otherwise, is yours, and none of our advice is going to be a very good replacement for your own self-awareness.

I did this for a professor of mine, and I handled it by giving the full name in the first use of it and going with "Dr. so and so" afterwards. I felt this was appropriate because it conveyed my respect for this individual. So - start with "I am writing on behalf of Dr. Jonathan Harker, an English professor specializing in Vampire Studies here at No-Name University" and then after that, just "Dr. Harker is..." "Dr. Harker does..." "Dr. Harker impresses..." etc. etc.

Second this. It can't hurt your application to send that score in with your other GRE scores, especially when it's that good.

Not unless you believe absolutely that you can do much, much better on a second test.. Your scores are fine. Focus on your SOP and writing sample.

I agree with both of your responders. While the statement of purpose I wrote, edited once, and sent out last season was good enough to get me a single, unfunded offer, when I read it now I cringe. I sound so unfocused as to what I'm trying to do, and at the same time so adorably pompous, that I imagine adcomm members laughing over certain of my statements before easily tossing me to the rejections pile. This year, I am actually on probably the fifth complete version of my statement of purpose, and that only includes completed versions, not partially-begun versions, and doesn't account for all of the editing and shifting of phrases and so forth. I have spent more time working on this than I did working on any of my writing samples. But at present, I have three very enthusiastic endorsements of the current version from two professors and a current PhD student, all of whom are now stating they can't imagine I would not get an offer based on this statement (Which NONE of them said about any of the other versions).. And for the first time in the entire process, I actually agree with them and think this one is really, really good. And I thought all of them were really good. So - yeah. I'm looking currently at about 20-30 hours on this single document - but I definitely do not consider them wasted hours.

If the citation works perfectly within the context of explaining your own goals as a graduate student, then it's OK to use it. Rather than a bibliography, I would footnote this - they already have enough paper to shuffle through. I would also keep any citation(s) employed as brief as possible - the statement of purpose ultimately has to be about you and your work.

Oh, my Lord...I was reading through this thread and saw people talking about taking the test "tomorrow". My heart slammed in my chest until I finally realized that no, the November exam is in fact NEXT weekend, not THIS PAST weekend and I haven't missed it entirely!!

Don't just go by what is listed on the graduate admissions websites. Double check with the specific departments to which you are applying as to their expectations for the writing sample(s). Some departments want one, 25 (give-or-take) page sample. One of the departments I am applying to requires two critical samples, not to exceed 25 pages in length including works cited. A quick email to the graduate admissions secretary can get you an answer to this question. From there, you may well need to just bite the bullet and either expand your current paper, or write a new one that meets the page requirements. Hope that helps!

There are several approaches you could take to this, so many reading lists to pick from. Are you planning to go into the Classics at the master's level? If so, you want to consult Classics department homepages for reading lists: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Classics/grad/reading.html http://classics.unc.edu/grad/readinglists/grad_PHDlist.html http://www.uiowa.edu/~classics/programs/graduate/reading.html http://classics.artsci.wustl.edu/graduate/reading_list If you just want a "well-read folks read these things" sort of list, those are plentiful, also: http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/ANreadlist.shtml http://rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/complist.pdf Hope that gives you a starting point!

Honestly, from my perspective, you go in there and ask the questions you want to ask. I know a lot of people disagree with me and that there seems to be this notion that there's a high-stakes game to be played in it all - but if I'm meeting with a faculty member, it's because I want to meet the faculty member, and if I want to meet him/her, it's because I have questions - and so I am going to ask them. I just don't know how to respond to the idea that professors conduct these interviews as a sort of secret rite of passage, and if you say the right thing, the right way, you're in, and if you say the wrong thing, the wrong way, you're out. I mean, obviously, you should seek to be articulate, educated, and not blatantly offensive - but beyond that, you can't really control a conversation. I should think people you would want to work with, would be happy to meet an enthusiastic and prepared applicant. I am always responsive to enthusiastic students, although of course I'm teaching high school level courses. I have met professors who seem to take offense at things said and the way they are said - but these also tend to be professors I am certain I would not want to work with. When I'm at conferences and meeting people, I enjoy best the professors who are down to earth and just really passionate about their research and the work of others, they're just really into the profession and their place in it and the whole thing. There's a lot of camaraderie and laughter in such conversations, a lot of fun as well as scholarship going on, and those are the kinds of people I like to work with. None of them, I believe, would reject a candidate because of a question s/he asked, as long as it was a reasonable question. I mean - don't ask them about their family, or religious views, or their home decor...but wondering about their current projects and what they think of the current state of the field, I should think they would not view askance. If they're acting as though this is a top-secret club and you're not a member, that's a pretty elitist viewpoint, and while they are entitled to have that viewpoint and have earned it and so on and so forth (I certainly wouldn't begrudge a professor the right to a little "you have to earn it" action) in the end, these are people you have to work with for 5-7 years. For me, a highly hierarchical department wouldn't work, I like interdisciplinary approaches too much. For others, the idea of a regulated moving up in the ranks according to your specific situation and how much time you have put in is a major selling point in academia, and that's fine, too. There are all sorts of academics, and all sorts of professors, and I think in the end you have to approach this in the way that makes you feel most comfortable. A doctoral program is a major commitment, so I think you should feel strongly that you are going to be happy (or at least content and productive) wherever you end up. In my book, that definitely means meeting professors in the department and asking questions. For a lot of people, that seems like crossing the line. So - wow, I hope this was a helpful viewpoint; it's just one of many. Good luck!

I didn't read over instructions for the writing section, or look at sample responses, prior to the test. I just figured it would be "here's a prompt, write an essay". And I didn't use an obvious, five-paragraph essay format, or specifically "follow the rules" - I just had fun shredding the poorly-written article they asked me to shred. The free-response question was something about appearances and stereotypes. I wrote that the way people dress for 8:00 a.m. college classes in France, Japan and America is generally a good indicator that in many ways, the stereotypes for each country are alive and well and manifested in freshman clothing choices, backing it up with a discussion of the perceived American love of ease, convenience and trend-following as evidenced in people's wearing the logo-laden, brand name pajamas they wore to bed the night before to class, the idea that the French love tradition and culture mixed with personal statements as evidenced in the Gallic tendency to wear solid basics and dress them up with colorful accessories, and the stereotype that the Japanese are perfectionists who love technology and innovation evidenced in their wearing of suits/ business attire and carrying of the latest technological devices, etc. etc. It wasn't a graduate term paper, by any means, but I thought it was an interesting angle on the question. Maybe they responded to it as being original?

That's fair, and makes more sense, thank you for the clarification (although, in my defense, my post was really just an attempt at gallows humor, as it were. We are all in application hell, after all...

YES, double space your paper. Remember, the adcomm members have to wade through a couple hundred of them; make it easy on them. In terms of your paper - how long is this historiographical piece? Could you interweave your own argument into it, using the historiographical work to underscore your own argument on a topic? It seems to me that would be a good solution, if it can be done. Otherwise, you may need to think of something else to submit. They do want a critical argument, something that underscores your thinking.

I am also only applying to three schools this season. I can't move my family in this economy(we live in a very rural, high unemployment area and the houses for sale here are not moving at ALL), so there's no point in applying elsewhere; if I get in, I get in, and if I don't, I'm not getting a PhD. It's easy to be clinically calm and rational like that at present, but if I don't get in, I'm not going to lie and say I'll be totally fine with it - I WANT this degree, and I've worked incredibly hard to get to a point where I could earn it if I got in with funding. Not getting accepted this year would be absolutely devastating to me, crushing. But, I'm not going to keep putting myself and my family through this application hell year after year, especially since after this year I will have exhausted the local possibilities. I'm applying to the three programs within driving distance of where we are, and hoping for the best.