Medievalmaniac

definitely, make sure you have met or can meet the requirements for the MA, including comps and/or thesis, before you mke a final decision. And also, you should definitely speak with your advisor about your concerns. S/he has a stake in what happens to you, and (technically) should want the best for you. You can gauge from his/her reaction whether or not s/he saw this coming, or it is a big surprise. It might turn out that s/he has just been waiting for you to decide when to leave, if you have been dissatisfied and/or unhappy/struggling for a while.

Take a deep breath and slow down. Take out a piece of paper and physically write down all of the reasons you want to quit. Put it away. Come back to it in a day or two. How valid do those reasons seem now? On the back of the paper, write down all of the reasons to keep going and finish. Put it away again. Take it out in a day or two. Compare the two lists. Which one seems more valid? Take out another piece of paper. Write down what it will take to get it done - materials, tools, emotional/physical aspects, etc. Put this list away. Look at it in a day or two. Do you think you have what you need to get it done? This process may seem very simplistic and almost corny, but I guarantee it does actually work. You are giving a voice to your concerns, a name to the problem, and some space to think and reflect on everything - that will get you to a clear-headed answer better than anything any one of us could offer up to you by way of advice one way or the other. Good luck!!

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Oh. My. God(dess)(e)(s).

Caveat: remember, I'm an English major doing that Math, it may be off somewhat. But the general idea is spot-on. And yes, I bothered to do that Math trying not to obsess over acceptances...!

That 62 credits a term has to be wrong. That would mean TWENTY 3-credit CLASSES in a single term. He would have to be in classes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 8:00 a.m. to 9 p.m. straight with no breaks, and then again Tuesdays and Thursdays for seven classes. It would be a physical impossibility. Particularly when he was engaged in acting and such at the same time...!

I think that sounds perfectly fine, very acceptable question. Hope you get the answer you are looking for!

I certainly think you have received sound advice here, and just wanted to add my own "Congratulations!!" to the voices. An interview is definitely a very positive sign! Given the distance you would need to travel, I would think a call to the director of English graduate studies reframing the question to give yourself a good understanding of where you are at would not be remiss. Maybe something like, "I am very excited about the offer of an interview, as yu are certainly my top choice in programs, but I would be flying in from Europe for this, and of course that's a bit of an overhead cost. How likely would I be to be accepted if I were to attend the interview?" That is a reasonable thing to ask, given the logistics and expense of air travel, and you should be able to gauge from there whether the flight would be worth the expense.

I have presented at several conferences. In my experience, you want between 8 and 9 pages if you want to read at a steady but not rushed pace. Twenty minutes goes by really quickly when you are reading aloud! "They" say to figure two minutes a page, but in my experience that is too fast for the people listening to be able to follow your argument well. My recommendation is to try to keep it to no more than 9.5-10 pages, and then do a timed practice to figure out if you need to cut anything. In a paper being presented, I will often omit textual citations from the reading, but have them as footnotes so if I need them for the Q&A I have them, but I don't have to take up time from my argument in repeating them. This is especially helpful when everyone int he audience is familiar with the text(s) you are discussing, but can work in other situations also - if they want you to recap the story or give the citations, you can do it in the Q&A. I hope these suggestions are useful to you. Good luck! I love conferences.

This. It's so easy not to consider the demands made on professors' time, because we don't consider the bigger picture when it comes to correspondence. Remember that most professors on any given day walk into the office, sit down, turn on the computer, and check their inbox....only to find department emails, emails from colleagues, emails from family and friends, emails from listservs, emails from current students, emails from thesis/dissertation advisees, emails from current and former students asking for letters of recommendation, emails from conference organizers, emails from publishing houses about new books coming out; if they're publishing or working on a publication project they have emails from editors, readers, proofreaders...it can be a hundred or more, a day. And the better-known/more respected the prof, the more emails. That's a lot of correspondence to wade through. I wouldn't take the curt response as a negative - they bothered to respond at all, after all. But I wouldn't necessarily send them anything else, either. Hang in there!

In terms of asking professors to submit multiple recommendations - if you know how many you need, then I would certainly disclose that number to them as you are asking. But with the invention of the online submission form in the Applyyourself system, this should not be a hardship - you write a recommendation letter, then upload it into the system. Once the letter is written, ten uploads will take about ten minutes. I shouldn't think it would be a problem. If it is, then they should tell you so when you request the recommendation. In terms of who to ask for the rec- you should always ask for a recommendation from the professors who are most able to speak to your strengths as a scholar. I can assure you that a detailed, thorough recommendation from an assistant professor will carry more weight with an adcomm than a rec from, say, J.R.R. Tolkien, Professor Emeritus in English at Oxford, that says "Janey is a fantastic student. I recommend her fully for your program. Sincerely, J.R.R. Tolkien." Unless a big-name professor has specific ties with the department in question and/or has a track record of only sending really great applicants, that rec is pretty much useless - remember, s/he who is well-known in your field may be just another member of the MLA to people on the adcomm. You my be a medievalist who knows and adores Larry Benson's work; the adcomm may be comprised of 17th, 18th, and 20th century American studies professors. That's why letters of recommendation should speak to your strengths across the board as an English student, as specifically as possible. Now, if you could get the above-mentioned Tolkien to write you a one page evaluation of you as a super-promising linguist and an extremely strnong reader with a penchant for comparative work, then THAT letter would definitely be the one to get (not to mention, involving an inexplicable instance of time-travel, but I digress...)! But in your situation, it seems your better choice is going to be the second professor. You have taken more classes with him/her, and therefore s/he is more familiar with you as a student.

Congratulations!! What are you working in?

Hey, All - first 2011 English admit is posted on the results board: Northwestern. Anyone want to claim it and/or discuss? Congratulations!!!!

I'm just wondering - is he even enrolled as a full-time PhD student? Because, if so, how can he also be taking classes at Rhode Island School of Design? Isn't it against regulations to be enrolled in programs at two institutions simultaneously, unless it's as part of a consortium? Maybe he is just taking graduate level courses...?

First off - congratulations! Making it to peer review for an article is exciting! I also have recently heard that an article of mine has been passed on for a double-blind peer review, for a very well-known publication in my field. I thought it would be a great thing to add to my application, but I ran the idea past a few professors, including my former advisor, and they all cautioned that unless I have a firm offer of publication, I should hold off on sending the information on to the schools to which I applied, because there are too many variables at play for it to be more than exciting at this point (i.e., adcomms won't be impressed, apparently). So, going with their view, I declined the inclination and refrained from sending the information in, and since I trust their judgment, I guess my advice would be, if you get an offer of publication, send that information along, but at this point silence is a better option. Hope that helps.

Hi there, and welcome (back) to the Grad Cafe....I see you have been a member for a while, but only three posties - you have much more restraint than I do! lol In terms of the first question, the standard answer applies - you have as good a chance as anyone else filling out an application, sending in required documents, and paying the application fee, of getting into a good PhD program. Certainly, your language preparedness recommends you in particular for Comp Lit., and the fact that your grades went up over the second half of the undergraduate degree is a plus. There are a number of excellent comp lit programs, and if you just scroll down in this sub forum, or type "comp lit" into the search box, you will find a number of threads devoted to discussion of the various pros and cons of these programs. Michigan, Yale, WUSTL, UCLA, UCSB, UVA, UMASS-Amherst, Rutgers, Brown, UPenn, Cornell - all have programs in Comp Lit, for starters.

I will state that from personal experience, many graduate students will tell you the good,bad and ugly, as long as you don't seem like you are fishing for it - if it comes up in an honest conversation, they'll often be quite frank. The MOST honest responses I have ever gotten, though, have been from professors on the cusp of retiring. They don't CARE what anyone thinks of them, they're leaving. I had one professor write horrible things about the direction his department was going in, and then suggest five or six other departments he thought would be a better choice for me and my interests. I had another older professor who simply wrote: "Don't come here. They'll wreck your enthusiasm. Go somewhere where graduate students are genuinely supported". Needless to say, I didn't apply to those programs, and I was really grateful for the heads-up. So - you might try contacting professors with older hiring dates listed on the websites...?

Yes, please, take my screening process for fellowship candidates as a major exaggeration intended merely to illustrate my point. In no way did I mean for that to be taken super-literally!! I was simply trying for an example that would be clearly a fellowship candidate sort of application - but as DietcOke and others have pointed out, fellowships depend on a wide variety of variables.